Thursday, August 15th, 2013

Time	Event
12:44p	Interior Department Picks 10 Combatants for $10 Billion Cloud Bakeoff The Department of the Interior has picked 10 firms to compete for cloud outsourcing contracts valued at up to $10 billion. The U.S. Department of the Interior has tapped 10 companies to compete for a series of cloud computing projects that could involve a total investment of up to $10 billion. The agency has structured the deal as a rolling bakeoff between 10 systems integrators – IBM, Verizon, Unisys, AT&T, Lockheed Martin, Aquilent, Autonomic Resources, CGI, GTRI and Smartronix – who will compete for each phase of the project. “Individual projects will be awarded via task orders, one for each project, following a one-off competition for the project between the ten selected vendors,” said Andrew Jackson, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Technology, Information and Business Services for the Department of the Interior, in a statement on the agency’s web site. “By doing it this way, Interior hopes to ensure the most competitive prices throughout the life of the contract. These contracts will not only allow us to move these apps to the cloud, but move them in a well-planned, methodical way.” The first project will be for SAP application hosting. Additional services will include virtual machines, storage, database hosting, secure file transfers, Web hosting, as well as development and test environments. The DOI said the launch of its cloud services will allow it to begin closing or consolidating “potentially hundreds of DOI data centers” under the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative (DCCI). IBM demonstrated its first-strike capability with a press release yesterday saying it would work with the Interior Department on an indefinite deliver/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract is valued up to $1 billion, saying the DOI “may use” IBM cloud computing technologies, services and hosting. A number of media outlets quickly issued stories touting IBM’s contract before Verizon let media know that it was also part of the award, which involved 10 companies. The Department of the Interior is the steward of 20 percent of the nation’s land, more than 500 million acres worth. It’s also the largest water supplier in 17 states, and maintains relationships with 566 federally recognized Native American tribes. The sixteen Bureaus and Offices that manage this mission spend in excess of $1 billion a year on IT. The department is undergoing a decade-long transformation of its IT systems, moving to a cloud computing model. The DOI is hoping to save roughly $100 million per year, starting in 2016 through at least 2021 in infrastructure and IT costs.  IBM, for its part, was touting its potential to play a key role in that transformation. “IBM has been delivering trusted and secure cloud services to business and government clients for decades, and working with virtualization technologies for more than 40 years,” said Anne Altman, General Manager, IBM US Federal. “Our Cloud offerings are backed by a long history of successful work in hardware, software and services wrapped in world renowned security offerings, unmatched R&D, and secure supply chains.  We’re committed to infusing these capabilities, proven security and reliability, and leading-edge technology into our work with the US Department of the Interior over the next decade.” Other US government agencies can also benefit from the Interior’s effort through the DOI Foundation Cloud Hosting Services vehicle.  The vehicle also allows request for quotes/task orders to be issued on behalf of other government customers including both civilian agencies and the Department of Defense. “This is a change we’ve been eager to make for a while,” the DOI’s Jackson, noting delays due to a lawsuit from CenturyLink (Savvis) over the contracts. “The cloud hosting award was on hold until recently, when a contract protest was dismissed by the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. Now that we can finally move forward with these contracts, we’re expecting significant reductions in hardware, software, and operations costs to the taxpayer.” (Comment on this)
1:55p	Skyera Launches New Enterprise Flash Array Enterprise solid-state storage system provider Skyera has released a new storage array that boosts capacity and performance over its previous generation, and formed strategic partnerships with Toshiba and SK hynix. Building upon its skyHawk array from last year Skyera announced the skyEagle Series, the first all-Flash enterprise storage arrays with the reliability, performance and capacity to handle mission critical data center applications below the price per gigabyte of legacy disk-based arrays. Adding over 2.5 petabytes after compression and deduplication this third generation solid-state platform adds active/active controllers for high availability, synchronous/asynchronous replication, fully converged networks, protocols, and storage, and an unprecedented half petabyte (500 terabytes) capacity in a 1u form factor. “Big data and analytics; public, private and hybrid cloud infrastructures; and virtualized environments demand highly-available storage but that is only one piece of the storage infrastructure,” said Radoslav Danilak, CEO of Skyera. “With the introduction of skyEagle, Skyera has created a next-generation all-Flash platform with an optimal balance of storage availability, usable Flash capacity performance and enterprise-class durability.” Using 1y/1z NAND (MAN) Flash chips, combined with its proprietary high-performance Flash controller and hardware accelerated services, Skyera has boosted the capacity and performance of skyEagle by a factor of 10 over the market-leading skyHawk array in just one year. With shrinking 20nm NAND Flash geometries, Skyera’s 100x life amplification technology eliminates the issues of durability and performance in the enterprise data center.  