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Wednesday, December 30th, 2015
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| 1:00p | Data Center Technology Startups to Watch in 2016 You won’t find hot SDN, cluster management, flash, or application container startups on this list. We specifically chose to narrow it down to companies we feel are addressing some of the biggest pain points in data center design and management. This isn’t meant to be an exhaustive list, but the startups listed here are trying to solve big problems in interesting, innovative ways. Feel free to suggest other companies that should be on this list by submitting comments below or on our social media channels: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+. Vapor IOFew companies have attempted to challenge the way people think about data center design as radically as Austin-based Vapor IO, which came out of stealth in March, has. The startup proposes that straight rows of IT racks and hot and cold aisles between them is not actually the most efficient way to use space or energy in the data center. Its alternative, the Vapor Chamber, which consists of six wedge-shaped server racks arranged in a cylinder. Cold air comes into the servers from outside, and warm air gets exhausted into a “hot column” inside, which replaces the hot aisle. Exhaust air gets sucked out at the top of the chamber.  Vapor Chamber from all angles (Image: Vapor IO) Vapor, which announced its first funding round earlier this month, claims its chamber saves space and offers a way to deploy a high-density data center anywhere with enough air conditioning and power. The company’s founder Cole Crawford likes to say that a defunct video rental store will do. Vapor’s primary target is the quickly growing edge data center market. As more and more media content gets consumed online, and as businesses rely more and more on cloud services, the need for data center capacity in places that aren’t known as major data center markets, is growing quickly. The startup also has developed a commercial server and rack management software product called Vapor Core and open sourced a portion of it as OpenDCRE, or Open Data Center Runtime Environment. Crawford took part in the creation of OpenStack, the open source cloud infrastructure software that has become the primary alternative to building clouds using VMware’s technology. He’s also held several senior leadership roles at the Open Compute Foundation, which oversees the Open Compute Project, Facebook’s initiative that aims to bring benefits and philosophy of open source to hardware and data center design. |
| 4:46p | Presidential Candidates Must Address Grid Security
This is an article by our sister site The Energy Times. Because grid security and reliability are matters of life and death for the data center industry, we’re posting it here for our readers. EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first part of a two-part interview with Ted Koppel, one of the most prominent journalists in America and the author of the new book, “Lights Out.” The second installment, “Power Grid Vulnerability Imperils National Security,” will be published January 7 in The Energy Times. ENERGY TIMES: What do you think the response to your book has been, and what would you like it to be? KOPPEL: Well I’d like it to become the object of a national conversation. We are, after all, just at the beginning. It seems like we’ve been engaged in the process for a long time already, but it’s only the beginning. The presidential campaign year – we’re almost a year away from the election. I certainly think this is an issue that deserves the attention of presidential candidates, and I’m hoping that at some point or another it will be on their agenda. It needs to be. It’s not something that can easily be handled after the fact. Tom Ridge, the first secretary of Homeland Security, put it very well when he said we tend to be a reactive society. We are not very good at pre-emptive action. ENERGY TIMES: According to your analysis both China and Russia having the capability of attacking the grid but they are unlikely to use it given the interlocking interests they have with us. You worry more about North Korea and ISIS. Isn’t it likely that if there’s ever a major global conflict it’ll be unlike anything we’ve ever recognized before? KOPPEL: Yes. But I’m not talking about a major global conflict. What I’m talking about is the internet in addition to its many virtues is a weapon of mass destruction. This is unlike any weapon system that has ever existed before. In the past, weapons of mass destruction have only been available to and usable by governments. A group like ISIS doesn’t have an air force and it doesn’t have a navy. It doesn’t have access to missiles. It is capable only of terrorism. But as we’ve seen, even the sort of retail terrorism in which they are engaging can be enough to absorb the attention of a nation like France or a nation like the United States. Imagine for a moment the capacity to inflict enormous damage on the United States from outside our borders by a single person using a laptop computer. It can be very difficult to track down in short order, the source of a cyber-attack. This is something that we have never experienced before. We are totally unfamiliar with it. ENERGY TIMES: There have been incidences of physical terrorism to the grid. There are several key points in the grid that, if knocked out, would bring widespread outages. Do you think a physical assault is equally threatening, or do you see the cyberthreat as more potent? KOPPEL: Well I see the cyberthreat as more dangerous only because it’s easier to carry out. As you know, there was an attack that took place in California where a group of shooters using AK47 rifles took out 17 large power transformers. The fact that they haven’t been found almost two years after the fact is pretty alarming. The notion that some law enforcement have – that this was a trial run rather than an actual attempt to cripple the grid out there – is equally alarming. But again, a physical attack is something that has to be done within the borders of the United States, and is something that requires probably more than one person. As for a cyberattack, I don’t want to leave you with the impression that I think this is an easy thing to do. It’s incredibly complex, otherwise I think groups like ISIS would have already done it. Thus far at least, the capability is only in the hands of a few nation states – like Russia, and China, and possibly Iran. A number of our allies and friends have the capability. But what I’m saying is the looming danger is much greater and unlike anything we’ve seen before. This first ran at http://tdworld.com/news/presidential-can |
| 5:22p | Survey: Cloud Security Still a Concern Heading into 2016
