DCIM – Don’t Care, I’ll Manage

When asked how powerful the engine under the bonnet of its cars is,  Rolls-Royce used to say only that it was “adequate”.  And if you could afford to buy the car then the cost of filling it up should be of no consequence to you because, after all, it is not when you arrive but how you arrive that is important!  But even a car like that has a speedometer, a rev counter and a fuel gauge on the dashboard.

The same cannot be said for many data centres and server rooms.  Speedometers were optional extras on cars in the early days of the auto industry before becoming standard equipment.  I don’t envisage a law being passed anytime soon that stipulates data centres must be fitted with a DCIM “speedometer”.  Yet the consequences of not having real-time monitoring are expensive and laden with risk.  For example, over provisioning of power is a big problem in many facilities – they are designed according to equipment face-plate power ratings and then a bit more is added on just in case.  The end result is a serious amount of stranded power – provisioned but not used.  The theory is that there is plenty of safety margin built-in and perhaps monitoring is not really needed.  That way lies the route to out-of-control spending, poor capacity planning, increased operating risks and, most expensive of all, building more, un-needed data centre space.  Real-time monitoring of actual consumption data to a granular level provides the basis for benchmarking and for driving efficiencies. Put simply, knowing what is going on in real-time in your data centre just makes good business sense.

To be in control of your data centre you need real-time access to real-time data otherwise you cannot get the most out of the control systems you have.  Monitoring the meters, sensors and other devices in the data centre and capturing real-time data is the necessary starting point to taking control.  It puts the data centre manager in a much better position to be able to prioritise potential problems and benefits – energy savings and increased data centre resilience being chief among them.  Best of all – use a vendor-independent software solution that interoperates with multi-vendor systems, typical in most facilities.

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Sausages, elephants and data centres

“No man should see how laws or sausages are made” – so goes the saying oft misattributed to Otto von Bismarck. This week it cropped up in the unlikely setting of the 451Group’s Hosting and Cloud Transformation Summit in London.  Perhaps the first time either the Iron Chancellor or sausages have been associated with data centres.  So I thought I would take it further and suggest that no man should see how power is monitored in the data centre.  Why?  Because power and infrastructure monitoring should be automated, taken care of by software, meters and sensors.

Relatively few data centres have implemented any automated energy monitoring solutions so far.  But energy bills represent the biggest operational cost for data centres.  There is general acceptance that something can and must be done about reducing energy consumption or, at least, slowing up its growth.  So why the relatively low uptake levels of solutions?

I looked for clues in a session entitled “DCIM – The Elephant in the Datacenter”, Andy Lawrence described DCIM as one of the most hyped areas of the IT industry.  However, he added that “If you want to get the best out of cloud, you need DCIM”.  Speaking to fellow attendees, it is clear that the term DCIM means different things to different people.  In practice, eating that particular elephant means a staged process and that means starting with automated metering and monitoring.

Much like fashion shows where the models wear outfits which seem unattainable or irrelevant to the average person, data centre conferences can be great places to hear about solutions that are at best aspirational.  Hidden from the view of the audience are the safety pins and sellotape holding the fashion models’ outfits together, giving the illusion of the perfect line as they strut their stuff.  So it is with data centres conferences.   One operator described how its DCIM implementation integrates all the elements of managing their data centre estate – only to add that they still create spreadsheets to “share” information manually between elements (asset database and monitoring) of the DCIM system.  Another illusion shattered!

A more mundane but very important issue discussed was lack of budget for data centre software.  For example, allocating CapEx for metered power strips or branch circuit monitoring but not making provision for the monitoring system to leverage the investment in all that intelligent hardware.  Why?  A key reason cited is organisational silo management: IT and Facilities not collaborating and keeping budgets and objectives separate.

Others mentioned difficulties in defining RoI metrics; products look too complex to implement without a lot of (expensive) help.  And “DCIM itself does not save energy” – may be but it helps you understand and then optimise operations.

Which brings us back to sausages!  Put down the clipboard and the portable ammeter – how the power monitoring is done should be invisible and automated.  Your focus needs to be on the outputs and the decision-making that follows from your new-found understanding of where the energy is being consumed.

