Wednesday, January 15th, 2014

Time	Event
12:30p	Schneider Electric’s Three New Data Center Services Offerings Schneider Electric continues to move deeper into services and to concern itself with the entire lifecycle of the data center. The company announced the availability of three new Operation Services offerings to help organization optimize and simplify data center operations throughout the entire data center lifecycle. The company has also launched these offerings in selected countries: Russia, China the UK and India. Expect Schneider to continue to expand its services globally. “It doesn’t matter whose equipment is in there, now we have the capabilities to go in and improve efficiency, effectiveness, standardize things for them,” said David Gentry, VP, Data Center Services. “One of the things clients really like is standardization across many sites.” Aimed at maximizing equipment availability and reducing instances of downtime, Schneider Electric’s Operation Services offering is comprised of three levels of vendor-agnostic services: Vendor Management: Provides a single point of contact for scheduling and dispatching preventative, corrective and emergency maintenance. “We want to meet the client where they have needs,” said Gentry. “We coordinate and deliver standardized services across all their systems.” Managed Maintenance: On-site support during times when facilities are exposed to the greatest amount of risk – during maintenance. “This is really where we begin to add in a very key component: change management systems,” said Gentry. “We do many of the same things as with Vendor Management. When a vendor shows up, there’s a Schneider person there going through the Schneider quality system.” Facility Operations: On-site operations and maintenance in a mission critical environment, focused on emergency preparedness and response, maintenance management, change management, documentation, safety and training.  “The final offer is where we move really from maintenance and into operations,” said Gentry. “It’s comprehensive on-site management. Schneider Electric will report on a daily basis. It includes staff that comes in, and outside of hours we remotely manage them.  In facility operations this is really the ultimate offer. We can really take a data center to a different level.” “Once thought of as necessary but expensive cost centers, data centers are now in a position to drive business results and help companies gain a competitive advantage. However, despite increasing system intelligence and automation capabilities, every data center today still needs to rely on effective operation, maintenance, and management by well-trained, organized people,”said David Gentry, vice president, Data Center Services, Schneider Electric. “Schneider Electric’s Operation Services has extensive experience in managing mission-critical facilities around the globe, which is becoming increasingly important as data center managers look to increase performance, reliability and efficiency while minimizing risk, and eliminating the complexities of day-to-day operations.” (Comment on this)
1:00p	Outsourced Data Center Space Expected to Grow 15 Percent This Year Chart courtesty of DCD Intelligence Almost a quarter of data center space in North America is now outsourced, and the growth trend in data center outsourcing and colocation shows no signs of abating. Outsourced data center investment has increased 13 percent over the past 12 months to around $8.8 billion, and it’s predicted to increase another 15 percent by the end of this year, according to a new report from DCD Intelligence. Growth is being fueled by increasing IT capacity requirements combined with reduced budgets and the need to access new technologies, according DCD Managing Director Nicola Hayes. “The sectors that are the highest users of colocation services are currently public administration, IT services and financial services but we are witnessing an increase in the uptake of outsourced data center solutions across all industry verticals, this demand is fueling further growth in the colocation sector in terms of build and this section of the market is expected to continue to show healthy growth through 2014,” said Hayes. The 2013-2014 Census Report: North America Data Center Markets breaks down the industry in terms of trends with facility requirements across space, racks and power. It also provides a facility profile, granularly breaking down facilities by construction type, rack density and more. The biggest overall trend is the continued shift to outsourced data center and general growth of data centers in North America. Data Center Consume 11.5 Gigawatts of Power North America now accounts for 9.97 million square meters (107.3 million square feet) of data center white space, an increase of 3.5 percent over the previous year. Power consumption – the true defining metric – stands at 11.55 gigawatts, an increase of 6.8 percent from 2012.  