Friday, November 20th, 2015

Time	Event
1:00p	Switch May Turn Michigan Pyramid into Data Center Switch, the Las Vegas-based company that builds mega-scale data centers, is pushing officials in the State of Michigan to quickly pass a series of data center tax incentives, so it can proceed with plans to build a data center campus that will include a pyramid-shaped building that used to house offices of the large office furniture supplier Steelcase. At full build-out, which may take up to 10 years, Switch’s plans call for two million square feet of building space across multiple data center buildings around the Steelcase pyramid. “It could be as many as six buildings,” company spokesman Adam Kramer said. The pyramid’s basement would be turned into a data center, and additional buildings would be constructed around it. Tax Breaks or No Deal But Switch says it is not going to go forward with the plan, unless the legislature passes three bills that would ensure the company would receive tax breaks. Kramer declined to share what other locations Switch was considering for the project. State lawmakers have a deadline if they want the company’s investment. Switch wants the incentives to be approved by the end of the year. Lawsuit Challenges Property Sale In addition to uncertainty about the future of Michigan’s data center tax break legislation, a lawsuit connected to the sale of the Steelhead property to Norman puts Switch’s plans in further jeopardy. Following Switch’s announcement, a group called Education Campus Investors filed a lawsuit against Steelhead, the property’s former owner, for reneging on an agreement to sell the property to ECI for $3 million the two entities reportedly made last May, according to a report by M Live. In the lawsuit, ECI asked that the court order Steelcase to honor the agreement and sell the property to the group. Companies have not disclosed how much Norman paid for the property. Kramer said Norman’s decision to buy it was not driven by Switch’s plans. Stepping Out of Las Vegas After many years of building out its campus in Las Vegas, the data center provider started expanding into other territories this year. It announced plans to build a campus in Reno, Nevada, its first project outside of Vegas, in January. Last month, the company said it had broken ground on a 450,000-square-foot data center build in Siziano, Italy, just outside of Milan. Norman Properties, the same developer that recently bought the Steelcase property in Michigan also owns the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center in Nevada, where Switch is building its new campus. eBay will be Switch’s anchor tenant in Reno. The company has had success attracting high-profile customers, including Google, Amazon, Boeing, Intel, Dreamworks, HP, Intuit, and JP Morgan Chase, among others. Its customer roster has about 1,000 brands. The reason Switch wants to build a data center in the Michigan location is its ability to serve major East Coast and Midwest markets without the risk of natural disasters in coastal areas and high prices of power and real estate. It picked Reno to serve West Coast markets for the same reasons. A connection between the Michigan data center and New York would have 14-millisecond latency. It can achieve 2-millisecond latency on links to Chicago, the company said. (Comment on this)
5:59p	Weekly DCIM Software News Update: November 19 CA pulls the plug on its DCIM product offering, Sunbird Software opens new worldwide headquarters and TDB Fusion expands to meet growing demand for its software. CA Quits DCIM Software Market. CA Technologies announced has decided to get out of the data center infrastructure management market, where it was considered one of the leaders. The CA DCIM solution was built around the company’s previously existing energy monitoring product called ecoMeter. Instead of selling a stand-alone DCIM product, CA will focus on end-to-end IT infrastructure monitoring. Sunbird Software opens Global Headquarters, Technical Service Office. Sunbird Software announced it has moved into its new worldwide headquarters in Somerset, NJ, and opened a new technical service and support office in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. When Raritan was acquired this past summer by Legrand, Sunbird was created to focus on DCIM. Sunbird also announced that it has launched a new Customer Support Portal with interactive features to help customers get the most out of their DCIM solutions. TDB Fusion executes growth expansion plans. Responding to consumer demand for its DCIM software TDB Fusion says it has more than doubled its workforce in the last 12 months, and has opened new offices in London to support growth. The company also made eight new appointments across the company. (Comment on this)