Doing nothing is not an option; but neither is trying to do everything at once.  Start with automated monitoring: either leveraging the intelligent metering you have already invested in or by implementing some (it can be done economically and non-intrusively).  Once you have real-time visibility of live data, delivered as actionable information through dashboards and alerts, you are on the road to understanding.  That is the critical step toward optimising data centre operations.

Through tuning and optimisation you make energy savings.  You will see the effects of any changes you make to your operating environment.  You will have direct feedback into your RoI metrics.  And you will be able to achieve payback within a year.  What’s not to like?  What’s stopping you tucking into that elephant sausage now?

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No automated metering in your data centre? You cannot be serious!

I have just been looking at a survey run by The Green Grid - “How often do you measure PUE™/DCiE in your data center?”.  The results indicate to me a problem that data centre operators need to address now.  And that problem is – no automated meter reading.

At the time of writing, approximately 500 people have responded to the survey.  Around 33% have answered “Never”.  Another 20% have said “Monthly” and 8% have said “Weekly”.  As I see it, that is at least 60% of data centre operators who do not have automated metering and monitoring in place.  If they did then they would have much more visibility of PUE.  More importantly, it begs the question – what else are they missing?

PUE is just a metric, of course, but if you are one of the minority of data centre managers (29% according to the survey) who is monitoring it continuously then you probably have some other granular metering and monitoring in place, too.  That’s a very good thing; in fact I would argue it is business critical.  Having detailed, real-time visibility of where the power is going – rack-level or even device level – puts you in a much better position to

  • manage capacity
  • identify under-used servers
  • bill for actual usage
  • reduce risk of downtime

Without it you cannot operate optimally.  Moreover, having that information available automatically through dashboards and interactive management reports saves a lot of time and money.

Gathering meter data manually is notoriously error-prone and time-consuming, not to mention dull.  If that is how your facility operates, it’s time to change!  Instrument with network-addressable meters and sensors.  And automate with a software solution, like InSite, that will monitor your power infrastructure and put actionable information, including PUE, at your disposal continuously.  It makes business sense.

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DCIM – is it really so complicated?

Implementing a data centre infrastructure management (DCIM) solution is usually portrayed as being very complicated.  There are so many aspects to it (for example asset management, auto discovery, monitoring, dashboards, alerting, automations, and so on and on) that it is difficult to compare solutions.  Implementing DCIM requires a lot of planning.  It requires IT and facilities to collaborate.  And it can be very expensive – not just to buy but in ongoing ownership costs.  And yet…………….

Here’s a typical scenario.  A data centre manager described to me his recent experience of looking for a DCIM solution.  He has an 80-rack facility already fitted with intelligent power strips and some sensors.  He received several quotes for systems but the core problem was the 5-year payback cycle for the licenses alone (not including professional services).  This just made no sense and was completely out of synch with his needs and budget.  Sub-year payback has to be the order of the day for the investment to make sense and get signed off.

Part of the problem is undoubtedly caused by the breadth of capability of solutions coming under the DCIM banner.  It is often hard to compare one to another.  All singing, all dancing DCIM products might well be excellent and extremely sophsiticated with complex user interfaces but frequently they are somewhat overwhelming, too.  I believe that many data centre managers are looking for solutions that are very capable yet relatively simple to implement and use and, above all, are cost-effective.  I believe they value vendor independence because they operate in a heterogenous environment.  Data centre managers want something that is flexible and can ideally leverage the infrastructure (incl. meters, PDU strips, sensors, UPS, etc) they have already invested in.  They want something that can be implemented quickly, and can start giving them real-time information on metrics like capacity, energy consumption and PUE immediately.  They also want to know that the solution they implement is reliable, scalable and can grow in breadth and depth of capability as they ask it to do more.

Value for money is critical and is too often what is forgotten.  It is not about the technology but what it delivers and how quickly it proves the RoI case to the CFO and CIO.  So, get in touch and let’s talk about how InSite can help you save money now and manage your data centre more effectively.  Getting started may be simpler than you think!

