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Wednesday, September 28th, 2016
- Data centers help harness the power of data and compute. Your data center is part of the cloud; there’s no question about it. Now, whether you’re leveraging your own data center, a colocation provider, or a dedicated data center service, you can still harness the power of your infrastructure for content delivery. Traditionally, housing massive amounts of cache or data just didn’t make sense, or was too expensive. Now, you can create low-cost (and even free) CDN solutions to help control how and where data lives. Most of all, you can use data center interconnects to integrate with other big CDN partners like Amazon CloudFront, Akamai, Azure CDN, Level 3, Rackspace Cloud Files, Yottaa, and many others.
- CDNs will become a bigger part of the traditional data center in the future. As mentioned earlier, you can integrate CDN solutions into your own data center, or you can create partnerships where you extend your data. Technologies like CloudFlare offer customers free DNS services, into which you can integrate things like proxy, DDoS protection, and CDN systems. CloudFlare, for example, will cache content to its edge locations – to act as a CDN – and then reverse proxy requests and deliver cached content directly from its ecosystem. If you have multiple data centers, you can use your own caching mechanisms or even partner with a CDN to help you deliver the data. The point is that you have options; you don’t have to host all of your data with one CDN provider.
- Your data center can become a CDN for your business. As mentioned earlier, it’s easier than ever to create powerful CDN environments. And, as more organizations grow their requirements around data, CDN technologies will become even more impactful. If you’re leveraging some type of cloud ecosystem today, there’s a good chance that your cloud provider can offer CDN services as well. Similarly, you can create your own CDN options which specifically aim to optimize business operations. Remember, your data center is an integral part of the business and holds your IT’s most critical resources. If you’re heavily distributed, you can leverage your existing data center sites to create caching engines and enable CDN operations. Similarly, partnering with a CDN provider can unlock the delivery power of your data center and further enhance the overall business.
| Time | Event |
| 12:00p | Taking Data to the Edge: CDN’s Role Grows in the Data Center The first, and probably most important, point to understand is that there is simply more data traversing today’s internet and cloud ecosystems. At the cusp of the digital revolution, businesses and individual users are using more content, richer applications, and improved experiences. At the core of this technological shift is data and our capability to deliver and control its distribution. A recent Cisco report indicated that metro traffic surpassed long-haul traffic in 2015 and will account for 66% of total IP traffic by 2019. Globally, metro traffic will grow nearly twice as fast as long-haul traffic from 2014 to 2019. The higher growth in metro networks is due in part to the increasingly significant role of content delivery networks (CDNs), which bypass long-haul links and deliver traffic to metro and regional backbones. Furthermore, the report states that content delivery networks will carry over half of internet traffic by 2019. Globally, 62% of all internet traffic will cross content delivery networks by 2019, up from 39 percent in 2014. What we’re seeing is a rapid growth in data utilization and the need to consume this data efficiently. The challenge becomes doing all of this as efficiently as possible while containing costs. Many experts will agree: this is one of the prime reasons we’re seeing a huge boom in CDN platforms. Simply put, we’re taking more and more data to the edge and CDNs are guiding the way. A Growing MarketA recent MarketsAndMarkets report indicated that CDN vendors help organizations in efficiently delivering content to their end users with better QoE and QoS. They store their customers’ content near its target users and secure it from the attacks such as DDoS. This segment is expected to grow from $4.95 billion in 2015 to $15.73 Billion in 2020, the report estimates. These shifts in the ways data is consumed and delivered are changing the way we utilize data center technologies. In 2014, Apple announced its own CDN; Level 3 and Verizon have CDN offerings; even Netflix has its own CDN coupled with its Open Connect platform, through which it partners with ISPs to deliver content more efficiently. There are many others in the mix as well. This has placed added pressure on incumbent CDN providers like Akamai, and there is plenty of competition in the CDN market, where the data center also has its place: Cisco’s report pointed out that CDN traffic will deliver over half of all internet video traffic by 2019. And, by 2019, 72% of all Internet video traffic will cross content delivery networks, compared with 57% in 2014. Moving forward, organizations will need to find better ways to deliver rich content. This can be as simple as training videos for sales people, all the way to rich media being consumed as a service. The point is that you can create CDN environment both within a partner ecosystem and on your own. Still, optimization around network and content delivery is a must. If this is new ground for your organization and IT team, work with a partner; it’ll be worth it. |
