Tuesday, June 14th, 2016

Time	Event
12:00p	LinkedIn Deal Means More Microsoft in Digital Realty Data Centers Its $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn will make Microsoft one of the top 10 customers of Digital Realty Trust. While Microsoft has done business with the San Francisco-based data center provider, it has not leased enough capacity to be considered even one of Digital’s top 20 customers. Microsoft is one of the world’s biggest consumers of leased data center space, and it has been leasing more and more recently, as it expands its cloud services business, competing with Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, and IBM SoftLayer, in addition to several smaller players. Together, the cloud giants are fueling a data center land grab that has created a boom for data center providers, many of whom have found it difficult to build more data centers fast enough to satisfy the demand. Read more: How Long Will the Cloud Data Center Land Grab Last LinkedIn is Digital Realty’s sixth-largest customer, judging by the amount of rent it pays to the San Francisco-based data center REIT annually. Its top tenant is IBM, and CenturyLink, Equinix, Facebook, and AT&T are second, third, fourth, and fifth, respectively. If Microsoft’s acquisition of LinkedIn closes successfully, Digital Realty will be able to claim it as one of its biggest customers, which should be good news for the data center provider, considering the rate with which the Redmond, Washington-based giant has been ramping up its data center spending. The company spent 65 percent more on data centers in the first quarter of this year than it did in the first three months of 2015. See also: New LinkedIn Data Center Strategy Similar to Microsoft’s In the first quarter, Microsoft leased close to 50MW of data center capacity in three locations from two different providers: CyrusOne and DuPont Fabros Technology, according to the commercial real estate firm North American Data Centers. Last year, Microsoft’s data center leasing activity included about 28MW total in three deals, with Digital Realty, DuPont Fabros, and Vantage Data Centers. LinkedIn has five data center locations, using Digital Realty in four of them, according to Digital’s investor report for the first quarter. Digital doesn’t disclose specific locations its customers are in, but, as Data Center Knowledge has reported in the past, LinkedIn is in Digital’s data centers in Northern Virginia and Dallas-Fort Worth markets. The social network has also said publicly that Digital is its data center provider in Singapore. It is unclear where the fourth LinkedIn location Digital has cited is. Overall, LinkedIn occupies about 280,000 square feet of data center space in the four Digital locations. In 2014, it also signed a 2MW lease with Equinix in Los Angeles, according to North American Data Centers, and last year took 10MW with Infomart Data Centers in the Portland market. (Comment on this)
3:49p	Impact of Cooling and Efficiency in Modern Data Center Design Phil Koblence is COO of New York Internet. It’s 2016, yet IT experts are still challenged with how to effectively and efficiently cool their data center. The cooling process accounts for 40 percent of all power consumed by data centers, so this question is a top priority for operators. Ensuring optimal cooling in a data center not only lowers operational expenditure, but it reduces the strain on equipment cooling mechanisms, extending the lifespan of the hardware; and freeing up power for IT equipment, increasing equipment uptime. The decision to invest in cooling infrastructure is easy, however, choosing the method with which you regulate temperature within the data center can be more challenging. Cooling and efficiency strategies are constantly evolving, with companies like Microsoft going so far as to drop a self-contained data center into the ocean. However, you do not need to plunge your equipment into the sea or move to the Arctic to keep yours cool. Hot-aisle containment (HAC) and cold-aisle containment (CAC) are the primary methods used by leading businesses to reduce energy and optimize equipment performance within the data center. This proven and highly effective methodology of cooling has emerged as a new best practice within the industry. Cooling and Energy Efficiency Legacy data centers pose a challenge to containment due to the full separation of the supply and return airflow, which has evolved over time with the design of the room and equipment footprint. In these situations, custom containment solutions are often required to address the issues plaguing the existing footprint, such as computer rows without opposing cold or hot aisles and isolated equipment that is not configured in a hot/cold aisle format. HAC and CAC configurations within a data center ensure optimal efficiency by separating the cold supply airflow from the hot equipment exhaust air. By minimizing the mixing of hot and cold air, a uniform and predictable supply temperature is created and distributed to the intake of IT equipment. This results in a warmer, drier return air to the AC