The list price for the read-optimized half petabyte (500 TB) skyEagle storage system of $1.99 per GB, or $.49 per GB with data reduction technologies. “skyHawk’s introduction last year put us in a class by ourselves in regards to capacity and performance,” said Frankie Roohparvar, COO of Skyera. “We felt that our only competition was us, and now we have disrupted ourselves not by a factor of 2 over 18 months in accordance with Moore’s law, but by over 10 times the performance and capacity in just 12 months.” Partnerships Skyera also announced its collaboration with NAND Flash provider Toshiba America Electronic Components. Together the companies will work together to ensure that their storage products deliver the high-performance and high-capacity storage to support the business-critical needs of enterprises today and into the future. This exchange of technical and development information will allow Skyera to fully leverage the enterprise-class architecture of Toshiba’s new second generation advanced 19nm (A19nm) NAND Flash technology as part of its skyEagle™ series of all-Flash enterprise storage arrays. “Enterprise customers require a different set of features for their storage architectures than those in the consumer marketplace – higher performance, improved power efficiency and capacity,” said Scott Nelson, senior vice president, memory business unit, Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc., “By working closely with Skyera, we ensure that we continue to offer the unmatched innovation and leading-edge technologies that our customers have come to depend on from Toshiba. We look forward to a successful relationship with Skyera as we continue to deliver on this commitment with optimized solutions that address the needs of enterprises worldwide.” Skyera has selected 16nm NAND Flash from SK hynix, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of Flash memory chips, for its new skyEagle all-Flash enterprise storage array. As one of the leaders in the industry to achieve mass production of its 16nm technology node NAND Flash, SK hynix’s technology leadership is again validated by enterprise deployments in Skyera’s skyEagle. SK hynix innovations in NAND process and design are key factors to enabling high performance and reliable 16nm Flash comparable to 20nm offerings. “We believe that building a strategic partnership with Skyera will open a new window to bring broad and deep expertise in Flash technology system-level issues to complement the world-class semiconductor excellence of SK hynix,” said Young Joon Choi, Senior Vice President of SK hynix. “This pairing ensures that the industry’s very best Flash technology experts will be guiding this collaboration as the two companies continue to produce Flash chips and systems that raise the bar for the rest of the market.” (Comment on this)
2:30p	Picking the Right Partner: Facility Development for Smaller Operators Shawn Mills is a technology entrepreneur, founding member and president of Green House Data. You can find him on Twitter at @tshawnmills. SHAWN MILLS Greenhouse Data I am writing a series of posts about developing a new facility as a small- or medium-sized data center company, in an effort to inspire other companies of our size, who don’t have the same resources as large operators like Amazon, or companies who build data centers as their core business. First things first: yes, you can build a brand new, highly energy efficient facility even as a small company. In my last article, I covered how to decide when a new facility is in the cards, locating possible building sites, and securing incentives so your wallet takes less of a hit. This week, let’s take a look at choosing development and design partners. You may want to design and build your facility yourself, but there are many advantages to working with partners so you can stay focused on your customers while still meeting the goals for your new facility. Do You Need a Development Partner? As a small- or medium-sized data center company, a development partner can take a lot of the headaches out of your new build. Organizations dedicated to designing and building data centers will jump at the chance to work with you, provided you have something to bring to the table (namely, tenants, and/or incentives). These companies can help you: Avoid time sinks of non-growing your company tasks Address unforeseen obstacles in the build process Stay committed to your daily activities of keeping customers happy Raise capital investment or soften capital pressures Help guide the designers, construction managers, subcontractors, etc. In our previous post, we mentioned that applying for data center incentives could be a good way to start getting your project details hammered out. At Green House Data, as we started to flesh out our plans and applied for a managed data center cost reduction grant, we began to think how to approach our new facility build (in Cheyenne, WY). We believe our service level helps us stand out from the pack, so we wanted to remain focused on serving our customer base with data center operations and management, rather than acting as landlords and or running around trying to raise capital. For our new