Friday, July 19th, 2013

Time	Event
12:30p	Five Key Trends in DCIM Matt Bushell leads Nlyte’s Product and Corporate Marketing efforts as their Sr. Product and Corporate Marketing Manager. Prior to joining Nlyte, Matt worked at IBM for more than ten years, helping to launch multiple products in their Information Management and SMB groups. MARK BUSHELL Nlyte I recently attended the Gartner IT Infrastructure & Operations Summit in Orlando, and had the opportunity to sit in on several sessions. If you were fortunate enough to attend yourself, you don’t need me to tell you that it was a great show. From a Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) standpoint, there were a lot of observations I picked up on that are worth sharing. Regarding the show itself, there was a lot of interest in I&O. Proof of that was with the kickoff keynotes (Mike Chuba, David Coyle, Donna Scott) where the events were standing room only (and this was not a small conference). For individual presentations, Gartner had each presenter conclude their sessions with related research for deeper follow up. For the closing wrap-up, it was much more than a “thanks for coming” rather it was a true overview of the entire plenum with bulleted observations (M.Chuba and D.Coyle literally went through every presentation to formulate the final session). But instead of repeating the points in the Gartner wrap-up topic (as not all spoke directly to DCIM), here are the top five takeaways from a DCIM perspective: Infrastructure and Operations professionals need to show their value to the rest of the business. This point was made in the introductory keynote by Donna Scott, and came up in spades in sessions focusing on Financial Management (Robert Naegle) and Metrics (Jeff Brooks). It isn’t even “how efficiently you are doing your job,” but literally, “how much money you are saving the business.” Everyone takes for granted and thus expects I&O professionals to fix an outage, but which problem would you address first and why? How much does improving my MTTR by 10% mean to the business? Comparative metrics are key, to you, versus benchmarking to some “industry averages” as no one is satisfied with being average. Why is this important to DCIM? DCIM solutions can help I&O professionals measure their business operations, aligning tasks to owners, showing chargebacks and usage. I&O professionals need to think in terms of Business Services as their end customer. This point is derivative of the former, but merits its own mention. Too frequently I&O says, “I got that application back online in 20 minutes”. Great. But is that business group going to appreciate that 20 minutes? Rather, they expect you to get them back online. But how expensive would another 10 minutes have been? What’s the value of that to the overall business? Why is this important to DCIM? Business services is the top level in a business, sitting above an application, in order to support a business service, you need to consider all the infrastructure involved. Without that level of view, proper planning cannot be undertaken. CFO of IT cares about service cost and makes sourcing decisions. This point was brought up by VMware, but in connection to the above points, really hits home as it is the cost of a service, not an application, is what counts. For sourcing, they make decisions, and thus own the hardware budgets. Why is this important to DCIM?For all the reasons above, services costs are paramount, is the reason that DCIM and ITSM should be integrated. In regards to sourcing, the more efficiently you refresh your hardware, the better off you’ll be, and having a strong DCIM system manage changes in the data center due to hardware / technology refreshes can make all the difference. Complexity exists in your IT service chain, you just need to acknowledge and manage it George Spafford had a session chock-full that covered complexity, and it really needs to be acknowledged. IT environments are complex. Data Centers are increasingly complex. Processes are complex. And of course costs of service go up with complexity. But you can have a minimum of processes; you can master that complexity (if only through repetition.) Why is this important to DCIM?There are processes in the data center for asset moves, adds and changes, and a DCIM solution like Nlyte’s has ways to manage complexity, namely Workflow. Integrated with IT Service Management is how Nlyte helps clients manage these complexities of change. Infrastructure as a Service and Cloud place more stress on your infrastructure. Almost as a continuation of the complexity statement, these higher level abstraction of a physical environment actually place greater stresses on your physical environment with higher utilization rates, increased power densities and thus increased workload and need for cooling. Why is this important to DCIM?In a way, the more advanced your IT environment, the more you leverage your physical infrastructure, the