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Friday, February 7th, 2014
| Time | Event |
| 12:30p | Data Center Jobs: Online Tech LLC At the Data Center Jobs Board, we have a new job listing from Online Tech LLC, which is seeking a Director of Marketing in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The Director of Marketing is responsible for strategic planning and execution of the marketing plan to help the company quadruple its size over the next five years, recruiting, leading, training, evaluating, and managing the Online Tech marketing team, maintaining a consistent message and voice across all of Online Techs marketing, sales, and corporate communications, managing all aspects of our online and digital marketing programs, including website development, SEO, SEM, blog, multimedia, and social media campaigns, developing public relations campaigns and media relationships to drive the visibility of the company in both local and national markets, and promoting Online Tech as a thought leader in markets we serve through educational marketing, white papers, speaking engagements, webinars, and partner relationships. To view full details and apply, see job listing details. Are you hiring for your data center? You can list your company’s job openings on the Data Center Jobs Board, and also track new openings via our jobs RSS feed. |
| 1:00p | Open Networking Moving Ahead ‘Very Quickly’  Open networking was a hot topic at the Open Compute Summit. Participating were moderator Najam Ahmad of Facebook and panelists Matthew Liste (Goldman Sachs), JR Rivers (Cumulus Networks), Martin Casado (VMware/Nicira) and Dave Maltz of Microsoft. (Photo: Rich Miller) SAN JOSE, Calif. – If software is going to eat the world, it must first nibble on networking. And the networking community seems to have a large appetite for change. That was the message last week at the annual summit of the Open Compute Project (OCP), which has taken a leading role in developing an open approach to networking. It’s one of several efforts to bring about a future in which commodity networking hardware will be easily managed by software, all of which will be open. Last year the OCP said it would begin building network switches. Within six months, Broadcom, Intel and Mellanox each submitted specifications for a top-of-rack switch. At last week’s event, “Opening up the network has happened very quickly,” said Frank Frankovsky, President and Chairman of the Open Compute Project. “Network engineers are a passionate and extremely smart group of people. They want to do engineering. The black box of today takes that away from them. We decided to crack open that black box. The passion in that group just overwhelms me.” SDN Bringing ChangeThe networking sector has been dominated by a handful of large vendors offering routers and switches managed by proprietary software. The last several years have seen progress in the development of software to support open networking, especially in the use of software-defined networking (SDN) that allows network equipment to be managed by external devices such as commodity servers. This shift holds the promise of making it cheaper and easier to build and manage large-scale networks. But as this transition moves ahead, the incumbent vendors won’t yield ground easily. Cisco Systems has unveiled its own approach to programming the network, known as Application Centric Infrastructure. Open Compute is one of several community-driven efforts to bring change to the network, along with the Open Networking Foundation and the OpenDaylight initiative. Several panels at the Open Compute Summit illustrated the enthusiasm for new approaches to networking. In the first, two industry pioneers assessed the state of the network. Andreessen: “Great Rollout” of SDN is Just Starting“We believe deeply that the same structural change that has happened in computing will happen in networking,” said Marc Andreessen, president and founder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, which has backed several startups focusing on software-defined networking. “We think the great rollout of software defined networking is just starting.” “I think it makes a lot of sense to standardize networking hardware,” said Andy Bechtolsheim, founder and chairman of Arista Networks. “Building the software stack is more difficult than the hardware.” Bechtolsheim, who is on the Open Compute board of directors, said the project can innovate more quickly than traditional channels for developing standards, like the IEEE. “I like the Open Compute approach to standardization,” he said. “There’s a lot of innovation potential that needs a venue to reach the public. Until Open Compute, there was no such venue.” Which Way Forward?A session featuring networking executives focused on frustrations with the status quo, and potential paths forward. “Right now we have a lot of different people doing a lot of different things to manage the network,” said Matthew Liste, a managing director for Goldman Sachs. “We need the ability to manage switches like we manage servers today,” added Dave Maltz, a networking researcher for Microsoft Bing. “Open Compute is striving to open things up,” said JR Rivers, co-founder and CEO of Cumulus Networks. “How do we create ecosystems to fulfill all the goals?” “We view the industry as though Darwin has already spoken,” said Martin Casado of VMware. “We’ve seen the physical network become simpler. We kinda know what the network of the future looks like. As the rest of the world catches on, the question is ‘what’s the right migration path.” Casado said a key challenge was developing tools so networking’s new paradigm is accessible to network admins. “Probably the most inflexible thing in industry is people’s brains,” said Casado. “It’s incumbent upon us to develop new solutions that look like what people have used before. “I’m so optimistic,” he added. “There’s a lot of work we have to do. It’s more about education, and I really believe the industry’s going to do the right thing, and we’ll have better networks.” |