facility, our development partners, 1547 Critical Systems Realty, will own the building and lease it back to us on a wholesale basis, making Green House Data more of a data center services operator and service provider rather than a data center owner and landlord. Potential partners should be chosen for the reason we chose 1547: they understood our vision of a highly energy efficient facility that’s cost effective—for us and especially our customers—while maximizing white space. Our current Cheyenne data center was a retrofitted building, where we picked up some sledgehammers and handled a lot of the design and even some minor construction internally. We learned a ton, but expert facilities partners can help big projects go much more smoothly. After all, we tell our clients to leave the infrastructure management to our expert techs—why should we put our future at risk by trying to stretch beyond our own strengths? In-House vs. Outsourced Building Design Designers help you think about the impacts of every decision, avoiding pitfalls that you might not avoid yourself, like investing in too much electrical infrastructure, for instance. You may have a solid internal team already. Large companies might have designers on staff, and small companies might take one look at the quotes coming in and decide they can handle it themselves. After all, operators deal with equipment day in and day out—they can probably figure out a new building, right? We thought the same thing, but after talking with our design consultants, Deerns America, for a couple weeks we found out how helpful they can be. We wanted to put the generators for the new building wherever they needed the least amount of effort. Our designers were quick to point out how they would affect sound levels and vibration inside the white space itself. Generators are just one of many things to keep in mind when designing a new facility: “How tall are the walls?” “How big are the bays?” “What kind of flooring do you put in?” The design consultant is critical to bring the whole team and pieces together. We choose Deerns America for their vision of staying focused on flexibility, low cost, high reliability and energy efficiency. Many of these attributes can be at odds with one another unless you have design consultants who will keep hammering it out with you. Designers give extremely important insights into facility builds, but only you know about the needs of your customers and employees (and of course just how much of an investment is bearable or realistic). Usually, it’s a math problem, not an unsolvable problem, and good designers will want to find the sweet spot between budget realities and facility requirements. Unforeseen Obstacles Another example of how our designers pulled us out of the deep end was with the build site itself. We had our eye on a site, and we thought we knew the space the building required. We had estimated cooling, generator, parking, and other exterior space requirements based on our existing facility, so we were sure our potential site had more than enough space for a 35,000-square-foot facility. What we didn’t realize was that the new building was big enough to require a water storage tank and runoff area. Thankfully, we got guidance from Deerns before going through with the purchase. Without an experienced design partner, we would not have known that we needed to increase the size of the plot. Ultimately, every company has to decide for itself if development and design partners are worth the expense. Speaking from experience, we can say we are glad we had someone to consult with prior to our land purchase. That retention pond could have been too tight of a squeeze, or we might have been forced to downsize the facility plans. At the very least, take some meetings and see what kind of ideas and synergy you find with developers and designers. They can save you time and money in the end. Facing the Code Officials In our next installment, we’ll cover working with your design partners to balance your infrastructure requirements with site and building code constraints. 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)
2:46p	Rackspace Study: Hybrid is the Culmination of Cloud Journeys A survey from Rackspace Hosting suggests that the hybrid cloud future is so bright it has to wear shades. The survey of US and UK enterprises finds that the limitations of one-size-fits-all solutions like large public clouds are becoming more apparent, and these limitations are driving organizations to hybrid cloud: public, private cloud and dedicated servers working together in any combination. The survey illustrates growing recognition of the value proposition of  hybrid cloud. In sponsoring the research, Rackspace is building upon its efforts to define itself as a major player in hybrid infrastructure, rather than just public clouds. This is a potential differentiator for Rackspace (RAX), which for years has managed physical servers for customers, a service not offered by public cloud rivals like Amazon and Google. The survey results show that the majority (60 per cent) of IT decision-makers see hybrid cloud as the culmination of their cloud journey, rather than a stepping stone to using the public cloud alone for all their cloud needs. 