That’s enough to power nine and a half DeLorean time machines (the DeLorean as a unit of measure is a standard I’d like to push). This increase comes amid a larger focus on energy management, so the amount of power consumed continues to grow, even as the industry becomes more efficient. DCD has downgraded its power consumption forecast through to 2016 because of this increasing focus on efficiency. The report finds that only 69 percent of data center operators in North America are monitoring energy consumption continuously, with 51 percent monitoring energy efficiency and 21 percent monitoring carbon emissions. Unsurprisingly, power continues to be the single largest operational cost, followed by network upgrade and maintenance and labor costs. Data Centers By Rack There were approximately 3.28 million racks in North America in 2013. There were an estimated 2.92 million racks in the U.S. and 360,000 racks in Canada, with Canada showing stronger growth year over year with 9.1 percent compared to 4.3 percent in the U.S. However, the U.S. has higher proportions of high density racks, primary facilities in dedicated facilities, large and mega data centers. Two in three racks are owned or operated by companies whose data centers are global in scope. Almost 20 percent of all racks have a power demand of greater than 10 kilowatts, and 30 percent demand between 5 kilowatts and 10 kilowatts. Mega-facilities are the largest share of the regional data center market, making up 31 percent of total facilities. Data Center Investment The report predicts increased data center investment, especially for meeting growing power requirements as well as cloud enablement or virtualization. The three most commonly deployed services in 2012 to 2013 are private cloud (26 percent), Infrastructure as a Service (23 percent) and Software as a Service (22 percent). Investment will also go towards increasing sustainability, reducing operating costs and improving space usage. The total amount invested in facility equipment & solutions and IT optimization strategies & solutions is $33.7 billion, up from $27.9 billion in 2011/12, a significant increase of 20.3 percent. total investment is predicted to rise 7.4 percent in 2013/14 to $36.2 billion. While the United States accounts for 89 percent of these numbers, Canada’s high growth means its share of investment versus size is much higher, with an increasing amount of investment traveling north. Refit and refresh was the most marked investment trend, up from 44 percent in 2012 to 73 percent in 2013. So we’re at the peak of the tech refresh cycle. North American data center owners and operators have dedicated 42 percent of in-house investment to building new facilities, while 21 percent is for extending/expanding existing facilities and 21 percent is for refitting and refreshing. Within the facility, the most commonly deployed solutions in the year to mid-2013 are cabling and switching equipment (55 percent of respondents), power distribution solutions (49 percent) and cooling infrastructure (47 percent). These are all core to data center operations and investment in them tends to be cyclical across markets. The report also states that the uptake of DCIM, containerized and modular data center solutions are all trending higher. Overall, the report indicates a very healthy colocation market, with outsourced data centers taking over a bigger share of the overall market. Investment trends indicate that multi-tenant data center operators are investing in the future, and customers are investing in cloud. Over 310 organizations participated in the report, with 70 percent located in the United States and the remainder in Canada. The report is available through DCD Intelligence. (Comment on this)
1:20p	Hybrid Clouds, File Sync Will Build Momentum in 2014 Rani Osnat, VP of Marketing at CTERA, has two decades of international experience in high tech and management consulting. Prior to CTERA, he was VP of Marketing at database security company Sentrigo (which was acquired by McAfee). RANI OSNAT CTERA 2013 was certainly an eventful year for the data center. Data center hubs continued to proliferate exponentially across the globe. Infrastructure extended to accommodate big data, cloud computing, mobility and other rapidly emerging technology trends. And in light of the public disclosure of PRISM and growing concerns surrounding the use of public cloud services, IT admins across all organizations took new measures to reassure the privacy of their data. I believe we will see the continuation of these trends and several others in 2014. Here are a few predictions for the new year. 1. Private, public and ‘virtual private’ cloud environments will flourish: The false dichotomy of private vs. public is now apparent to most. It’s not a question of either or – for many enterprises, especially the larger ones, it will be both. Another model that is rapidly catching on is ‘virtual private,’ whereby the enterprise uses a public cloud provider (externally hosted) but with its own private instance that is not connect to the rest of the public cloud. This model provides the same level of control as private clouds, but in an OPEX model. Companies may currently choose to put some types of data on public clouds – for example less sensitive data – while keeping other types of data in a private cloud. Other reasons for using public clouds include extended geographical reach, pressure to reduce CAPEX, speed of deployment and lack of in-house expertise. Ultimately, there will be true hybrids, with a centralized way of controlling what data goes where, and how to transfer data between various clouds. We’re not there yet, but we may see early adopters of enabling technologies (like EMC’s ViPR and IBM’s InterCloud) in 2014, which will make ‘public vs. private’ choices easier. 