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Data centre energy and competitive advantage

The start of a new year is a traditional time for taking stock.  For data centre owners and operators that should include reviewing how you meter, monitor and manage energy.  Saving on energy improves the bottom line – it is a business issue not just a technology one.  Failure to address this is not only wasteful but irresponsible.  It’s time do something about it and turn data centre energy management to competitive advantage.

Research carried out by Quocirca [1], on behalf of Oracle, shows that more than a third of data centre managers do not see the energy bill and that a further 10% doubts that anyone else sees a copy of the bill for data centre energy usage.  If you don’t see the bill, how can you even begin to manage energy!  A 2011 study by DatacenterDynamics [2] estimates that the UK data centre market consumes around 6.4 GW of electricity annually – (that’s the same as around 6 million homes!) – and that this is growing by almost 7%.  So, combine huge scale consumption with increasing costs per kWh and the need felt by all organistations to reduce costs and what does it add up to?  A compelling business reason for investing in metering, monitoring and management and at a granular level (service, device, rack, department etc).

Yet deployments of automated energy and infrastructure management software solutions are relatively few and far between.  I think there are several reasons including:

  • not knowing what is possible;
  • lack of awareness of available solutions;
  • many solutions are very complex to deploy and very expensive;
  • technology is only part of it – data centre energy management is a business issue and the solutions need to be usable by business people;
  • fear of the potential disruption to operations that deploying some solutions may create (e.g. deploying infrastructure hardware).

We speak to data centre managers from all sectors, from service providers and colos to corporates, and often it is the issues above that are raised as they describe their current situation.  Faced with escalating costs, limited budgets and increasing demands from the business they are looking for help.  So, we show them InSite, describe how it leverages the infrastructure investment they have already made, show the real-time management reporting, talk about customers who have achieved RoI in only a few months, and demonstrate how easy it is to take the first steps with a trial.  That moves the conversation on to a more collaborative footing and moves the focus on to the business benefits.

Data centres are a business asset and represent major investments for their owners and operators.  Organisations, whether public or private sector, large or small, depend on them – they are business critical.  Data centres are complex environments.   They cost a huge and growing amount to run and that cost must be managed because it is financially irresponsible not to.  Above all, data centres represent a source of competitive advantage for the organisation.  That is something data centre managers – and businesses – cannot and must not ignore.

[1] Quocirca/Oracle report

[2] DCD report

 

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Does that make sense?

There are many system monitoring tools out there and often they are great at gathering data and perhaps displaying events but they can fall short on user friendliness.  They don’t always display information in an understandable manner particularly to the non-tech expert.  So when I came across this article – “Never ask ‘Does that make sense?’” in the Harvard Business Review – it got me thinking about our InSite software product.  The author argues that, when giving a presentation, the speaker should never ask the audience this question because it implies that (a) the speaker is uncertain of his/her ground and (b) the audience might not be capable of understanding.  Instead, the speaker should ask the audience if there are any questions.

You may or may not agree with the article but it makes sense to me in the context of InSite and its users.  We endeavour to make InSite intuitive to use.  Configuring a new installation is likely to be done by a technically competent person, someone familiar with the systems and infrastructure that InSite will be monitoring for them.  However, the dashboards and reports through which users interact with InSite day-to-day need to be usable and understandable by a wider audience – business people and non-techies as well as sysadmins and facilities managers.  They should not find themselves staring at a report and asking themselves “Does this make sense?” although they may have questions about the information trends they are seeing.  This is where the usability of the dashboards and reports, which present information in real-time, comes into its own.  Users can drill down into detail, quickly and easily, to get answers to their questions and become better informed for making business decisions.

A few brief examples might help to illustrate this (although even better is to Contact Us to ask us questions and for your own demonstration).

Example 1:

Map of European Facilities

An interactive dashboard showing a map with each icon linking to another layer which can be drilled down to in order to reveal further detail.  In this way, you can go from a world view of your data centres right down to a local view, to a site view, to a floor plan, to a specific device.  (Yes, there are shortcuts to enable you to get to exactly what you want at one click).

Example 2:

Global Summary Dashboard

Perhaps you are responsible for several facilities and what you are most interested in is an overview showing you consolidated information, including key metrics that you are accountable for such as PUE.  A dashboard like the one above, which is easily customisable, can give you that and it also enables you to drill down rapidly into any anomalies or critical situations that you can see.  When you pick up the phone to the local data centre manager, you have the key information in front of you so you can ask the right questions and identify the issues.

