Friday, December 19th, 2014

Time	Event
1:00p	Did Last Year’s Cloud Predictions Pan Out? Before we dive into our annual cloud predictions, we here at Data Center Knowledge are going to look back on 2014 to see if last year’s cloud predictions panned out. A lot happened in 2014; too much to cover everything. So, let’s paint the year in cloud using wide brushstrokes. Application Containers Credit to Rackspace CTO John Engates, who was a fervent and optimistic proponent of containers this time last year. Containers provide an easy way to spin applications up and down on any type of infrastructure, and they have definitely commanded the cloud world’s attention this year. Docker released its first commercial product this month. Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure added support and services for Docker containers. Docker was integrated with Windows Server, and virtualization giant VMware added container support to VMware infrastructure. IBM, Microsoft, and Red Hat joined Google’s open source container project. Rackspace added native Docker support. Several startups providing services around Docker raised money. In summary, the startups and the giants have embraced containers. Much of the container technology is open source, which leads us to the second prediction from last year. Open Source: from Alternative to Prime Time The days of looking to a specific vendor for a complete roadmap are now in a death rattle. Innovation in cloud is spearheaded by open source. DevOps partly drives this trend. As the developer’s role in technology infrastructure decisions grew, so did the use of open source. A recent survey found that nearly everyone is planning to employ DevOps, and cloud providers like Cisco’s Metacloud noted not only increasing Dev team involvement in decisions, but increasing success with private cloud when Dev teams were involved. A handful of giants opened up big time. Microsoft open sourced the entire .NET framework, IBM opened its POWER server architecture, taking the trend all the way down to server firmware. The OpenPOWER Foundation recently added Rackspace to a growing consortium. In Platform-as-a-Service, the Cloud Foundry Foundation launched. The open source PaaS project used to be run solely by VMware-controlled Pivotal, but the software company decided Cloud Foundry would grow much faster as an independently governed endeavor. Open source is also driving the big data cloud. OpenStack, the open source cloud architecture, saw incredible growth and participation, even among enterprises and the largest tech companies. IBM fully endorsed OpenStack across its entire cloud portfolio this week, and HP has become one of the top contributors to the project. Popular open source technologies like Docker, Kubernetes, Apache Mesos Apache Spark and etcd formed the foundations of hottest tech startups. Everybody needs to play nice in the cloud world, and open source is the way vendor ecosystems are hooking up. From Public or Private to Public AND Private Both private and public cloud models are taking root. While many new companies are born in the cloud, medium-to-large enterprises continue to employ a hybrid strategy. Hybrid is shaping IBM’s cloud strategy. Big partnerships like Microsoft and Accenture were formed to address hybrid cloud needs. Data center providers like Equinix see hybrid cloud needs driving colocation sales. It was the most popular trend in a recent survey from 2nd Watch Cloud: Birthplace of Value-Added Services Pricing wars among cloud giants led many to believe that cloud’s influence would turn compute and storage into a cheap commodity. While there has been a race to the bottom, the most successful companies this year tuned offerings to provide value beyond raw cloud infrastructure. In conjunction with the emergence of the hybrid model came a need to outsource management and operations to further optimize infrastructures. Raw compute is available if you need it, but the picture for many is more complex. The growth of private cloud means many are looking to leverage operational flexibility of cloud but in a contained, managed way. CenturyLink and Internap both are offering a wide variety of cloud and services, adding value above and beyond raw cloud as part of the strategy. Cloud storage providers are acquiring capabilities to combat commoditization of cloud storage, adding value to businesses in particular. (Comment on this)
5:00p	Friday Funny Caption Contest: Christmas Tree Kip and Gary are firm believers in going big or going home! Help us squeeze in one last holiday laugh with this week’s Friday Funny! Diane Alber, the Arizona artist who created Kip and Gary, has a new cartoon for Data Center Knowledge’s cartoon caption contest. We challenge you to submit a humorous and clever caption that fits the comedic situation. Please add your entry in the comments below. Then, next week, our readers will vote for the best submission. Here’s what Diane had to say about this week’s cartoon, “We decided to get a real tree this year but somehow miscalculated the height of our ceiling. Our tree resembled Kip and Gary’s before we gave it a good trimming!” Congratulations to the last cartoon winner, Mike, who won with, “How did Santa get past all of our security controls?” For more cartoons on DCK, see our Humor Channel. For more of Diane’s work, visit Kip and Gary’s website. (Comment on this)
