Thursday, July 24th, 2014

Time	Event
12:00p	Skybox Enters Wholesale Market With Houston Data Center The pool of wholesale data center providers in the Houston market has expanded with the arrival of Skybox Datacenters, which breaks ground today on an 86,960 square foot facility in the area, optimized for the data-crunching requirements of Houston’s energy sector. The facility’s design is geared for supporting high-performance computing workloads. Skybox will offer wholesale data center space, allowing customers to lease turn-key data halls to house their IT equipment. The facility will feature four to six data halls, depending on customer requirements. The 20-acre site in Katy, Texas (right outside of Houston), can support a second facility of a similar size. Skybox Datacenters is based in Dallas and is a joint venture between the investment firm Rugen Street Capital and real estate developer Bandera Ventures. The company sees an opportunity in the growth of “Big Data” in the energy industry, which uses 3D seismic imaging to identify promising oil and gas deposits. These applications require intensive data-crunching in high-power-density environments. As these datasets grow larger, they become unwieldy to move over the network. Skybox believes its site in Katy offers some of the lowest-latency data transfer from the nearby “Energy Corridor” along Route 10, allowing customers to easily move data between their corporate offices and the data center. “This is the energy capital of the world,” said Rob Morris, managing partner of Skybox Datacenters. “Companies in Houston are changing the way they look at their data center portfolio. The strong preference for these energy companies is to have their (data analysis) teams within their offices rather than at the data center. That’s why they really want a data center that’s close.” Market competitive, but demand strong Skybox enters a competitive market in Houston, which has been a historic hub for both CyrusOne and SoftLayer (now IBM) and is home to a total of about 30 data centers. But market watchers say supply is tight, and the large footprints of recent deals in the energy sector suggest continuing demand. “Houston has become a very dynamic data center market over the past two to three years,” said Bryan Loewen, global data center practice leader at Newmark Grubb Knight Frank. “We expect the requirements for local data center product to only increase as the reliance and dependence on technology increases for all companies in the greater Houston market.” The Skybox Houston One site offers users up to 12.4 megawatts of power and is located next to a 300-megawatt power substation. Skybox is providing feed A/B utility power feeds in underground concrete-encased duct banks. The building’s sturdy infrastructure is protected by a concrete roof deck designed to resist 190 mph hurricane grade winds. The data halls will be column-free, with dedicated power and cooling equipment housed in adjacent distribution galleries. “Data center users in the Houston market are very sophisticated and require robust infrastructure to withstand the elements,” said Morris. “Our ability to provide both 2N and N solutions to our customers in a secure, robust and reliable operation will provide great flexibility and value in their overall data center portfolio.” (Comment on this)
12:30p	Hedge Fund Elliot Management Pushing EMC to Spin Off VMware Hedge fund Elliott Management is at it again, this time pushing buttons (publicly) to convince EMC to spin off VMware, the hugely successful data center software company EMC owns a controlling stake in. As EMC’s fifth-largest shareholder, with a $1 billion stake in the company, the activist investor says the IT giant’s present structure has hampered stock performance. EMC maintains an 80-percent stake in VMware and a 62-percent stake in Pivotal, a software company led by former VMware CEO Paul Maritz in which VMware owns a sizable chunk as well. EMC continues to be a leader in traditional storage offerings and innovates through advances in its product lines as well as through strategic acquisitions. It has also gone to great lengths to integrate its storage products with VMware and Pivotal cloud services. EMC CEO and Chairman Joe Tucci will surely fight the idea to separate companies, as it was his planning that federated them, but Tucci is slated to retire early next year. VMware and EMC are rumored to be developing an EMC-branded converged infrastructure appliance, code-named Project Mystic. In a Wednesday earnings release statement Tucci said that its “industry and customers are in the midst of a massively disruptive and transformational shift, and the pace of change is accelerating. EMC detected it early on, put the right strategy in place and is executing well. New customers are coming to EMC for the first time, and existing customers are investing more heavily, because of our expanded capabilities across EMC Information Infrastructure, VMware and Pivotal. As a result, we have no doubt that EMC and our customers and shareholders will emerge among the primary beneficiaries of this transformation.” Elliott Management, led by founder Paul Singer, believes that if EMC splits off VMware, buyers will emerge for the rest of the company, according to news reports. Elliott feels those suitors could be as diverse as Cisco, Oracle and Hewlett Packard. The campaign is being led by Jesse Cohn, the hedge fund’s head of U. S. equity activism. Elliott has had success in the past with strong-arming its investments into doing what it sees as the correct course of action. In its other billion investment in Juniper Networks, Elliott lobbied for and was able to convince the company to roll out a new, integrated operating plan for growth. Elliott also made company improvement suggestions to LSI and offered up to $3.3 billion to acquire Riverbed. (Comment on this)