| 1:06p | DCK Video: Hyve Partners DDN and Nebula Hyve Solutions is partnering with a number of vendors in the Open Compute Project. Last week at the Open Compute Summit V in San Jose, California, we spoke with Conor Malone, vice president of engineering at Hyve, and he showed us what storage provider Data Direct Networks, and Nebula, an open source cloud company, are doing with Hyve chassis and servers. This video runs 4:15 minutes. More details after the jump. Malone gives a brief tour of gear located in partner booths at the OCP event. Data Direct Networks partnered with Hyve Solutions, and produced a high capacity, high performance storage unit with 12 6TB Helium drives from HGST, with a boot drive as well as their software layer. The unit has the upfront connections for ease of serviceability, enhanced cooling capability and reducing the energy required to run and cool the unit. Also, cloud company Nebula was running a full demo of its cloud controller and Hyve’s hardware at partner LSI’s booth. Ben Broderick Phillips, software engineer, runs through the demo hardware that is running. Malone gives a close-up walkthrough of the components on the Hvye 1300 unit. For additional video, check out our DCK video archive and the Data Center Videos channel on YouTube |
| 2:25p | Friday Funny: Time for Cupid? It’s finally, finally Friday. It’s been a long week, folks and it’s time for some chuckles. So we present our data center cartoon that needs a caption. Scroll down and add your suggestion. Diane Alber, creator of Kip and Gary, writes, “Cupid somehow managed to find himself in the data center…. And watch out Gary!” Congrats to our winner, “Pleeaase Gary, let me use the tin can and string. I’ve got no service!” from “lgurdjia” for the What’s Up with that Phone? cartoon. The caption contest works like this: We provide the cartoon and you, our readers, submit the captions. We then choose finalists and the readers vote for their favorite funniest suggestion. The winner will receive his or her caption in a signed print by our artist Diane Alber. For the previous cartoons on DCK, see our Humor Channel. |
| 2:30p | Cloud News: Datadog Raises $15 Million British Airways selects Red Hat Enterprise virtualization to handle additional Linux workloads in its infrastructure, TIBCO takes its Spotfire data discovery and visualization platform to the cloud, and Datadog raises $15 million to grow its SaaS monitoring and data analytics platform. Datadog raises $15 million. Software as a Sevice monitoring and data analytics platform provider Datadog announced that it has raised $15 million in a Series B round led by OpenView Venture Partners, with follow-on investments from Index Ventures, RTP Ventures, Amplify Partners, IA Ventures and Contour Ventures. Dev Ittycheria, OpenView’s Managing Director and former Founder and CEO of BladeLogic, will join the company’s board of directors. The company will use the funds to accelerate the development of its next-generation monitoring platform, grow its engineering division and expand its sales and marketing teams in New York and Boston to meet the increasing market demand. “Increasingly organizations are shifting their computing workloads from static on-premise infrastructure to elastically scaling clouds,” said Ittycheria. “Easily adding and changing compute capacity is a major benefit of the cloud, but also introduces a level of dynamism that overwhelms legacy monitoring systems. Datadog has created a monitoring platform that has been explicitly designed to monitor highly elastic compute environments on public or private clouds as well as to support traditional computing infrastructure.” Red Hat selected by British Airways for Enterprise Virtualization. Red Hat (RHT) announced that British Airways has deployed Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization on its infrastructure. British Airways was looking for a solution that would support their projected future growth and anticipated additional e-commerce traffic. Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization was selected as the best solution for its Linux workloads for the production environment that supports its website and other workloads such as internal applications, both pre-production and production. “We use Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization to create our own cloud so that our developers can use it to build their own virtual machines and hence build and control environments as they wish,” said Richard Dawson, a Unix and Linux infrastructure consultant for British Airways. “We have used Red Hat solutions in various parts of our business for ten years, and we are pleased to continue our long-standing relationship by deploying Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization. As developers need to create and delete environments quickly, a highly scalable solution is critical for us and this advantage then means that we don’t need to over-commit on our IT plans.” TIBCO launches Spotfire Cloud. TIBCO Software (TIBX) announced the public launch of the cloud-based version of the TIBCO Spotfire data discovery and visualization platform, TIBCO Spotfire Cloud. Spotfire Cloud offers the rich, visual analytics of other TIBCO Spotfire products, while at the same time giving organizations the capability to deploy analytics as a hosted service so they can make data-driven decisions more quickly than ever. It is offered in Personal, Work Group, and Enterprise editions. ”As cloud technologies become an increasingly large part of businesses’ IT infrastructure, it’s critical that TIBCO is able to offer valuable solutions that support these technologies,” said Matt Quinn, chief technology officer, TIBCO. “Over the past year, we’ve been committed to developing and acquiring the foremost cloud services that enable businesses to discover new ways of connecting people, derive intelligence, and improve operational efficiency. With Spotfire Cloud, we are confident we can deliver best-in-class analytics services for individuals, teams, and enterprises.” |
| 3:30p | Radware Integrates Security Application Into OpenDaylight Radware’s SDN security application is integrated into the OpenDaylight Project controller framework, Extreme Networks launches Purview application analytics, and Cyan’s Blue Planet platform is selected by the Jeollanam-Do province in South Korea. Radware releases Open SDN Security Application. Radware (RDWR) announced its contribution to the OpenDaylight Project with Defense4All, the industry’s first open SDN security application to be integrated into OpenDaylight. As a part of Hydrogen, the first OpenDaylight SDN controller framework, Defense4All offers carriers and cloud providers DoS and DDoS detection and mitigation as a native network service. Defense4All gives complete abstraction of the anti-DoS resource provisioning and alignment with network operations to provide, manage and monitor DoS protection as a service within the SDN ecosystem. “With Defense4All, we can revolutionize the way security services are implemented and managed,” says David Aviv, vice president, advanced services, Radware. “By using the programmability of SDN technologies to collect statistics, analyze the information and control the infrastructure layer to proactively defend against DoS and DDoS network flood attacks, we transform point security solutions into highly scalable network services that are easy to provision and offer tremendous cost reduction.” Extreme Networks introduces Purview application analytics. Extreme Networks (EXTR) introduced Purview, a first-of-its-kind solution built on patented ASIC technology. Purview provides visibility into application use across the network, helping organizations in four ways: improving the experience of connected users; enhancing organizations understanding of user engagement; optimizing application performance; protecting against malicious or unapproved system use. Purview integrates with network data that carries context of users, devices, locations and applications in use – capturing network data and then aggregating, analyzing, correlating, characterizing, and finally reporting on insight into how and why systems and users perform. Purview is the official Wi-Fi analytics solution for the NFL, available to all 32 teams. ”With the explosion of enterprise mobility, social and collaborative applications, network infrastructure is now viewed as an enterprise IT asset and a key contributor to optimizing business applications and strategic intelligence,” said Rohit Mehra, vice president, network infrastructure, IDC. “Solutions such as Purview are unique in terms of providing rich application analytics integrated within a network management platform, so enterprise IT is enabled with deep visibility and control of data, applications and users, for better business decisions, easily and efficiently.” Cyan selected by South Korean Jeollanam-Do Provincial Government. Cyan (CYNI) announced that its Blue Planet SDN Platform and Z-Series packet-optical hardware have been selected by the Jeollanam-Do province in South Korea. Deployed together with partner Telefield, the new network will deliver e-government applications in support of the two million citizens living in the province. Cyan and Telefield were selected as the exclusive SDN and packet-optical solution provider for the provincial government’s Carrier Ethernet network transformation project. Applications delivered by the network upgrade include Internet, VoIP and video conferencing. “Cyan’s Blue Planet Platform lays the foundation for some of the most sophisticated, but easy-to-use and manage networks around the world,” said Michael Hatfield, president, Cyan. “By combining our SDN and packet-optical technology with Telefield’s expertise and support in South Korea, the province and its citizens will now be able to benefit from an advanced network, scalable for any e-government service or application.” |
