Friday, April 26th, 2013

Time	Event
2:00p	The APIs Have It: CA Deal for Layer 7 Highlights Trend In an era of software-defined everything, the API (Application Programming Interface) is becoming more and more crucial in addressing rapidly changing IT environments, and to leverage software development and delivery as a competitive advantage. Several companies recently have been acquired, or received funding for bringing APIs to the forefront, and getting deeper into the data center. CA to acquire Layer 7 Technologies CA Technologies (CA) announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Layer7 Technologies, a leading provider of API management and security. The announcement was made at the CA World 2013 conference this week in Las Vegas. Complementing CA’s Identity and Access Management suite, Layer 7 products will help organizations better manage and secure APIs and speed delivery of cloud, mobile and composite applications. API management software enables organizations to govern API activity, as well as expand the network of API developers by offering a convenient API development platform that provides all the tools necessary to discover, publish and test APIs. “The addition of Layer 7 and the synergy across our technologies will improve how we securely support organizations in their cloud, mobile and ‘Internet of things’ initiatives,” said Mike Denning, Security general manager, CA Technologies. “We use APIs every day, whether accessing flight data from our mobile device, using Google Maps from a hotel website or making payments online. There are billions of API calls a day and that number is going to increase with the proliferation of smart devices, ranging from vehicles, meters, TVs and other devices, as they start interacting over APIs. Without API security and management, thousands of business services are vulnerable to disruption.” MuleSoft acquires ProgrammableWeb Affirming its faith in APIs as the future of connectivity, MuleSoft announced that it has acquired ProgrammableWeb, a company that pioneered the idea of open APIs. ProgrammableWeb has the world’s largest and most active community of API developers and consumers. The combined API directories of MuleSoft’s APIhub and ProgrammableWeb form the world’s largest and most complete repository of APIs. “APIs are the catalyst for a new era of hyperconnectivity, and our acquisition of ProgrammableWeb underscores our commitment to connect the New Enterprise,” said Greg Schott, president and CEO of MuleSoft. “Together with ProgrammableWeb, we’re extending our platform to give customers and developers a single, authoritative voice on APIs and a centralized venue for resources that enables developers and companies to fully embrace the API phenomenon.” “The number of APIs continues to grow exponentially, and we’re passionate about providing the best information and resources available to the API community,” said Adam DuVander, executive editor of ProgrammableWeb. “MuleSoft’s industry leadership, financial strength to invest in ProgrammableWeb’s growth and commitment to growing the API ecosystem make it the perfect home for us, and we’re ready to join forces to further evangelize the importance of APIs.” 3scale raises $4.2 million San Francisco and Barcelona-based API Management solutions provider 3scale announced $4.2 million of new funding in a round from Javelin Venture Partners and Costanoa Venture Capital. 3scale’s flexible platform is immediate, self-service, and lets businesses build a solid foundation for their API program and scale confidently to serving 10’s and 100’s of Millions of API transactions per day. The new investment will help broaden 3scale’s set of services and bring it to a global audience, enabling even more valuable APIs and API delivery by its customers. “As products and services we rely on for our daily lives—from travel info to e-commerce, thermostats to elevators—increasingly connect to internet applications through machine-to-machine interfaces, the need for robustly managed API’s becomes critical,” noted Noah Doyle, Managing Director of Javelin Venture Partners. “We are proud to lead this new round of funding for 3scale because it will bring high grade solutions to a wide market, which no provider has done before.” Intel acquiring Mashery Although not officially announced by the company, ReadWrite Enterprise reported that Intel (INTC) is acquiring Mashery. San Francisco based Mashery is a company that specializes in linking together web-based software and services. Mashery has 125 employees, and has raised a total of $35 million from investors. Helping over 175 top brands, Mashery lists customers of its API technology and services like USA TODAY, Comcast, Hoovers, Rdio, Associated Press, Coke, and more. The two companies have collaborated in the past, to deliver the Intel Expressway API Manager. Positioned as a ‘composite API platform’ the 451 Group published this analyst report and the Intel and Mashery API Platform. (Comment on this)
2:30p	Global Watch: Q9, Colt Announce Expansions The interior of a Q9 Networks data center. The Toronto-based provider is expanding in Calgary. Here’s our review of some of this week’s noteworthy links for the global data center industry: Q9 expands in Calgary. Q9 Networks announced that it has opened a new phase of capacity at its largest suburban Calgary site. Over $190 million was invested on facilities in western Canada. The new Calgary build is the third in a series of planned expansions at the suburban site. Over 40 percent of the announced expansion has been already sold. All of Q9′s Calgary data centre facilities are interconnected with Q9′s data centres in British Columbia, providing customers with a range of business continuity options by leveraging multiple Q9 data centers. ”We have been proudly serving the data centre needs of Albertans since 2002,” says Q9 Chief Executive Officer, Osama Arafat. “In that year, we opened our first facility and we’ve been building in Calgary ever since. Today’s announcement demonstrates our continued success and ongoing commitment to meeting the growing needs of our many blue chip customers in Western Canada.” Interxion London offers access via BT Cloud.  