Monday, October 7th, 2013

Time	Event
1:00p	A Guide to a Successful Data Center Migration Executives in any organization are facing tough decisions about their business’ IT needs including growth, capacity and the ability to support the expanding goals of the organization. In some situations, the organization may elect to migrate its data center environment. For some, this is a frightening thought that has created many sleepless nights. However, the reality is that a data center migration can actually be an amazing opportunity to create an architecture built around direct strategy and long-term growth. The trends around cloud computing, big data and IT consumerization will continue to increase. With that, many organizations will outgrow their existing environment and will have to outsource or build their own data center platform. With that in mind, C-level executives must examine several factors when making that decision to create an optimal data center migration plan. In this white paper from RagingWire Data Centers, we examine the key strategic points which must be integrated into any data center migration plan. This includes: Asking the right questions – Before you start Migration of necessity vs. Strategic migration Platform alternatives – Data center, cloud, or hybrid Making major decisions – Relocate existing IT equipment or purchase new Mitigating migration risk – Dollars vs. Downtime Identifying  and mitigating migration risk factors Understanding key financial considerations Migration execution – Logistics and Project Management Furthermore, this white paper examines a case study where moving towards a cloud platform makes sense – and why it was a great decision for the organization. Today’s data center market offers a lot more than just racks and space. The modern data center is considered to be the home of many new technologies. In fact, new organizations are born directly from the cloud and the data center. This increase in data center reliance has resulted in a boom for data center services. As companies and their business needs grow – the data center will need to accommodate to new demands. Download this white paper today to understand the some of the major strategic issues that should be an integral part of your evaluation when forming a data center migration strategy. (Comment on this)
2:28p	Closer Look: Inside A BladeRoom A corridor inside a BladeRoom data center (Photo: BladeRoom) U.K.-based data center provider BladeRoom is bringing its modular data center designs to the U.S. market. The BladeRoom design focuses on flexibility and the ability to bring together “building block” components into a finished data center of nearly any size that closely resembles a traditional bricks-and-mortar build. For those who are new to the company, check out our photo feature Inside A Bladeroom for a visual tour of the design. (Comment on this)
2:38p	OpenStack Summit to Convene in Hong Kong The OpenStack Summit 2013 will bring together those interested in cloud computing to discuss its future, November 5-8, 2013, in Hong Kong. The OpenStack Summit is a four-day conference for developers, users, and administrators of OpenStack Cloud Software. The event will take place at the Asia World Expo, which is located at the airport in Hong Kong. OpenStack cloud OS, networking and storage software is being deployed around the globe. Summit organizers will highlight case studies from users like Ctrip, LivePerson, MercadoLibre, PayPal, Workday, Yahoo! and more. For more information and registration, visit OpenStack Summit website. Venue Asia World Expo See website for hotel information. For more events, please return to the Data Center Knowledge Events Calendar. (Comment on this)
3:07p	Velocity Conference 2013, NYC – Web Performance and Operations Velocity 2013 in NYC calls itself a “non-stop ride into the inner workings of web ops and performance.” This event, convened by O”Reilly Media, visits the East Coast for the first time, to offer participants the opportunity to dissect, deconstruct, and put it all back together for the fastest, strongest Web yet. Held from October 14-16 in New York, the event includes keynotes from: Richard Cook, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, physician, educator, and researcher; Cuong Do, Dropbox, software engineer; Dan Kaminsky, noted security researcher; Dan Kuebrich, AppNeta, Director of Product Management; Zane Lackey, Etsy, director of security Engineering; Philippe Le Hegaret, W3C, interaction domain leader; Sean Leach, Verisign, vice president, product strategy; Patrick Meenan, Google, software engineer; Colt McAnlis, Google, developer advocate; and Guy Podjarny, Akamai, chief product architect; and others. For more information and registration, visit the Velocity Conference website. Venue New York Hilton Midtown (map) 1335 Avenue of the Americas New York, New York, 10019 For more events, please return to the Data Center Knowledge Events Calendar. (Comment on this)
