Wednesday, February 19th, 2014

Time	Event
12:43p	Informatica 9.6 Adds New Features to Data Integration Platform Data integration software company Informatica (INFA) announced the release of version 9.6 of its platform, with new capabilities that make it easier to develop and deploy a wide range of data tasks, from  integration jobs to new cloud and big data projects. “With data volumes and complexity soaring, and bad data costing hundreds of billions of dollars annually, enterprises need as comprehensive an integration platform as possible for effective data management,” said Anil Chakravarthy, executive vice president and chief product officer, Informatica.” Today, Informatica delivers ‘great data’ for individuals and organizations. This great data is a true differentiator because clients can gain a competitive advantage when they can find, clean and transform data to fit their business needs. Far and away the most complete platform available, only Informatica 9.6 delivers data at any scale – from departmental to enterprise and from transactional to big data – while accelerating data integration projects by a factor of five.” Informatica 9.6 is offered in PowerCenter Standard, Advanced and Premium editions, along with a new PowerCenter Big Data trial. The editions feature built-in business-IT collaboration functionality, built-in profiling and rapid prototyping, advanced scaling and metadata management, and state of the art data stewardship, data validation and proactive monitoring that guarantees safe data. The Vibe Virtual Data Machine architecture provides risk-free big data integration experimentation. A new set of toolkits and trial editions take the Informatica Platform throughout the development community. New offerings include an Informatica Software Developer Toolkit, Informatica marketplace, and an Informatica Vibe Starter Kit to jumpstart a hybrid data landscape. “Informatica continues to drive innovative capabilities in 9.6, with enriched features that mirror the increasing need for business-driven data governance, ease of deployment across hybrid cloud and on-premise data environments, and more agile application development. These capabilities are underscored by an attractive, new packaging and pricing scheme that encourages enterprises to take a holistic, integrated platform-approach to data integration and quality. Collectively these enhancements will appeal to both customers and partners that are resinous about treating their data as a first-class citizen in their solutions.” (Comment on this)
2:07p	Fend Off Collateral Damage of DDoS Attacks Jeffrey Lyon, CISSP-ISSMP, founder of Black Lotus Communications, a DDoS mitigation firm specializing in the defense of service providers and enterprises.. JEFFREY LYON Black Lotus Communications Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks are increasing in scope and frequency, and companies in high-risk industries face numerous challenges when it comes to defending themselves. While DDoS attackers don’t generally target data centers directly, that hasn’t spared them from DDoS-related problems. In a recent report, the Ponemon Institute found that DDoS accounted for about 18 percent of data center outages, up from two percent in 2010. As these attacks generate larger and larger amounts of traffic, data centers are finding it harder to recover from spillover repercussions. To preserve uptime regardless of DDoS activity, data centers should follow these guidelines: Learn the risks and prepare for them. DDoS attackers are smart. Even as new defense mechanisms come on the market, companies know that the shelf life for these solutions is 18 months, at best, before cyber criminals crack them. The attackers who can bring down a data center are motivated by financial gain or idealism, and their methods are increasingly sophisticated. It pays to stay up to date on Layer 3, 4 and 7 attacks, as well as on the mitigation solutions that are most effective at identifying and fighting these onslaughts. Teach your users to ignore attacker inquiries. To some extent, data centers are as vulnerable as their users. Teach those stakeholders what they can expect from hacker inquiries and why they should avoid such contact. Sometimes these messages are about financial extortion. Others might be taunts that happen during a DDoS-triggered outage. Whatever the content, messages from attackers should be ignored, whether they go to the data center itself or to the end user. When recipients engage, attackers are more likely to initiate or continue their efforts. Protect your networks. Firewalls aren’t what they used to be. If you’re counting on this old security standby to protect your data center, it’s time to rethink your best practices. Even the largest firewalls are vulnerable to even the smallest attacks. Instead of firewalls, seek out solutions that can manage and secure your servers or build proxies using