Bill is still away, but Peter got a trip to the bright lights of Slough to see IO’s new data center there. And in the office there’s been plenty more to talk about. 

IBM’s Spark announcement excited Max, as it gives Big Blue a chance to do something useful with its Watson artificial intelligence technology, and to bring something new to the Hadoop ecosystem. We also both enjoyed hearing about the role of car batteries in the data center. 

IO, IO, it’s off to Slough we go… 

Being a modular build, IO’s new pad in Britain’s data center capital is still pretty much a huge empty shed, with a few modules in the corners. IO has the modules built in Arizona by its sister company Baselayer, and they arrive in about 90 days. The company is very proud of its IO.OS operating system. 

Power is a big issue for data centers, and General Motors is putting second hand electric car batteries to work in its Milford plant, to power a data center. 

The site has solar and wind energy, but they aren’t available all the time, so five batteries are used - previously installed in  Chevy Volt cars - to store the energy till it is needed. 

Finally,we noted the departure of Stephen Elop from Microsoft. The man who sold Nokia’s phone division, he won’t be forgotten in the industry for a long time.