1:00p	With DevNet Cisco Renews Attempt to Court Developers Cisco has a new developer program called DevNet, aimed at attracting developers for building Cisco-enabled applications faster, boosting the networking giant’s place in the cloud computing world. The goal is to court programmers to write apps to enhance or manage Cisco-powered networks. Cisco is primarily known for networking hardware, but CEO John Chambers has been moving the company away from its traditional hardware-centric strategy. The company has sharpened its SDN focus and pledged $1 billion for data centers in a cloud play. Attracting developers is key to keeping people within its ecosystem as well as attracting new customers via the apps that are developed. Cisco has long had a developer program, called Cisco Developer Network. The main differences with DevNet are the addition of a developer sandbox and REST-based APIs. Cisco is also building a team of developer evangelists, community managers and developer support engineers in support of DevNet. The rebranding of the developer program and renewed push highlights how important Cisco thinks developers will ultimately be in the scheme of things. Unlocking intelligence from the network using applications provides value to the Cisco ecosystem. “As Cisco adds powerful software and services to our market-leading hardware portfolio, we recognize that developers are critical to creating value for our customers,” wrote Susie Wee, VP and CTO of networked experiences at Cisco. “With the advent of so many market transitions—mobility, cloud, the Internet of Everything (IoE), the application-centric infrastructure — driving and accelerating innovation, the value of our networked platforms is greatly enhanced by the applications that run on them.” Cisco also has a growing cloud security play. The company recently participated in a funding round for OpenDNS, a predictive threat intelligence startup. Cisco is closely tracking enterprise data and mobility security, which probably helped land OpenDNS on its radar. OpenDNS is doing interesting things around security at the heart of Cisco’s playground: the network. The company launched Managed Threat Defense in April, a managed security solution that applies real-time, predictive analytics to detect attacks and protect against advanced malware across customers’ extended networks. (Comment on this)
2:00p	Why Your High-Efficiency Data Center Needs Good PDUs Cloud computing, new applications and a lot more user connectivity are all driving forces around the data center evolution. In fact, the data center has become the home of all modern technologies. Businesses are now building their entire organizational model around the capabilities of IT. Through it all, pressure continues to mount on data center operators to run high-efficiency environments capable of good power control. Power consumption in the data center continues to be a rising trend. The need to provide redundant power systems with high reliability and availability of compute resources is a major driving force for the increase in power utilization. Some data centers use just as much power for non-compute or “overhead energy” like cooling, lighting and power conversions, as they do to power servers. The ultimate goal is to reduce this “overhead energy” loss so that more power is dedicated to revenue-generating equipment, without jeopardizing reliability and availability of resources. Cloud computing has had a big impact on data center power needs, and so too has virtualization. Increased virtualization and use of high-density devices require even more power. In this whitepaper from Chatsworth, you’ll learn why it’s crucial to deploy a reliable and effective power distribution unit (PDU) at the cabinet level – the hottest place in the data center. As a pioneer in Passive Cooling Solutions to promote “free cooling” in data centers, Chatsworth Products (CPI) brings an unmatched level of quality, expertise and efficiency to airflow management. CPI Passive Cooling was one of the first solutions to use comprehensive sealing strategies and a Vertical Exhaust Duct to maximize cooling efficiencies at the cabinet level. Download this whitepaper today to learn about the powerful CPI eConnect PDUs. When you’re working with next-generation data center platforms it’s critical to work with advanced power control technologies capable of supporting advanced needs. The CPI eConnect for example, currently has the highest ambient operating temperature rating of any PDU in the market. Data center convergence continues to happen as high-density, high efficiency systems continue to support advanced functionalities around cloud and data control. Organizations will look to their data center platform to help their business model outpace the competition. (Comment on this)
4:37p	HP Buys $50M Stake in Enterprise Hadoop Heavyweight Hortonworks HP has made a $50 million equity investment in Hortonworks, an enterprise Apache Hadoop distribution provider. HP has partnered with Hortonworks in the past. The round is the latest development in a year that has seen Cloudera and Hortonworks trading blows in terms of both investment and acquisitions. Hortonworks closed a $100 million venture round in March. Cloudera is backed by Intel, Google Ventures and In-Q-tel and has raised more than $900 million in funding. Hortonworks is a spin-off from Yahoo, which formed it together with Benchmark Capital in 2011. The Hadoop market is getting heated, with several competitors vying for the enterprise space. It’s not a two-company race, and many players have placed big bets. Google Capital led a $110 million round for enterprise Hadoop firm MapR in June, for example.  There’s also startup Pepperdata in the mix, which raised a $5 million Series A in April. Former Yahoo and Microsoft executives founded the company. HP and Hortonworks will integrate their engineering strategies, deepening their existing relationship. HP customers will be able to deploy the Hortonworks Hadoop into HAVEn, its Big Data platform. HP is also working to certify HP Vertica with Apache Hadoop YARN, the architectural center of Hadoop 2.0. HP will commit R&D resources to accelerate adoption of Hadoop with the Hortonworks Data Platform. HP’s executive vice president and CTO Martin Fink joins the Hortonworks board of directors. “The ability to understand data and put it to effective use is now more crucial than ever,” said Colin Mahony, general manager, HP Vertica. “Hortonworks has demonstrated outstanding dedication and expertise in addressing the business and technology needs of its customers within this new era of information and data, and we look forward to partnering with the Hortonworks team to deliver innovative big data solutions to our customers.” “We are extremely pleased to work more closely with HP to accelerate our joint customers’ transition to a modern data architecture,” Rob Bearden, Hortonworks CEO, said. “Through deep integration with Enterprise Apache Hadoop, HP customers will be able to easily build their next generation of applications with the Hortonworks Data Platform.” (Comment on this)