closer you need to manage it – which is precisely where DCIM comes into play: managing and optimizing power, cooling, space, network connections and even weight. Without a doubt, the financially oriented sessions (in addition to the keynotes) were the best attended. Ironically, the couple DCIM-labeled ones that were amongst the worst. Whether the attendees didn’t perceive the value of DCIM or those organizations that presented did not “speak I&O’s language” is unclear. What I know is that DCIM has a lot to offer Infrastructure and Organization teams, and attending the Gartner IT I&O Summit only verified that in spades. Industry Perspectives is a content channel at Data Center Knowledge highlighting thought leadership in the data center arena. See our guidelines and submission process for information on participating. View previously published Industry Perspectives in our Knowledge Library. (Comment on this)
1:41p	Silver Lake’s Choksi Becomes CEO at Vantage The exterior of the’ V2 data center on the Vantage Data Centers campus in Santa Clara, Calif. (Photo: Vantage) Vantage Data Centers has appointed Sureel Choksi as President and Chief Executive Officer, the company said Thursday. Choksi succeeds Jim Trout, who has transitioned into a new role as Founder and Chief Technology Officer, where he is responsible for data center design and construction and corporate strategy. Trout will continue to serve as a member of Vantage’s board of directors. Choksi is a senior member of the Value Creation Team at Silver Lake Partners, the private equity firm that backs Vantage, and has been serving on Vantage’s board. He has over 15 years of experience as an executive in the Internet infrastructure industry. Prior to joining Silver Lake, Choksi was Chief Executive Officer of Elevation Data Centers, a private equity backed roll-up vehicle. Choksi also held a number of executive roles with Level 3 Communications. “We are very pleased to welcome Sureel Choksi as CEO,” said Trout. “I’m looking forward to partnering with Sureel to lead Vantage’s next phase of growth. I am proud of what we have accomplished in building Vantage into a leading wholesale data center provider with campuses in Santa Clara, California and Quincy, Washington. Sureel’s extensive experience in the Internet infrastructure industry will help us better serve our customers and build upon our operational excellence.” “I have worked closely with Vantage’s management team over the past few months and am impressed with the company’s rapid growth and innovation in highly scalable, resilient and energy efficient data centers,” said Choksi. “Most remarkable is the fact that Vantage has leased over 25MW of capacity to high quality customers in less than three years. I look forward to working with Jim Trout and the entire Vantage team to continue delivering world-class data center solutions to our customers.” Vantage entered the highly-competitive Silicon Valley market in early 2011, quickly leasing nearly 20 megawatts of power capacity. After competing aggressively for market share as it leased its first two buildings, Vantage has fine-tuned its approach to leasing its last and largest building in Santa Clara. The company also expanded its credit line last year. Meanwhile, it has opened its first data center in Quincy, a key outsourcing hub in the Pacific Northwest. Silver Lake Partners is a private equity firm that manages more than $23 billion in investments. The company has experience in the data center sector, having led a consortium of firms in acquiring SunGard Data Systems. The company’s portfolio includes technology industry leaders such as Avaya, Gartner, Interactive Data Corporation, the NASDAQ OMX Group, NetScout, Seagate Technology, Serena Software and Skype. (Comment on this)
1:52p	CDN Provider EdgeCast Raises $54 Million Content delivery provider EdgeCast Networks has secured $54 million in new financing. The company will use the funding to develop and launch new web acceleration, routing and security services, strengthening its IP portfolio, as well as expanding its global network behind its content delivery network (CDN). Expect increases sales and marketing efforts as well. The financing was led by Performance Equity Management (PEM), with participation from existing investors Menlo Ventures and Steamboat Ventures. The equity portion of the financing was augmented with a debt facility from Silicon Valley Bank. CDN customers are deeply tied to their ability to deliver services quickly and reliably, so the new financing is good news for them, as it looks like the company has earmarked a significant chunk of it for improving its global network and enhancing its optimization offerings. The company launched EdgeCast Transact last May, a dedicated PCI-compliant acceleration and optimization solution built exclusively for ecommerce and online retailers. EdgeCast has been profitable for four consecutive years. The company added more than 