[Most Recent Entries] [Calendar View]
Wednesday, October 28th, 2015
| Time | Event |
| 2:51p | OpenStack Foundation Launches Certification Program for Cloud Admins
This article originally appeared at The WHIR The OpenStack Foundation announced the launch of a certification program for cloud administrators and a project navigation tool on Tuesday. The announcement was made at OpenStack Summit in Tokyo and unveiled a certification process developed with the help of partner companies which will begin awarding certifications in 2016. Companies including Cisco, Mirantis, Canonical, HP, and Rackspace contributed to the process, which builds on the success of the training marketplace launched by the OpenStack Foundation in 2013. About 20 training providers will offer Certified OpenStack Administrator courses, and the OpenStack Foundation will test applicants with the help of the Linux Foundation. “This OpenStack professional certification program addresses the need for well-trained and highly qualified OpenStack administrators,” said Jonathan Bryce, executive director, OpenStack Foundation. “We expect COA certification to become a valuable credential that any hiring manager would want to see on the resume of viable candidate. Further, it is our hope that the OpenStack professional certification program will encourage new entrants into the OpenStack community and expand the talent pool within the industry.” The organization plans to extend the program to developers and other roles in the future, TechCrunch reports. The OpenStack Project Navigator breaks down associated services and projects from more than 25 into six core projects and optional services. It is meant to help users understand the breadth of functionality and maturity of each service. Data is provided about each project, as well as sample configurations for a variety of uses including web hosting, big data, eCommerce, high-throughput computing, public cloud and video processing and content delivery. “One of the primary reasons that the community reorganized the project into core and optional services was to simplify the process of architecting and deploying OpenStack-powered clouds,” Collier said today. “Project Navigator takes this a step further by giving users new to our community a simple, graphical presentation of core and optional project information to help them quickly make informed decisions about the components they need in their own deployments.” Meanwhile, OpenStack uses continue to expand, with NetApp and Mirantis announcing a collaboration to enable NetApp storage on OpenStack earlier in October. OpenStack Liberty, the open-source cloud OS’s 12th release, was launched also launched this month. This first ran at http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/o |
| 3:00p | Canonical Announces OpenStack Cloud App Store for Ubuntu Linux
This post originally appeared at The Var Guy Canonical is launching yet another app store for Ubuntu Linux. Unlike its great, late desktop-oriented predecessor, however, this one is focused on the OpenStack cloud, with apps delivered via Juju. Ubuntu founder and former CEO Mark Shuttleworth announced the new app store at the OpenStack Summit this week in Tokyo. The platform will provide a way for people running Ubuntu-based OpenStack clouds to install cloud applications via Juju and Horizon, the web-based management interface for OpenStack. The app store will work on all Ubuntu systems, whether they are bare-metal or virtualized. It also supports private and public clouds alike. This isn’t Canonical’s first foray into app stores. The company ran a similar system for desktop-based versions of Ubuntu, called the Ubuntu Software Center, for years until announcing last summer it was shutting it down to focus on mobile app delivery for Snappy Ubuntu Core. Juju, which Canonical has also offered for years, works something like an app store, too. It lets users deploy cloud-based apps and services in a few clicks using “Charms.” Now, however, it appears that Canonical is intent on taking a broader and thicker approach to app delivery for the cloud. The new app store that Shuttleworth announced will extend beyond what Juju currently makes possible by integrating directly into the OpenStack management interface. Canonical said it intends for the app store for the cloud to help Ubuntu-based service providers to attract more users. The platform is “for those of you who are building clouds and saying, ‘How am I going to bring users to my cloud, how am I going to bring applications to my cloud, how am I going to get people to consume this cloud much faster and at much better scale?'” Shuttleworth said. “We hope with this cloud to help you with that.” This first ran at http://thevarguy.com/open-source-applica |
| 3:30p | Microsoft and Akamai Partner on Azure CDN