2. Enterprises will take a more holistic view of File Sync & Share (FSS): The ‘enterprise drop box’ phenomenon is far from over and will continue to drive consumption of cloud storage. While there are many vendors providing such solutions, the majority are SaaS providers, with only a handful allowing enterprises and service providers to use their own infrastructure for file sync. While some applications (such as CRM) have seen great success as pure SaaS, FSS will need to grow out of the relatively limited functionality that made Dropbox famous and hugely successful. CRM has been successfully migrated to SaaS because it offers a way to manage a complete process. FSS (for most) is currently just a way of easily sharing files in the cloud. Enterprises are questioning why some data would need to go to an external provider just for that, while other workflows remain in-house. The current scenario, of enterprises storing files in-house, then storing them again with a SaaS provider (and paying for both!) will not continue forever. Economically sensible management of data and storage resources will drive companies to either demand more than just file sharing from SaaS providers, or control the data in-house (private or ‘virtual private’ clouds) to make sure it integrates with other needs. Already many enterprises are unifying end-point backup with FSS, and this trend will continue and expand. 3. Nirvanix will be remembered (or forgotten) as a mere hiccup: By the end of 2014, the abrupt demise of cloud storage service provider Nirvanix will be remembered as a blip in the otherwise unstoppable rush to the cloud. Nirvanix chose the wrong business model and as a pure-play storage-as-a-service provider was doomed to fail, competing on price with the likes of Amazon and Microsoft without the economies of scale. The way it shut down, giving only 2 weeks’ notice to customers to vamoose, was a wake-up call for the industry and has already improved SLAs and what enterprises look into before committing their data to the cloud. It also highlighted that cloud “off-ramping” is just as important as “on-ramping”, something that can be achieved with cloud storage gateways, offline seeding services and cloud-to-cloud data transfers. But enterprises did not take the Nirvanix debacle as an indication that cloud storage as a whole is non-viable – rather, it’s been business as usual with the above adjustments. This is an indication of both the overwhelming value cloud storage creates, and that the industry is maturing. 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)
1:54p	SoftLayer Racks Up More Wins With Gaming Companies Racks of servers inside a SoftLayer data center. (Photo: SoftLayer) SoftLayer, an IBM company, continues to show strength in the gaming vertical. Last March, the company says it passed the 100 million-player mark for games running on its infrastructure. That number has now surged past 130 million gamers, as SoftLayer continues to enjoy success in the gaming vertical, where customers are being won over by its combination of bare metal servers, global data center footprint, database expertise and solid network. Two examples of gaming providers hosting with SoftLayer are game hosting provider Multiplay and social game development studio KUULUU. Multiplay hosts servers for popular games like Battlefield 4 and Minecraft, while KUULUU releases games on Facebook and mobile that are tied to popular music acts like Robbie Williams and Linkin Park. Gaming presents big potential scalability issues. Latency is extremely important, particularly for First Person Shooting (FPS) games where milliseconds count and lag is always the enemy. A game sees a burst of traffic upon launch, and may experience peaks and valleys over the course of its lifetime. Gaming audiences are truly global, meaning this massive, sometimes unpredictable user base needs a truly global network. Scaling to Support Global Music Acts KUULUU’s games are tied to big music acts. The company had previously worked with another provider for its Robbie Williams-branded game, but turned to SoftLayer for scale. Linkin Park boasts 55 million fans on Facebook, so the company wanted to insure the game was able to scale with a large, globally distributed fan base. In September, the company is launching RECHARGE, a third person 3-D online game