coil. By increasing air efficiencies, containment systems increase uptimes, extend hardware life and result in valuable cost and energy savings. Furthermore, HAC and CAC containment systems are known for their ease of installation and limit the impact on existing infrastructure within a facility, which is important given that floor space in a data center can be expensive. That said, it is important to understand the source of the supply airflow and return airflow when designing a HAC or CAC system. The room and equipment layout should dictate the design of the containment, dictating whether the aisle will be cold or hot. For instance, rooms with drop ceiling voids can be used to return air directly back to the CRAC without mixing with the room’s ambient airflow. Containing Energy and Cost Containment effectively reduces the power consumption of a data center and can result in significant cost benefits. The benefits can always be measured at the cooling intake of the servers. Before and after measurements show that the intake temperate can drop 10°. Additionally, return air temperatures increase 10°, which in turn increases the CRAC cooling capacity by over 50 percent. The cost savings can be calculated directly from temperature within the data center. For every 1°F in temperature rise, the gain is 2 percent in cost savings for cooling. Additionally, containment allows data center providers to use the top 15 percent of the rack that is often left unpopulated due to inconsistent air supply temperatures, which results in an immediate savings that can run into the millions. Before and after computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models can assist customers in predicting their energy savings, so as to build an ROI model that improves the value of the containment investment. SubZero Engineering records before and after containment temperatures at both the intake of the cooling air to the servers and return air to the CRAC units report a national average of slightly over 10°F drop at the IT intake. 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)
5:17p	CyrusOne Buys Land for Third Northern Virginia Data Center CyrusOne has acquired a big parcel of land in Northern Virginia, the biggest and most coveted data center market in the US, the company announced Tuesday. The parcel gives the data center provider room to expand in a key region where it is currently at capacity. The Northern Virginia data center market is continuing to snowball. It is a high-demand data center location because of the big cluster of data centers and network infrastructure that are already there. Companies that have data centers there want to continue expanding there, and ones that don’t want to access the rich ecosystem that’s grown in Northern Virginia over the years. Today, data center providers like CyrusOne are seeing the most action from the biggest cloud providers and other popular internet services. These companies are racing to expand data center capacity to address the demand of their quickly growing businesses, and Northern Virginia is one of the places where this data center land grab is playing out the most. Read more: How Long Will the Cloud Data Center Land Grab Last? Carrollton, Texas-based CyrusOne’s existing capacity in Northern Virginia is fully utilized, according to its first-quarter earnings presentation. One of the biggest deals it signed in the market recently was with Microsoft. During the first quarter, the software giant and the world’s second-biggest cloud service provider leased 22MW of capacity from CenturyLink in Northern Virginia, according to the commercial real estate firm North American Data Centers. See also: Who Leased the Most Data Center Space in 2015 CyrusOne is planning to build what will be its third data center in the market on its newly acquired 40-acre parcel that’s part of a mixed-use development in Loudoun County called Kincora. It has a live 130,000-square foot data center in Reston and an adjacent one under construction. Here are some of the biggest recent Northern Virginia data center leases, according to North American Data Centers: 2015 (follow link for full NADC report) Microsoft: 10.4MW with DuPont Fabros Technology Apple: 6MW with DuPont Fabros Technology Oracle: 4.5MW with Digital Realty Trust Uber: 4MW with Digital Realty Trust PNC: 3MW with Digital Realty Trust Google: 2MW with Equinix First quarter of 2016 (follow link for full NADC report) Microsoft: 22MW with CyrusOne (Comment on this)
