Monday, February 2nd, 2015

Time	Event
1:00p	AmEx Data Center Sale to Add Capacity in Burgeoning Minneapolis Market DCI Technology Holdings has bought a large data center in downtown Minneapolis recently vacated by American Express and plans to turn it into a multi-tenant facility, bringing a substantial amount of capacity to the rapidly growing market. Lots of big corporations have headquarters in the area, and many out-of-region companies look to it as a disaster recovery location. There is demand for data center space in the market, but supply of quality space is relatively low. That’s according to Tim Huffman, a real estate exec at Colliers International who played a big role in facilitating the $22.4 million transaction. While still a second-tier market, Minneapolis has been growing in importance for the data center industry. Big corporate office presence is one reason. Target is headquartered there, and so are Best Buy, Cargill, General Mills, 3M, and U.S. Bancorp, to name a few. Others reasons are relatively low-cost power and some of the best tax incentives for data center operators in the country. The corporations in the area “have historically kept their IT footprint in house, mainly because they didn’t have high-quality inventory options,” Huffman said. The market’s benefits haven’t been lost on data center providers, who have flocked to the area in recent years. DataBank is building a 20 megawatt facility in the market; ViaWest launched a 9 megawatt data center in April of last year; CenturyLink lit up a 1.2 megawatt Compass-built site in May; and Stream Data Centers opened a 7 megawatt site in July. The former AmEx data center, which has 5.5 megawatts of capacity and 120,000 square feet of raised floor, has the potential to do for Minneapolis what 350 East Cermak did for the Chicago data center market, Huffman said. The Digital Realty-owned carrier hotel in Chicago has become the network interconnection hub of upper Midwest, he explained, which in turn made it one of the most desirable data center markets to be in. The current primary carrier hotel in the Minneapolis area is the 511 Building, located just a few blocks away from the AmEx facility. The AmEx building has a chance to challenge the 511 Building’s status, however, since the former is a purpose-built data center, while the latter is an “old office building,” Huffman said. Palo Alto, California-based DCI knows carrier hotels. Among its properties is the Dallas InfoMart, a key southern connectivity hub. It also owns the Tritech Center, another Minneapolis connectivity hub. The company specializes in technology real estate, and its other data center assets are in New Jersey, North Carolina, and Ohio. AmEx’s lease in the downtown Minneapolis building has expired, but it’s unclear why the credit card giant decided not to renew it. The company did recently build a data center of its own in North Carolina, so vacating the Minneapolis building may have been a consolidation move. (Comment on this)
4:30p	Hybrid Cloud Turns IT from a Cost Center into a Revenue Center As VP of Product, Toby Owen is responsible for Peer 1’s global product strategy and oversees the complete product management lifecycle across the company’s entire portfolio; he was previously the head of international product strategy at Rackspace. Hybrid cloud – it means many things to many people. This past year, as both a concept and a practical solution, hybrid cloud finally came into its own. We can define hybrid cloud loosely as some combination of the cloud and another technology. For example, cloud combined with bare metal servers or a combination of public and private clouds. Although hybrid cloud can be seen as a buzzword, it is the future of IT, and Gartner predicts half of enterprises will adopt a hybrid model by 2017. As cloud buyers have become more discerning, hybrid models are becoming a de facto norm because they can tailor specifically to unique business requirements with unique offerings. We will only see this continue in the coming year as vendors rise to the occasion to make all of the varying cloud technologies in the market work better together to enable hybrid cloud. The biggest factors in this hybrid transformation will be federation, interoperability, big data and the Internet of Things (IoT). Building a Cohesive, Connected Hybrid Cloud There has already been great progress in approaches to federation and interoperability, which are helping to improve hybrid cloud’s cohesion. Some recent progress in building more interoperable cloud environments include the entry of Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) into OpenStack, the leading open source cloud platform (more on the progress of this effort here). SAML enables single sign-on for Web properties, which makes B2B and B2C transactions much easier. Integrating this into OpenStack-powered clouds allows them to more easily federate with other cloud environments, ultimately giving cloud buyers more hybrid options. Similarly, federation models like OnApp’s have been maturing, enabling service providers to resell excess capacity among each other. Workload automation is still not a fully automated proposition in the OnApp ecosystem, but the continued growth of their federation is a promising sign that different vendors and service providers can work together toward the common goal of more integrated, hybrid cloud services. As the OnApp and OpenStack federation models evolve, and other entrants come into the field who also emphasize the interoperability of technology and services, it will be a great leap forward in giving consumers a hybrid cloud offering that is robust and can offer a wide variety of functions. The Data-Driven Hybrid Cloud Additional drivers for hybrid cloud’s evolution include big data and the Internet of Things (IoT). Big data was the big buzzword in 2014, but some of its shine may start to wear off as early adopters find the currently available technology amazing, but still lacking a lot in terms of integration and usability. Despite this, the coming year will see more case studies of early adopters of big data achieving impressive return on investment, which will help boost adoption. This will be helped further by a consolidation in the big data