experience that combines puzzle, adventure and action elements. The game supports Music for Relief Power the World campaign by introducing players to real world clean energy solutions in the game. “We choose SoftLayer for a variety of reasons,” said Jendrik Poshe, executive producer of KUULUU. “We chose them because of the nice people, the way that they operate with you; they’re open to lots of things that we were needing or asking for.” The infrastructure SoftLayer provided KUULUU addressed the constant demands of beta testing, launch, daily play, or update downloads, allowing KUULUU to focus on creating games. Benefits of Bare Metal KUULUU has most of its infrastructure on bare metal servers. It operates out of two data centers, one in Dallas and the other in Amsterdam. Softlayer handles the synching between them. “A very nice thing about Softlayer is that, although we have our basic infrastructure on bare metal servers, Softlayer gives us the opportunity to add cloud-based servers which you can turn on or off as you’d like,” said Poshe. SoftLayer’s strength and expertise in MongoDB came into play because it’s one of the main technologies behind the game. The company uses Clustered MongoDB which it can scale up fairly easily, in combination with a Redis server it uses for quick database work. Multiplay supports approximately 500,000 gamers on SoftLayer’s IaaS platform, hosting some of the most popular game titles like Minecraft, BattleField 4, DayZ, Starbound and Team Fortress 2. At peak traffic, 100,000 concurrent gamers play every night on SoftLayer bare metal servers. With the recently launched Battlefield 4, Multiplay was able to spin up and provision the IT resources required to support 25,000 new users in less than 4 hours. “Bare metal game servers are the best way to get a truly excellent online gaming experience,” said Will Lowther, Business Development Manager for Multiplay. ”Utilizing the power of single tenant machines, a Multiplay Game server will always be there, ready for you to start gaming.” “We have been with SoftLayer for almost three years now,: Lowther added. “For Battlefield 4 we chose bare metal cloud solutions, provisioning them in locations all over the globe. With hardcore games the players expect absolutely flawless experience, so we cannot allow any lag times or glitches. By using SoftLayer’s platform coupled with the high-speed network, we give the game fans exactly the experience they want.” (Comment on this)
2:00p	Akamai Selected for NBC Olympics Video NBC partners with Akamai to stream the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Sabey selects MRV to power its Intergate.Exchange network, and French telecom TDF selects Ciena to expand its network. Akamai Video delivery to be used for NBC Olympics coverage. Akamai Technologies (AKAM) announced it has been selected to provide online video streaming delivery, site performance and security services to NBC Olympics, a division of the NBC Sports Group, during its production of the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia. The combination of Akamai’s cloud-based digital media, site performance and security solutions help make the entire online experience faster, scalable and more secure. These video experiences are automatically optimized for viewing devices and network variability while enjoying protection against malicious traffic. The Sochi Olympics mark the first time that all Winter Games competitions will be streamed live. For live and on-demand video delivery, NBC Olympics is leveraging Akamai Digital Media solutions to stream all 98 events. “A production of the importance, scope and magnitude of NBC Olympics’ digital experience involves countless complexities that can be managed through Akamai’s cloud-based solutions,” said Brad Rinklin, Chief Marketing Officer, Akamai.  ”The Akamai Intelligent Platform is designed to handle the challenges that organizations face in site performance, video delivery and security. Akamai is proud to partner with NBC Olympics on the Sochi Winter Games and is looking forward to helping viewers across America enjoy their favorite events wherever and whenever they want, and on whatever device they choose.” Sabey selects MRV for Optical network.  MRV Communications (MRVC) announced that Sabey Data Centers has selected MRV’s OptiDriver optical transport platform for its proprietary Intergate.Exchange (IGX) network to support interconnection bandwidth requirements at Intergate.Manhattan—its new mega data center in New York City. The OptiDriver platform improves manageability while reducing energy required for system operation and cooling, providing Sabey a competitive advantage with ongoing energy and operational costs. “Our brand new IGX fiber connection at Intergate.Manhattan requires high bandwidth and resiliency to ensure high levels of service to our customers, and efficient energy usage to lower costs and improve our environmental footprint in the largest data center in the city,” said John Sabey, president of Sabey Data Centers. Ciena and TDF partner for France Network. Ciena (CIEN) and European telecom TDF announced TDF has deployed Ciena’s optical solutions to provide 100G capabilities to its customers. This will allow TDF to address the need for increased bandwidth for its customers that are interested in high speed and low latency connectivity. The network is powered by Ciena 6500 Packet-Optical platform, and is connected to data centers in Paris, Bordeaux, Lille, Lyon, Aix-Marseille and Rennes.  