Wednesday, April 6th, 2016

Time	Event
12:00p	Setting Up the WAN for Cloud Connectivity We’re using more bandwidth, transferring more data, and demanding even richer user experiences. In a distributed cloud environment, connectivity is king. We must know what we are pushing down the link to ensure optimal performance for the end user. Are we delivering rich media content or just small files? Bandwidth and WAN considerations must happen when the cloud environment is being designed. As you look at the future cloud and WAN landscape, there’s no slowdown in utilization. According to Cisco, annual global cloud IP traffic will reach 8.6 ZB by the end of 2019, up from 2.1 ZB per year in 2014. Furthermore, global cloud IP traffic will more than quadruple over the next five years; and that same traffic will account for more than 83 percent of total data center traffic by 2019. Now that WAN connectivity has greatly improved, cloud-based offerings have become more attractive. The emergence of the cloud has helped many organizations expand beyond their current physical data center. New types of cloud-based technologies allow IT environments to truly consolidate and grow their infrastructure quickly and affordably. When it comes to WAN considerations, administrators must be aware of the type of cloud they are deploying and what they will be hosting. When working with a private, public, or hybrid cloud environment, planning will be the most important deployment step. During the planning phase, engineers and architects will examine how to build out their cloud environment and size it for future growth. By forecasting growth over a span of one, two, and three years, IT managers can be ready for spikes in usage and be prepared for the growth demands of the business. This level of preparedness is called cloud growth agility. Key WAN Considerations The ability to quickly and efficiently deliver workloads over the WAN will be crucial to the success of a distributed cloud-ready environment deployment. Special considerations must be made depending on the type of cloud or infrastructure. Some organizations will have multiple different links connecting their cloud environment for proper load balancing and high availability. Although each environment will have its own needs, there is a good set of best practices that can be followed for a respective site type: Major cloud data center: This is a central cloud computing environment with major infrastructure components. Hundreds or even thousands of users will be connecting to this type of environment. It can host major workload operations where workers from all over the world will connect and receive their data. The requirements here involve very high bandwidth and very low latency. Recommendations: MPLS, optical circuits, or carrier Ethernet services. Branch cloud data center: This is usually a smaller but still sizable cloud environment. This infrastructure would be used to house secondary but vital cloud systems. Here, administrators may be working with a few cloud delivered workloads which need to be distributed to a smaller amount of users. In this type of data center, requirements call for moderate bandwidth availability with the possible need for low latency. Recommendations: MPLS or a carrier Ethernet service. Small cloud data center for DR or testing: This is a small cloud data center with only a few components. Many times small distributed data centers are used for testing and development or for smaller DR purposes. Requirements in this environment call for low bandwidth but may still need low latency and the option for mobility. Recommendations: MPLS over T1/DSL, broadband wireless options, or internet VPNs. Remember, when working with a distributed environment, site-to-site replication must be a consideration. Administrators must determine what they are pushing across the WAN and what type of connection to use. Also, it’s important to use existing tools for effective replication. This can be integrated into virtualization or WANOP solutions. WANOP Benefits and Advancements Many organizations are now leveraging the benefits of network virtualization and the coupling of WANOP technologies. AT&T, for example, says it will open source the software it is using for an in-house network virtualization push. AT&T’s software-defined architecture, ECOMP (enhanced control, orchestration, management and policy), aims to virtualize 75 per cent of the AT&T network by the year 2020. This will incorporate functions around NFV, SDN, and WANOP. So, what are the big benefits and advancements? Consider the following: WAN delivery based on context. You’re not just optimizing data traffic. This is far beyond simply ensuring that content gets delivered quickly. WANOP technologies now look at resources, workloads, and data from a contextual level. Policies around geolocation, user fingerprinting, and even data distribution are all functional layers within the WANOP architecture. More organizations can create powerful content delivery networks, optimize user experiences, and incorporate new business strategies, all with better WAN control options. Integration with cloud and virtualization. This is a big one. Not only do we have virtual WANOP appliances, we have virtual services which integrate and live in the cloud. You can optimize traffic regardless of where it lives. Private, public, and hybrid cloud environments can all be configured with precise WANOP specifications. Eliminating latency. The power behind WANOP technologies is the flexibility around control. You can dynamically manage WAN settings depending on the workload and the data being delivered. Basically, your ability to create granular WAN-based QoS controls allows you to manage data sets and applications at a new level. User access controls, content distribution, and even resources bursting are all functions WANOP can help with. Creating WAN security. Sometimes referred to as WAN Hardening, WANOP systems are integrating greater levels of security around your WAN ecosystem. For example, offering 256 bit AES encryption to secure all WAN traffic, controlling and encrypting all data in-flight, and doing all of this without any performance degradation. Furthermore, you can integrate WANOP controls into existing security policies and even into the network layer. There are a lot of other big advancements as well. Basically, these systems are being designed to be closely coupled with virtualization and cloud layers. Most of all, they aim to give you very granular controls of your data and how you deliver it. With the introduction of virtual WANOP appliances, organizations of all sizes can begin to leverage a better delivery architecture. (Comment on this)