3:30p	Executive Hires for Active Power, Codero, GoGrid October has already been a busy month for executive appointments at companies in the data center industry. Here’s a review of recent appointments at Active Power, Codero and GoGrid. Ascolese to Take Helm at Active Power Flywheel UPS specialist Active Power (ACPW) has named Mark A. Ascolese as president and chief executive officer, effective Oct. 14. Ascolese will replace Dr. Ake Almgren, who currently serves as interim president and CEO and will continue his role as chairman of the company’s board of directors. Since 2006, Ascolese has served as CEO and is currently Chairman of the Board of Power Analytics, an electrical infrastructure enterprise software firm based in San Diego, Calif. Prior to Power Analytics, he served for more than 20 years in various leadership roles at Powerware Corporation, a global provider of power quality and backup power management products, which is now a part of Eaton Corp. “We are excited to have an industry veteran like Mark on board,” said Almgren. “We believe his track record and deep knowledge of UPS products and mission critical markets will greatly benefit our business.” “Active Power has a highly differentiated product offering with a convincing value proposition, a strong base of global customers, and a solid operating platform from which to grow the business,” said Ascolese. “I’m excited about what the future holds particularly for the new CSHD UPS as I believe it will position Active Power as an even stronger participant in the market than it is today.” Codero Hires Rackspace Veteran Autenreith as COO Hosting and cloud provider Codero Hosting has named Robert Autenrieth as COO and Vice President, Technical Operations and Support. His responsibilities will include management of Codero’s 24/7/365 customer support, data center operations and technical operations teams. Additionally, he will manage Codero’s data center strategy, from design to execution. Autenrieth was previously Vice President of Global Support Operations at Rackspace. “With his extensive hosting technology experience, Robert is uniquely qualified to deliver on Codero’s promise of exceptional service through industry-leading uptime, expert customer support, and unparalleled value and performance,” said Emil Sayegh, CEO and President of Codero Hosting. “Robert led one of the largest teams at Rackspace with hundreds of employees reporting to him, making him an ideal fit to ensure Codero reliably delivers cloud-based services on a massive scale, always advancing our technology to meet growing customer and business demands.” Autenrieth spent eight years with Rackspace in various roles and most recently provided the executive oversight of strategic planning, tactical alignment and P&L responsibility of nine teams supporting revenue generation, Customer Support and product engineering activities for Rackspace globally (USA, EMEA, APAC). As General Manager of Data Center Engineering/Operations, Autenrieth orchestrated operational strategies around data center management, customer care, engineering, and asset management, resulting in improved customer experience and increased profitability. New C-Suite Posts for Worsey, Carroll at GoGrid Cloud infrastructure company GoGrid recently appointed CIO & EVP Technology Mark Worsey as the company’s Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President Technology, and named Robert Carroll as Chief Revenue Officer overseeing global sales, marketing, and products. “As we amplify our focus on providing the reliable high-performance cloud platform our customers need to support their Big Data and related technologies, we’re delighted to rely on these two industry veterans to help guide our strategic development,” said GoGrid CEO and Co-Founder John Keagy. “Their expertise helps us deliver the innovative solutions, services, and expertise our customers need to take their businesses to the next level.” Since 2010, Worsey served as GoGrid’s CIO & EVP Technology, responsible for all aspects of product execution including R&D, Engineering, and Network Operations as well as the company’s Customer Service Operations. Previously, he was CIO & Global VP Technology for Blackhawk Network, with responsibility for driving the technology platform strategy and global network operations for this prepaid and gift card payments processing leader. As GoGrid’s Chief Revenue Officer, Robert Carroll has global responsibility for executing the company’s Sales, Product, and Marketing strategies.Before joining GoGrid, Carroll was CMO at SDL Tridion, where he crafted and executed thought-leadership initiatives in the emerging Customer Experience Management (CXM) category. (Comment on this)
