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Thursday, September 10th, 2015
| Time | Event |
| 12:00p | Equinix Offers $280M for Bit-isle to Boost Position in Japan Data Center Market Equinix, the world’s largest data center services company, announced earlier this week it has offered about $280 million to buy Bit-isle, one of its competitors in Japan. Both companies have data centers in Tokyo and Osaka. The acquisition, if closed, will bring the number of Equinix’s facilities in Tokyo to 10 and in Osaka to two. The deal will also increase diversity of Equinix’s customer base in Japan and potentially put it in greater position to compete with some of its biggest rivals in Asia Pacific, according to market analysts. Equinix executives were not available for comment in time for publication. This will be the second big acquisition Equinix will have made this year to strengthen its position in a foreign market. In July, the company announced a $3.6 billion offer to buy TelecityGroup, one of Europe’s largest data center providers, in a deal that would secure its lead in Europe. Several other big acquisitions in the data center services space took place this year. NTT Communications Corp., one of Equinix’s biggest rivals in Japan, acquired a majority stake in German data center provider e-shelter in March. In June, Digital Realty, another big Equinix competitor in Asia, acquired Telx, substantially increasing its play on Equinix’s turf in the US. Redwood City, California-based Equinix has had success providing data center space in Japan to multinationals based elsewhere, Kelly Morgan, research director at 451 Research, said in an email. “Bit-isle, by contrast, has had success with local Japanese firms, particularly systems integrators,” she said. “The deal will therefore broaden Equinix’s customer base in Japan and perhaps lead to cross-selling opportunities for space outside of Japan for multinational firms, as well as for the cloud exchange.” Equinix’s cloud exchange is a platform through which its data center customers can buy services from cloud service providers globally. The cloud exchange provides private network connectivity to servers running cloud infrastructure services by Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and IBM. Private links to public cloud are important to enterprises because they bypass the public internet, making for a faster and more secure way to use those services. These connectivity services have emerged as one of the most important and rapidly growing revenue streams for Equinix. If it goes through, the acquisition will create the fourth-largest data center operator in Japan, Equinix said in a statement. Its biggest rivals in the country are NTT and KDDI Corp., owner of the data center services giant Telehouse. Another major player is Internap Japan, a subsidiary of the Atlanta-based service provider. In Asia Pacific, the fastest growing region for Equinix and all other data center service providers, Japan already contributes the biggest share of the Silicon Valley colocation firm’s interconnection revenue, the company said. While it has had success in the market, that success is not likely to have come easy, according to Jabez Tan, senior analyst at Structure Research. “The Japanese data center market has traditionally been a closed market and therefore tougher to penetrate from the perspective of an international data center provider looking to enter and establish a footprint there,” he said via email. Physical proximity of Bit-isle and Equinix data centers in Tokyo and Osaka are likely to have been an important driver for the deal. “This greatly shortens time to lay down additional fiber infrastructure to interconnect Bit-isle’s data centers into Equinix’s and could potentially drive greater interconnection volume and revenue for Equinix in Tokyo and Osaka,” Tan said. |
| 3:00p | Preparing Your Enterprise for Global Scale Sharon Bell is the Director of Marketing for CDNetworks. Globalization is not a new concept, but strides in technology seem to have accelerated the shrinking of our world. The internet – and more recent advancements in cloud technology – have made people around the world accessible with a few clicks on a keyboard. Consider this: A recent Cisco study found that cloud traffic will represent about 75 percent of the total data center traffic by 2018. By that time, more than half of the world’s population will have internet access. This will put enormous pressure on existing infrastructure from data centers to wireless networks. The time to start preparing is now. But where to start? Let’s take a look at the steps enterprises and data centers should take to ensure readiness for an increase in users, traffic and global access points. Think GloballyWith more than 7 billion people on Earth, there’s incredible opportunity to reach new customers around the globe today and well into the future. Network infrastructure provides the foundation for global scale. There are several options to ensure security, scale and operational effectiveness. Deploying multiple data centers at key global locations is one solution (either in a private or colocation data center model). Multiple data centers provide redundancy for data and applications as well as the potential for lower latency for global users. Having multiple data centers allows for business continuity in the face of natural disasters, planned downtime or other failures. However, it also creates challenges for enterprises, such as high maintenance costs, need for staff expertise, synchronization concerns, and unaddressed content delivery issues. One of the driving factors toward cloud storage and data centers as infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) is it allows for the offloading of traditional IT department functions and shifting capital investments to operational costs. In that vein, another solution to global scale is to utilize a content delivery network and application acceleration techniques. Both can increase speed of information exchange for the middle mile and reduce latency for the end user. A hybrid of both – taking advantage of the redundancy benefits of two or more data centers and acceleration benefits of a Content Delivery Network (CDN) – provides a well-rounded solution as well. The best solution for an enterprise depends on an its overall business plan and budget, but building out the network foundation for global scale is an absolute necessity. Accelerate the ExperienceAfter building a solid network foundation, it’s time to address efficiency and acceleration. More people accessing the internet will hopefully translate into more visitors to enterprise websites. The ability to handle increased traffic – and from diverse global locations – is and will continue to be vital to global growth. Creating the best user experience is a challenge. Caching static content in data centers scattered throughout the globe reduces latency by shortening the distance between the user and content. Yet, much of today’s content is dynamic content – application-generated and often user-specific. This type of content can’t be cached on a local server, but enterprises should employ other techniques to accelerate communication. Hardware-based WAN optimization is a traditional solution. Employing an application delivery network can improve web performance and provide a scalable solution. Cloud technologies have changed the way many of us think about growth and accessibility. No longer do enterprises need devoted server rooms and to make large capital expenditures on hardware. Partnering with specialized companies to provide the solution to enterprise challenges enables the accelerated growth required in competitive markets. Focus on MobileOne of the main drivers for increased internet users across the globe is the pervasive spread of web-enabled smartphones. Within the next three years, about one-third of the world’s population – more than 2 billion – will own a smartphone, and one-quarter already do. What does this mean for a global enterprise? It means that mobile friendly is going to be an essential component to growth and success. From enabling employees to access applications to optimizing web properties for mobile users, mobile use is on track to becoming even more ubiquitous. Web applications and websites designed for mobile use is a no-brainer and a necessity at this point, especially in a global marketplace. Ensuring enterprise customers (and employees) have fast access to web assets is another challenge. It’s not enough to rely on simplifying design to optimize a mobile experience; mobile visitors also want information and access quickly. Improving mobile performance must be treated differently – and involve different tools – than desktop web performance. Tactics include reducing the number of HTTP requests required to fetch for each page, compressing the size of text, images and video, and optimizing client-side processing. Local storage, in a data center or CDN, reduces latency. Small World, Big BusinessAs technology accelerates the shrinking of our world, it’s imperative to stay on top of opportunities. The internet connects companies and customers in a way never before possible, but it also crowds the competitive landscape. Preparing for global scale takes planning, investment and choosing the right partners to provide the backbone necessary for success. The opportunity for growth and establishing business connections in new markets is ripe for the taking. Build a strong foundation and reap the benefits years into the future. 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.
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| 4:16p | DevOps Automation Firm Chef Raises $40 Million to Grow Operations This article originally appeared at The WHIR DevOps automation software provider Chef has raised $40 million in a Series E funding round to accelerate product development and expand its operations globally, the company announced on Wednesday. The funding round was lead by DJF Growth, and also included Millennium Technology Value Partners, Hewlett Packard Ventures, and participation from all existing investors. Chef claims it is growing exponentially, and the company is scaling to meet enterprise demand. Its automation platform is now recognized as an industry standard for DevOps workflow, being used by more than half of the Fortune 50 and over 700 other companies including Facebook, GE, and Yahoo. Chef is supported by AWS, HP, and was also added to Microsoft’s Azure Marketplace on Wednesday, the company announced. MariaDB Enterprise also extended its support for Chef in July. “This is an inflection point for Chef as a company. Our innovation is becoming the primary bridge between traditional IT and New IT in the enterprise,” said Barry Crist, CEO, Chef. “Today we enter a new era as the automation control plane for digital-first organizations everywhere, and this new capital will help us take DevOps mainstream.” The company also recently unveiled Chef Delivery, an extension of the core platform that it says brings advanced software development practices from Chef’s most innovative customers to all developers and system administrators managing IT environment changes. Chef Delivery automates changes to enable “continuous delivery of infrastructure, runtime environments – including containers – and applications.” This first ran at http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/d |
