Monday, September 19th, 2016

Time	Event
12:00p	Everything You Wanted to Know About Facebook Data Centers As Facebook prepares to break ground on yet another massive data center, this time in Los Lunas, New Mexico, we decided it’s time to update our popular Facebook Data Center FAQ. Wondering how many data centers Facebook has? What kind of servers and networking gear does Facebook run on? How much is Facebook spending on all this stuff? You’ll find answers to these and many other questions about the infrastructure that underpins the world’s largest social network and the third most visited site on the internet in our FAQ. Here’s DCK’s up-to-date in-depth guide to everything you ever wanted to know about Facebook data centers: The Facebook Data Center FAQ (Comment on this)
3:00p	Microsoft Data Center to Guard Utility Grid from Blackouts As the power requirements of its data center in Cheyenne, Wyoming, approach 35MW, Microsoft and its energy provider in the area are laying the groundwork to ensure the site can continue to grow. Cheyenne has never needed nearly the amount of power the Microsoft data center campus is expected to draw in the future, so neither the local utility, Black Hills Energy, nor the state’s Public Utility Commission had the infrastructure in place to supply what may at one point become a 200MW load to a single customer. That’s almost double what the entire City of Cheyenne needs, according to a recent Environmental & Energy Publishing article. So they had to get creative. The result is an agreement signed earlier this year, under which Black Hills will buy enough additional energy to deliver whatever the Microsoft data center’s load is at any given time, while Microsoft will fire up its natural-gas-fueled backup power system at times of peak load on the local grid, acting essentially as a demand-response mechanism to prevent blackouts caused by energy shortages. To implement the agreement, Black Hills created a new tariff for high-load industrial customers, which was approved by the PUC. The tariff is for customers using at least 13MW who have lots of onsite power generation capacity. In effect, Microsoft is the only company in the utility’s territory that fits that description. The deal illustrates a problem that’s bound to reoccur in numerous parts of the country as giant cloud and internet companies, such as Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Amazon, continue expanding data center capacity to meet quickly growing demand for their services. These companies are building data centers at unprecedented rate and scale, and not all places they choose will be prepared to supply them with the amount of energy they need right away. Read the full E&E Publishing article here: Data Center or Power Plant? In Wyo. It’s Both (Comment on this)
6:09p	Ex-eBay Infrastructure Chief Takes Over Uber Data Center Strategy As Uber expands from being a provider of a mobile app that connects drivers with passengers into everything from restaurant deliveries to on-demand helicopter rides and self-driving cars and trucks, it needs to expand its data center infrastructure to massive scale. Today, the man the company has appointed to lead that expansion is starting his new job. Dean Nelson, former head of infrastructure at eBay, is the new Head of Uber Compute. He will lead the company’s data center strategy as it scales infrastructure to support a rapidly expanding user base for its core app — which in July reached its 2 billionth ride, six months after reaching 1 billion — as well as the new areas it is expanding into. The strategy will include use of Artificial Intelligence technology. “Uber city expansion is a challenge in and of itself, but imagine the amount of data being generated from these self-driving cars,” Nelson wrote in a post on LinkedIn Monday. “That data needs to be collected, ingested, analyzed and acted upon rapidly. This is Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning on a grand scale.” Nelson ran eBay’s infrastructure strategy for more than six years, leaving the online auction giant earlier this year. He came to eBay after a long stint at Sun Microsystems, where he started as a senior electronic technician in the late 1980s and worked his way up to senior director, according to his LinkedIn profile. In 2000, he left Sun to work for Allegro Networks, but rejoined after three years. Gartner analyst Ray Paquet interviews Dean Nelson (left) of eBay’s global foundation services about what impacts the recent deployment of eBay’s dashboard metrics have had on the organization in 2013. (Photo by Colleen Miller.) During his tenure at eBay, the company incorporated a lot of new ideas in data center design and technology into its strategy. The company launched a data center in Phoenix that manages to use free cooling in hot desert climate and has data center containers on the roof for example. Another cutting-edge project was a data center in Salt Lake City that uses natural gas-fueled fuel cells as its primary power supply instead of the utility grid, which it uses as backup. Earlier this year, Nelson launched Infrastructure Masons, a networking organization for data center executives whose advisory council includes data center and infrastructure heads from Google, Microsoft, eBay, Facebook, Switch, and Digital Realty Trust. He said he learned about the Uber opportunity through Infrastructure Masons. Uber appears to rely at least partially on leased data centers. Last year, the company leased 14MW of data center capacity total in Dallas, Santa Clara, and Ashburn, Virginia, according to a report by the commercial real estate broker North American Data Centers. In 2015, Uber acquired a Microsoft data center in Boulder, Colorado, as part of a package of assets the Redmond, Washington-based giant used for collecting imagery for its mapping applications. Microsoft decided to outsource image collection, and sold the data center, as well as cameras, software, and a license to some of its intellectual property, to Uber. (Comment on this)