5:58p	Eaton Updates Energy Management Software With Capacity Management, Load Simulation Eaton has updated its Power Xpert Insight energy management software with real-time capacity management and load simulation capabilities. The new features simulate the impact of additional equipment on electrical loads, a feature useful in data center capacity planning. Power Xpert provides a dashboard view into real-time energy usage, efficiency and power quality for a variety of facilities, such as data centers, schools, or manufacturing plants. Users can drill down to the device level, analyze trends, and get a unified view of the building data. Dublin, Ireland-based Eaton is known in the data center industry for its physical wares. It has wide range of electrical equipment, as well as racks, cable trays, meters, and airflow management solutions. Some of this equipment is seen in action in the recent Iliad data center photo tour or Florida Poly’s new super computer. The company noted last month that it was working on ways to tie the various infrastructure components in its portfolio into a single platform using software. It updated Power Xpert last March with enhanced alarm notification, advanced building integration capabilities, and simplified setup and commissioning. “During periods of peak loading, or when installing new equipment, it is vital to ensure adequate electrical capacity to avoid unplanned power interruptions,” Marty Aaron, product line manager at Eaton, said in a statement. “By providing the ability to simulate load additions, the new capacity management and simulation features can help commercial and industrial customers proactively forecast peak capacity requirements to predict system performance more efficiently and reliably.” Simplified integration of backup power devices from a variety of manufacturers is provided through a Modbus protocol adapter engineered into the software. It works with those that communicate on open protocols. The Web-based energy management software includes support for installation and deployment. (Comment on this)
7:43p	Submarine Cable to Boost Southern Ireland’s Data Center Industry Hibernia Networks announced addition of a southern Ireland landing station to the list of landings for the trans-Atlantic submarine cable system it is building together with TE SubCom. The landing will be a substantial boost to direct connectivity to North America for Ireland, making the country more attractive for data center development. The project may have an especially big impact on data center development in southern Ireland, as opposed to Dublin, the country’s current data center hub. The biggest concentration of data centers in Ireland is in and around Dublin. Microsoft has a data center there, and so do Google and Amazon. Digital Realty Trust launched a brand new facility in Dublin in September. All submarine cables that land in the Dublin area, except one, go to the U.K., according to the map of worldwide submarine cables by TeleGeography. One links Dublin directly to Nova Scotia in Canada. There are currently six cables connecting southern Ireland directly to the U.K. and one to Canada. The only other direct submarine link between Ireland and North America connects a landing station in a village in the north of Ireland called Killala to New York. Hibernia’s Express cable system that’s currently under construction will land in multiple locations in the U.K., New York, Nova Scotia, and now also in Cork, Ireland, the country’s third-largest city, located in the South-West region. Hibernia and TE announced start of construction in July. Cork is a major city but does not have a high concentration of data centers. One well-known data center site there is the Cork Internet Exchange. IT giant EMC is seeking planning permission to build a data center in Cork, the Irish Times reported today. “The extension of Express to Cork has significant international business implications and will make Ireland that much more attractive to both established players and tech startups alike,” Ireland’s Minister for Agriculture, Food, the Marine and Defense, Simon Coveney said in a statement. (Comment on this)
8:30p	US Congress Approves Four Cybersecurity Bills Ahead of Year End This article originally appeared at The WHIR Four cybersecurity bills have been approved by the US Congress in a surprise flurry of activity ahead of the session’s end. While the bills are not expected to have a major impact on government or industry practices, Hunton & Williams LLP suggest in a blog post that they could indicate that more impactful legislation on cybersecurity will be passed in the next session. The Federal Information Security Modernization Act of 2014 overhauls the Federal Information Security Management Act, a 12-year-old law that required agencies to file IT security checklists. The Department of Homeland Security is now responsible for “compiling and analyzing data on agency information security” and providing tools “to continuously diagnose and mitigate against cyber threats and vulnerabilities, with or without reimbursement.” The department has already been performing this duty for many agencies. The Homeland Security Cybersecurity Workforce Assessment Act was passed as a rider to the Border Patrol Agent Pay Reform Act. The newly passed bill may eventually lead to the federal government hiring cybersecurity professionals, however it seems largely to overlap the Homeland Security Cybersecurity Boots-on-the-Ground Act, which was passed earlier in the year and includes a department workforce assessment. Another current Homeland Security practice was made official by the National Cybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure Protection Act of 2014, which codifies the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center as the hub of public-private information sharing. Also known as the National Cybersecurity Protection Act, it is a version of earlier legislation stripped in the senate of legal protections for industry information sharing. It is believed that liability concerns will continue to hamper information sharing. Finally, the Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2014 makes the NIST Cybersecurity Framework official. No regulatory authority was added, so the process remains voluntary. If the passage of the four bills represents an emerging consensus or sufficient political will to resolve jurisdictional disagreements, then more effective legislation could soon follow. Hunton & Williams suggests information sharing liability protection and legislation related to data breaches could be on the docket for 2014, as service providers continue to push for updated laws to address outdated legislation and a variety of growing concerns. This article originally appeared at: http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/us-congress-approves-four-cybersecurity-bills-ahead-year-end (Comment on this)
