Thursday, January 16th, 2014

Time	Event
1:20p	Beyond the SLA: Choosing a Financially Sound Cloud Provider 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 Cloud computing brings a certain set of risks. By nature customers put their faith in service providers to protect their data and keep it readily available. Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are meant to protect the customer in case of downtime, allowing them to sue if data is inaccessible. Part of an SLA is generally a degree of redundancy, guaranteeing that every server and piece of infrastructure is backed up with an equivalent version. Customers often had their own data backups as well. An SLA, however, doesn’t protect anyone once a company is bankrupt. In September, Nirvanix, a cloud storage company founded in 2007, suddenly revealed they were declaring bankruptcy. Users had two weeks—later extended until mid-October—to migrate their data, or lose it forever. With large customers storing 10 to 20 petabytes of data, those few weeks suddenly seemed like a few days. These types of shutdowns happen infrequently, but they do occur. In 2011 four cloud storage companies shut down, including one owned by EMC. Provider shutdowns raise two vital questions. How do companies escape from a sinking cloud? And more importantly, how do they choose a provider who is financially stable and won’t shut down their cloud services in the first place? Cloud Exit Strategy With cloud growth continuing unabated, it seems like even these shutdowns can’t slow down adoption. But companies would be wise to have some sort of exit strategy available. There are limited options for migrating directly from one cloud storage or virtual server to another provider. A remote backup stored with a different service provider can be one way to quickly restore data to a new cloud. Otherwise, companies are left with limited windows to transfer enormous amounts of information to their own servers (which they may not have) and then onward to another provider. That downtime can severely affect daily business operations. A hybrid cloud is another solution, allowing enterprises to connect their existing infrastructure with external storage providers. Because storage is expensive to procure, this is an economic solution and one in which data can be more quickly retrieved from a floundering service provider. To state the obvious, though, the whole problem can be avoided if companies choose a cloud partner who has solid financials. That may be easier said than done, but there are ways to feel confident that an infrastructure service provider will be around for years to come. Financial N+1 Cloud shutdowns change the conversation from one of redundancy to one of business practices. It’s not just about how many data center locations one provider can offer, or their backups of your data. N+1 doesn’t add up when the company itself goes under. In a natural disaster, one data center might go down, but your data might be backed up elsewhere. When the entire provider shuts down, the other four data centers they operate won’t help customers, as they’re getting shut down too. What happened with Nirvanix? We can’t be sure, but it seems like they were in a negative burn, spending more money than they could raise even as they continued to receive additional funding. The one fact we do know is that operating a data center comes with massive financial investment. The sheer cost of cloud storage technology may have combined with mismanagement to run the company under. Check Finances Before Migration Redundancy will always be an issue. Many companies may start to keep more of their data backed up locally or with a second cloud provider. But with the shift to business confidence rather than data security as a primary issue, how can users evaluate a potential service provider for financial integrity? One essential division in business funding is between equity and debt spending. In the case of Nirvanix, they had raised a significant amount of equity from outside investors in exchange for a stake in the company. That makes them liable to pressures from investors, as well as keeping money flowing even if they operate with a loss. Companies taking on their own debt face banks, who are much less likely to take risky bets on a company. To evaluate a potential cloud services provider, customers can inquire about finances including documentation of cash flow, debt, backers, and spending forecasts. Ask for reports from previous years, budgets, anything that could give you an idea of the financial state of the company. Develop a Real Relationship Large providers seem safe. Cloud users may jump to Google or Amazon and feel good about the safety of their data. Even with large companies, when a product is no longer profitable, it gets the axe. One advantage of a smaller company, once you’re comfortable with the financials, is getting to peek under the hood. Come on by and look at their servers. See how they’re growing. Chat with their CEO or even their banker. This can be difficult to do with the giants of the industry. A confident and financially stable service provider will be prepared to demonstrate financial acumen to assure clients they are a safe bet. The cloud may always be a bit of a gamble, but with the right preparations you can get the additional computing power you need, at a great price, and be able to sleep knowing vital business information is safe. 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)