2:32p	Nokia’s New Case for GPON Shrinking Data Center Footprints In what amounts to a complete reversal of its earlier, negative stance towards passive optical networking technology — evidently, by way of having completed its merger with Alcatel-Lucent last January — Nokia announced on Tuesday its official entry into the passive optical LAN (POL) market for on-premises data centers. Nokia now says its POL will enable enterprises to reduce their capital and operational expenditures by greater than 50 percent, but attributes a big chunk of those savings to a factor that Nokia’s earlier incarnation, NSN, argued eight years ago might never come about: data center shrinkage. “POL requires less cabling, fewer racks, LAN switches and patch panels,” reads a newly published Nokia white paper on the subject of its new product line. “This eliminates the need for telecom equipment closets on each floor or at every 100m as well as associated power supplies, air-conditioning and special cable channels. As a result, POL enables large savings on capital and operating expenditure. And the floor space freed up by eliminating unnecessary equipment can be used more productively.” A New Way to Define “Home” Passive optical technology promises to simplify networking technology within enterprises where data centers share real estate with their users. Ironically, it accomplishes this by adopting a technology called Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH). Since its inception, FTTH was intended to facilitate connections between homes and businesses and upstream service providers, over single-mode with passive fiber lines up to 12 miles long (active connections, by comparison, could be 62 miles long). Now, network engineers have taken to using the term “FTTx,” as a way of acknowledging that passive optical has a place in connecting clients, using fiber, to almost any point of contact. At issue throughout the last decade has been the ongoing skirmish between fiber and copper as a connection medium. In an eyebrow-raising move back in 2008, the company then known as Nokia Siemens famously withdrew from the gigabit passive optical network (GPON) market, saying it would concentrate its efforts on DSL-based media such as VDSL2. While the company did acknowledge at the time the inevitable rollout of GPON and its underlying FTTH technology to the home (which is what the “H” stands for), it foresaw continued delays in rolling out GPON into the mass market — which would encompass businesses with data centers on-site. The Late Breakthrough In fairness, the “inevitable” transition to GPON, as was widely predicted in 2006, may be coming a decade too late. Even when Broadcom entered the GPON market in 2009 with components such as passive optical bridges, deep in the small print of its announcement came a warning that it would pay attention to “delays in the adoption and acceptance of industry standards in the markets for GPON gateway processor products.” In a 6-K filing made in August 2008, Nokia reported, “the company plans to limit its investment into existing Gigabit Passive Optical Networks due to the fact that the mass market rollout of fiber-to-the-home is unlikely in the short term.” Last year, however, came the first indications that the seeds of passive optical were taking root. A June 2015 report from analyst firm IHS revealed both GPON and VDSL technologies were enjoying 14 percent year-over-year gains. One fundamental driver, said IHS analyst Jeff Heynen at the time, was a sudden increase in demand from the utility provider market, which was looking to compete against cable companies. Yet another fundamental driver may have been something of a “sleeper:” the move to GPON in the data center. While IHS says China accounts for half of the world’s GPON spending, there’s good reason to believe it’s not just about the growing demand for broadband in households. In a corporate office, GPON connections only require passive components, with work areas connected to the equipment room by single fibers. Those fibers transmit both upstream and downstream signals simultaneously, by way of wave division multiplexing (WDM). This way, active Ethernet switches can be replaced by much smaller signal splitters that not only consume less space, but consume no power. Cooler Cooling Less power consumption means less heat generation, which is where the GPON argument may finally be hitting home with enterprises. A 2013 white paper from networking equipment provider CommScope (citing data from Network Strategy Partners) showed that the streamlining of on-site data centers made feasible with GPON could reduce capital expenditures by up to 39 percent for single building deployments, and 41 percent for multi-building. As CommScope’s diagram at the left shows, a typical data center (top) uses three types of connections for three classes of data (voice, data, and video). The adoption of GPON (bottom) replaces this segmentation with one single-mode optical cable, implementing connections both ways. Powered switches and cross-connects are eliminated at the closet level by non-powered optical splitters. An Alcatel-Lucent white paper on the subject [PDF] supports CommScope’s findings: A single GPON chassis, said A-L, could support up to 4,608 users on a single fiber with a 1:64 split ratio, while ordinary deployments only support 2,304 users with a 1:32 split. (A network with a 1:64 split ratio can support up to 64 optical network units.) So now that Bell Labs is operated by Nokia, and the leading GPON proponent Alcatel-Lucent is now integrated into its one-time principal opponent, which technology will Bell Labs prefer: VDSL or GPON? In a study last February, for rolling out fiber-to-the-home the way FTTH was originally intended, Bell Labs concluded VDSL incurred between $250 and $300 lower capital costs per subscriber than GPON. That sounds more like the old NSN’s way of thinking. But in seeking out strong use cases where GPON may be a clear alternative, Bell Labs pointed to “enterprises with demands that exceed the speeds that can be supported by the copper infrastructure.” In other words, the “x” in “FTTx” could very well stand for “office.” (Comment on this)