5:00p	CenturyLink’s California Data Center Powered With Bloom Energy CenturyLink is expanding its sustainability commitments by installing Bloom Energy fuel cells to generate up to 500 kilowatts of clean power for one of its Irvine, California data centers. The Savvis-operated data center runs cloud, managed hosting and colocation services. The Bloom system will be fully operational in early to mid-2014. This configuration enables CenturyLink to receive primary power for its critical loads from Bloom Energy Servers, protecting those loads from electrical outages without the need for backup UPS and generator systems. The Bloom Energy Server is based on solid oxide fuel cell technology that converts fuel to electricity through an electro-chemical reaction, without any combustion. Because they are housed at the customer premises, the Bloom box can continue operating during grid outages. “We must explore our energy alternatives to support advancements in technology and the escalating demand for network and IT infrastructure,” said David Meredith, senior vice president and global general manager for Savvis. “Bloom’s clean fuel cells offer a way for businesses like CenturyLink to promote the continuing evolution of technology without sacrificing their sustainability commitments.” It’s cleaner power, and will help CenturyLink avoid approximately one million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions annually. Fuel cells also significantly reduce SOx (sulfur oxides), NOx (nitrogen oxides) and other harmful, nasty smog-forming particulate emissions. The fuel cells are expected to produce nearly 4.4 million kilowatt-hours of annual electricity. Bloom Picking Up More Notable Data Center Customers The bigger trend is that this is more adoption of fuel cells for data center power. Bloom sharpened its focus on the data center industry after some mild adoption from some early adopters like Google, Bank of America, and other enterprise blue-chip companies.  Also, both AT&T and NTT announced purchases of Bloom units in 2011, to support their data centers in California. Bloom has established a track record in data center operations and is beginning to see more widespread usage, as is the case here with CenturyLink. Bloom Energy has seen growing adoption, perhaps most famously at the eBay data center. At eBay natural gas-powered Bloom energy fuel cells replace what’s been pretty standard in the industry: diesel generators and UPS. eBay took a “Bloom first” approach, while other data centers (like Apple) have used them for supplemental energy while retaining traditional UPS and generator setups for emergency power. (Comment on this)
6:08p	Hulk Hogan Steps Out of the Ring and into the Data Center with Hostamania Launch Brought to you by The WHIR. US wrestler Hulk Hogan is starting a new business venture, and it’s probably not what you would expect. On Friday, Hostamania announced that it will begin accepting web hosting customers at the end of October through a partnership between Hogan and Tech Assets. Tech Assets will provide the cloud hosting platform while Hogan will act as a brand ambassador. Along with web hosting, Hostamania will offer domain registration services. The one-minute Hostamania video teaser features Hulk Hogan riding a wrecking ball in a thong (a la Miley Cyrus) and parodies GoDaddy’s recent TV commercial featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme.  “Can you believe this, brother? They’ve got this little punk playing a rainbow flute on their homepage,” Hogan writes in a blog post last month. “How do you think a FLUTE is going to stand up to these 24 inch pythons? Weak mascots of the web hosting world – whatchu’ gonna do when HOSTAMANIA runs WILD on you?” The whole concept is pretty silly, but celebrity spokespeople for hosting have sort have been GoDaddy’s bread-and-butter marketing approach. The question is: will consumers really buy into a hosting service just because Hogan’s face is behind it? GoDaddy has risen to the top of the US hosting market, but there are other factors (pricing strategies, small business focus, etc.) at play. Tech Assets currently runs web hosting brands WPZilla, SendUser, WebIntellects, OpenSourceHost, APSpanel, Christian Web Host, ServFarm, DomainRegi and Jumpline.com. Tech Assets hosts over 120,000 websites, with offices in Columbus, OH; St. Petersburg, FL; and San Diego, CA. Hostamania is currently accepting beta signups through its website. (Comment on this)
7:00p	Giving Attention to Data Center Cold Spots Lars Strong, senior engineer, thought leader and recognized expert on Data Center Optimization, leads Upsite Technologies’ EnergyLok Cooling Science Services, which originated in 2001 to optimize data center operations. He is a certified US Department of Energy Data Centre Energy Practitioner (DCEP) HVAC Specialist. LARS STRONG Upsite Technologies Data centers exist to provide continuous power, connectivity and proper intake air temperatures to IT equipment. Hot spots are a well-known difficulty that occurs when IT intake temperatures are above the recommended maximum. Now, cold spots have become the new challenge, and opportunity, for data center operations. A cold spot is any IT intake temperature less than the established minimum. The minimum is established by data center personnel, or when ASHRAE recommended guidelines are followed, at 64.4 degrees F. Historically, computer rooms have been kept overly cold. There are a number of