Ken Brill, founder of the Uptime Institute and a forward thinker in data center design and operations, died this week at the age of 68, the Institute said on Thursday. The cause was cancer, a spokesman said. Brill was known for his work creating the Uptime Institute's data center tiering system, which provides a way to rate and compare the reliability of computing facilities. It's used by many large companies for their data center planning and selection.