Tuesday, March 5th, 2013

Time	Event
12:30p	IBM Announces OpenStack Cloud, Boosting Open Cloud Momentum IBM has moved into open cloud architecture with a new service based on OpenStack, the company said yesterday. Technology industry heavyweight IBM announced its move into open cloud architecture, which includes a new cloud offering based on the open-source cloud OS, OpenStack. IBM had joined the OpenStack community last year, but this was its first announcement of bringing a OpenStack-based service to market. “History has shown that standards and open source are hugely beneficial to end customers and are a major catalyst for innovation,” said Robert LeBlanc, IBM senior vice president of software. “Just as standards and open source revolutionized the Web and Linux, they will also have a tremendous impact on cloud computing. IBM has been at the forefront of championing standards and open source for years, and we are doing it again for cloud computing. The winner here will be customers, who will not find themselves locked into any one vendor — but be free to choose the best platform based on the best set of capabilities that meet their needs.” IBM said that its move towards industry-wide open standards for cloud computing will allow businesses to take full advantage of the opportunities associated with interconnected data, such as mobile computing and big data. Big Blue’s move was not unexpected, but nonetheless significant. Here’s a look at the notable analysis and commentary from around the web: IBM Makes a Big Bet on OpenStack in the Cloud – From AllThingsD: “Ann Winblad, a venture capitalist and a managing director of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, a firm that has had a long-term investment interest in open source software and open standards, and has backed companies like Plumgrid and Sonatype, says that OpenStack has essentially become the operating system for the cloud. “I think the trend here is that OpenStack has won the race to become the standard, and it has done it rapidly,” Winblad said. “We’ve made some investments around the software-defined data center, and OpenStack is a key component. It is the OS for the cloud.” IBM builds next-gen cloud control freak on OpenStack - From The Register: ”…the company’s top cloud brass said that OpenStack will be the foundation of its SmartCloud tools for creating private and public clouds – including the public cloud by the same name that IBM runs on behalf of customers.” IBM Leads Open Source Cloud Flotilla Against Amazon - From Seeking Alpha: ”It’s strange to see IBM as being the underdog in any fight, but super-aggressive price-cutting by Amazon.com (AMZN) has kept that company well ahead in the market for public cloud services. Now, in an unsurprising move, IBM has publicly announced its intention to fight Amazon with “standards,” in this case the open source Open Stack cloud infrastructure.” Finally: IBM drops the other OpenStack shoe – From GigaOm: “While it’s hardly surprising that IBM would make use of all these open source goodies it’s been working with, the news is … a big deal. In theory this means big cloud buyers will be able to mix and match cloud workloads among and between various OpenStack providers including IBM competitor Hewlett-Packard, Rackspace, Red Hat and others.” IBM says OpenStack will be central to its future cloud strategy – From Network World: “Robert LeBlanc, senior vice president of middleware software for IBM, says there’s a lot of talk about the debate between public and private clouds, but he believes customers will more likely end up using both in a hybrid world. Open source tools, like OpenStack, he says are critical for supporting common platforms that span public and private clouds, which is why the company plans to’”fully adopt OpenStack in our products and services,’ he says. ”That could be somewhat of an issue though: The basis of IBM’s cloud strategy is SmartCloud, which combines a pay-as-you-go public cloud offering, with components for customers to launch a private cloud or have dedicated hosted infrastructure, along with even a platform as a service (PaaS) offering, according to the company’s website. IBM developed SmartCloud before OpenStack was founded two and a half years ago though, so LeBlanc said SmartCloud is not running on OpenStack at this point. Will it in the future? ‘We’re on a continual journey,’ LeBlanc said about integrating OpenStack into the SmartCloud Platform. ‘But we think this is a major step in that journey.’” (Comment on this)