This article originally ran at Talkin’ Cloud Microsoft has partnered with Akamai to provide a Microsoft Azure CDN offering that leverages Akamai’s network. The partnership is part of a strategy that Azure announced earlier this year that extended its CDN offering into Standard and Premium bundles. The partnership announcement comes as Microsoft has reported its first-quarter FY2016 earnings where the company saw an 8 percent increase in cloud computing revenue. Under the agreement, Akamai’s CDN capabilities will be integrated into the Microsoft Azure cloud platform, providing content delivery specifically designed for cloud platform customers. Azure customers will also benefit from an expanded global footprint, particularly in Latin America and Asia. Customers will be able to purchase an Azure CDN offer and deploy it onto the Akamai Network architecture via the Azure portal in early 2016. A limited number of targeted customers will begin on Nov. 1. Akamai and Microsoft have been long-term partners, recently teaming up as critical technology partners for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, 2014 FIFA World Cup, and the 2015 NFL Super Bowl. This first ran at http://talkincloud.com/public-cloud/micr |
| 5:17p | QTS Reports First Full-Quarter Results after Carpathia Deal As far as data center REITs go, QTS Realty Trust has devised an atypical business model. It has its own Infrastructure-as-a-Service cloud business, retail colocation, and a more wholesale-oriented offering. QTS, a real estate investment trust, builds out data centers by converting massive infrastructure-dense properties it buys cheaply, such as the former 1.3 million square foot Qimonda semiconductor plant in Richmond, Virginia, it bought in 2010. The company diversified its list of services further by making one of the year’s biggest acquisitions in the data center industry when it bought managed hosting provider Carpathia Hosting for $326 million, adding a substantial managed hosting capability and 230 new customers, many of them US government agencies. Speaking of government agencies, QTS also has a federal government cloud business hosted in dedicated physical space in Richmond and in the Atlanta metro. This week QTS made its first earnings report for a full quarter after closing the Carpathia acquisition. Carpathia results integrated, the company’s third-quarter revenue was about $89 million – up more than 50 percent year over year – and its net income was $8.2 million – up from $4 million it made in the third quarter of 2014. Carpathia Integration on Track but not PainlessIntegration of Carpathia into QTS, overseen by a project management office created specifically for this purpose and an outside consultant, is on track, QTS CEO Chad Williams said on a call with analysts Wednesday morning, adding that he expects Carpathia and QTS “to be fully operating as one company by early 2016.” The integration process will not be painless, especially for Carpathia customers in some non-QTS data centers. QTS is planning to move Carpathia customers in markets where both companies have data centers into QTS facilities. It plans to start moving those customers early next year and expects to see a higher-than-usual customer churn rate as a result, Williams said. “The integration of the sales team is progressing well,” he said. After the Carpathia deal, QTS is able to pitch a different solution to CIOs, since it now has a broader list of services and can offer a fuller hybrid IT offering. “We’re in different, higher-level-type discussions with customers,” QTS COO Dan Bennewitz said on the call. Higher Revenue per Square FootWhile QTS did not see a big quarter in terms of new wholesale leases, it reported higher revenue per square foot for some existing customer footprint. One customer renewed a lease and as part of the renewal increased its power density requirements within the same space, Bennewitz said. Another customer asked for more power mid-lease. The latter company, whose name was not disclosed, is one of QTS’s biggest tenants, leasing 19 MW of capacity. Another factor that’s driving up revenue per square foot is availability of colocation, cloud, and managed services, according to QTS executives. Customer are taking more cloud services, and there is a larger volume of smaller retail-colocation deals, Williams said. QTS signed customer leases totaling $5.6 million of annualized rent, and renewed leases totaling $9.2 million during the quarter. More Cash for Data Center ExpansionQTS is continuing to expand its data center capacity across multiple US markets and now has a bigger war chest to fund that expansion. The company announced Tuesday it has raised an additional $250 million in debt from a syndicate of seventeen financial institutions. It is expanding existing facilities in the Atlanta, Dallas, New Jersey, Virginia, Silicon Valley, and Sacramento markets and building out its first data center in Chicago. It is converting a former Sun-Times newspaper printing plant in the city it acquired in 2014 into a data center. QTS expects to bring the Chicago data center online in the middle of next year, Bennewitz said. |