6:25p	VMware Co-Founder Diane Greene to Head Google’s Cloud Business This article originally appeared at The WHIR Google has bought Bebop Technologies, a stealth-mode startup that had been developing a platform for building and maintaining enterprise applications. Bebop was founded by Diane Greene, a co-founder of VMware and Google board member, who had herself been in stealth-mode for some time. The acquisition of Bebop (or perhaps “acqui-hire” of Greene) could help Google meet its new ambition of becoming the go-to cloud provider. Greene and the Bebop team will join Google upon close of the acquisition. She will be heading up a new unit containing all of Google’s cloud businesses, including Google Apps, Google for Work, and Google Cloud Platform. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google Inc., said in a blog post, “We think [Bebop] will help many more businesses find great applications, and reap the benefits of cloud computing. Bebop and its stellar team will help us provide integrated cloud products at every level: end-user platforms like Android and Chromebooks, infrastructure and services in Google Cloud Platform, developer frameworks for mobile and enterprise users, and end-user applications like Gmail and Docs.” Hiring Greene and reorganization of Google’s cloud divisions come as the company struggles to catch up with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure in the cloud infrastructure market. The company has a data center infrastructure of scale that’s similar to the two rivals’ but has not been able to carve out a market share that would make it a major rival. But, as Urs Hölzle, Google’s VP of technical infrastructure, put it on stage at a conference in San Francisco earlier this week, majority of the world’s workloads are not running in the cloud yet. He said he expected Google’s cloud services to replicate the success of its Android operating system, outpacing the incumbent leader, and even outgrow its advertising business in terms of revenue. Hölzle will retain his title, following Greene’s appointment and will report to her. This first ran at http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/google-buys-diane-greenes-startup-hires-lead-new-cloud-businesses-unit (Comment on this)
6:53p	Latest Red Hat Enterprise Linux Improves Security, Networking, Container Features This post originally appeared at The Var Guy Security, networking speed and container-based virtualization are the focus of the latest enhancements in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2, the newest release of Red Hat‘s open source OS. RHEL 7.2, which debuted Thursday, includes the following enhancements: An OpenSCAP plug-in for Anaconda, the RHEL installer, which allows users to verify that the packages they install on their systems during setup have not been subject to tampering. DNSSEC support for preventing DNS spoofing and other DNS-related security attacks. Tweaks to packet processing, support for TCP (DCTCP) and other updates to the networking stack. Networking throughput has been “doubled in many network function virtualization (NFV) and software defined networking (SDN) use cases” in RHEL 7.2, according to Red Hat. Updates to container software packages, including Docker and Atomic Host. In addition, RHEL 7.2 includes the beta release of the Red Hat Container Development Kit 2 for building container-based applications. A backup and disaster-recovery tool called Relax-and-Recover. None of these changes totally revolutionizes RHEL, but they make the platform more robust and easier to administer in several of the areas that matter most, especially security and networking. This first ran at http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2015/11/17/canonical-releases-openstack-autopilot-open-source-cloud-management/ (Comment on this)
11:27p	Aecom and Project Frog Partner on Modular Data Centers Schools, hospitals, and data centers. The need for all three types of buildings is growing faster than traditional construction methods can deliver, and all three can benefit from using modular building components pre-fabricated and shipped to the construction site for faster delivery. That’s according to Project Frog, a company that specializes in modular construction of the three types of facilities. Project Frog recently partnered with Aecom, one of the world’s largest engineering design firms, to deliver modular data centers, 1 MW and up. Los Angeles-based Aecom, whose annual revenue is $18 billion, says it has been designing and building data centers for the last 25 years but recognizes that today’s data center users need simplified deployment that enables quick expansion in the future. “Project Frog’s innovative and proven delivery method, combined with Aecom’s lifecycle data center services, creates a quality, turn-key delivery solution,” Louis Armstrong, Aecom’s executive VP, said in a statement. The venture is called “Rapid Deployment Team.” The team will deploy Project Frog’s Converge data center kit, which includes building core and shell, as well as some cooling infrastructure that can be adapted to a variety of climates or loads. The two-story “off-the-shelf” modular data center design can scale from 1 MW to 50 MW. (Comment on this)

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