load balancers. This approach should dampen the effect of damaging DDoS activity, such as low-and-slow Layer 7 attacks. Additionally, the primary reason why firewalls are not sufficient to stop DDoS attacks is that they were not intended for this purpose. Although some brands and models say they will offer DDoS protection, the primary concern is that the devices are stateful (they “maintain state”), which in layman’s terms mean that they track every connection that travels through the device, limiting the amount of traffic that can be realistically handled. DDoS mitigation equipment is a special category of firewall generically referred to as a packet filter. It’s important to note that traditional firewalls or stateful firewalls are the ones that are not effective. Protecting your networks also means upgrading to modern equipment. Your service contracts should be up-to-date, and any new products you purchase should have a track record of withstanding prolonged attacks. However, even if you take these precautions, it’s possible that your data center could feel the effects of a DDoS attack. That’s why contingency planning is so important. Approach your network protection holistically, with secure network and system architecture, onsite packet filters, skilled security staff, and additional mitigation capacity that can help you during a worst-case scenario. The Ponemon Institute found that some data centers aren’t at all ready for the potential impact of DDoS outages, which can cost many hundreds of thousands of dollars to mitigate. Beyond the cost of emergency mitigation, unplanned downtime represents an untenable expense for data centers. When staying operational is at the core of your value proposition, it’s essential to follow best practices to avoid DDoS-created outages. Industry Perspectives is a content channel at Data Center Knowledge highlighting thought leadership in the data center arena. See our guidelines and submission process for information on participating. View previously published Industry Perspectives in our Knowledge Library. (Comment on this)
2:31p	IBM, AT&T Team Up to Target the Internet of Things A new global alliance agreement between IBM and AT&T aims to develop solutions for the Internet of Things, with an initial focus on city governments and midsize utilities. The companies will combine their analytic platforms, cloud, and security technologies with privacy in mind to gain more insights on data collected from machines in a variety of industries. “This collaboration of two world-class companies will help deliver a more connected planet,” said Chris Hill, Senior Vice President, AT&T Advanced Solutions. “We share a vision that the ‘Internet of Things’ will help companies in a variety of industries rely on their remote assets and connected devices to take their business to the next level.” IBM and AT&T intend to integrate and analyze vast quantities of data from assets such as mass transit vehicles, utility meters, and video cameras. As a result, cities may be able to better evaluate patterns and trends to improve urban planning and utilities can better manage their equipment to reduce costs. The connected cities with technologies from the two companies will enable better allocation and distribution of resources based on information reported from incidents and service disruptions, as well as the ability to analyze the movement of people to improve traffic management, parking capacity, location and number of first unit responders. It can also identify inefficient traffic patterns and monitor social media updates from citizens reporting bad weather or major traffic. AT&T brings its M2M globally accessible network, devices and Global Subscriber Identity Module to help connect assets worldwide to a single network. IBM brings the Intelligent Operations Center, Maximo Asset Management, its advanced analytics capabilities, and IBM MessageSight MQTT Appliance, which complements the IBM MobileFirst family of solutions. The two companies will work together to build solutions at the AT&T M2M Foundry in Plano, Texas and IBM Global Solution Centers around the world. “Smarter cities, cars, homes, machines and consumer devices will drive the growth of the Internet of Things along with the infrastructure that goes with them, unleashing a wave of new possibilities for data gathering, predictive analytics, and automation,” said Rick Qualman, Vice President, Strategy & Business Development, Telecom Industry, IBM. “The new collaboration with AT&T will offer insights from crowdsourcing, mobile applications, sensors and analytics on the cloud, enabling all organizations to better listen, respond and predict.” (Comment on this)