Example 3:

Power Usage Summary

From a management reporting perspective, perhaps you need a daily or weekly summary of what it is costing you, by rack or department, to power your data centre equipment.  You might use this information for internal or customer billing; you might use it to drive behaviour change by making people aware of how much it costs to run those servers and applications they asked you to set up for them a year ago.

There are many more examples we could use but the key point is – you don’t have to wallow around in a sea of data asking “Does that make sense?”.  Get in touch – we would really like to know how you want to see and use information to run your data centres even more efficiently.  And we would love to help you make it happen!

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Landing a helicopter on a beer mat

Talking to a friend this week about how he was handling a challenging situation in his business, he described it as feeling like he was trying to land a helicopter on a beer mat.  I am not a pilot but that sounds difficult!  And it got me thinking about data centre managers and the challenges they describe to us when we discuss InSite with them.  Just like a helicopter pilot, the data centre manager – or ‘pilot’ - has a lot to keep an eye on and control if he is going to operate his facility as efficiently and effectively as possible.  I want to focus on a couple of recurring themes we come across – let us know if they are familiar.

In particular, I am thinking about (1) achieving targets and (2) managing the data centre through multiple monitoring systems.  There is nothing new about using targets to measure progress towards achieving specific business goals.  Data centre managers may be targeted on reducing OpEx or energy consumption or on improving PUE.  At first glance, there is nothing out of the ordinary with these targets but to measure progress against them implies that you know where you are starting from.  And this is the surprising thing – we speak to many data centre managers who do not have access to this base data because they do not have a capable monitoring system in place.  That makes landing their helicopter pretty difficult!

Another cause of real difficulty for the hard pressed data centre manager is coping with the accumulation of multiple point solutions, each of which only provides information on one of the systems he or she is responsible for.  For example, one application is monitoring the rack PDUs, another is monitoring the environmental sensors, yet another is monitoring the UPS and then there is the BMS.  Most data centres are multi-vendor sites; whilst many of these equipment vendors now offer software to manage their own products, and claim it can also manage the rest, although that seldom works in practice.  To make matters potentially worse, some of these systems might have been built in-house.  If developing data centre management systems is not your core business then this is extremely unlikely to be a good use of your scare resources – money, time and people.  And it does not stop there – maintaining such a system becomes burdensome and expensive, especially when the developer has left the company.

The data centre ‘pilot’ wants to go to one system to see, in real-time, what is going on in his or her facility.  What is required is a solution that is vendor independent and which can integrate with all the core infrastructure equipment and 3rd party systems, aggregating and consolidating the data in one place.  That sets the stage for providing dashboards for operations people and reports for business people through a single browser-based user interface.  And this is what InSite is designed to do.

If you have targets to hit then you need InSite’s interactive reporting tool to show you the time-based trends and analysis you need to make informed business decisions about how your data centre is run.  If you want to get a purview of your data centre and its critical metrics – cost, energy, PUE, capacity, etc – together with the ability to drill down into the detail at the device level, then you will appreciate the capability and ease of use of InSite’s real-time dashboards.  If managing your data centre sometimes feels like trying to land a helicopter on a beer mat then get in touch.  InSite gives you the intrumentation you need to take control.

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I want a red one

As a software development company, we think very hard about our product – what it does, what it looks like, what  it’s like to use.  Like painting the Forth Road Bridge, it’s a never ending task.  We have a product roadmap which we review and revise.  There are always new features that can be added, new reporting functionality to be created, new interfaces to be developed, and even the occasional bug to be fixed.  Yet this can be a very introspective process and therein lies the danger.  Developing a product in isolation from users is crazy and it does not generate sales either!

We think our InSite software looks pretty good, works pretty well and is intuitive to use.  We also think we know what our target market is looking for from a solution to data centre energy and environmental monitoring.  But complacency is always lurking down that path.  We are not customers and that is a crucial, if obvious, point.  Crucial because it is only by listening to and understanding the needs of real customers that we can solve real customer problems. In a competitive market the reason the customer chooses your product over someone else’s, aside from relationships and services and so forth, might not be for the reason you think your product is the best.