1:05p	Data is the New Punk Rock: 90s Band Invests in Data Centers Think Loud Development’s Chad Taylor, left, and Chad Gracely are members of the rock band “Live.” After selling 20 million albums, the group’s members are investing in data centers. (Photo: Think Loud Development) The era of data center groupies might finally be upon us. Members of the 90s rock band Live are investing in a project to build data centers in four Pennsylvania cities, as well as fiber line from New York to Northern Virginia. Three of Live’s members and their company, Think Loud Development, are investing in a $200 million plan by Lancaster-based company United Fiber and Data. In the plans is a 300-mile fiber optic line from New York City to Virginia at a cost of $29 million, and secure data centers in Allentown, Lancaster, York and Reading at an approximate cost of $40 million each. Will “Lightning Crash” twice for the band? It looks like album title “Throwing Copper” was indicative of the band’s future, after all. Except they’ll be laying fiber instead of copper lines. “You might call data the new punk rock,” said Live guitarist Chad Taylor, speaking at a launch event at the Strand-Capitol Performing Arts Center in York. ”"The company, like our band, would have to give voices to the masses.” From New York, the fiber line bypasses the traditional interstate 95 route taken by most major networks, instead traveling west through New Jersey. The four data centers will be in Allentown, Reading, Lancaster, and York, along the fiber line route. The data centers are expected to be around 20,000 square feet each. Eastern Pennsylvania has several success stories in the industry, most notably iNetU, which has built a cluster of data centers in the Lehigh Valley and is expanding nationally following a private equity investment. A state-backed initiative known as Wall Street West sought to establish the region as a hub for disaster recovery services for financial firms, with limited results. The primary success from the effort was a facility built by DBSi, which is now part of Xand. Giving back With the data center project, Think Loud is giving back to its home state. United Fiber is planning a 20,000 square foot data center near the Lehigh River in hometown Allentown, reports local paper The Morning Call. The company has a property under agreement in a Keystone Opportunity Zone, which offers tax breaks on state and local levels for up to 10 years. However, the York Daily Record reports that the project stands to bring more than $2 billion in tax revenue over the next 30 years, according to Christopher Lodge, President and Chief Operating Officer of United Fiber and Data. United Fiber, currently a 9 person company, is anticipated to employ 350 people, according to Lodge. Think Loud is the latest example of broadening investor interest in the data center business. This trend has expanded the pool of data center investors beyond the private equity firms that have historically driven development efforts in the industry, which has always placed a premium in expertise. For United Fiber, that industry pedigree is provided by Lodge, who previously served as GM of data center solutions for Paetec. The company has all the approvals necessary to complete the project as a competitive local exchange carrier, or in other words, an underdog telecommunications company competing against the mainstream carriers. Looks like Live is once again the underdog, like when they were in high school and going under the name “Club Fungus” and then “Body Odor Boys.” The venture will also build an office building downtown in Allentown’s Neighborhood Improvement Zone that will house United Fiber and Data’s corporate HQ, for around 100 employees. The Morning Call reports United Fiber has looked at a vacant lot in the 500 block of Hamilton Street that was once home to the Colonial Theater. Construction on both the Allentown data center and the office could begin in six to eight months, taking 12 to 18 months to complete. More on Think Loud In 2009, Think Loud began a process of securing countless rights of way and legal approvals. The company received approval from the state Public Utility Commission to operate as a telecommunications services competitive access provider under the name United Federal Data of Pennsylvania. Think Loud initially teased that a mysterious tech company would soon occupy a building on East York Street in York, a former Bi-Comp building. The building was purchased for $164,000 a year ago and will soon house admin and sales for United Fiber & Data, partially owned by Think Loud. An additional 4.4 acres in the city’s Buttonwood Gateway redevelopment area was purchased in 2012, according to published reports. Think Loud also purchased a 110-year-old Reading Outlet building. The Live band members involved in Think Loud include Chad Gracey, Chad Taylor and Patrick Dahlheimer – basically, the original band lineup minus lead singer. Live’s album “Throwing Copper” sold a whopping 8 million copies in the US back when people still bought albums, in the mid-nineties. The followup was considered disappointing in terms of sales, with 2 million. That’s right, 2 million was disappointing. There’s no telling if this will be a trend, but Chumbawamba, Better than Ezra, Eagle Eye Cherry, and Sixpence None the Richer most likely all have relatively empty calendars. (Comment on this)