Interxion (INXN) announced that BT will offer a range of its BT Radianz services from Interxion’s City of London data center campus.  BT can also offer its BT Radianz Hosting services for remote management of customers’ network and IT inside the Interxion data center. Additionally Interxion’s customers can benefit from the availability of BT Radianz Venue Interconnect, which provides optimized low-latency connectivity between Interxion’s London campus and data data centers in five key financial centers – Milan, Stockholm, Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo. “Our customers demand fast, secure and reliable access to international trading venues, which are exactly what the BT Radianz Cloud delivers globally,” said Tom Regent, president global banking & financial markets, BT Global Service. ”As the automated global trading community seeks ever-faster communication, the need for optimised low-latency access to execution venues and trading platforms is increasingly important.  We believe that offering access to BT Radianz Services from Interxion London will create many new business opportunities for both of our companies.” Colt expands European network.  Colt announced a strategic expansion of its European network with the extension of its high-capacity infrastructure to Cork, Ireland’s second largest city. This expansion follows the completion of a new low-latency route between Dublin and London last year, a key component of a multimillion euro, five year program of investment by Colt across Europe. “Cork is an exciting place for Colt because of its substantial potential to grow as a hub for large multinationals, particularly in the well-established ICT and pharmaceutical sectors. By extending our network to Cork, we’re making a strong statement of confidence in the region and its ability to prosper in the inward investment space thanks to its business-friendly environment and skilled workforce.” (Comment on this)
2:45p	Friday Funny: What’s the Best Caption? It’s Friday! Time to wrap up the work week and enjoy some data center humor with the Data Center Knowledge caption contest. First we were remiss and forgot to announce the previous winner for the cartoon, “Raised Floor Adventures”. Congratulations to Gordon White who submitted, “So, when I told you we had a replication problem in the data center. . .” This week, we are voting on the cartoon dubbed, “Into Every Life, A Little Rain Must Fall.” Please take a minute a vote for the funniest captions in the poll below. Here’s how it works. We provide the cartoon and you, our readers, submit the captions. We then choose finalists and the readers vote for their favorite funniest suggestion. Diane Alber, our fav data center cartoonist, supplies the cartoon, and our readers suggest the funny captions. Please visit Diane’s website Kip and Gary for more of her data center humor. Take Our Poll For the previous cartoons on DCK, see our Humor Channel. (Comment on this)
3:00p	Open Data Center Alliance Tackles Cloud Lock-In Just how easy is it to move workloads around in the cloud? The Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA) is testing virtual machine interoperability in the enterprise cloud. A new report looks at hypervisor interoperability – just how easy it to move a virtual machine from hypervisor to hypervisor? It identifies gaps that hypervisor and VM solutions providers need to address in order to move VMs between public and private enterprise clouds going forward.   It’s tackling the dangers of “Cloud Lock In” on the hypervisor level, and trying to establish an ODCA VM Interoperability Usage Model. “A capability for VM interoperability is an important precondition to truly realize the oft expressed benefits of virtualized clouds, such as the ability to balance resources through fungible pools of resources, business continuity and load balancing by leveraging distributed publicly available resources, as well as demonstrable avoidance of lock in to a single Cloud Provider, platform or technology,” states the report. The report details a test taken to check out hypervisor interoperability, with the specs and components used for the test bed solution stack and hardware components available in the report. The aim was to: Check interoperability Move or copy between two hypervisors and cloud providers Leverage common operation and interoperability The results aren’t meant to determine interoperability, but rather show there’s room for maturity when it comes to hypervisors playing nice with one another. It includes matrices showing how well commonly used VMs were moved between VMWare, Citrix Xen, KVM and Microsoft Hyper-V. Who was the friendliest hypervisor during the test? Who was a big, fat jerk hypervisor? You’ll have to read the report (note: the report does not actually call any hypervisor a “big fat jerk”). Cloud interoperability remains a concern, particularly with all of this hybrid/multi-cloud talk. The ODCA continues its efforts to resolve interoperability challenges that might prevent cloud adoption. (Comment on this)
6:21p	Schneider Electric Opening New R&D Facility Near Boston An artist’s illustration of the planned Schneider Electric R&D center in Andover, Mass. Schneider Electric does plenty of research, and a new R&D facility is part of its commitment to advancing the energy efficiency and management market. The company announced today that it plans to build a new high-tech R&D Innovation Center in Andover, Massachusetts, just outside of Boston. The 235,000 square foot property will serve as the company’s North American R&D hub, accommodating more than 850 Schneider Electric employees. Out of the gate, the facility promises to be one of the most energy efficient buildings in the world, with LEED certification at the time of its opening. The Andover site is scheduled to be fully occupied by fall of 2013. “The vibrant ecosystem of innovation in the Greater Boston area is the ideal backdrop for Schneider Electric’s Global Innovation and Technology Center,” said Chris Curtis, president and CEO, North America, Schneider Electric. “The center will be a rich resource for customers, and it will bring together cutting edge innovators in the region with researchers from around the world, allowing for a cross-pollination of ideas essential for transformative