contributing factors: Mainframes which primarily occupied data centers had less emphasis on front and back, and less airflow pattern or orientation that needed alignment with the room, so entire room was cool to compensate. Power was considered inexpensive. Densities were low relative to the area IT equipment covered so cooling capacity was not critical. Power was a much smaller portion of cost to run data center than today. As IT equipment densities and power consumption increased, hot spots (HS) started forming. HS were recognized as damaging. For the last decade, the emphasis has primarily been on getting rid of HS. This has often been done by developing advanced AFM techniques, adding more cooling capacity, and turning down cooling set points. As the cost of electricity has increased, and more significantly as the cost of electricity has become a much larger portion of operating cost, emphasis has been placed on reducing the power consumption of the cooling infrastructure, the largest consumer of power in the data center other than the IT equipment. Thermodynamics The increased efficiency and capacity of cooling units at higher return air temperatures is driving computer room operating temperatures up. ASHRAE, working with IT manufacturers, have raised the recommended and allowable intake temperature ranges several times. The focus on the maximum intake temper has led to a lack of awareness of IT equipment intake temperatures being below the minimum recommended. As a result computer rooms often have a very wide range from the lowest intake temperature to the highest. There is a direct relationship between the range and efficiency: the wider the range, the lower the efficiency. Data Data from Upsite shows that cold spots are now even more prevalent in data centers than hot spots. Of the last eight data centers reviewed by Upsite, on average 7 percent of cabinets have hot spots and 35 percent of cabinets on average have cold spots. The sites reviewed totaled 84,600 sq. ft. of analysis. Not surprisingly, these same sites have an average rated cooling capacity that is 2.4 times the IT load. Opportunity Cold spots reveal an opportunity to improve the efficiency and capacity of cooling units by raising return air temperature set points. Set points often cannot be raised until overall AFM is improved to eliminate hot spots or reduce maximum intake temperatures if hot spots do not exist. Depending on the cooling unit type and design, efficiency improves by approximately 1% to 4% for every degree F increase in return air temperate set points. Cooling unit set points are often below the standard conditions they were rated for so they are not able to deliver even the rated capacity. If set points are raised above the standard conditions, often 75° F and 45% Rh, then cooling unit capacity will exceed rated capacity. Process Step one is to calculate your site’s Cooling Capacity Factor (CCF), which is determined by dividing the total running manufacturer’s stated cooling capacity (kW) by 110 percent of the IT critical load (kW). This number reveals the utilization of cooling capacity. Upon determining the CCF of your data center, the second step is to address the 4Rs to ensure that your data center airflow is optimized. The 4Rs consist of: 1: Raised Floor Seal all unmanaged openings in the horizontal plane of the raised floor. A thorough effort is required to identify and seal all raised-floor penetrations. Electrical equipment such as power distribution units (PDU) often have large openings that need to be sealed. This effort must be seen to completion because as each hole is sealed, the remaining holes release increasing volumes of valuable conditioned air. 2: Rack Seal the vertical plane along the face of IT equipment intakes. Blanking panels that seal effectively (no gaps between panels) need to be installed in all open spaces within cabinets. The space between cabinet rails and cabinet sides need to be sealed if not sealed by design. 3: Row Manage airflow at the row level. Spaces between and under cabinets need to be sealed to retain conditioned air at the IT equipment face and prevent hot exhaust air from flowing into the cold aisle. Adjust perforated tile and grate placements to make all IT equipment intake air temperatures as low and even as possible. This will include replacing perforated tiles or grates with solid tiles in areas where excess conditioned air is being provided, and adding perforated tiles to areas where intake temperatures are the highest. All perforated tiles and grates located in dedicated hot aisles and open spaces should be replaced with solid tiles. For high-density rooms and rooms with layout challenges (e.g. low ceilings, cabinet and/or cooling unit placement), partial or full containment strategies may be warranted. 4: Room In most cases, even with high percentages of excess cooling capacity running, the first three fundamental steps of AFM must be implemented before changes can be made at the room level to reduce operating expenses. A common misconception is that AFM initiatives reduce operating expenses. Improving AFM will improve IT equipment reliability and throughput and free stranded capacity. However, to realize operational cost savings and defer capital expenditure of additional cooling capacity, changes must be made to the cooling infrastructure, such as raising cooling unit set-points, raising chilled water temperatures, turning off unnecessary cooling units, or reducing fan speeds for units with VFD. This process is best if done as part of a comprehensive facility assessment and remediation plan to assure that all opportunities are realized and no conditions are created that could damage IT equipment. 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)