1:30p	Understanding IT Risks Hani Elbeyali is a technology strategist for Dell. He has 19 years of IT experience and is the author of Business Demand Design methodology, which details how to align your business strategy with your IT strategy. His previous post was Demonstrating IT Value, Illustrated. HANI ELBEYALI Dell Businesses are always trying to minimize risk to the enterprise, but smart leaders realize that profits are sometimes the rewards earned for taking educated risks.  Once a manager understands that risks and rewards (or benefits) are positively correlated, the next step may be to expect that the higher well-calculated risks, the higher expected returns are going to be. This concept applies to the IT organization because it’s part of the overall process of any enterprise’s need to “get things done.” What is IT Risk? Risk, according to financial theory, refers to the unpredictability of outcome. “While financial measures of risk, such as volatility and standard deviation, measure the upside and downside of deviations from the expectations, only downside variability to be the true measure of risk”, states Mukul Pareek, in his article “Information System Control Journal.” What we infer from this statement is the risk is only represented by the downside of the expected return, and not the upside. In contrast, IT risk or downside is represented by the measurement of the potential for an unplanned event, internal or external; resulting into a failure or misuse of IT to threaten an enterprise objective; and it is no longer confined to a company’s IT department. What are Risk Types? Planning for risks can be huge undertaking. Because the risk permutations count are beyond the capabilities of one article, I wanted to give an illustration of an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) risk failure, and the volatility of an enterprise risk for taking on such project. ERP potential risks can be measured in two stages: during implementation and post deployment. During Implementation: Internal factors Risks: Delay due to the rise of an internal event, which could be beyond the control of IT, examples: business priorities change, dependencies out of line, budget constraints, and unexpected cost overrun Siloed IT focus due to aligning IT to serve specific line of business Lack of alignment between business strategy and IT strategy Not enough time, money, and effort spent on assessment, plan and design No executive sponsorship Lack of process to implement an enterprise governance Results: Significant harm to the organization stakeholders and stockholders. This could result in financial loss, with the organization may be able to recover. Example: In December 2003, the United Kingdom’s Inland Revenue put a new system for managing tax credits into production. Pre-production testing had been limited to four weeks rather than the planned 20 weeks because the project was behind schedule. It is estimated that over £2 billion in erroneous tax credits were paid out by the system before errors were recognized and corrective measures taken. Post Deployment: Internal and External factors Risks: Ineffective implementation of enterprise governance, this is especially important in today’s times of rapid strategic business change Loss of service due to broken process flow or vendor services failure Data leakage, theft, or misuse of information Complex and uncontrolled IT environment, this manifest as complex asset inventory, many IT overlapping management tools, poor documentations, and lack of unified change management procedure Results: The risk exposes bad enterprise management to customers, ineffective implementation of compliance, and governance, not only in IT but throughout the entire organization Significant harm to the organization stakeholders and stockholders. This  could result in financial loss, the organization may be able to recover. But, with negative Net Present Value (NPV) and Return on Investment (RoI) Damage the reputation of the organization, over time, the organization my never be able to recover Example: In 1996, a failed implementation of SAP’s enterprise resource planning software at FoxMeyer, a $4 billion pharmaceutical distributor, allegedly led to the company’s bankruptcy. The company’s trustees filed suit against SAP (the software vendor) and Accenture (the systems integrator for the project), asking for $500 million in damages from each. The case was settled out of court in 2005.1 (Comment on this)
2:00p	Closer Look: eBay’s Solar Array at its Utah Data Center Sun and clouds reflect the large surface of the solar array atop eBay’s Topaz Data Center in South Jordan, Utah. Last year e-commerce giant eBay unveiled its largest solar installation to date today, situated atop its “Topaz” data center located in South Jordan, Utah. The 665 kilowatt solar power system, designed and installed by SPG Solar, featuring 72,000 square feet of solar panels and covers nearly the entire roof of the data center. That’s about 10 percent of the power required to operate the Topaz facility. In this video, Lori Duval, the Global Director of Green at eBay, discusses eBay’s use of solar power in Utah and the return on investment eBay is expecting on the project. For more news about eBay’s data center operations, please see our eBay Channel. For additional video, check out our DCK video archive and the Data Center Videos channel on YouTube. (Comment on this)