| 4:33p | Officials in Ireland Approve Apple Data Center Project Local officials have approved a 20-megawatt Apple data center construction project – one of two Apple data centers the company said it would build in Europe earlier this year. Galway County Council voted in favor of the build but set 12 conditions, including construction time restrictions, limits on vehicle travel on local road, and a €16,500 fee to the council to cover costs of changing road markings, RTE News reported. Apple announced in February it would spend $1.9 billion to build data centers in Ireland and Denmark, saying it expected to launch both in 2017. According to RTE, the Cupertino, California-based company’s Athenry, Ireland, data center project will start with a 20 MW facility on a 500-acre site that can accommodate a total of eight such data centers if the need arises. Apple expects to employ at least 150 people at the data center, once the €850 million project is complete. |
| 4:48p | Report: Microsoft Mulling Texas Data Center Build Microsoft is considering a big land purchase in San Antonio, Texas, for a data center construction project, Puget Sound Business Journal reported citing multiple anonymous sources. The company is also weighing one other potential new data center location outside of Texas. The 75-100-acre property in San Antonio is located at the Texas Research Park. If the company decides to go with San Antonio, it will bring a third Microsoft data center to the city. It has a 470,000-square-foot data center in Westover Hills and currently building a 256,000-square-foot one next to it. |
| 6:56p | Intel Data Center Group Chief Bryant One of Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Fortune has included Diane Bryant, who leads Intel’s data center business unit, one of the chipmaker’s strongest segments, in this year’s edition of its Most Powerful Women list. This is the first time Bryant’s name has appeared on the list of 51 women, which also includes IBM CEO Ginni Rometty, HP CEO Meg Whitman, Oracle Co-CEO Safra Catz, and the pop singer Taylor Swift. The Intel Data Center Group has been growing revenue faster than any other unit. Its 2014 revenue was $14.4 billion – up 18 percent year over year. Bryant has been Intel senior VP and the group’s general manager since early 2012. She has worked at Intel since 1985, the same year she graduated from University of California at Davis with a bachelor’s in electrical engineering. Her group makes processors and other components for servers, workstations, networking, and storage hardware. In recent years it has been making custom processors for some of the world’s largest data center operators – companies like Amazon and Oracle. One of the group’s biggest recent bets has been on FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays). Earlier this year Intel paid $16.7 billion to acquire FPGA vendor Altera. In combination with server CPUs, FPGAs can make servers reconfigurable based on application needs. Ranked 43rd, Bryant is one of 11 female executives who are new to Fortune’s latest MPW list and the only tech executive among the newcomers. |
| 9:48p | Dell Partners with Kingsoft as Part of $125 Billion Tech Investment in China
This article originally appeared at The WHIR Dell has partnered with Chinese tech giant Kingsoft to jointly launch Dell-Kingsoft Cloud as part of a $125 billion investment in China by Dell over the next five years, CEO Michael Dell announced Thursday. The company’s “In China, For China 4.0 strategy” includes the entry of Dell Ventures into the Chinese market to support entrepreneurship and growth among Chinese emerging technology enterprises. Dell will invest in research and development and an “Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Computing Joint-Lab” in the country, which is its second largest market after the US. Dell already employs 2,000 people in China, and is committed to sustaining a million jobs through $175 billion in imports and exports. The “comprehensive” Kingsoft partnership and cooperation with local big data and cloud companies supports China’s national “Internet+” strategy, Dell says. Kingsoft led an investment in Chinese data center operator 21Vianet in December, which gave it access to 5,000 cabinets over three years. Following that funding boost 21Vianet announced it would operate Azure and Office 365 in China until 2018. “The Internet is the new engine for China’s future economic growth and has unlimited potential,” said Dell. “Being an innovative and efficient technology company, Dell will embrace the principle of ‘In China, for China’ and closely integrate Dell China strategies with national policies in order to support Chinese technological innovation, economic development and industrial transformation.” Dell also signed agreements with the Guiyang Municipal Government, China Electronics Corporation, and Tsinghua Tongfang Co., Ltd. this year that it says will benefit the developing Chinese cloud computing industry. Combined with investments by Dell Ventures in storage, cloud computing, big data, next generation data center, mobility and security, Dell could soon be a major player in the Chinese cloud services even beyond its new offerings with Kingsoft. Dell has also recently made gains in share of the global server market, which is largely driven by Chinese demand. The partnerships announced today may afford Dell more opportunities to satisfy that demand. This first ran at http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/d |
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