7:40p	CoreSite to Host LINX Node in Northern Virginia Colocation providers CoreSite Realty, Telx and Latisys have all announced meaningful customer wins over the past week. Here’s a roundup: LINX to Deploy at CoreSite At today’s kickoff of NANOG59, CoreSite Realty announced that the London Internet Exchange (LINX) has chosen CoreSite’s Northern Virginia data center campus as one of the locations for its first North American peering exchange, LINX NoVA. The new deployment will enhance CoreSite’s existing carrier density and increase the number of options for Internet peering and customer connectivity. The LINX infrastructure will span CoreSite facilities in Reston, Virginia and Washington, DC, which support 150 customers and more than 45 networks and ISPs. LINX, one of the world’s largest Internet exchanges, currently connects over 480 networks from nearly 60 countries. In May LINX announced plans to enter the US market with an initial Northern Virginia node at the EvoSwitch data center in Manassas. LINX’s deployment at CoreSite is aligned with the Open IX, a member-governed organization seeking to adopt the European model for Internet exchanges in the United States. “We believe that our deployment in CoreSite’s Northern Virginia campus will contribute to us being able to create a successful new exchange in the US,” said John Souter, CEO at LINX. “To demonstrate our commitment to building a world leading Internet Exchange in North America, we will be subsidizing it by providing free 10G ports to any networks who join.” “The addition of LINX NoVA to our group of peering partners will further enhance the existing network density inherent in CoreSite’s Northern Virginia community and support the development of a more robust Internet peering ecosystem in the important Northern Virginia market,” said Brian Warren, VP Product Management at CoreSite. “As reflected by the introduction of our Open Internet Exchange Hub last year, we believe in the importance of neutral Internet exchanges and our relationship with LINX NoVA in Virginia further strengthens our platform’s value in providing our customers additional opportunities for both connectivity and community.” Twitch Gaming Platform Deploys at Telx Twitch, a video platform and community for gamers with over 40 million unique visitors per month, has expanded its presence in the Telx SFR1 data center at 200 Paul Avenue data center in San Francisco. Twitch said the ability to connect directly to the world’s top mobile and transit networks within SFR1 will boost Twitch’s growth as a leading video platform for the video games industry, servicing developers, media outlets, organizations, publishers and individual gamers with more than 600,000 unique broadcasters. “Telx has been an important partner in our growth strategy by enabling us to deliver a high performance service of digital media content,” said Jonathan Shipman, EVP Engineering Operations for Twitch. “We were able to expand our presence with Telx in a cost-effective way and scale quickly to support growing demand from new and existing customers. Telx’s facility in San Francisco provides us with a way to expand our user base and improve experience, and we are excited about future opportunities with Telx.” The San Francisco Bay Area is the second-largest market for colocation in the United States and is a key strategic growth market for Telx. Telx’s SFR1 facility provides access to dozens of the leading domestic and international carriers, CDN’s, and ISP’s, as well as physical interconnection points to the world’s largest networks and enterprise backbones. Latisys Boosts APT Payment Processing Latisys has announced an IT Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) agreement with Accelerated Payment Technologies (APT), which provides secure credit card payment solutions. APT chose Latisys to consolidate multiple hosting providers to a private cloud environment with dedicated switching and a PCI compliant hosting environment to underpin its payment processing services. By consolidating at Latisys, APT was also able to deploy a disaster recovery (DR) service to automatically and instantaneously move workloads from one site to another. Under terms of this multi-year deal, Latisys tailored a managed infrastructure solution to blend APT’s private cloud environment with Latisys’ PCI compliant hosting platform. Latisys deploying an MPLS ring network with dedicated circuits and bandwidth, enabling APT to leverage Latisys’ backbone between data centers. “APT is a financial services firm with mission critical payment services demanding high levels of IT performance while meeting PCI compliance requirements,” said Pete Stevenson, Chief Executive Officer, Latisys. “Our national platform is ideal for delivering highly flexible and scalable hybrid IT infrastructure solutions including new, customizable outsourced disaster recovery services.” (Comment on this)