2:12p	Data Center Jobs: QTS (Quality Technology Services) At the Data Center Jobs Board, we have a new job listing from QTS (Quality Technology Services), which is seeking a Site Director in Sacramento, California. The Site Director is responsible for coordinating, synthesizing and integrating all aspects of corporate real estate management, financial analysis, and maintenance; maintenance contracting for service to critical equipment, master planning for the data center floor and new construction. To view full details and apply, see job listing details. Are you hiring for your data center? You can list your company’s job openings on the Data Center Jobs Board, and also track new openings via our jobs RSS feed. (Comment on this)
3:30p	Utilizing European Data Center Colocation – Selection Criteria The data center infrastructure has truly become the heart of any organization. With the increase in IT’s role and importance, many North American organizations are looking for ways to increase their presence – both locally and overseas. All across Europe, data center providers have been enticing American organizations into their environments. Why? Because to stay competitive in today’s market, it makes sense to expand and to do it with the right partners. As data flow continues to increase, US-based data center executives will need to bring their European users closer to their data points. To accomplish this, there needs to be a logical expansion into a European data center environment. Although there are very many similarities between American and European data center infrastructures – there are some core differences as well. In TelecityGroup’s white paper, we are able to see they key decision criteria for selecting the right European data center provider. This means answer questions and having an understanding around the following: Connectivity What type of Internet Exchanges are available to the data center? Does the data center facility also host an IXP (Internet Exchange)? Flexibility How well can the data center scale? Is the data center a customer-focused provider? Transparency What type of energy efficiency does the data center provide? Does the provider deploy proper amounts of physical security? What about network/hardware-level security? Another very important aspect to consider is location. This whitepaper outlines the major European data center hot-points and outlines the benefits of each site. For example, Scandinavia enjoys one of the world’s largest internet penetration rates – 92.5% – and Stockholm acts as the epicenter of this! Download TelecityGroup’s white paper to gain a true understanding of the important criteria behind selecting the right European data center provider. As your infrastructure continues to expand, there will need to be a good growth plan in place for markets outside of the USA. In this expansion, working with the right European data center provider can make all the difference for an organization. (Comment on this)
3:30p	Violin Teams With Toshiba on High-Performance PCIe Cards Storage performance is becoming more important as data centers manage massive volumes of information. Two leading players in the storage sector, player Violin Memory and Toshiba have rolled out a strategic alliance to leverage one another’s intellectual property  in NAND flash to deliver a new family of high-performance server-based PCIe cards. Shifting data center economics at the server layer and shared storage layer has brougth together Toshiba, the inventor of NAND flash, and Violin, a pioneer in memory-based architectures for enterprise storage. The partners say the alliance will result in “pervasive memory-based computing” and mass adoption of an economic memory-based IT infrastructure. The Toshiba alliance enables Violin to have full visibility and control of the supply chain, manufacturing, distribution, and R&D efforts at the foundry, chip and software layers. PCI Express (PCIe) is a high-speed serial computer expansion bus standard that allows higher data throughput in a smaller footprint. “The PCIe card market is important to Toshiba’s customers,” said Hiroyuki Sato, vice president of Storage Products Division, Toshiba Corporation Semiconductor & Storage Products Company. “Expanding our strategic relationship with Violin Memory will allow us to bring the valuable Violin enterprise IP to a broad range industry leading solutions in our future product offerings.” New PCIe Cards New third generation PCIe cards use a lightweight driver, expensive host CPU and DRAM resources are not required. The card family includes 1.37TB to 11TB capacities, and form factors that range from low profile to full height and full length. Cards will range from $3/GB to $6/GB list price. With the Velocity family and Violin’s third generation memory-based arrays, Violin now offers a complete portfolio of memory-based storage solutions to address the needs of the widest variety of application workloads. “Our new focus on PCIe cards will allow both companies to drive radical new economics that lead to the mass adoption of memory-based architectures,” said Don Basile, CEO of Violin Memory. “NAND memory is now a requirement at every level from the smart connected device to the core of the cloud and the enterprise data center. Violin’s combined portfolios continue our leadership across the evolving memory-based solution market.” (Comment on this)