2,000 customers in the past year, and it now has more than 6,000 accounts serving some of the world’s leading web brands. Companies that use EdgeCast include Twitter, Pinterest, Sony, and Hulu. “Millions of people use EdgeCast every day – when they use Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, Hulu, or any other of the thousands of sites we accelerate worldwide,” said Alex Kazerani, EdgeCast Chairman and CEO. “We deliver more than 4 trillion digital items a month to almost every Internet user in the world. We are proud that our investment partners recognize our incredible performance and share our enthusiasm about our continued growth.” “EdgeCast has set itself apart from the competition while continuing to grow dramatically year over year,” said James Tybur of PEM. “This impressive track record has firmly established the company as the top challenger in a rapidly growing market, and we are pleased to support the company’s strong growth.” This investment will be used to fuel the company’s growth as it continues to focus on three key areas: performance, Quality & Reliability, and Security. The company has been somewhat disruptive in the CDN market. It was also named by Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500 as the #1 fastest growing company in the Internet sector in North America and the 13th-fastest growing company across all sectors. (Comment on this)
4:48p	Friday Funny: Vote for the Best Caption It’s Friday and time for a little lighthearted fun about the data center. Here’s how it works: We provide the cartoon (drawn by Diane Alber, our favorite data center cartoonist) and you, our readers, submit the captions. We then choose finalists and the readers vote for their favorite funniest suggestion. The winner will receive their caption in a print signed by Diane. So it’s time for the voting on captions for last week’s cartoon, which we titled “Close Encounters of the Data Center Kind.” Take Our Poll Please visit Diane’s website Kip and Gary for more of her data center humor. To see our previous cartoons, visit the Humor section on Data Center Knowledge. (Comment on this)
4:55p	Customer Wins for Internap and Peak 10 Internap provides managed hosting and IP connectivity to TalentWise, and Peak 10 signs the Tampa Tribune. Internap selected by TalentWise Internap Network Services (INAP) announced that Hiring Process Management (HPM) solutions provider TalentWise is leveraging Internap’s managed hosting and route-optimized IP connectivity services for the high-performance delivery of its cloud-based hiring solution, TalentWise Hire.  Since TalentWise manages sensitive candidate and employee data, it must meet stringent data security and compliance requirements, including the Experian Independent 3rd Party Assessment (EI3PA) and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) designed to protect Personally Identifiable Information (PII). Internap will host TalentWise from its Dallas data center with its Santa Clara data center used as a disaster recovery site.  Additionally, TalentWise will use the Internap Seattle data center for development. TalentWise requires optimal performance and availability, and as such have selected Internap’s Performance IP connectivity, which minimizes latency and provides a 100 percent uptime SLA with its patented Managed Internet Route Optimizer technology. “Our thousands of customers rely on TalentWise solutions to more easily and efficiently screen prospective employees and manage the hiring process in a way that’s assured to be secure and compliant,” said Prashant Luthra, vice president, technology at TalentWise. “To address these demands, we needed our platform to reside on dedicated hardware managed by a secure, compliant, best-of-breed provider. Internap stood out among those we considered based on its ability to provide uptime and performance guarantees at advanced, SOC2-audited facilities, while collaborating with us to design the ideal customized environment for engendering trust with our customers.” Peak 10 signs the Tampa Tribune Peak 10 announced that metropolitan newspaper The Tampa Tribute has signed for Peak 10′s Tampa data center services. Peak 10 collaborated with The Tampa Tribune and TBO.com to transfer and set up its IT production environment within a short time period to minimize interruption of its 24×7 operations. The Tampa Tribune is utilizing Peak 10 for hosting its proprietary programs such as processing systems for generating newspaper and online content, file servers for employees, and programs for manipulating photos and ingesting and outputting data to production. “In addition to our proximity and immediate service delivery, our multi-carrier network was important to The Tampa Tribune, as it provides the 24/7 redundancy needed to maintain business operation,” said Cheryl Kleiman, Peak 10 vice president and general manager responsible for Tampa-based operations. “Its staff was also impressed by our level of customer support and commitment to investing in new technologies so that we, and our customers, can stay ahead of the industry curve.” (Comment on this)