8:00p	BladeRoom Brings its Data Center Building Blocks to the U.S. Market The exterior of a data center created with technology from BladeRoom, which is partnering with Modular Power Solutions to enter the U.S. market. (Photo: BladeRoom) BladeRoom is bringing its next-generation modular data center designs to the U.S. market. The U.K.-based company has teamed with Modular Power Solutions to form BladeRoom USA, which will manufacture pre-fab components in a factory in Michigan to create modular data centers at customer sites across the U.S. In January the company will open a technology center in Chicago to showcase its designs. BladeRoom has built more than 30 data centers in Europe, Asia and Africa using designs that can be delivered in as little as 20 weeks. These include Merlin, the CapGemini UK data center that is among the most efficient in the world. BladeRoom says its designs, which feature fresh-air cooling, can deliver Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) energy efficiency ratings of between 1.09 and 1.17 in major markets in the U.S. The 20-year-old company came to the data center business via an unusual route. Its initial focus was creating modular buildings for commercial kitchens (including some for the Olympic Games), which required expertise in heat management. It then built more than 150 modular operating rooms for hospitals, technical complex facilities which required exceptional filtration and ventilation to maintain a sterile environment. In 2008 it rebranded as BladeRoom and shifted its focus to the data center industry. Humble Origins, Global Ambitions “We come from humble origins building operating rooms and kitchens,” said Barnaby Smith, Head of Communications for BladeRoom USA. “We break the overall data center down into a series of pre-engineered building blocks. You can combine these to create a facility of any size and density.” Although it has humble origins, BladeRoom is plenty ambitious about its expansion into the U.S. market. “We see BladeRoom USA leading the necessary progression of the data center industry because we are the only manufacturer of a factory assembled facility that is built to your exact requirements without compromising the flexibility and robustness of a traditional data center,” said Smith. “Our facilities become operational faster, and operate at a lower cost than your standard data center solution due to increased energy efficiency.” Modular Power Solutions (MPS) is a unit of Rosendin Holdings (also the parent of Rosendin Electric), and has delivered more than 60 megawatts of modular power rooms for clients including Digital Realty Trust and Bank of America. With its experience delivering modular power infrastructure, MPS/Rosendin proved an ideal partner for BladeRoom’s expertise in modular IT data halls. “We’ve always had our eye on the US market,” said Smith. “Last year we made contact with Rosendin. Once they saw the systems, they were interested.” Flexibility in Modular Design BladeRoom is in the vanguard of companies that have developed factory-built components offering greater flexibility in creating modular data centers that resemble traditional brick-and-mortar buildings. Others offering these type of next-generation designs include IO, Datapod, Colt and AST Modular. But BladeRoom doesn’t see other modular providers as its competition. “The (modular) competition that we’ve seen in the market are largely based on ISO solution or a data center shoehorned into a particular size,” said Smith. “It’s a very different animal than a BladeRoom. We’re competing with traditional data centers and clients looking to build a permanent data center. We do sometimes compete on modular projects, but our core focus is on the traditional data center.” BladeRoom is IT vendor neutral, designed to accommodate any racks or free standing IT equipment and says its system can be delivered at any size and power density. BladeRoom’s modular data hall designs support IT capacities ranging from 70 kW up to 1.5 megawatts of space. Optimized for air cooling, the halls average 1 to 20kW per cabinet, with spot delivery of cabinets of up to 50kW. The cooling system is set to automatically adjust the airflow to use the least required amount of energy and water.  