Via The Var Guy While more enterprises have become comfortable with, and even embrace, cloud computing in 2015, concerns about security associated with the technology remain as the year comes to a close, according to a recent survey by Netwrix Corp. The Netwrix 2015 Cloud Security Survey found that 65 percent of companies still have security concerns when migrating to the cloud, while 40 percent are still worried about their loss of physical control over data in the cloud. Netwrix provides IT auditing software for visibility into IT infrastructure changes and data access, with more than 150,000 IT departments worldwide using the solution. For the survey, the company polled more than 600 IT professionals worldwide in technology, manufacturing, government, healthcare, finance, education and other industries. “We wanted to find out the exact reasons that prevent companies from cloud adoption and taking advantage of all the benefits it offers,” said Alex Vovk, CEO and co-founder of Netwrix, in a press release. The survey revealed that even though the cloud is not a new technology, the market still has a good potential to grow further if better security is in place, he said. “Advanced security solutions and true visibility into what is going on across the cloud infrastructure will help companies minimize security risks, take back control over business-critical assets and accelerate cloud adoption,” Vovk said. The survey found that 30 percent of organizations are already taking advantage of this improved cloud security, while more than 40 percent are ready to invest in additional security to keep their cloud environments safe. Among the technologies that will make the cloud safer, continuous auditing will provide an important advantage to ensure data integrity in the cloud, 71 percent of respondents said. Companies seem more comfortable with hybrid cloud deployments during the transition from on-premise infrastructure to a cloud-centric model, with 44 percent of organizations preferring this method, according to those polled. Private clouds also seem to be a more secure option for many, with 37 percent of organizations who are prepared to invest in additional security eyeing this option. As far as the primary concerns organizations have with migrating from on-premise to cloud environments, unauthorized access is top of mind among 69 percent of respondents, while 43 percent said they worried more about account hijacking, according to the survey. Companies also, naturally, plan to beef up security ahead of their cloud deployments, focusing on internal policies. Fifty-six percent of those polled said they plan to improve identity and authentication management, while 51 percent will use encryption to stay secure while moving to the cloud. Establishing auditing of changes and user activity are part of the security plans of 45 percent of medium-to-large businesses as they move to the cloud, the survey found. Still, while companies plan to make necessary security investments to move to the cloud, some still balk at adoption, with 13 percent rejecting adoption of cloud technology in the near future. However, this is not to say those opinions can’t be swayed. Thirty percent of these respondents said they would reconsider deploying cloud computing if security is improved. This first ran at http://thevarguy.com/secure-cloud-data-s |
| 5:59p | TierPoint Enters Chicago Data Center Market With AlteredScale Acquisition TierPoint has acquired Chicago data center provider AlteredScale, gaining its first data center in the important Chicago market. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. TierPoint, a St. Louis, Missouri-based data center rollup, has been buying small providers in secondary markets on an aggressive schedule. AlteredScale is its tenth acquisition. TierPoint’s biggest deal to date was acquisition of the data center business of the Arkansas-based telco Windstream for $575 million, announced in October. The deal closed this month, bringing the size of TierPoint’s data center portfolio, including AlteredScale, to 525,000 square feet across 19 US markets. The company’s CEO Jerry Kent said it is stepping into Chicago in response to demand by its existing customers. “This acquisition was precipitated by significant customer interest in TierPoint expanding to Chicago, and we have already begun installing the infrastructure for a long-term major client,” he said in a statement. “It’s a great market, top ten in tech startups, and I believe our focus on providing unrivaled service and local support will be well received in Chicago.” AlteredScale’s building is more than 100,000 square feet but has only 25,000 square feet of data center space. According to TierPoint, AlteredScale has made a lot of renovations and upgrades in the building since it bought it in 2011. TierPoint started in 2010 as Cequel Data Centers, following the ownership group’s acquisition of data center provider Colo4. After Cequel acquired a smaller provider called TierPoint in 2012, they renamed the company to TierPoint. In 2014, the company was acquired by its management team and a group of additional investors with the goal of expanding it further, primarily through acquisitions in underserved regional markets. |
| 10:30p | Open Source Pioneer Ian Murdock Dead at 42 Ian Murdock, creator of Debian – one of the most popular Linux distributions – who most recently worked for the hot Linux container startup Docker, has passed away, according to a Tuesday blog post by Docker CEO Ben Golub. Murdock, who died at the age of 42, is best known professionally as founder of the Debian project. Debian is one of the three most widely used Linux distros and one of the first ones ever created. He started the project in the early 90s, when he was a student at Purdue University. The cause of his death has not been disclosed. Numerous recent tweets by Murdock’s Twitter account recounted a disturbing run-in with police (links to cached pages displaying the tweets via VentureBeat). A tweet posted later said, “I’m committing suicide tonight …” The tweets did not specify a police department. According to VentureBeat, they were posted Monday. “Ian helped pioneer the notion of a truly open project and community, embracing open design and open contribution; in fact the formative document of the open source movement itself (the Open Source Definition) was originally a Debian position statement,” Golub wrote. “It is a testament to Ian’s commitment to openness and community that there are now more than 1,000 people currently involved in Debian development.” Prior to joining Docker this November, Murdock worked as VP of platform for Marketing Cloud at Salesforce, where he ended up after Salesforce bought his former employer ExactTarget in 2012. He spent two years working in senior roles at Sun Microsystems and prior to that served as CTO of the Linux Foundation. “Ian’s sharp focus was on creating a distribution and community culture that did the right thing, be it ethically, or technically,” Debian community members wrote in a post on the Bits from Debian blog. “Releases went out when they were ready, and the project’s staunch stance on software freedom are the gold standards in the free and open source world.” |
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