5:44p	DreamWorks “Turbo” Accelerated By HP DreamWorks Animation has used HP’s converged infrastructure portfolio to develop cutting-edge animations for its latest film, “Turbo”. HP (HPQ) and DreamWorks (DWA) have been partners for many years, with HP solutions helping to power films such as Rise of the Guardians, Shrek, How to Train Your Dragon, Kung Fu Panda, and Madagascar. “DreamWorks Animation’s strategic alliance with HP ensured that we had the high-performance computing, continuous availability and streamlined management capabilities needed to accurately depict Turbo’s dream of becoming the world’s fastest racer,” said Derek Chan, head of Technology Global Operations, DreamWorks Animation. “HP’s advanced Converged Infrastructure portfolio enabled our artists and engineers to create the highest-quality picture possible.”  75 million render hours DreamWorks animators use HP Z800 and Z820 workstations with Intel Xeon E5 processors, a HP FlexNetwork architecture, and HP networking to simplify collaboration among artists. To create fully realized images including 32 Indy 500 race cars and 32 million crowd character instances the production of “Turbo” required 75 million render hours. Rendering demands for “Turbo” was completed with ProLiant Generation 8 servers, which increased render throughput by approximately 40 percent and performance per watt by approximately 42 percent. This allowed DreamWorks to render an average of 500,000 jobs a day. DreamWorks Animation utilized HP Enterprise Cloud Services to provide a robust, scalable, cloud-based infrastructure that offers the additional compute power needed to render the 10 CG films that are in production at any given time. Additional HP converged infrastructure used in the making of “Turbo” included 3PAR StoreServ storage, archiving with HP StoreAll 9730 Storage, simplified network management with HP Intelligent Resilient Framework (IRF) and HP BladeSystem c7000. Artists and engineers were required to protect and conveniently access 230 terabytes of files that make up the film. When not in use by creative teams, workstation processing power was used to run nighttime rendering jobs, contributing to the millions of compute hours needed to produce the movie. (Comment on this)
6:00p	Google’s Data Center Building Boom Continues: $1.6 Billion Investment in 3 Months Google’s extraordinary data center building boom continues to drive its spending, as the company invested a record $1.6 billion in its data centers in the second quarter of 2013. It marked the third consecutive quarter, Google spent more than $1 billion on data centers and servers, reflecting the company’s latest wave of data center construction projects. The capital expenditure (CapEx) numbers were disclosed Thursday in Google’s earnings report for the second quarter, which ended on June 30. The Internet services giant fell short of Wall Street’s expectations, amid tight scrutiny of its advertising performance. While results may fluctuate from quarter to quarter, the need to invest in infrastructure continues apace. Google had pumped $1.2 billion into its server farms in the first three months of 2013, topping the $1.02 billion from the fourth quarter of 2012. The only time the company has spent more on capital expenditures was the fourth quarter of 2010, when it spent $2 billion purchase of 111 8th Avenue, primarily for its office space. Google’s data center construction will likely continue at high levels in coming quarters, as since November the company has announced a $200 million expansion in Council Bluffs, Iowa, a $600 million expansion at its campus in Berkeley County, South Carolina and another $600 million to expand its campus  facilities in Lenoir, North Carolina, and $390 million to add capacity to its facility in Belgium. Google is also expanding its infrastructure in South America and Asia. Here’s a look at Google’s quarter-by-quarter spending on capital expenditures. 2Q 2009: $139 million 3Q 2009: $186 million 4Q2009: $221 million 1Q2010: $239 million 2Q2010: $476 million 3Q2010: $757 million 4Q2010: $2.55 Billion 1Q2011: $890 million 2Q2011: $917 million 3Q2011: $680 million 4Q2011: $951 million 1Q 2012: $607 million 2Q 2012: $774 million 3Q 2012: $872 million 4Q 2012: $1.02 Billion 1Q 2013: $1.20 Billion 1Q 2013: $1.60 Billion A capital expenditure is an investment in a long-term asset, typically physical assets such as buildings or machinery. Google says the majority of its capital investments are for IT infrastructure, including data enters, servers, and networking equipment. In the past the company’s CapEx spending has closely tracked its data center construction projects, each of which requires between $200 million and $600 million in investment. (Comment on this)

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