1:20p	IBM Beefs Up Enterprise X-Architecture With Flash, Modular Design An IBM X6 server, the newest incarnation of Big Blue’s X-Architecture for enterprise servers. (Photo: IBM) IBM has introduced X6, the sixth-generation of its enterprise X-Architecture, which optimizes x86-based servers for cloud, and analytics. The company has added integrated flash storage for high performance, as well as modular design for long life cycles to help reduce costs, and improve resiliency. The company has added features that can help extend cloud delivery models to mission-critical applications. “We think System X is a dramatic change in servers,” said Stuart McRae, Business Line Manager, High End Systems at IBM. ”It’s targeted to Big Data Analytics and Cloud. This is for big scale-up, mission critical, IO intensive applications like ERP and databases that need to be fast, agile and responsive while remaining resilient. Customers don’t want to architect their application, so we’re changing the base architecture.” The X6 is targeted to high-end and mission critical applications that are heavy in transaction processing; think credit card databases and things like SAP HANA. Clients are rapidly adopting analytics for greater business insight and moving critical workloads like ERP, analytics and database to the cloud for increased efficiency and lower costs. Flash Memory Channel Storage Added One of the big additions is eXFlash memory channel storage: IBM has taken high-speed flash memory and integrated it on the system memory bus.  The DIMM-based storage provides up to 12.8 terabytes of ultrafast flash storage close to the processor. “We’ve taken high speed flash and packaged it (DDR 3 packaging) in the same sockets that system memory would go in; we’ve taken the flash device and integrated on the fastest bus,” said McRae . “This results in three times better latency than any storage on the market: five microseconds. It’s very resilient. It’s one thing to say ‘I can do three times as much’, but this doesn’t mean much if it’s not highly resilient.” X6 can provide significantly lower latency for database operations, which can lower licensing costs and reduce storage costs by reducing or eliminating the need for external SAN/NAS storage units. It also features three times the amount of RAM in the server over the previous generation, at 12 Terabytes. “This allows customers to think about doing stuff with x86 databases,” said McRae. Modular, hot swap components The architecture has hot swap component capabilities. The modular, scalable design can support multiple generations of CPUs, which IBM says is an industry first, and can reduce acquisition costs. The new design supports at least 3 generations of technology. “With the modular design, we’ve redesigned the way the physical server goes together,” said McRae. “Everything plugs in the front or the back or the server. There’s always an opportunity for error when you have human hands in the server. The processors and memory have been packaged in what we call ‘books’. I can dial in the exact amount of performance that I want. It makes it very cost efficient to deploy and meet customer needs. X6 provides stability and flexibility through forthcoming technology developments, allowing users to scale up now and upgrade efficiently in the future. Fast set-up and configuration patterns simplify deployment and life-cycle management.” Server models supported by this new architecture currently include the System x3850 X6 four-socket system, System x3950 X6 eight-socket system, and the IBM Flex System x880 scalable compute nodes. IBM also is introducing the System x3650 M4 BD storage server, a two-socket rack server supporting up to 14 drives delivering up to 56 terabytes of high-density storage. It provides 46 percent greater performance than previous comparable IBM System x servers and is ideally suited for distributed scale-out of big data workloads. New Storage for Cloud, Analytics IBM has also announced the general availability of the new IBM FlashSystem 840. The new IBM FlashSystem 840 doubles performance, ideal for virtualization and cloud. The new system provides 1.1 million IOPS, nearly double the bandwidth and performance of the predecessor FlashSystem 820, making it ideal for analytical databases, virtualization infrastructures, and public and private clouds. (Comment on this)
1:30p	PEER 1 Hosting Names Former CFO Gary Sherlock CEO This post originally appeared on The WHIR. After a seven-year stint as CFO and being co-CEO with the recently retired Fabio Banducci, Gary Sherlock is now the CEO of web infrastructure and cloud hosting provider Peer 1 Hosting. Having joined PEER 1 in 2006, Sherlock worked with Banducci to implement a strategy focused on customer-oriented experience, domestic and international expansion, and profitability, as well as creating a great work environment for employees – having just won a recognition for its “engaged workplace.” According to the Wednesday announcement, in Banducci’s absence (having resigned in November 2013) Sherlock aims to continue to drive the global growth of Peer 1, which already has more than 500 employees across 14 offices and 16 data centers worldwide. He also plans on developing partnerships with other companies that “power human potential online”, and educate people on how the Internet can change the world for the better. Sherlock has written about how the internet is more than a novelty, but rather has the potential to save lives around the globe by solving real-world problems. A PEER 1 press release states that Sherlock will help make Peer 1 “the most human company on the Internet.” “I’ve been proud to be part of the Peer 1 team since the day I joined, and being appointed CEO is a sincere honor for me,” Sherlock said in a