4:30p	Dell, Teradata, Brocade Focus on Healthcare Tech The healthcare industry is increasingly looking to IT vendors to help them manage the influx of patient data, as well as the shift to electronic health records. Dell, Teradata and Brocade all unveiled news announcements at the 2013 Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Conference underway this week in New Orlean. The event conversation can be followed on Twitter hashtag #HIMSS13. Dell joins forces for Electronic Healthcare Records Dell announced that it has joined forces with  with Red Hat, Intel and VMware to open a dedicated center where hospitals can test and deploy a new option for running Epic Systems’ electronic health records (EHR) software on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The DRIVE (Dell, Red Hat, Intel and VMware for Epic) Center of Excellence is located near the EHR vendor’s Verona, Wisconsin headquarters. Red Hat Enterprise was recently added to the list of target platforms for Epic, and its Linux option provides a cost-effective option for hospitals.  VMware vSphere is the leading healthcare virtualization platform and Dell provides a full range of professional services and support for every stage of EHR deployments. “The new alternative of running Epic on Linux with the latest generation of Intel x86 servers meets the needs of mission-critical healthcare solutions,” said Rick Cnossen, worldwide director of health IT for Intel. “The DRIVE Center of Excellence provides hospitals with an efficient way to evaluate an open platform based on industry standards, with ecosystem expertise available for ongoing support.” Teradata selected by CHRISTUS Teradata (TDC) announced that Integrated Delivery Network provider CHRISTUS has selected Teradata and Claraview for designing and implementing its new healthcare analytics platform. Featuring hardware, software, data utilities and consulting services, the new data warehouse analytics platform will help the healthcare leader evolve beyond traditional healthcare technology thinking. CHRISTUS expects this to generate deeper insight and result in improved patient care. The new information solution includes the Teradata Data Warehouse Appliance platform, a Teradata Healthcare Logical Data Model (HC-LDM), a Teradata Data Mart Appliance for Test and Development, and Teradata Claraview’s consulting services to map clinical data into the HC-LDM as well as deploy analytics across the organization. “Our strategic goal is to integrate our siloed data sources into a single data warehouse in order to support and measure clinical protocols across the institution and leverage our evidence-based care pathways to improve the quality of patient care,” said Mavis Girlinghouse, CHRISTUS Analytics Director. “We awarded the contract to Teradata and Claraview due to their extensive healthcare data warehousing and business intelligence expertise in addition to their relevant industry experience working with health systems with similar challenges and objectives.” Brocade selected by Singing River Health Systems Brocade (BRCD) announced that  Singing River Health System has strengthened its business continuity and disaster recovery systems with Brocade networking solutions, implementing 1 and 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) performance using Brocade VDX and Brocade FCX switches in the data center and at the campus edge. To support a rapidly growing infrastructure Singing River chose Brocade VDX switches for the non-blocking architecture that enables the organization to scale the fabric one switch at a time. By using Brocade VDX switches on both sides of the network, the organization is able to provide end users with low latency and maximum availability. “The objectives for our uptime are pretty stringent, so we need the reliable, fast network we currently have. In addition, we were able to beat the industry standard of 15 seconds for login time by more than 50 percent, by reaching seven seconds after leveraging Brocade VCS Fabric technology. We can provide a business continuity and disaster recovery setup that has a failover time in the range of seconds,” said Aaron Marsden, network and database administrator, Singing River Health System. “It’s been fantastic working with Brocade and we’re very pleased.” (Comment on this)

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