and disruptive innovation.” The facility will combine all of Schneider Electric’s business segments, including Buildings, IT, Industry, Power and Corporate, under one roof. It will operate an R&D laboratory at the facility to develop and test new classes of technologies, ranging from data center management, to home and small business automation, to commercial business automation. It will also include a StruxureLab – a cross-discipline technology integration laboratory where Schneider Electric tests and validates its solutions, as well as a customer innovation center, a training facility, and a state-of-the-art conference facility. “We are bringing together top talent to collaborate across several disciplines, with the expectation that we will deliver breakthroughs in energy efficiency that will change the industry forever,” said Barry Coflan, senior vice president, Buildings Business, Schneider Electric, and member of Schneider Electric’s Global Innovation and Technology Council. “In addition, the new facility will be a fertile place for innovation, attracting new employees, students, researchers and customers to the Boston area, driving business and community development.” The facility will leverage the company’s portfolio of technologies, including StruxureWare energy management software applications and suites. It will leverage critical power and cooling, power distribution and control, and video surveillance and lighting, all from Schneider Electric. The facility will leverage the SmartStruxure Building Management solution and a highly efficient chilled beam HVAC system that will reduce costs, as well as operation and maintenance requirements. Schneider Electric is headquartered in Rueil-Malmaison (Paris), France, and the new Global Innovation and Technology Center in Andover joins four existing Schneider Electric Global R&D centers located in North America, Europe and Asia. (Comment on this)
6:30p	Wired for Business: Digital Realty Boosts Connectivity at its Data Center Hubs Digital Realty’s building at 350 East Cermak in Chicago, a key hub in the region’s digital economy, and one of the most conencted buildings in the country. (Photo: Rich Miller) The digital world is tied together by fiber. It runs under streets and sidewalks, through conduit underground and risers inside skyscrapers. Fiber connects the world’s data centers, but sometimes a customer will need just the right cable transmitting bits to a specific provider or partner. And it doesn’t always exist. Digital Realty wants to fix that problem. The company will build dark fiber infrastructure to connect its key Internet gateways and data center buildings, making it easier and cheaper for customers to connect with the carriers and clouds of their choice. Digital Realty will run high count dark fiber between buildings, allowing it offer a “plug and play” Gigabit Ethernet product as well as straight dark fiber cross-connects to customers, carriers and service providers campus-wide. Dark fiber is cabling that is in place but not yet carrying customer traffic. Having dark fiber already in place between physical locations allows customers to “light” unused cabling, enabling traffic to flow without having to dig up streets and sidewalks to lay new fiber. For Digital Realty’s enterprise-heavy customer base, the initiative will simplify the deployment of hybrid environments, enabling private clouds within data centers to easily connect with public cloud providers. It will also ensure that customers have easy access to their choice of carriers and can easily create direct connections with high-traffic Internet destinations like social networks and video hubs. “The launch of this important strategy takes our global portfolio to the next level in terms of network connectivity, which is a key factor for customers when selecting a data center provider,” said Michael Foust, chief executive officer of Digital Realty. “When combined with our scale, expertise and global footprint, this initiative will give customers a one-stop shop for all of their data center needs.” Foust made it clear that by making dark fiber available, Digital Realty won’t be competing with its customers. “The important distinction here is that we are not building a network, nor are we becoming a reseller,” said Foust. “The goal of this initiative is to ensure a robust offering of network and carrier products and services in every Digital Realty location, making our portfolio the easiest place for both wholesale and retail colocation customers to locate their data centers.” By offering friction-less fiber, Digital Realty removes the connectivity complexity from the decision-making process of choosing a data center provider. If a carrier isn’t already “in the building,” there’s a cost involved in establishing that physical connection, which can change the economics of the deal. By building its own dark fiber infrastructure, Digital Realty is leveraging its financial strength to simplify this part of the site selection process, and gain an advantage over its growing field of rivals in the wholesale data center business. The “Digital Realty Ecosystem” program will launch later this year in the company’s major campus locations in the New York, London, Chicago, Boston, Ashburn, Va. and Santa Clara, Calif. It will then be expanded across the company’s portfolio, which spans 22 million square feet of technology properties across three continents and 32 geographic markets. The additional dark fiber capacity may prompt new business relationships between Digital Realty’s customers, according to John Sarkis, vice president carrier and connectivity operations for Digital Realty and the architect of the plan. “The Digital Realty Ecosystem is designed to give customers a neutral, efficient, and connectivity rich environment for our customers to connect, not only to any carrier of choice, but directly to one another,” said Sarkis. “In addition, this ecosystem will provide an underlying infrastructure for carriers and service providers to deliver their entire portfolio of products and services to our customers, without the major capital intensive deployment costs hindering their business models.” (Comment on this)

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