9:00p	Report: Telstra Mulling Pacnet Acquisition Telstra, Australia’s largest telco, is in negotiations over a potential acquisition of Pacnet, which owns and operates and extensive submarine cable network in Asia Pacific and has a big data center services business in the region. Cash-strapped Pacnet is after a $1 billion valuation, Bloomberg News reported, citing anonymous sources. Pacnet acquisition would give Telstra the Hong Kong-based company’s 19 data centers in 15 cities in India, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Korea, Japan, and Australia. In October the company opened a 225,000 square foot data center in Tianjin, China. The company’s submarine cable system in Asia connects Hong Kong, China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Singapore. Pacnet also operates a trans-Pacific cable that links Japan and California. The cable, called EAC Pacific, is part of Unity, a $300 million trans-Pacific cable system financed by Google, Bharti Airtel, Global Transit, KDDI Corp., and SingTel. Telstra has been growing its enterprise cloud services business. The company provides private connectivity to Microsoft’s Azure cloud. Since November, it also offers VMware’s vCloud Air services out of its own data centers in Australia. (Comment on this)
9:30p	Five Tips to Advance Your Cloud Career in 2015 The focus around IT only continues to grow and expand. Many people have the opportunity to look at what they’re doing now and evolve that to become something even greater. Still, there are those folks that truly enjoy being a professional at a specific technology. You know what? There’s nothing wrong with that at all. Many specialized engineers and architects create wonderful careers developing platforms for massive organizations. However, there are those that want to explore, be noticed, and see what’s beyond the engineer hat. There are those that want to explore more cloud careers. So, what can you do? How can you shine a brighter light on your cloud career path? Let’s take a look! Get noticed. Social media is your friend – start using it. Networking, both online and in person, is absolutely critical to your growth as an IT professional. Get out there, write a blog, get noticed, and become a thought-leader around cloud. The other big one around social media is consistency. You create a living profile of yourself in the cloud. Keep it alive and it helps get you noticed. You can get a lot of interaction and share your ideas on blogs and forums. Another big one to remember is that recruiters and hiring managers almost always check online to see what you do and who you are. I was recently interviewing a senior Cisco architect who had absolutely NO professional online presence. It’s a competitive world out there, and social media and professional profiles go a long way. Bottom line: get on social media; it’ll only be to your advantage. Diversify your skillset. Cross-training is critical to becoming a next-level cloud professional. By understanding the critical components that make up cloud computing, you suddenly begin to see the big picture. Even by understanding the majority of these components will greatly increase your abilities in the cloud. Also, learn about the software layer that lives within the data center. Cloud APIs are making a big impact in how we control and distribute resources. Start learning more about cloud, network, storage, compute, and, of course, the data center model. Learn the language of business. Want to get into the front office? Want to get into the executive or managerial space? Then it’s time to understand direct business needs and how they can be translated into IT solutions. Basically, start thinking like an architect. Look for places where cloud can help with corporate or infrastructure efficiencies. After that, don’t be afraid to speak up! More than ever before organizations are looking for intelligent IT people who understand technology and can explain how it all works in logical business terms. Why is this so critical now? Executives fully understand that technology now directly drives business. This means they need to better integrate business processes with the capabilities of IT. There needs to be that person who can translate business needs into IT solutions Understand your value. As you gain experience make sure you understand the value that you bring to both your organization and the industry. Talented engineers often fly under the radar because they’re happy with the status-quo. Just like anything in technology, you have to evolve. Know the value of your experience, education, and certifications as your progress through your career. Here’s a big tip: be wary of position hopping. The grass may be greener, but, after a while, organizations are going to be skeptical in investing time in someone who’ll just leave in 10 months. Start to think “outside of the data center.” Be creative with your solutions. The progression of cloud computing, virtualization and converged infrastructure has created a much larger library of potential solutions for today’s business challenges. Many types of delivery models and optimizations all act as pillars to create a more powerful overall platform. As a creative cloud professional, think outside of the data center when searching for solutions. Get your head into the clouds and begin to understand where certain challenges can be overcome in using creative solutions. There are a lot of new areas in the IT and cloud world to jump into. Big data center shops are actively looking for cloud engineering and architecture professionals. Probably the biggest and best piece of advice to any IT professional is this: never stop learning. Read blogs, take in new articles, download white papers, and ask questions. (Comment on this)

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