BladeRoom is optimized to use filtered outside air in an evaporative cooling system, with a backup DX refrigerant system. The company’s “match technology” automatically ramps cooling up and down to match the IT demand. The design doesn’t use a raised floor or ductwork. “This really is the secret sauce,” said Smith. More Diverse Requirements in the U.S. Rosendin/MPS will provide its local knowledge and operating expertise in different climates around the U.S. “The US is a different animal from the rest of the world,” said Smith. “It’s got very diverse requirements across the country. It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach. We’ve adapted the system for greater flexibility for clients in different areas of the US.” That includes the ability to create facilities with high seismic reinforcement for earthquake-prone areas or BladeRooms with high wind protection for regions where tornadoes or hurricanes are a concern. One of BladeRoom’s selling points is the ability to use a smaller construction team when deploying its designs. “One of the benefits of a product approach is that we’ve defined our processes and components to be precise,” said Smith. “This allows us to have concurrent efforts at different sites.” In its international business, BladeRoom says it has seen strong uptake with companies providing colocation services or wholesale data center space, including Metronode (Australia), Megatron Federal (South Africa) and Ark Continuity (UK). The same equation could work in the U.S., where service providers have been looking to outsource the construction of their facilities. One beneficiary has been Compass Datacenters, which uses a repeatable design and some pre-fab components, and is currently building data centers for Windstream, Savvis/CenturyLink and Iron Mountain. BladeRoom USA will be opening the doors to its new BladeRoom Technology Center in Chicago, Illinois in January to allow prospective clients a first-hand look at a BladeRoom data center facility. For a visual overview of BladeRoom’s design, check out Inside a BladeRoom: A Closer Look At Its New Modular Design. (Comment on this)
11:00p	Equinix, Microsoft Partner on Direct Access to Windows Azure Colocation provider Equinix was founded with a mission to help companies and networks connect to one another in a single location. Now it would like to do the same thing with clouds. Today Equinix has announced a key step towards that goal: a strategic relationship with Microsoft that will enable customers in Equinix data centers to connect directly to the Windows Azure cloud. “This creates an environment in which existing customers can get a secure, high throughput, low-latency connection to the Windows Azure cloud,” said Chris Sharp, General Manager of Cloud and Content at Equinix. Equinix already provides direct access to the Amazon Web Services cloud platform. Now customers in some Equinix data centers in the U.S. will be able to connect their infrastructure directly to Windows Azure as well, establishing a private network connection that may reduce network costs and latency and provide more consistent network performance than connections across the Internet. The companies didn’t announce any specific locations where the service will be rolled out, but said a “small number” of customers will participate in beta testing this year prior to an official launch in multiple U.S. data centers in the first half of 2014. For Equinix, the addition of Azure is part of a broader strategy to forge a central role in the network connections that tie together the global cloud. “Customers want access to the multi-cloud environment,” said Sharp. “We’ve been working with all the major cloud providers to help them understand the benefits of their customers having a private direct connection. It can drastically change the types of workloads and infrastructures that customers can deploy. We see this as a step toward the maturity of the (cloud computing) model.” “Fifteen years ago we brought networks together to solve their connectivity problems,” he added. “We see the same problems existing in the cloud. We see this strategy as a key underpinning to the development of cloud computing.” The Equinix data center network serves as an interconnection point for companies to connect to networks and cloud platforms, and is home to more than 950 networks among its 4,000-plus customers. “Windows Azure provides customers with a variety of ways to connect in a manner that is private, fast and secure,” said Satya Nadella, executive vice president of Cloud and Enterprise for Microsoft. “The relationship with Equinix gives customers yet another seamless way to extend their on-premises network to Windows Azure by strategically using Equinix’s global data center footprint where businesses are already connecting to the cloud.” Sharp said Windows Azure has been in demand because many Equinix customers operate .net environments. While the companies didn’t announce sites for direct Azure conenctions, Sharp says Equinix has a vision for the markets that will become focal points for cloud connections. “We see 10 major markets around the world as cloud hubs, and Equinix is the only one serving all those markets,” he said. (Comment on this)

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