software ecosystem as the core platform providers (e.g. Hadoop distributions) start to snatch up smaller solutions to round out their capabilities for enterprise users. Hybrid cloud is important to big data because bare metal servers tend to be more suited to big data software like Hadoop, which is about horizontal scaling, and doesn’t always require specialty technology like the cloud. That means organizations embracing big data will still need traditional servers and hosting environments, which they will need to integrate with their cloud infrastructure by using a unified hybrid cloud platform. The Internet of Things (IoT), which is data-driven and a big contributor to the growing volume of big data, will creep more and more into the consumer space in the form of wearable technology and connected home devices. A $7.1 trillion market by 2020 according to IDC, the IOT will affect the workspace as business users bring their connected devices to the office (in similar fashion to BYOD), which means organizations will have even more data to wrangle with. Again, only hybrid cloud platforms can offer the flexibility to really mine the data from the really BIG data generated by the IoT. Getting Prepared In response to these trends and coming developments in hybrid cloud, business and technology leaders have some new priorities for 2015. Having a cloud strategy means something different than it did even just a few years ago. With more options in terms of hardware, software and services than ever before, organizations must understand which architecture is right for what they want to do (and get help deciding if they can’t figure it out alone). The real benefits of the cloud are slightly different than we originally predicted; they are less about pure cost efficiency, and more about speeding up time to market (aka agility). Every CIO and IT decision maker should be thinking about how they can use cloud and hosting to accelerate time to market, which means turning IT from a cost center into a revenue center. The tone of the cloud conversation has shifted, as we now know that legacy infrastructure can be adequate, or even preferable, for certain tasks and workloads such as big data analytics clusters. At the same time, we are seeing the real performance and reliability benefits of the cloud as it matures as a technology. The reality is that cloud is not one-size-fits-all, but rather a complex and diverse technology that can only truly reach its potential and meet all business demands through an integrated, hybrid approach. 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)
6:23p	Weather Brings Fujitsu Data Center Down in Australia, Ghana Facility Down After Fire Weather in Perth, Australia, has brought another data center down, while a fire in Ghana knocked out a data center operated by the telecommunications network provider Surfline. The data center in Perth, operated by Fujitsu, suffered a power outage Sunday during severe thunderstorms. Among customers affected were WA Health, the Government of Western Australia Department of Health, and, possibly, Bankwest. Fujitsu faciliy suffered two incidents. The first lasted 1.5 hours. Despite backup systems responding as designed, according to the company, a second failure occurred in an undisclosed control system leading to a longer outage. An investigation is underway to determine what happened. It is uncertain if lightning strikes were to blame. In Early January, Aussie ISP iiNet had an outage due to an equipment failure during record breaking temperatures. “The protection mechanisms of the Fujitsu data center kicked in to protect the computer equipment and site safety, causing an interruption to service,” Fujitsu’s general manager of data center service Michael Gunton told Australia’s IT News. Bankwest is an anchor tenant of the facility. The banking company began a consolidation effort in 2010, choosing Fujitsu as a core data center destination as it decommissioned other facilities. Bankwest has not confirmed it was affected, however its ATM and phone banking systems were down for 12 hours. Fire in Ghana Contained, Issues Persist A fire in Ghana caused by a major power outage disrupted network connectivity for Surfline data center users. The telco provides LTE services. The fire in caused an unspecified technical issue, bringing the data center down, according to a company statement. The fire has been contained, but problems persisted as of Monday morning Eastern Time U.S. Subscribers were unable to access the network. The company sent text messages to notify customers of the problem. It also released a statement on Facebook: “Nobody was injured, but we do not know the extent of the damage at this time. Please bear with us as we assess the impact of this unfortunate incident and work to get the network back up to speed.” Judging by comments on Facebook, many customers are frustrated by lack of transparency about the outage. Teams are working to fix the problem and the company will hopefully reveal what happened in further detail once status is back to normal. (Comment on this)
6:56p	Equinix Data Center in Melbourne Live, Boasts 30 Clients More than 30 customers have taken space at the recently launched Equinix data center in Melbourne, its first facility in Australia’s second most populous city, the company announced. The Redwood City, California-based colocation giant announced plans to build a $60 million data center in Melbourne, called ME1, in January 2014. Today, one year later, the facility is online and seeing strong user and carrier pickup. Australia is a growing data center market. Equinix cited Frost and Sullivan projections that forecasted the market to grow at a compound annual rate of about 14 percent between 2013 and 2020, at which point it would reach about $1.36 billion in revenue. The company’s customers in Melbourne include CacheFly, a Chicago-based content delivery network provider, Azzurri Communications, a U.K. business voice and data consultancy, and LiveBackup, an Aussie cloud backup service provider. Other cloud and IT service providers deploying points of presence in the facility include Bulletproof, Connectivity I.T., Entrust ICT, Exigent, and Servers Australia. These providers are installing their equipment at the data center to join the company’s cloud provider ecosystem, which gives them access to potential customers and partners. Network service providers at ME1 include Telstra, Vocus, FirstPath and Western Australian Internet Associations. Telstra announced expansion into ME1 and SY3, an Equinix data center in Sydney, in September of last year. (Comment on this)