3:00p	Cisco Expands Virtualization Offerings for Service Providers Highlighting its Open Network Environment (ONE) strategy, Cisco (CSCO) announced the expansion of its virtualization offerings for  service providers with the introduction of the Cisco Evolved Services Platform (ESP). With a rapidly increasing number of people, devices, machines and sensors coming online across the Internet of Everything (IoE), service providers require new capabilities to lead in the delivery of value-added, cloud-based services and applications. The Cisco service provider virtualization strategy centers around the network becoming increasingly virtualized and virtualization becoming networked, that virtualization should work as an integrated extension of the physical infrastructure, and that virtualization shouldn’t be limited to a function but rather placed throughout the whole architecture. Evolved Services Platform The Cisco ESP works with the Cisco Evolved Programmable Network (EPN) and is designed to enable service providers to accelerate the delivery of innovative new services. More than 25 global providers are transforming their networks with various aspects of the Cisco ESP, including China Mobile, Deutsche Telekom Technik GmbH, SunGard Availability Services and Telecom Italia. “Service providers success is dependent on providing a consistent experience, agility to roll out new services and the ease at which these services can be ordered, automated, managed and delivered,” said Pankaj Patel, executive vice president and chief development officer, Cisco. “Service providers globally view virtualization not just to reduce costs, but to have it work with their infrastructure to provide even greater value by means of increased agility and elasticity.” Incorporating both Openstack and Open Daylight (SDN) protocol suite, Cisco ESP works with Cisco’s virtual functions and with other vendors’ functions and applications such as Metaswitch Networks and Openwave Mobility. Empowering on-demand offerings, Cisco ESP allows service providers to seamlessly and dynamically scale their existing services, while also dramatically accelerating deployment of new services and network functions. Service Modules for Video and Mobile Cisco is also announcing the availability of the first two modules for deployment.  Cisco Videoscape Cloud DVR Solution is a cloud-driven video recording with capture and storage in the cloud instead of the end device. Cisco Virtualized Mobile Internet features the Cisco Quantum Virtualized Packet Core (vPC), the Cisco Virtual Gi-LAN capabilities and the Cisco Quantum Services Bus. It is currently in trials at China Mobile and other service providers around the globe. “Virtualization is a key area of interest for China Mobile’s future network architecture. We are pleased to see Cisco move in this direction with the virtualized packet core,” said Zhiqiang Yang, Deputy General Manager of China Mobile Research Institute, China Mobile. (Comment on this)
4:00p	CoreSite Adds Storage as a Service In LA With Zadara A screen shot of Zadara Storage’s Virtual Private Storage Array (VPSA), which has been adopted by CoreSite as a storage as a service solution for its media and entertainment clients in Los Angeles. (Photo: Zadara) Data center provider CoreSite is offering storage as a service through enterprise storage provider Zadara. The service is tailored to media customers in Los Angeles with high storage requirements. This is the latest in a series of announcements of colocation and wholesale data center providers layering services atop of their baseline space offerings. This allows CoreSite to offer a flexible cloud storage in a single tenant setting, billed hourly. “CoreSite is proud to provide services to enable Zadara’s enterprise-class VPSA solution which offers the scalability to add or change storage capacity at will throughout our Los Angeles facilities,” said Brian Warren, Senior Vice President at CoreSite. “In addition to storage-as-a-service from Zadara, our local customers can interconnect to cloud-based IT resources and applications resources as part of CoreSite’s Open Cloud Exchange community of enterprises and networks and cloud providers.” Zadara offers flexible SAN and NAS “as a service” without upfront costs or long term commitments. CoreSite will now offer the Zadara Virtual Private Storage Array (VPSA) for block and file SAN and NAS at CoreSite’s downtown Los Angeles facility at One Wilshire. Zadara’s dedicated hardware is located on premises at CoreSite’s facilities, adjacent to CoreSite customers’ compute resources, and connected to servers by CoreSite’s high-speed fiber lines. The architecture allows exceptional Quality of Service for even the massive data volume needs of the entertainment industry. “Organizations are either staying put on traditional storage because they haven’t found the enterprise-grade features they need in the cloud or they’ve had frustrating experiences with rudimentary cloud storage that required complex architectures or yielded insufficient or unreliable performance,” said Nelson Nahum, CEO of Zadara Storage. “Through our relationship with