| 6:14p | Banks Lead Charge to Adopt AI for Business, IBM CEO Rometty Says (Bloomberg) — Banks are positioned to pioneer the use of artificial intelligence to help them retain clients in an era of technological disruption, IBM Chief Executive Officer Ginni Rometty said at a conference in Geneva. “Financial services, I believe, can and will lead the world into this era,” Rometty said at the Sibos conference on Wednesday, sharing a panel with Sergio Ermotti, CEO of UBS Group AG. “The ultimate competitive advantage is being cognitive.” International Business Machines Corp. has touted its “cognitive solutions” unit and its Watson artificial intelligence platform as crucial to future growth. Revenue at that unit increased 3.5 percent to $4.7 billion in the second quarter, following five straight quarterly declines, the company reported in July. While IBM hasn’t broken out Watson sales, it makes up only a small portion of the total. UBS and other global banks are turning to technology to mine data for insight on customers that could help the lenders fend off the encroachment into finance by Internet giants such as Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Apple Inc. Banks are also responding to the threat of fintech startups that offer cheaper and quicker services in areas such as payments and investment management. See also: Intel Building Next-Gen Xeon Phi for Artificial Intelligence UBS PilotsRometty said banks including Edinburgh-based Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and Brazil’s Banco Bradesco SA are using Watson, which analyzes unstructured data to provide insights in various industries. Financial-services companies need systems with “augmented intelligence” to remain competitive, she said. UBS embraces technology and is implementing ideas harnessed from the fintech startup competitions the bank runs to find the most promising innovators, Ermotti said. He expressed skepticism about the potential for technology companies to replace banks one day. “If anybody wants to be regulated as a financial institutions, please join the party,” he said. “But it’s not going to be so easy.” Financial services is one of IBM’s largest industries and is an early adopter of Watson business solutions, Steve Tomasco, a spokesman for IBM, said in an e-mail. IBM is working w it h UBS on “several cognitive pilots,” he said, declining to provide re venue figures for the sector. See also: Why Nvidia Gifted Elon Musk’s AI Non-Profit Its Latest Supercomputer |
| 7:11p | Microsoft Ignite: Windows Server 2016 Launches, Along With Host of Third-Party Releases  Brought to you by IT Pro There’s been a lot to talk at Ignite about the launch of Windows Server 2016. Even though that wasn’t a surprise (we noted that this was coming back in July), there’s a lot of excitement for the new features and extensibility in the latest offering — but Microsoft isn’t making all the news around it. I’ve had a number of vendors reach out about updated support for Windows Servers and new, related features, and I’m working to catch up with several of them throughout the rest of Ignite. In the meantime, here’s some of the more interesting announcements I’ve seen with Windows Server 2016 ties. ThreatSTOP unveils its firewall for Microsoft Windows Server 2016 Now that you’ve got Windows Sever 2016 all set up with your critical business data, you want to be extra sure it doesn’t get out. Using its updated DNS Firewall, ThreatStop’s Windows Server 2016 customers can now automatically block outbound communications with threat actors’ command and control, dead-letter-drop, and dropper/infection infrastructure, preventing data theft and system compromise. If you’re in town, they’ll be doing a joint presentation with Microsoft on Friday. Cavium announces QLogic Ethernet and Fibre Channel adapters now fully support Windows Server 2016 What good is a hybrid or private cloud if you can’t access it instantly? Cavium’s FastLinQ 10/25/40/50/100GbE Ethernet Adapters and Enhanced Gen 5 (16GFC) and Gen 6 (32GFC) Fibre Channel Adapters now support Windows Server 2016, with a focus on enabling application acceleration and Software Defined Networking and Software Defined Storage capabilities. Read the full release here DataCore announces free keys for its Parallel I/O-powered DataCore Hyper-converged Virtual SAN software for MVPs Open up the virtual goodie back, because DataCore has a freebie for Microsoft MVPs: The company announced that, to tie in with Microsoft Server 2016’s official release, it’s releasing free non-production licenses for MVPs to play around with its Hyper-converged Virtual SAN software. Great for those looking to dip their toes into parallel processing or decide if it’s the right solution to their business needs. Details here. Chelsio showcases Windows Server 2016 Storage Replica using RDMA over Ethernet Always have a backup is one of the first rules in IT, but Chelsio is hoping it can at least remove some of the burden. At Ignite, it demonstrated how its iWARP RDMA adapters could help replicate Windows Server 2016 Storage Replica (SR) at 40Gbps, over a 50Km fiber loop. AppSense showcases new migration tools Before you can take advantage of everything that Windows Server 2016 has to offer, of course, you need to migrate to it — which can be one of the biggest challenges of all. There are no silver bullets, but AppSense announced plenty of ammunition with new migration tools for not just Windows Server 2016, but also Office 365 and Windows 10. Read details here. I know there are a few announcements still out there, so please send over what I missed to michael.morisy@penton.com, and we’ll continue to be reporting live from Ignite. This first ran at http://windowsitpro.com/ignite/windows-s |
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