| 4:00p | Fusion-io Offers Flash Appliances as Integrated Solutions Fusion-io (FIO) announced that the all-flash ION Accelerator appliance and ioControl Hybrid Storage appliance are now being offered as fully integrated solutions from Fusion-io value added resellers (VARs). The integrated all-flash and hybrid flash appliances are simple to deploy, purpose-built solutions for accelerating enterprise applications including Oracle, SAP HANA, and Microsoft SQL Server, as well as virtualization workloads. “Enterprises of all sizes trust Fusion-io flash memory to accelerate the applications that are critical to their success, and with integrated all-flash and hybrid flash appliances, Fusion-io is making it easier than ever to add performance that enhances existing IT infrastructure,” said Gary Smerdon, Fusion-io Chief Strategy Officer. “Fusion-io is pleased to provide our integrated solutions to our partners interested in offering customers ready-to-ship appliances that optimize the potential of flash as a scalable persistent memory.” The appliances enhance existing IT infrastructure by delivering application-focused performance for data-intensive workloads, allowing general purpose storage systems to focus on managing data capacity. The ION Accelerator appliance maximizes data-intensive application performance in an all-flash solution that leverages the unique architecture of Fusion ioMemory, and the ioControl hybrid flash appliance delivers enterprise flash memory performance that accelerates databases, applications and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) by up to 10x in a simple, cost-effective solution. “Solid state storage (SSS) will have a profound effect on the future of enterprise storage and has already transformed the enterprise datacenter,” said Jeff Janukowicz, IDC Research Director. “IDC believes primary application acceleration will drive the need for subsequent acceleration downstream, creating new and unforeseen demand. The enterprise all-SSS array market is one of the most critical new drivers of the storage industry.” “We have demanding users who need reliable access to complex files and digital models,” said Tim Rice, IT Director at Seattle-based LMN Architects. “We didn’t want to buy yesterday’s technology. We wanted our new storage system to provide enough capacity and performance to ensure we wouldn’t outgrow it in the near term. I like the next-generation ioControl hybrid approach, which gets everything out in front of the controllers with PCIe flash memory from Fusion-io. Now we don’t have to give performance a second thought.” The all-flash Fusion ION Accelerator appliance is available now to early access customers and will be widely available in Spring 2014 from Fusion-io value added resellers in North America. The Fusion ioControl Hybrid Storage appliance is now available from Fusion-io value added resellers in North America and EMEA. |
| 4:30p | IBM Launches SmartCloud Data Virtualization Service IBM partners with copy data virtualization platform provider Actifo to launch a SmartCloud data virtualization service, and partners with Completel in France to build a unique, high performance cloud offering. IBM partners with Actifo for SmartCloud Data Virtualization IBM announced a new data virtualization service for its portfolio of cloud-based enterprise offerings. The new service, IBM SmartCloud Data Virtualization (SCDV), will enable customers to decouple their application data from their physical infrastructure. By virtualizing data management, a single physical copy can be used to create multiple virtual copies, in support of any business application. IBM SCDV leverages Actifio’s Virtual Data Pipeline technology to provide a model for managing critical data, without the expense of managing excess copies. “IBM’s SmartCloud Data Virtualization combines the power of Actifio’s data virtualization platform with IBM’s Resiliency technology and operational reliability,” said Laurence Guihard-Joly, General Manager for IBM’s Business Continuity and Resiliency Services. “As part of our growing portfolio of cloud software, services and expertise that help clients tackle any IT or business challenge with confidence, security and trust, SCDV will not only offer many customers faster recovery times at better price points, it will enable them to leverage their protected data as a business asset rather than simply an insurance policy.” IBM’ SoftLayer to develop Cloud in France IBM and French company Completel announced the signing of an Infrastructure as a Service contract, to deploy a unique high speed cloud. The agreement ties Completel’s network infrastructure and IBM’s SoftLayer Cloud Computing to support their customers in the digital era. This offer will be available throughout France for Completel’s clients (including SMEs/SMIs, public sector) and partners (Independent Software Vendors, Systems Integrators). Completel engaged IBM because it is uniquely positioned to lead in the cloud market, and will have 40 data centers worldwide in 2014, among which one that will be open in Paris in the second semester of 2014. “In this year of the IBM France Centennial, we are very proud to work with Completel in this new cloud challenge, definitely aimed at providing outstanding performance to its customers.” says Rémi Lassiaille, General Manager, IBM France Global Technology Services. “By combining its expertise in Very High Speed Telecoms solutions to new SoftLayer cloud infrastructure services, it will allow new uses for its customers.” |
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