CoreSite we’re eager to help more service providers and enterprises start moving more of their business applications to the cloud.” The LA service specifically targets media & entertainment community with enterprise-grade, high IO, high Quality of Service primary storage needs as well as for backup and repository applications. Other features available in the cloud include NFS, CIFS, clustering, large volume sizes, asynchronous replication, and read/write clones. Zadara provides dedicated disks, virtual controllers, and separate networking to achieve single-tenant, predictable performance, but since it’s delivered via cloud, offers a multi-tenant price and ease of deployment. Each customer receives its own management interface where they can add or eliminate disks, as well as control a wealth of other configurations such as disk or SSD, adjusting controller capacity, and other fine tuning. Storage is prices at around 11 cents per gigabyte per month, depending on controller and disk selection. Zadara’s VPSA is now live in 11 cities globally, allowing expansive replication and backup possibilities. The release was times with the Hollywood Post Alliance event in Indian Wells, CA, where broadcasters, studio industry leaders and their partners gathered to discuss new cloud options, among other trends. (Comment on this)
8:31p	Lifeline, Online Tech, Alpheus Announce Data Center Expansions The Online Tech data center in Flint. Michigan is being expanded. We continue to see local data center providers expanding their footprints. Here’s a look at three announcements from this week: Lifeline Data Centers Plans Site in Fort Wayne - Lifeline Data Centers has announced plans to establish a new data center facility in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Upon finalizing its site location, Lifeline Data Centers will make “significant” investments in data communications infrastructure improvements to its facility.  Lifeline said it is working with real estate representatives and Greater Fort Wayne Inc. to perform its due diligence on a site location, which will be announced in the near future. “We are very excited to finally be a direct part of the Fort Wayne business community,”  said Lifeline Data Centers Co-Owner, Alex Carroll. “Lifeline is committed to driving significant technology infrastructure into Ft Wayne. As a private company making an investment in Fort Wayne’s technology infrastructure, we will assist to enhance the capabilities of the community through providing data center services to the Northeast Indiana market.” Online Tech Expands Mid-Michigan Data Center – Online Tech has completed a major expansion of its Mid-Michigan data center in Flint Township, Michigan to support the rapidly growing number of customers that rely on its encrypted, compliant data center services. Online Tech’s $3 million investment in the Flint facility has doubled the overall capacity of the data center in terms of both physical space and power, allowing the company to support a large number of new clients and existing clients whose needs are growing. The facility expansion boasts a total of 22,500 square feet and includes the addition of two new 1 megawatt generators. This brings the data center’s total backup power to 4 MW, ensuring availability and redundancy that will meet Online Tech’s stringent SLAs to customers throughout the facility. “Online Tech is growing rapidly, and this multi-million dollar investment in our Flint data center is the latest step we have taken to expand our mission critical facilities to support customers,” said Mike Klein, co-CEO of Online Tech. “This follows quickly on the heels of our Metro Detroit data center announcement a few weeks ago, and we plan to make additional data center announcements in the near future about Online Tech’s expansion to other Midwest markets.” Alpheus Expanding Premier Data Center in Downtown Austin - Alpheus Communications, a leading provider of Texas metro-regional fiber and networking solutions, is significantly expanding its data center in downtown Austin, located at 1905 E. 6th St. The expansion is driven by demand for premier data center space from companies building public, private and hybrid cloud environments requiring 100-percent uptime and fiber connectivity.“Our 6th Street data center is unique because it’s just a few minutes from Austin’s central business district, it’s convenient to freeways, and most important, because our fiber network hub is in the same facility, Alpheus clients don’t have to source network and colocation services from separate providers,” said Scott Widham, CEO of Alpheus Communications. “Companies are rapidly expanding their cloud environments, and that’s creating significant demand for the premier network and data center services that Alpheus provides, not only in Austin, but throughout Texas.” (Comment on this)

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