IAMC Chair Colleen Caravati says an action orientation is not enough. Concern counts too. And we learn from IAMC corporate end user members about COVID-19 supply chain solutions. (Watch for coverage of IAMC’s first-ever virtual Professional Forum in the November issue of Site Selection.)
You’ve read in our past coverage about data center solutions in remote locations, whether to serve the needs of cryptocurrency firms or deploying underwater facilities. We even covered Sun Microsystems’ Blackbox product just after it debuted in 2006. The latest solution for the needs of operations in challenging locations far from population centers debuted earlier this month, when Microsoft introduced its Azure Modular Datacenter (pictured). “The unit can operate in a wide range of climates and harsh conditions in a ruggedized, radio frequency (RF) shielded unit,” Microsoft explains. “Once deployed it can act as critical infrastructure where temperature, humidity, and even level surfaces can pose a challenge. MDC can provide onsite augmentation of compute and storage capabilities, managing and operating high-performance applications in the field, IoT and real-time analytics workloads that require ultra-low latency, and standing up cloud applications to support critical infrastructure recovery.”
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Privapath company LetsGetChecked, a developer of sexual health tests that has expanded into other health areas such as thyroid, diabetes and colon cancer screening, has announced it will create 50 new jobs at its Dublin office. The company expanded by 120 jobs at its Dublin and New York offices just last year, and already has a headcount of 350. The company earlier this year secured $71 million in Series C funding after introducing a COVID-19 test kit that some airlines are using in pre-flight procedures. Earlier this year, the company launched its first privately owned laboratory in Monrovia, California.
Seoul-based Samyang Foods Co., whose efforts to help its native country overcome food shortages resulted in the country’s first ramen noodles in 1963, launched construction of this new manufacturing plant earlier this month, in a city located midway between Busan and Daegu. According to reports in The Korea Herald and other publications, the five-story, 69,801-sq.-m. (751,356-sq.-ft.) plant will produce ramen noodles and soup powder and will be completed by early 2022, with a focus on exports. When the new plant’s capacity is combined with that of plants in Wonju and Iksan, Samyang’s total ramen production volume will be 1.8 billion servings per year.
Paula Korowin, the certified meeting planner who serves as director of events & host sponsors for the Industrial Asset Management Council, sees this front-yard “cemetery” and gets a laugh every year as Halloween approaches in her neighborhood in the Atlanta-area community of Milton. The homeowner adds gravestone markers every year representing stories, issues in the news or actual milestones that have passed on (or that some might wish would do so). Among the memorialized over the years: the Montreal Expos baseball team, the muppet Elmo, “Deflategate,” the doomed Northern Arc perimeter highway once planned for the outskirts of Atlanta and the Chicago Cubs’ World Series curse. This year’s entries: toilet paper, the celebrity college admissions scam and Big Ten football (though a footnote on the marker saying “We’re back” notes the conference’s rise from the gridiron dead earlier this month).