2:44p	How Technology is Changing Warehouses and Distribution Centers Nora Leary is Head of Marketing & Business Development for LaunchwayMedia. With the influx of new technologies, coupled with the consumer want of efficiency, manufacturing as an industry has changed over the past few years. The on-demand economy and products that support that trend have made the industry adapt at a fast rate. What’s really interesting in this new era is how warehouses and distribution factories have and will evolve in order to adequately meet these new demands. There have been numerous reports on how the Internet of Things (IoT) is drastically changing facilities management and how, according to Gartner, IoT is set to grow to 26 billion installed units by 2020. The report notes that manufacturing is an industry leading this adoption, and the industry will benefit economically from IoT growth as well. With new technology comes new procedures and ultimately changes industry-wide. Distribution centers and warehouses will feel the impact of these changes as they adapt. What does the future hold for warehouses? With new technical changes will come location and physical changes to warehouses and distribution centers. Technology Changes The debate between onsite and offsite IT is one that many times ends with discussing cloud-based technologies. This type of technology drastically reduces the need for onsite IT, which means the warehouse has more space and less onsite staff. Cloud-based voice technology is in growing demand as more companies find it as a faster and more environmental alternative to paper systems. While much of the automation can go into the cloud, certain technologies are coming onsite to help with efficiency. Bot technology to collect orders for e-commerce companies claims to boost productivity by 800 percent. These robots don’t need breaks or salaries and are not prone to human error. The warehouse workers are then left for the more “human” tasks of personalizing orders. With these changes comes the need for warehouses and distribution centers to be better designed. Physical Changes For warehouses that fill direct-to-consumer orders, there is a need to change the layout to improve efficiency. For some facilities, opening another warehouse space for only direct-to-consumer orders has been successful. Other distribution centers are taking on remodeling activities to improve workflow. Elastic walls that can be moved and changed help companies keep up with this demand. Workflow improvements have also been attributed to conveyor belts that hold both individual parcels and pallets. The physical remodeling also has companies rethinking the location of the warehouses themselves. Location Changes Most warehouses or distribution center locations heavily rely on electrical grids, but with new batteries introduced by Tesla, this may not longer be the case. These batteries can store electricity from the grid or from a renewable energy source, which means that warehouses have more choices when it comes to location. Companies must analyze which technologies make the most sense for them and which are best for other industries. In addition to more efficiency, these new changes mean more security measures and training which will heavily impact the hiring and skills need internally. What is for sure is that technology is already altering the traditional warehouse and distribution center model and this industry will be in for more changes in the years to come. 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)
10:41p	Handmade Marketplace Etsy Gets into Web Hosting Business By The WHIR Etsy launched a website building platform on Tuesday to allow its sellers to create a more customized experience. The new seller service is called Pattern by Etsy, and it includes web hosting, customization tools, and automatic integration with the seller’s Etsy store, for $15 a month. The semi-white-labeled service runs on the retailer’s domain, and currently offers five templates which Etsy’s business users can customize and populate with product data from their existing Etsy site. Etsy currently sells goods from about 1.6 million active retailers, and the company’s own research indicated that one-third of its sellers are interested in launching a separate site, but challenges associated with the process are a barrier to many. Etsy has been a public company since April 2015, and shares have been in steep decline. According to a report by Quartz, shares are down 77 percent to $8.32 from their high of $35.74. Part of the challenge has been slowing growth, challenges with overseas expansion, and competition with Handmade at Amazon, which was introduced in October exclusively for retailers selling handmade goods on Amazon. Pattern could help bring in recurring revenue in its seller service segment, which has been a bright spot for Etsy, growing 54 percent year-over-year and making up half of its total revenue. Seller service is the “money it gets from charging its 1.6 million vendors to promote their listings, process payments and generate shipping labels,”Quartz said. With Pattern, Etsy sellers still need to sort out their own domain, but then can point and click to set up templates as their own ecommerce store. The Pattern-built store will import and integrate shop listings and content, analytics, and inventory and orders from Etsy, and use the same checkout and shipping tools. “We believe Pattern will deliver a special shopping experience as well—a high-quality, modern and professional-looking ecommerce site with branding unique to that shop,” said Etsy SVP of Product in a blog post. “Pattern sites feature responsive webpages so they look great at any size, on any device. And, with co-branded Etsy checkout, buyers will be reassured that their purchase is secure and trustworthy.” Pattern is Etsy’s fourth seller service, its first to extend beyond its core marketplace and its first with a monthly subscription model. Etsy is offering a free 30-day trial of Pattern to help it build a user base. In addition to website builders like Wix and Squarespace, which have been aggressively marketing their services, Pattern is in competition with Handmade at Amazon, which was introduced in October exclusively for retailers selling handmade goods on Amazon. Wix introduced Etsy integration for its customers back in 2014. This post was first published at: http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/handmade-marketplace-etsy-gets-into-web-hosting-business. (Comment on this)

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