statement. “Though the company has evolved over the years, one unwavering element is our commitment to people – employees, customers and partners. I am proud to lead a team that is dedicated to powering human potential online and enabling customers to focus on the opportunities of the Internet, not the problems.” Another major management change at PEER 1 happened in late 2012 when it was acquired by Montreal-based telecom Cogeco for $526 million, giving Cogeco control of PEER 1′s board of directors and operations. Although, there seem to be no signs that PEER 1’s plans to become more “human” conflict with Cogeco, whose shares rose 26 percent in 2013 and as it continues to be highly rated among investors. This post was first published here: http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/peer-1-hosting-names-former-cfo-gary-sherlock-ceo (Comment on this)
2:00p	Google Cloud Platform Adds Hadoop Connector Google adds a connector to make Hadoop easier on its Cloud Platform, Air France uses HP Cloud Service Automation to increase reliability and decrease cost on its infrastructure, and Egenera launches a new release of its Cloud Suite Platform. Google adds Hadoop connector. Google has made it easier to run Hadoop on its Cloud Platform, by adding a Google Cloud Storage connector for Hadoop that lets the user focus on data processing logic instead of managing a cluster and file system. Google’s self-described ‘planet-scale’ storage systems run on Google File System (GFS), the basis for Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS). With the new Hadoop connector library Hadoop can now run directly against Google Cloud Storage, an object store built on Colossus, the latest storage system iteration. Benefits of doing this include compatibility, quick startup,  greater visibility and scalability, interoperability, performance, and lower costs. HP helps Air France with physical and virtual environments. HP (HPQ) announced that Air France has automated and increased the reliability of its 1,500 Linux servers by deploying a private cloud solution based on HP Cloud Service Automation (CSA) software to accelerate deployment times for physical and virtual infrastructures. After a validation phase with HP Operations Orchestration and HP Server Automation software, which reduced the cost of infrastructure provisioning by 85 percent, Air France created a private cloud with HP CSA software and put the solution into production. In the space of 12 months, 90 percent of installation processes were automated. HP CSA’s self-service portal gives project managers secure access to installation services and automatic server provisioning, reducing delivery time and eliminating human error. “Since automating our installation processes, we have gone from around six days for installing a server cluster to one day and, instead of more than 24 hours, it now takes less than 15 minutes to install one virtual machine,” said Patrick Bourel, head of Open Systems, Air France. “This scalable platform will allow Air France to put in place monitoring and audit tools in order to achieve better quality of service.” Egenera launches new Cloud suite release. Infrastructure and cloud management software provider Egenera announced a new release of Egenera Cloud Suite featuring enhanced workflow automation, simplified administration, and enhanced security through integration with Microsoft Active Directory. “As the growth of cloud services is being driven by user demand for faster access to computing resources, enterprises are relying on a broad set of applications, with differing capacity requirements, levels of availability and security,” said John Humphreys, VP of sales and marketing at Egenera. “Egenera is the only solution to provision physical, virtual and public cloud resources from one unified management framework, and is in high demand from service providers and enterprises alike.” New capabilities include support for Microsoft Hyper-V and Active Directory, expanded role-based administration, billing enhancements, expanded templating, and lease periods for services. (Comment on this)
5:00p	GreenButton Partners with NVIDIA for Affordable Cloud Rendering GreenButton, a provider of high-performance cloud computing solutions, announced a partnership with NVIDIA (NVDA) to offer a more complete service for both studios and freelance artists. GreenButton’s solution for rendering software in the cloud gives users of Maya, 3ds Max and Softimage the ability to access massive compute resources on-demand at an affordable cost. “NVIDIA is very pleased to make mental ray available in the Cloud with GreenButton,” said Phillip Miller, director of NVIDIA Advanced Rendering Products. “As the rendering quality of productions continually rises there’s an ever growing need for more processing power to satisfy it. GreenButton now enables mental ray artists to have the rendering power of a major studio to ensure their creative vision isn’t constrained by local resources.” The partnership allows customers to access massive computing power on-demand with no upfront investment. Smaller organizations can now compete for the same jobs as larger studios and companies. In addition, users have the ability to consume the very valuable mental ray licenses on a per-use basis, and computing time is metered to the millisecond. This gives cloud access to tens of thousands of cores that would otherwise be unattainable. GreenButton’s Cloud Fabric platform provides the cloud access (via a plugin in Maya and 3ds Max), job distribution and execution, billing support and license management that the service depends upon, whereas, GreenButton Mission Control provides a management dashboard for the service as well as comprehensive reporting. “This is a great partnership for GreenButton,” said Scott Houston, chief executive officer of GreenButton. “It allows us to address a bigger slice of the Digital Media and Entertainment industry, a key market for us. NVIDIA was a logical partner given the breadth and depth and quality of their products. We are looking forward to a long and fruitful relationship, and are thrilled that together we can provide a more complete service for larger and smaller independent studios alike.” (Comment on this)