60 per cent of respondents have moved or are considering moving certain applications or workloads either partially (41 per cent) or completely (19 per cent) off the public cloud because of its limitations or the potential benefits of other platforms, such as the hybrid cloud. Rackspace’s study also found that hybrid cloud is now used by nearly three quarters (72 per cent) of respondents for at least a portion of their application portfolio, with US organizations (80 per cent) more likely to use it than UK organizations (64 per cent). The discrepancy between US and UK is typical, as Europe is a little behind the adoption curve compared to the US. The “End State” of the Cloud Journey “Hybrid cloud is a better model in the long term,” said Rackspace CTO John Engates. “I think it’s the end state. A lot of people start on the public cloud but reach a point where they find they can have better efficiencies with hybrid.” The top reasons respondents gave for why their organization is using hybrid cloud instead of a public cloud only approach for certain applications or workloads are better security (52 per cent), more control (42 per cent), and better performance or reliability (37 per cent). According to  Engates, companies typically begin with a public cloud, a private cloud or dedicated servers but then come to realize they need the benefits of the multiple cloud hybrid environment. He notes the survey findings mirror what Rackspace is seeing among its’ own enterprise customers. Engates gives the example of marketing software providers HubSpot, a company that moved from pure Amazon public cloud to a Rackspace setup, and achieved a 4x performance boost. The company uses tools like Hadoop, which works better on dedicated hardware, while other workloads belong in the cloud. “The findings of our study indicate that the hybrid cloud is the next cloud for many organizations,” said Engates. “They may have started with a public cloud-only architecture, but have come to realize the limitations of this approach as they’ve continued on their cloud journey. They turn to the hybrid cloud because it can combine the best of public cloud, private cloud and dedicated servers, delivering a common architecture that can be tailored to create the best fit for their specific needs. For example, instead of trying to run a big database in the public cloud on its own, which can be very problematic, businesses can leverage the hybrid cloud to run that database much more efficiently on a dedicated server that can burst into the public cloud when needed.” There’s no exact figure as to when this turning point is reached, but roughly $25,000 in spend a month is one rough benchmark the company is seeing at the point of customer transition. Best of Both Worlds? Traditional hosting and cloud computing complement one another, and Rackspace believes it is uniquely positioned to capitalize on this. “A lot of folks in the industry are starting to wake up to the fact that traditional hosting isn’t legacy, but an asset,” said Engates. The majority of its competition is either pure cloud like Amazon Web Services, or smaller competitors that have dedicated hosting but don’t offer cloud at all. Being able to offer both worlds, along with what the company dubs fanatical support, means all the best aspects of a traditional hoster and cloud. The survey suggests that hybrid’s best days are still ahead. “There’s a lot of engineering that goes into it,” said Engates. “This is not a well-worn path yet … cloud is in early stages of adoption. A lot of smaller startups have never done this before. Often times we do guide people. We put high value on customer service. We do this for enterprises up front through cloud-readiness assessments. We help find the right applications to move to the public cloud.” While this survey looked at people who have already used the cloud, Engates notes that Hybrid also holds a lot of appeal to those with on-premises infrastructure contemplating cloud. “Hybrid makes the transition to cloud computing a little easier,” said Engates. “It means they can transition to cloud as is. “If infrastructure setups are indeed moving towards hybrid, this is a good position to be in. We actually lead with hybrid with a lot of customers these days,” said Engates. “We guide them to a hybrid solution from day one.” The study suggests hybrid is the future, and the company’s recent growth rates also seem to back this up. (Comment on this)
3:24p	Penguin Computing Offers Ethernet Switches With Software Options News developments from the networking sector include Penguin Computing launching a new line of open, SDN Ethernet switches; the Detroit Tigers selecting Exinda to help manage the media using its networks; and Ciena collaborating with research and education networking leaders to build an international software-defined WAN to accelerate a SDN ecosystem. Penguin Computing launches new SDN Ethernet Switches.  Penguin Computing announced its new Arctica line of Ethernet network switches, a branded suite of industry standard Ethernet switches that are offered with multiple networking software options and enterprise support. To begin, the line will consist of a 48-port Gigabit Ethernet Switch Arctica 4804i and the 48-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet switch Arctica 4804x. The difference in this product line is  Penguin offers multiple network software options, instead of a proprietary network software stack. Also, Penguin is providing the Arctica switches as the first products on the market that are also offered with Cumulus Linux pre-installed. Cumulus Linux is a complete Linux distribution for network switches. “The network world is moving from proprietary network stacks to an open ecosystem that offers more choice, cost-effectiveness and flexibility. Within this ecosystem our native Linux distribution Cumulus Linux enables customers to leverage existing Linux expertise and tools to build and manage their networking infrastructures at a much lower price point than traditional switch offerings,” said William Choe, Head of Business Development at Cumulus Networks. Exinda selected by the Detroit Tigers.  