6:46p	Oracle’s Ellison Takes Shot at Amazon With New Cloud Services (Bloomberg) — Oracle Corp. unveiled new services that help customers take advantage of cloud computing, taking a more direct aim at rival Amazon.com Inc. The company announced “Cloud@Customer,” which takes the latest gear from its own data centers and puts that hardware on customer data centers, Executive Chairman Larry Ellison said Sunday during a presentation at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco. Customers won’t need to buy the technology — and can instead subscribe to the service on a monthly basis, just like they would do if they were buying from a distant data center. He also announced what he said were more powerful products at a lower cost than Amazon, the leading public cloud provider and the company’s No. 1 competitor in infrastructure. “Amazon’s lead is over,” Ellison said during the presentation. “Amazon’s going to have serious competition.” Oracle is stepping up efforts in cloud-based technology as it rolls out new products and acquires other companies to cater to the increasing number of customers that prefer to buy computing, networking and storage capabilities via networks from large providers. Amazon, which helped pioneer the public cloud, has grabbed the attention of startups and corporations around the world, an effort that’s also put it in competition with Microsoft Corp. and Google. Curious about Oracle’s data center strategy to support its cloud push See: Microsoft and Oracle Gobble Up Data Center Space in Virginia Equinix Becomes Data Center Gateway to Oracle Cloud The new “Cloud@Customer” will be managed by Oracle. It will be an alternative to moving everything to the cloud right away or keeping everything in-house, Ellison said. “We’ll put that part of the Oracle cloud behind your firewall, where it’s more protected and adheres to certain statutory requirements,” he said. “The Cloud@Customer machines are identical.” During Ellison’s presentation, which stretched for more than an hour, he unveiled several new services that touched on areas including databases, the cloud and programming methods. It even included a demonstration for a new “ChatBot” platform that integrates with Facebook’s Messenger application. Oracle also said earlier Sunday that it was acquiring startup Palerra, helping enhance security and identity capabilities for cloud applications. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. See also: Oracle, Ellison Accused of Misleading Investors on Cloud Revenue “Palerra offers a unique combination of visibility into cloud usage, data security, user behavior analytics, and security configuration, with automated incident responses,” the company said on its website. “Customers can respond to cloud security incidents in real-time, protecting sensitive company data and workloads across all of the leading cloud services.” During the presentation, Ellison also talked up the importance of artificial intelligence, including machine-learning, as Oracle rolls out tools that leverage the technology. He said his customers benefit from the massive database built up over the years — comparing it to Facebook Inc.’s trove of user information. Oracle also unveiled its strategy for key cloud offerings — including finance and human resources — that blend third-party data with real-time analytics and behavioral inputs to create applications that adapt and learn. The result is applications that automatically offer individualized recommended actions, it said in an e-mailed statement. (Comment on this)
7:30p	Avnet Sells Data Center Solutions Unit to Tech Data for $2.6B Tech Data, a $28 billion US-based IT distributor, has agreed to acquire the data center solutions business of competitor Avnet for $2.6 billion, the companies announced Monday. Once the deal is closed, Avnet will essentially get out of the data center business, which will enable it to focus on design chain and supply chain services and expand into new markets, such as the Internet of Things and digital platforms, its CEO, William Amelio, said in a statement. “By investing in these high growth areas, we can expand the breadth of our portfolio and attract new customers worldwide who depend on us to deliver world-class solutions,” he said. For Tech Data, the transaction greatly expands its data center solutions capabilities to make it more of an end-to-end technology solutions firm and gives it a foothold in Asia. The combined company will get about 3 percent of its revenue from the high-growth region when the transaction is complete. Avnet and Tech Data plan to partner on providing end-to-end IoT solutions. This is a second major transaction in the IT distributor space this year. In February, Ingram Micro, one of the world’s biggest IT distributors, agreed to be acquired by the Chinese conglomerate HNA Group for $6 billion. (Comment on this)
11:15p	Public Sector to Increase Cloud Spending in 2017: MeriTalk Brought to You by The WHIR If you are a cloud service provider targeting government agencies, MeriTalk’s latest report will bring welcome news: according to the new study, 82 percent of public sector cloud adopters say their agency will increase spending on cloud computing in 2017. The report, released Monday and underwritten by NetApp and Avnet Government Solutions, finds that public sector cloud adopters plan to nearly double cloud use from 35 percent up to 60 percent. Of course, it’s nearly impossible to talk about public cloud adoption without addressing one of the biggest challenges to cloud: security. Sixty-one percent of respondents said their agency or institution has privacy and security concerns, driving government cloud adopters to private cloud. According to the report, 64 percent of Federal agencies use private cloud, followed by state and local (54 percent) and higher education (50 percent). “Agencies and institutions must factor regulations, budget constraints, and the limitations of legacy systems – leaving them with little flexibility to respond to evolving mission demands,” Rob Stein, vice president, U.S. public sector, NetApp said in a statement. “Public sector adopters are looking to take advantage of the benefits of cloud, but they need a solution that allows them to manage, migrate, and secure their most valuable assets as needed.” Cost savings is a top driver for cloud adoption with 65 percent of Federal, 67 percent of state and local, and 59 percent of higher education institutions looking for cost savings when adopting public cloud. More than half of institutions and agencies look to cloud options first when considering new investments. Web hosting (82 percent), collaboration (82 percent), and backup services (81 percent) are the most common uses for cloud. For apps that handle sensitive information or are highly specialized, cloud adopters are more likely to select private over public cloud. While many public sector organizations are planning on adopting cloud over the next five years, MeriTalk said that few are actually prepared for the transition with less than half of cloud adopters assessing the required computing, network, and/or storage needs. Respondents said that email (41 percent) and backup services (36 percent) are still in need of updating before they can move to the cloud. This first ran at http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/public-sector-to-increase-cloud-spending-in-2017-meritalk (Comment on this)

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