Our approach to customer engagement is to focus on problem solving, understanding what the customer is trying to achieve and then showing how InSite can help them get there.  Not exactly rocket science but vital nonetheless.  This does not mean we are a consultancy developing bespoke software – we are a product business.  We know the direction we want to take InSite in but we ensure that direction is strongly informed by real customer needs.  We listen to the outcomes and outputs that they require, developing the necessary features and functions that will deliver those with added value.  Whilst each customer situation is unique, of course there are themes that have widespread applicability.  In our case, I can summarise them as:

    • consumption
    • capacity
    • billing
    • efficiency
    • reporting
    • integration
    • automation

For example, “I need to know in real-time the energy consumption in kWh per rack so that I can bill my customers for what they use”.  Or “I need to know the real-time PUE of my data centres so I can monitor trends over time and see the effect of any adjustments I make”.  Or “I need to monitor the environment of my PoPs to ensure I meet SLA requirements”.  And so on.  Behind these requirements are the actual sites and equipment and users that InSite needs to interact with.  The vast majority of sites we see are not homogeneous but multi-vendor with 3-phase meters from one vendor, racks PDU strips from several others, temperature sensors from another, and so on and so forth.  Not only that but the equipment may use different protocols to communicate – SNMP, ModBUS-over-TCP, etc.  Or it might only be able to make its data available as a CSV file to be polled at a regular interval, or through an SQL database.  So we develop InSite to be as flexible as possible in its ability to monitor devices, gather data from the widest range of sources, process that data and present the user with actionable management information in the form of automated alerts, interactive dashboards and real-time reporting.

InSite is designed so that the look and feel of it can be customised, down to the web interface colour scheme and incorporation of your logo.  That is important to some customers, perhaps those who incorporate InSite in their customer portal and want to present a familiar front to users.  We discovered this need during early trials so we built the solution in.  It was not an obvious feature to include in the product but is an important one for a business solution.  So, yes, if you really want it in red you can have that, too!

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AdInfa goes to Downing Street

Taking power!

The 19th July was quite a milestone for us – our first trip to Downing Street!  This came about through our participation in the Cabinet Office’s Innovation Launch Pad (see this post) which culminated in a “Product Surgery” at the Department for Business Innovation & Skills.  9 companies presented at this, selected from the original 351 which had submitted ideas to the ILP web site.  AdInfa was there to show government how we could save them £220 million per year on their data centre energy bills through deployment of our InSite software.

The audience for the event comprised around 100 top-level civil service commercial and procurement executives representing probably the largest collective buying power in Europe. After all, total public spending is around £700 billion per year!  The purpose of the Product Surgery was to demonstrate just what great value and innovation SMEs can offer to public sector buyers.  Francis Maude, Minister for the Cabinet Office was the keynote speaker.  He emphasised his desire for government to engage with SMEs because he can see that tremendous value that can be delivered that way.  He said that the approach to government procurement needs to change to focus on the “what” not the “how” – procurement needs to makes decisions based on the outcomes desired, not the inputs to the process of buying.  Pre-qualification to be able to bid should not simply be about the size of your balance sheet and the decades you have been in business – it should be about ability to deliver the best quality services at the most economic rate thereby delivering better outcomes.

The Rt Hon Francis Maude believes that government can work with SMEs and access more innovative solutions to problems and receive much greater benefits all while spending less overall.  Speaking to civil servants afterwards, I was told that he is serious about delivering on this and that they feel positive about it.  Following on, Sherry Coutu talked about a goal of increasing government spend with SMEs from 17% of total budget to 25% and what a huge difference that would make given that SMEs are the engine of job creation in the UK.  It would deliver much better value for taxpayers than today. Sherry has been a great driver for the initiative and is determined that the Innovation Launch Pad results in contracts and soon.  This sentiment was shared by the other private sector mentors in attendance – people such as Jon Moulton, Andy Phillipps and Sara Murray.