Exinda announced that the Detroit Tigers have deployed Exinda’s Network Control Suite to manage how journalists, photographers and broadcast media use the organization’s network and protect the user experience they rely on to report on games. Using this solution allows the team to prioritize the constant tweets, blog posts, high resolution photos and up-to-the-minute reporting coming from media personnel, while restraining recreational video and music streaming during rain delays and in-between innings that previously overloaded the network. “We needed a solution where we could look at usage by individual user and individual application, and intelligently create policies to better monitor and control usage and we found that with Exinda,” said James Darrow, Director of IT for the Detroit Tigers. “When our IT team is working the games, they have the Exinda dashboard up on the screen so they can see in real time what’s going on,” Darrow said. “Using Exinda, we’ve been able to limit that non-essential traffic when we need to.” Ciena collaborates to build SDN Ecosystem.  Ciena (CIEN)  announced that it is collaborating with CANARIE, Internet2 and StarLight to build the industry’s first network that unites all of the key packet, optical and software building blocks required to demonstrate and prove the benefits of software-defined, multi-layer wide area networks. Using Ciena’s OPn network approach the collaboration will support a fully operational end-to-end WAN that leverages OpenFlow across both the packet and transport layers, is supported by an open architecture carrier-scale controller and intrinsic multi-layer operation, and incorporates real-time analytics software applications.It will be the first to broadly deploy multi-layer SDN technologies, providing OpenFlow-enabled SDN at both the optical transport layer as well as the packet networking layer. “Going above and beyond a simple testbed, this live, fully functional network will drive continued innovation and demonstrate how a truly OPn network architecture can unleash the full power of SDN in the WAN,” said Steve Alexander, senior vice president and chief technology officer at Ciena. (Comment on this)
5:57p	Equinix Hits 110,000 Cross-Connects The blue-lit interior of one of the rooms inside the new Equinix TY4 data center in Tokyo (Image: Equinix) Here’s a data point that illustrates the central role that Equinix has come to play in the Internet: The colocation provider recently disclosed that its data centers now house more than 110,000 cross-connects, the physical intersections between networks that make the Internet work. Each Equinix customer averages about 25 interconnections with other customers, the company said. Equinix experienced 10 percent growth in interconnections in the 12 months that ended June 30, despite the fact that it divested 16 data centers to 365 Main during that period. It’s been a busy week for Equinix, which also opened a new data center in Tokyo and announced the appointment of Charles Meyers to the newly-created role of Chief Operating Officer. The COO post was created as part of a reorganization to realign its global operations. Meyers had previously been President of the Americas for Equinix.     “The changes we are making today will sharpen our global execution as we pursue our strategy to be the interconnection platform for the world’s leading businesses,” said Steve Smith, President and CEO of Equinix. “ In the role of COO, Charles will bring proven leadership and deep operating experience to the task of further aligning our global team for maximum effectiveness.” “As Equinix continues to grow, we must deliver compelling products and offers that provide clearly quantifiable value to our customers with the right balance between global consistency and local responsiveness,” said Meyers. “I look forward to working with the leadership team in a new capacity to position Equinix for growth and enhance the way we serve our customers and present our company to the marketplace.” Last week Equinix opened its TY4 data center located in the Ōtemachi section of Tokyo. The company invested $43 million in the facility, which has a total capacity of 750 cabinet equivalents. TY4 is located in an earthquake-resistant building in one of the most secure locations in Tokyo with multiple anti-disaster measures. “The opening of our fourth data center in Tokyo is in response to the ongoing high demand for interconnectivity, efficient space and power capacity we are experiencing from customers in the region,” said Kei Furuta, managing director, Equinix Japan. “We already have some of the world’s leading financial services firms, network providers, and cloud companies located in our existing facilities in Japan who are benefitting greatly from access to our established ecosystems within Platform Equinix. Our expanded presence in the market with TY4 further strengthens our twin-metro strategy, following our announcement last month to open our first data center in Osaka in the fourth quarter of this year. Customers in Tokyo will be able to benefit from access to sites in the two locations and take advantage of what the market has to offer.” Check out the Equinix Interconnections blog for some cool photos of the new TY4 facility. (Comment on this)

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