It will increase its reach in France to 5,000 kilometers by the end of 2014. The performance of the new network was tested and approved on a long-haul transmission network from Bordeaux to Marseille (via Paris), which covered 1,800 kilometers in France, without needing regeneration. Additionally, TDF will deploy Ciena’s digital video transport solution to offer users the ability to transport high-quality video content over its network.  “The network is now critical to numerous organisations in different sectors,” said Jean-Louis Mounier, industrial director at TDF Group.” As part of our experience in the media sector and in order to address new markets, we implemented an expansion strategy that requires a reliable packet-optical technology and a partner that could support us in the creation of new services. Ciena provided us with that by helping us broaden our range of solutions, identify new clients and seize new opportunities.” (Comment on this)
2:30p	WordPress Web Host WP Engine Raises $15 Million in Funding This post originally appeared on The WHIR. WordPress hosting provider WP Engine announced on Tuesday that it has secured $15 million in growth funding from North Bridge Growth Equity to expand its workforce and add an office in Europe. Founded in 2010 and based in Austin, WP Engine currently has about 14,000 customers who host over 120,000 websites, and has grown about 25 percent every quarter since its inception, according to a report by TechCrunch. “As we continue to experience hyper-growth as a business, this investment will enable us to accelerate our platform innovation and deliver market leading customer experiences,” WP Engine CEO Heather Brunner said in a blog post announcing the funding. Brunner was named CEO in October, after serving as COO at WP Engine. WP Engine has raised $18.2 million in funding to date, Brunner told TechCrunch, and hopes to use its latest round to double its employee count to 200 and open its first international office in Europe by 2015. Although WP Engine received inbound interest from around 20 VC firms, it decided to work with North Bridge because of its experience working with open source companies. As part of the deal, Matthew Blodgett, a General Partner at North Bridge, has joined its board of directors. “We are thrilled to partner with the WP Engine team as they build the next great platform company for the front lines of digital customer interaction,” Blodgett said. “WP Engine has what it takes to win – a powerful vision, strong technology and a seasoned executive team with a track record of success. Together with their clients and the WordPress community, WP Engine is building a new breed of fast, secure, and reliable content management.” Last week, WP Engine quietly acquired the WordPress hosting business of Crowd Favorite, called CloudMoxie. It appears that the move was more for customer acquisition than a specific technology or employees, TechCrunch said. Offering expertise in WordPress hosting has driven other hosting acquisitions. Last year, managed WordPress hosting provider Page.ly acquired its competitor BlogDroid in an all-cash deal, closely following the tenth anniversary of WordPress in May 2013. DreamHost is another big hosting supporter of WordPress, boasting over 750,000 WordPress installs last year, ahead of the launch of its managed WordPress offering in June.  This post was first published here: http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/wordpress-web-host-wp-engine-raises-15-million-funding (Comment on this)
3:00p	Nutanix Nets $101 Million in Funding Converged infrastructure solutions provider Nutanix has closed on a $101 million Series D financing, co-led by Riverwood Capital and SAP Ventures. The company has now raised a total of $172.2 million in four rounds of funding. Nutanix CEO Dheeraj Pandey has said that this will be the last round of private funding, but a timetable has not yet been set for issuing an IPO. The new funds will help accelerate the company’s global expansion, boost investments in research and development, expand service delivery capabilities and grow the sales, marketing and support teams. “Nutanix is one of a very small class of companies that is transforming the way enterprises deliver IT,” said Jeff Parks, founding partner of Riverwood Capital. “We are very excited to partner with Dheeraj Pandey and his world-class management team as they build the next-generation enterprise computing company.” Nutanix is now well capitalized to service the needs of global enterprise customers with backing from top Silicon