9:50p	Apple Data Center Coming to Arizona Apple will spend $2 billion to convert a former 1.3 million square foot manufacturing plant in Mesa, Arizona, into a data center. The facility will be powered entirely by renewable energy, supplied partially by a new local solar farm, the company said. State and local officials painted the announcement as a big economic development win for the state. “This is great news for our state, and we worked hard, and we acted rapidly,” Governor Doug Ducey said in a press conference Monday. Government officials expect the Apple data center to create 300 to 500 construction and trade jobs and 150 permanent Apple jobs. The investment represents a 30-year commitment to Arizona by Apple, Ducey said. An Apple spokeswoman did not specify how much data center space the facility will hold or what its power capacity will be. She said it will serve as a “command center for our global networks.” It is also unclear whether the company has received any tax incentive commitments from state or local government. Ducey dodged reporters’ questions about potential incentives for Apple in the news conference. At least one incentive program did not make any commitments to the company, according Ducey. “Dollars from Arizona Competes Fund are not part of this deal,” he said. Previous occupant of the property that will soon be an Apple data center in Mesa was GT Advanced Technologies, a company that until recently had a contract to supply Apple with materials for smartphone screens but last year filed for bankruptcy. The two had a legal dispute that ended with court approval of a settlement in December. Renewable Data Center Promise Apple owns data centers in Oregon, North Carolina, California, and Nevada. The company also leases space from colocation providers, but the bulk of its data center capacity is in company-owned facilities. It has publicly committed to powering its data centers entirely with renewable energy. It does it by using a combination of solar and geothermal energy, as well as fuel cells that run on biogas. Apple data centers surpassed its corporate facilities in energy use in fiscal 2013, consuming more than 300,000 megawatt-hours that year. Robust Tier II Data Center Market While not a data center hotbed, Arizona has a fairly robust data center market. Multiple major data center providers have facilities in and around Phoenix. Of the big-name end users that have data centers there is eBay, whose facility in Phoenix is one of the world’s most advanced data centers in terms of design and efficiency. CyrusOne has built one data center in the Phoenix metro and last May broke ground on a second one. ViaWest launched its first Phoenix data center about one year ago. Other major providers there include Digital Realty Trust and the Phoenix native IO. (Comment on this)
10:15p	Obama Proposes $14 Billion Cybersecurity Budget for Fiscal Year 2016 This article originally appeared at the WHIR US President Barack Obama has proposed a $3.99 trillion budget for fiscal year 2016 on Monday that includes $14 billion for boosting cybersecurity programs in the country. The cybersecurity budget for fiscal year 2016 is an increase of nearly $1 billion from last year, according to a report by The Hill. “No system is immune to infiltration by those seeking to steal commercial or Government information and property or perpetrate malicious and disruptive activity,” a summary from the fact sheet on the fiscal year 2016 budget said. “The Budget provides $14 billion to support cybersecurity efforts across the Government to strengthen US cybersecurity defenses and make cyberspace more secure, allowing the Government to more rapidly protect American citizens, systems, and information from cyber threats.” The proposed cybersecurity budget will include “key investments” in areas such as “continuous diagnostics and monitoring of federal systems, the EINSTEIN intrusion detection and prevention system, and government-wide testing and incident response training to mitigate the impact of evolving cyber threats.” The budget also seeks to improve the government’s information sharing capabilities with the private sector, including $227 million for construction of a civilian cyber campus to better share information on cyber threats. The government has looked to the private sector to improve its digital infrastructure recently. In 2014, the administration launched the pilot of the US Digital Service team, led by Mikey Dickerson, to bring private sector best practices to the public sector. The fiscal year 2016 budget includes $105 million to “scale and institutionalize this approach and create digital services teams in 25 key agencies.” At one of the State of the Union Address previews, Obama announced his intention to introduce new legislation to more easily prosecute cyber criminals and promote the flow of information on cyber threats between the public and private sectors. The government was involved in several cybersecurity investigations with the private sector this past year, including hacks against major US banks and Sony Pictures Entertainment. The fiscal year 2016 budget includes investments in cyber research and development, and plans to improve capabilities in responding to cyberattacks after they have already occurred. As cyberthreats against the US and private companies continue to grow in size and complexity, the budget also focuses on job training in the cybersecurity sector. According to the administration, the budget will provide $16 billion over 10 years to double the number of workers receiving training in industries expected to experience significant growth, including IT and cybersecurity. This article originally appeared at: http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/obama-proposes-14-billion-cybersecurity-budget-fiscal-year-2016 (Comment on this)

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