6:00p	SGI and SAP Plan In-Memory Appliance SGI announces plans to develop an appliance based on the SAP HANA platform, and Switzerland telecom Sunrise Communications selects Violin Memory to dramatically speed up processing times. SGI plans SAP HANA appliance. SGI announced plans to develop an in-memory appliance based on the SAP HANA platform, working in collaboration with SAP AG. Using the scalable shared memory architecture of SGI’s next-generation UV system together with SAP HANA, the new in-memory appliance will be designed to streamline database management for single large node environments, which require extremely high capacity and scale to meet the needs of in-memory databases. The appliance is expected to help enable businesses and government agencies running high volume databases and multi-tenant environments to leverage high performance DRAM that can offer up to 200x the performance of flash memory to help deliver faster insight. In addition, SGI’s shared memory technology will enable unprecedented scale in a single node, helping to enable customers to reduce the cost of management by up to 50 percent compared with multi-node solutions. The powerful SGI UV high performance computing technology will enable customers to scale with ease – providing efficient and reliable performance to help handle workloads using up to 64 terabytes of memory. “Many companies are running database sizes and multi-tenant environments that require exceptional scale-up capacity capabilities, where SGI leads with its expertise and technology,” said Jorge Titinger, president and CEO of SGI. “By working with SAP, a trusted provider to the enterprise and one of the innovative leaders in in-memory technology, SGI will now be able to target a significant high-end user requirement, representing an exciting market opportunity for us.” Violin Memory selected by Swiss Telecom.  Violin Memory (VMEM) announced that Switzerland telecom Sunrise Communications AG has selected the Violin 6000 Series Flash Memory Array to accelerate the billing process for its nearly three million customers. By deploying the Violin solution, Sunrise reduced processing time for its mission critical billing application by more than 75 percent, streamlining operations and improving customer satisfaction. More stringent internal service level requirements set a 24-hour completion goal to allow for potential re-runs. By deploying Violin Flash Memory Arrays, the company has seen processing time drop dramatically – a 76 percent improvement compared to the previous solution based on Fibre Channel disk drives complemented by Solid State Drives (SSD). “Violin Flash Memory Arrays have proven to be a vast improvement compared to our previous system, which often forced us to bill in arrears,” said Detlef Steinmetz, CIO of Sunrise. “This is no longer the case as we now have a fast, reliable process. Our goal is to get the billing process down to less than one day and I’m confident that with Violin Memory we will be able to achieve this objective quickly and easily.” (Comment on this)
6:30p	New GoDaddy CIO Arne Josefsberg to Oversee Global Cloud Infrastructure This post originally appeared on THE WHIR. GoDaddy named Arne Josefsberg Executive Vice President, Chief Information Officer and Chief Infrastructure Officer this week. Josefsberg will oversee GoDaddy’s global cloud infrastructure and information systems. He joins GoDaddy from ServiceNow, where he gained experience with technology advances and an expanding cloud computing strategy. Josefsberg also previously spent years with Microsoft, building on and working with one of the world’s largest infrastructures. GoDaddy is planning to make use of Josefsberg’s expertise in building scalable cloud computing environments, data centers, large-scale operations and IT systems as it expands into new markets. “As GoDaddy expands our global reach and product portfolio, a world-class and scalable technology infrastructure is critical to our success,” GoDaddy CEO Blake Irving said. “GoDaddy has the size and scale that allows us to reach a previously under-served customer base, and necessitates a global infrastructure that allows us to serve them seamlessly,” Josefsberg said. The emphasis on infrastructure which is global and scalable fits with GoDaddy’s intention to expand into 60 markets by 2015. GoDaddy announced a partnership with Microsoft to offer cloud tools earlier in the week, as it continues to develop its appeal to small businesses as a one-stop shop for web needs. GoDaddy counts 12 million customers currently, most in the US. If its infrastructure is built up to the point of bringing the same level of service to the 97 million small businesses it estimates are outside of the US, then GoDaddy will profit enormously from its global expansion. This article was first published: http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/new-godaddy-cio-arne-josefsberg-oversee-global-cloud-infrastructure (Comment on this)

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