Our pitch was about how we can help govt save up to £220 million from its data centre operating and energy costs and help the government achieve its goal of becoming the greenest government ever.  The panel’s questioning was effective and the individuals are smart people who have done their homework on the propositions they were listening to; they were no pushovers which is exactly as it should be.  In my case, the panel comprised Mike Lynch (Autonomy), Simon Parkes (Dept for Education), Geoff Sykes (Ministry of Justice) and Simon Lydiard (Dept of Transport).  The feedback we received was positive and data centres is an area that is definitely getting attention as part of the new ICT Strategy.  Interestingly, I was also asked if our InSite software could be applied to other areas, for example hospitals and other “intelligent building” environments – and the answer is “yes”, we focus on data centres as a target market, not because our technology is restricted to that environment.

Our experience of participating in ILP has been very good so far.  We have met some very smart people – both in private and public sector – who have helped with feedback and suggestions on our proposition.  We have spoken to top executives within government including David Smith (DWP), Joe Harley (Government CIO), Geoff Sykes (MoJ) and so on – people we are unlikely to have got any access to otherwise.  We can see real opportunities.

I got a sense of a genuine interest in what we are proposing and a strong desire to take action and to work with us.  However, I do not underestimate the perseverance and effort that will be required to keep us front of mind with the buyers and to get the contract stage.  Very positively, I have already been contacted by people I met at the event who said they are identifying potential projects to discuss with us – an excellent result.  Our goal is to be working on a project within 3 months – that will be proof of the government’s intention to take this seriously.

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AdInfa wants to cut Government data centre energy bills

On 28 March 2011, the Cabinet Office announced the opening of the “Innovation Launch Pad” and, at first, it completely passed us by!  The initiative was intended to encourage SMEs to submit ideas for how their products could help save the Government money or deliver better outcomes.  We have never considered selling to government before because we felt it would be too hard, take too long, involve too many hours form-filling and so on.  But this felt different and it has proved to be valuable for AdInfa and, we hope, will be invaluable for the UK.

I think I first heard about Innovation Launch Pad through an update on LinkedIn or it might have been on The Business Leaders Network blog (Mark Littlewood and Darren Harper do a great job there).  Anyway, I submitted AdInfa’s entry to “Cut Government Data Centre Energy Bills and Carbon Footprint” on 22nd April at 4:20pm, minutes before the closing deadline.  Our idea is to enable Government to cut costs, cut carbon emissions and optimise operating efficiencies across its estate of hundreds of data centres by monitoring and managing its energy consumption in real-time.  For that, we think they need InSite. The Government is seeking to reduce its data centre operating costs by £300 million per annum by 2020. Over the next 5 years, it is also expecting to reduce data centre operating costs by 35% and to reduce cooling and power consumption by up to 75%.  As the old saying goes, you can’t manage what you can’t measure! In order to realise its targeted savings, Government needs to implement a solution like our InSite software to enable data centre managers, operations managers and financial managers to see where the energy is being consumed in detail so that they can make informed decisions about how to improve things.

So, returning to the Innovation Launch Pad, 351 ideas were submitted by the closing date and these were subjected to comment, review and voting by civil servants.  Over 12,000 votes were submitted and around 30 companies were shortlisted to present to panels comprising leading British entrepreneurs and senior government business officials.  We made 4 such pitches over 2 days in June and received valuable feedback on how to engage with government.  From this process, nine companies have emerged as the most promising and AdInfa is delighted to be one of them.

On 19th July the nine selected companies will present their ideas to Government ministers, civil servants, business leaders (including Sherry Coutu who has been very proactive in pulling this together) and the press at what is known catchily as a “Product Surgery” being held at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.  Following that there will be a reception at No 11 Downing Street.  Needless to say, AdInfa is very excited to have been selected.  The process so far has been run efficiently and the people we have worked with have been helpful, friendly and appear genuinely committed and open to the ideas presented to them.  This is critical because entrepreneurs and SMEs are the wellspring of UK innovation and the Government can benefit hugely from engaging with them.  It just needs to take the plunge because the risks are low and the rewards for the UK are potentially huge.

[The nine companies are: AdInfa, Becrypt, Cambridge
Temperature Concepts
, Cat N Hosting, Health Analytics, HotDocs, Learning Pool, MyWorkSearch,
Software Europe]

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