| 6:42p | Telehouse and DataGryd Partner in New York Data Center Market Telehouse, the data center provider owned by the Japanese telecom KDDI, has joined forces with DataGryd, a wholesale data center provider with four stories in one of Manhattan’s most connected buildings, at 60 Hudson St. The companies said there was demand for customized data center space with access to a rich interconnection ecosystem, which is something the 24-story building can provide. DataGryd brought its New York data center online in 2014 after a big infrastructure upgrade, with Telx as the anchor tenant occupying one of the four floors under the wholesaler’s control. Telx, which was recently acquired by DataGryd and Telehouse competitor Digital Realty Trust, operates one of New York’s most important network meet-me rooms in a non-DataGryd data center at 60 Hudson. Telehouse provides retail colocation services out of about 40 data centers in North America, Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Asia. New York has traditionally been one of the biggest and most active data center markets. All major data center providers have presence there, and while it’s a highly competitive market, it remains one of the most expensive places in the world to operate a data center. According to the latest market report by the commercial real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle, data center rental rates in New York City range between $300 and $700 per kW. A company can get data center capacity for about half that just across the Hudson, in New Jersey, where the rates range between $125 and $350 per kW. Northern Virginia, the closest major data center market, has rental rates from $120 to $180 per kW. Still, because of a limited supply of “quality” data center space and continuing high demand, JLL expects New York data center rates to remain high. DataGryd is one of three wholesale data center providers in New York City that have vacant data center space to lease. The other two are Seattle’s Sabey Data Centers and San Francisco-based Digital Realty. |
| 7:56p | IBM Rolls Out Private OpenStack Cloud for On-Prem Data Centers IBM announced this week it will now sell full-package private OpenStack cloud infrastructure companies can deploy in a data center of their choice. It can be a corporate data center on a company campus, a leased colocation facility, or one of IBM’s cloud data centers around the world. OpenStack, the package of open source software for creating cloud infrastructure, is an alternative to proprietary private cloud options by VMware and others or public cloud services by Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, or IBM itself. However, OpenStack is notoriously difficult to set up for enterprises using internal IT resources, which has led to numerous vendors offering professional services around it. IBM gained its private OpenStack cloud capabilities by acquiring private cloud company Blue Box earlier this year. Following the acquisition, in August, the company rolled out a private OpenStack cloud option hosted at its SoftLayer data centers. IBM made the announcement at this week’s OpenStack Summit in Tokyo. IBM’s public cloud services, offered under the SoftLayer brand, are compatible with OpenStack via APIs, but not all companies can use public cloud for a variety of reasons, be it security, compliance, or performance concerns. IBM is going after these customers, offering them private cloud that can also integrate with its public cloud offerings, both SoftLayer and Bluemix, IBM’s Platform-as-a-Service cloud based on Cloud Foundry, an open source PaaS technology. The company rolled out a private version of Bluemix earlier this month as well. In its announcement, IBM cited a recent study by the market research firm Forrester that found that most enterprises expect to rely more on on-premise cloud as part of their IT infrastructure strategy but did not have the operational expertise to do it. |
| 11:24p | Equinix Becomes Data Center Gateway to Oracle Cloud Oracle has become the latest cloud service provider to join the Equinix Cloud Exchange, the data center provider’s platform for buying and selling cloud services. The two companies made the announcement during this week’s Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco, where Oracle rolled out yet another batch of new cloud services, and where the Redwood City, California-based enterprise software giant’s executives relentlessly drummed up its cloud services in presentations. Oracle’s cloud is now accessible directly from Equinix data centers in Amsterdam, Chicago, London, Singapore, Sydney, and Washington, DC. While the list of cloud providers accessible through the Equinix Cloud Exchange includes all the biggest players, Oracle’s special strength is in its massive existing software install base in enterprise data centers. Oracle is promising seamless integration between those on-premise environments with its public cloud services, including Infrastructure-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service, via the cloud exchange. Direct, private network connectivity to cloud services from Equinix data centers is a way to use public cloud without using the public internet. It is aimed at enterprises that want to use public cloud but cannot because of security, compliance, or performance concerns. Cloud interconnection has become the fastest-growing source of revenue for Equinix. Other clouds available through the cloud exchange are Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and IBM SoftLayer. Notably, Oracle’s Software-as-a-Service offerings are not part of the agreement. Equinix has been in aggressive pursuit of partnerships with leading SaaS providers so that it could give enterprise customers direct private connectivity to those cloud application services. Equinix made its first major SaaS partnership with Microsoft, rolling out direct links to Office 365 in September. Equinix reported third-quarter earnings Wednesday, reporting about $687 million in revenue – 3 percent up year over year – and $41 million in net income, or $0.72 in earnings per share. |
| << Previous Day |
2015/10/28 [Calendar] |
Next Day >> |