4:57p	VMware Launches Second UK Data Center for Cloud Services Continuing the build out of its cloud services infrastructure VMware has established a second UK data center. Traditionally a packaged software company, VMware has recently been expanding its role as cloud services provider.  This is the seventh data center for its vCloud Hybrid Service. It also recently opened a cloud data center in New Jersey and inked a deal with SoftBank to bring its vCloud Hybrid Service to Japan earlier this month. VMware uses colocation providers to host its cloud infrastructure. The company recently conducted a poll in the UK, which revealed that 86 percent of respondents thought it was important to ensure their business critical data was stored within the country’s borders. These “data sovereignty” needs were a major driver for expanding data center capacity in the UK. VMware opened up its first vCloud Hybrid data center in England last February. The first one was located in Slough (just outside of London) , and the new one is in nearby Chessington. VMware’s focus is on hybrid deployments – not necessarily the mixing of on-premises and cloud, but providing customers the flexibility to deploy infrastructure however they want to, on-premise in the cloud or both. The UK data centers provide a hosted complement to private VMware cloud infrastructures there. The company is seeing strong demand for the service in Europe overall, noted Gavin Jackson, vice president and general manager, EMEA Cloud Services, in an interview. In its most recent earnings, VMware reported close to 80 percent growth for the hosted service year over year. The service is new, so the growth is from a small base. “Customer research supports the need for a true hybrid cloud solution which can be fully integrated within an organization’s private cloud,” said Jackson. “It also highlights data sovereignty as having a large influence in whether organizations do move to the public cloud.” The company is relying on multi-tenant data center providers to expand its as-a-service offerings. “We are not at a scale where we buy or build our own data centers,” said Angelos Kottas, director of product marketing for the cloud services. “Today our objective is not to drive down cost to operate. Our objective is to grow rapidly.” VMware is also exploring a hybrid cloud service with the cloud computing branch of China Telecom under the brand name CT E-Surfing Hybrid Cloud Services. China Telecom, according to VMware, serves the largest Internet user base in the country. (Comment on this)
9:04p	Jury Acquits Real Estate Developer Rackspace Accused of Fraud A jury has acquitted a Texas developer of all charges in a criminal lawsuit in which he was accused of swindling Rackspace and the city of Windcrest, Texas, of millions of dollars in a 2007 purchase of land and the former shopping mall that now serves as the hosting company’s headquarters. Gary Cain, the developer, was faced with potentially spending the rest of his life in prison had he been convicted. Earlier this week, however, the jury in the three-week trial, which included testimony by Rackspace CEO Graham Weston, decided Cain was not guilty, San Antonio Express-News reported. The defendant’s brother, former Windcrest city manager Ronnie Cain, has been accused of participation in the alleged embezzlement scheme. He is currently awaiting trial. Gary Cain was accused of tricking Rackspace into paying $7 million more for the project to move headquarters to the site of the former Windsor Park Mall. His attorney argued that the case should have been a civil and not a criminal one. Rackspace has an ongoing civil lawsuit against Cain and his partners, accusing them of stealing $2.8 million out of a $5 million city-operated and Rackspace-funded escrow created for infrastructure improvements at the former mall property. The company filed this lawsuit in 2009, starting what eventually became a tangled web of suits and countersuits involving the Cain brothers, Gary Cain’s partner Buddin Properties and the city of Windcrest. In his witness testimony earlier this month, Weston said Gary Cain had refused to provide documents that detailed the nearly $26.9 million price of the property. “It looked like he was hiding something,” Weston said in court, according to Express-News. Cain was facing multiple first-degree felony charges, a conviction for which could land him in prison for the rest of his life. In 2007, Windcrest and Rackspace bought the property in question, Cain financing the acquisition and Rackspace reimbursing him. According to a state law enforcement affidavit, the $26.9 million price tag was $7 million more than the price documented in property deeds. “They had basically ripped us off, and we were trying to get our money back,” Weston said. Citing the same 2010 Texas Rangers affidavit, Express-News said Ronnie Cain, then city manager, also authorized a $2.8 million transfer from the infrastructure escrow to a bank account for which his brother had signatory authority. There is a multitude of abandoned shopping malls around the country, some of them repurposed as office buildings and some even turned into data centers. Rackspace recently agreed to establish another office building in a former mall in Texas. Austin Community College announced earlier this month that the company had agreed to move into the building that used to house Austin’s Highland Mall, which the college owns. (Comment on this)

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