Valley venture capital firms and numerous strategic investments. Parks, a founding partner of Riverwood Capital and former executive at Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., has been named to the Nutanix board of directors. In a separate appointment, industry veteran Mike Scarpelli, CFO of ServiceNow and former CFO of Data Domain, have also been named to Nutanix’s board of directors. Nutanix has won the business of 13 customers who have purchased more than $1 million of products within two years of launching its Virtual Computing Platform. Due to an aggressive global expansion strategy, international sales now account for 33 percent of the business and the company has shipped product to more than 30 countries in the last six months. Leading enterprises including eBay, McKesson, Toyota, Orange Business Services and Hyundai Hysco have adopted Nutanix as their preferred infrastructure platform for running high-performance virtualized workloads. These organizations seek the simplicity, scalability and efficiency of web-scale data centers to power their private cloud environments. “Nutanix represents a significant improvement to the simplicity of large scale datacenter architecture,” said Drew Trieger, virtualization architect at eBay. “We had considered alternative solutions from established players as well as newer companies, but none could match the combination of performance, compact footprint, ease of use and flexibility of the Nutanix platform. Today’s investment round validates our decision to choose Nutanix and ensures they will continue to deliver innovative solutions to our datacenter challenges for years to come.” “Adoption of web-scale computing, and Nutanix’s Virtual Computing Platform in particular, has grown explosively over the last two years, yet we’ve only scratched the surface of this $100 billion hybrid computing market,” said Dheeraj Pandey, CEO of Nutanix. “The additional support from such a high-quality investor group leaves us uniquely positioned to capitalize on the opportunity and build one of the elite companies of this decade.” (Comment on this)
4:17p	Is Intel Inside Your Cloud? Now You’ll Know “Intel Inside” is coming to the cloud. Intel (INTC) is teaming with cloud service providers (CSPs) around the world to launch its Cloud Technology Program, aimed at providing cloud users with a clear view into the technology powering their cloud-based infrastructure. Like the Intel Inside hardware logo, a “Powered by Intel Cloud Technology” badge will distinguish Intel-based instances. The Intel Cloud Technology program builds on the collaboration announced last September between Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Intel to communicate to customers the specifications, performance, quality, and security benefits of the Intel technology used in AWS instances. Intel says that the processor driving a cloud instance matters, and companies need to understand the technology powering the infrastructure at their cloud provider. “Much like when choosing a car, the type of engine that runs a cloud service dramatically affects performance and efficiency,” said Jason Waxman, vice president, Data Center Group and general manager, Cloud Platform Group, at Intel. “Cloud customers want to know what technology their applications are running on because it has direct impact to their business. For the first time, users will have the transparency to select the technologies that are optimal for running their applications in the cloud.” Intel Offers Co-Marketing CSPs will promote the users’ benefits of Intel cloud technologies powering their services, such as Intel Turbo Boost technology and Data Protection technology with Advanced Encryption Standard New Instructions (AES-NI), through multiple channels. Intel will also have direct marketing campaigns and participate in co-marketing activities with CSP partners – to educate customers and demonstrate the impact that Intel technologies have on application performance, user experience, and ultimately the business. “Rackspace has customers around the world that trust us to fulfill their cloud infrastructure needs,” said Rajeev Shrivastava, vice president of product marketing at Rackspace. “Our participation in the Intel Cloud Technology program strengthens our ability to deliver a broader range of hybrid cloud solutions to optimize application performance, and helps assure current and potential customers that Rackspace will run their business critical services on a cloud developed with the best available technology.” Other participants include Savvis (CenturyLink), Expedient, Virtustream, UOL Host and OVH.com. The Intel Cloud Finder tool facilitates a comparison of over 50 CSPs, and examines 80 end-user requirements to help find services based on Intel cloud technology. Intel Cloud Finder now offers access to trial offers, through participating cloud service providers. This tool will be integrated with the Intel Cloud Technology program. (Comment on this)

<< Previous Day

2014/01/15 [Calendar]

Next Day >>