5:46p	Alibaba Sees 48-Percent Growth in First Forecast Since IPO (Bloomberg) — Alibaba Group Holding said that revenue growth will accelerate this fiscal year as China’s largest e-commerce company provided its first financial forecast since going public in 2014. The company predicts sales will rise at least 48 percent in the year ending March 2017 as it pushes into new markets and businesses beyond e-commerce. Part of that growth comes from Alibaba’s rapid deal-making: it spent about $18.7 billion on acquisitions and stock buybacks over the past year, including on e-commerce site Lazada Group. Sales should rise more than 36 percent this year if revenue from Lazada and streaming video service Youku Tudou are excluded, CFO Maggie Wu told an investor conference Tuesday. That compares with 33 percent growth the previous year. Analysts were expecting 40 percent revenue growth on average for fiscal 2017. “Our core business together with our affiliates pretty much occupy all the building blocks of e-commerce in China. So it’s not just about the markets, it’s also the cloud computing business, the payments business, local services, digital entertainment, and search,” Wu told investors. Alibaba’s cloud business is its fastest-growing, tripling revenue in the March quarter to more than 1 billion yuan. Like Amazon, the service emerged from the enormous computational power needed to handle millions of online shopping transactions. But unlike its US counterpart, it enjoys home-field advantage in a vast Chinese market where internet-based computing is still novel to many enterprises. Read more: Alibaba’s Cloud Ambitions Taking Shape for Investors Its push into cloud, where software and services are provided to customers via server farms, prompted a second data center in Silicon Valley in October and preparation for its first in Europe. The guidance reflects how Alibaba is moving into untapped rural markets, exploring business abroad and investing in new sources of income from online media to cloud computing. The company, which is trying to counter the impact of a slowing Chinese economy, bought Youku to expand into online video and Lazada to gain a foothold in Southeast Asia. “A growth rate like this would be pretty fast given the base of their business,” said Li Yujie, an analyst at RHB Research Institute in Hong Kong. Alibaba’s shares rose as much as 4 percent in New York. Alibaba’s decision to release financial guidance comes after the US Securities Exchange Commission began looking into its accounting practices. The company is cooperating with the probe, which encompasses data reported from the company’s Singles’ Day promotion, Alibaba’s biggest shopping day, as well as how it consolidates results from affiliates such as logistics partner Cainiao. Alibaba had excluded Cainiao from its results to comply with GAAP accounting rules, Wu said Tuesday. Chairman Jack Ma said in November that times would be tough in the following 15 months, that many companies would fail as China tried to re-balance its economy. Founder and Executive Chairman of Alibaba Group Jack Ma (L) attends the company’s initial price offering (IPO) at the New York Stock Exchange on September 19, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images) Ma, who’s said he wants more than half of revenue to come from outside China, told investors Tuesday that gross merchandise value — or the sum total of its e-commerce transactions — was no longer the best metric on which to gauge Alibaba’s performance. That’s because the web giant is branching out into areas like providing computing to enterprises and growing its advertising revenue. Instead, the company will henceforth report results for individual segments such as mobile media and entertainment and cloud, Wu said.   (Comment on this)
9:26p	True Ventures, Cisco Invest in Cloud Logging Firm Loggly’s $11.5M Round Brought to You by Talkin’ Cloud Cloud-based log management solution provider Loggly has announced a $11.5 million funding round led by True Ventures to fund innovation and expand sales and marketing activities. According to an announcement on Tuesday, additional investors include Matrix Partners, Cisco, Trinity Ventures, Harmony Partners, and Data Collective Venture Capital. Cisco Ventures invested $10.5 million in Loggly back in 2013. Founded in 2009, Loggly said the funding comes as it has become “increasingly cash efficient as a result of significant growth in recurring revenues, gross margin and reduction in customer acquisition costs.” It expects to achieve cash-flow positive operations in 2017. “Following record growth and customer adoption, including reaching the 2,000 paid customer accounts milestone in Q1 2016, this next round of funding marks continued momentum for Loggly. True Ventures – and all Loggly investors – have set the stage for us to build on these achievements,” said Charlie Oppenheimer, CEO, Loggly. “This funding enables Loggly to further accelerate innovation in powerful analytics, alerts, search capabilities and other key areas so our customers can find root causes faster, spot anomalies earlier and monitor the health of their applications and infrastructure.” Loggly has customers in the technology, marketing, and finance industries, as well as gaming and entertainment. “True Ventures believes in taking bold risks and supporting our companies through their entire lifecycles,” said Puneet Agarwal, Partner, True Ventures. “We are excited to lead this next stage with Loggly and look forward to the continued innovation and growth.” This first ran at http://talkincloud.com/cloud-computing-funding-and-finance/cloud-log-management-platform-loggly-closes-115m-funding-round (Comment on this)

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