Thursday, October 13th, 2016

Time	Event
12:00p	Amazon Wind Farm to Help Power Iron Mountain’s Underground Data Centers Iron Mountain, the company best known for its document storage and data center facilities in underground caverns, has become the fifth major US data center provider to make a big direct investment in renewable energy to power its operations. The company has agreed to buy 10 percent of energy that will be generated by the enormous Amazon wind farm that’s currently under construction in Texas. As the deal illustrates, big energy users, such as data center operators, can benefit from both energy cost savings that are now possible when making utility-scale power purchase agreements and from helping their customers meet their corporate sustainability goals. Iron Mountain said it expects the deal to help it save $1.5 million in costs and that its renewable energy efforts to date are helping it open new doors with customers. “We’ve discovered that it’s also helping us to open meaningful dialogue and collaboration opportunity with our customers who are seeking to understand and mitigate their own environmental impact,” Ty Ondatje, senior VP of corporate responsibility and chief diversity officer at Iron Mountain, said in a statement. Representatives from multiple major data center providers have said that big colocation customers are increasingly interested in data center services powered by renewable energy. A recent survey of colocation customers by Data Center Knowledge confirmed that renewable energy is playing a growing role in companies’ decision making when it comes to selecting data center providers. Read more: How Renewable Energy is Changing the Data Center Market Download the full report on the survey’s results here A recent Department of Energy study estimated that all US data centers consumed about 70 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2014, representing 2 percent of the country’s total energy consumption. Amazon announced the 253MW Amazon Wind Farm Texas in September. Built by Lincoln Clean Energy, the wind farm in Scurry County will consist of more than 110 turbines. Amazon itself has a massive international data center footprint that hosts its Amazon Web Services cloud, but, as Greenpeace senior corporate campaigner and analyst Gary Cook pointed out in an email to Data Center Knowledge, the company is likely to use energy generated by the future wind farm to offset energy consumption of its online marketplace and delivery operations as well as the brick-and-mortar retail stores it has started to open, rather than AWS. “That being said — that’s a lot of power, and while Amazon.com does have eight distribution facilities in the states, that’s a lot of lights and conveyors,” he added. “They could be positioning to make a claim for their retail operations, and biting off a big affordable chunk [of energy] in Texas to spread around.” See also: Here’s How Much Energy All US Data Centers Consume Iron Mountain expects its share of the farm’s capacity to produce up to 100,000MWh per year, which is enough to offset about one-third of the company’s entire energy consumption in the US. It’s enough to cover all 75 of its facilities in Texas and more, the company said. While analysts often include Iron Mountain in the group of publicly traded data center REITs, the Boston-based company does a lot more than the others on that list, who are all strictly data center providers. Started as a mushroom seller that grew its product in underground caverns in early 20th century, the company pivoted to underground document storage during the Cold War, when corporations and government agencies wanted to protect their records from a potential nuclear attack. In recent years, it converted some of the space in its underground and aboveground facilities in the Boston, Pittsburgh, and Kansas City markets for data center use. Today, the company’s specialization is end-to-end records management, be those records physical or digital. Iron Mountain is one of several data center giants who recently made big investments in renewable energy. Last year, Equinix, the world’s largest data center provider, signed three power purchase agreements with developers whose future wind and solar farms in California, Oklahoma, and Texas are expected to offset all energy its data centers in North America consume. Switch, the company that operates the massive SuperNAP data center campus in Las Vegas and that is currently building new campuses outside of Reno, Nevada, and outside of Grand Rapids, Michigan, has also made renewable energy deals to cover its operations in all three locations. See also: Why Switch is Suing Nevada and NV Energy Earlier this year, Digital Realty Trust, the San Francisco-based global data center services giant, also announced a power purchase agreement with a developer of a wind farm in Texas to offset energy consumption of all of its retail colocation (not wholesale) facilities in North America. The company also has a global renewable energy sourcing program for wholesale customers. Chicago-based QTS Realty Trust has invested in a smaller amount of capacity than the utility-scale PPAs signed by its competitors, but it has taken an even more direct approach. The company has built a 14MW solar plant across 50 acres in New Jersey to help power its data center in Princeton, occupied by McGraw Hill, the financial and education publishing giant. See also: Iron Mountain Joins Obama’s Data Center Energy Challenge (Comment on this)
4:27p	Stop Thinking of Compliance as a Checkbox Matt Ploessel is a Security Architect for the Markley Group. There is no arguing that a company’s data is one of its most valuable assets, especially in the financial sector. And considering financial institutions are entrusted with keeping company financials, account information, cardholder data and other personal information secure and private, implementing the proper security solutions and protocols is of the upmost importance. In fact, it needs to be viewed as a critical business imperative. So why is it that so many financial organizations believe that by simply being compliant with industry regulations and requirements, they have also protected themselves against any potential vulnerabilities and security threats? Many of today’s executives view compliance as a check-box – and move on after the main requirements are met. However, financial compliance standards only scrape the surface of what proper protection should be – and by equating compliance with security and a belief that they’re protected, organizations are missing the danger directly in front of them. At most, compliance regulations should just be the minimum requirements or the starting point for an organization’s comprehensive security strategy. No one would want to enter into a dangerous situation without having as much protection as possible. You’d be needlessly increasing the possibility that something bad would happen. The same thing is true with the security of your organization’s data. While you may feel safe because you’ve checked off the appropriate box, you’re still vulnerable to other security risks. Assuming you’re protected because you’re meeting a requirement is too risky and ignoring potential dangers. It’s like visiting Jurassic Park and announcing you’ll be safe no matter what because you’re wearing your seatbelt during a park tour. Security is key to every line of business today – and is simply too important to leave to assumptions and chance. Be Proactive When it comes to security, it’s vital to be proactive. Organizations should look to adopt proactive controls, such as regular vendor audit mandates, to ensure that the organization is continually discovering and implementing the newest and strongest security solutions that work in conjunction with their compliance requirements, whether it be PCI compliance for a financial organization or HIPAA compliance for a healthcare organization. On the security side, with the epidemic of data breaches and ransomware situations facing companies today, it is more important than ever before that you have the strongest protections in place – and that you (or your vendors) are keeping watch of the latest vulnerabilities, so you can be sure you have protections in place. A regular questionnaire can be helpful to make sure your organization and vendor stay aligned on the objectives most important to the organization in the future – and that you are protected and aligned with all future regulatory changes and revisions. Look to Your Vendors for Compliance Assistance Many data storage vendors today offer compliance assistance, which can help transition non-compliant companies into compliance. Vendors that offer compliance assistance have the expertise and knowledge to meet the appropriate security needs to safeguard your organization. With regulations constantly being changed and updated, this is helpful as companies without a resident “compliance expert” often are unaware of these updates, and therefore don’t implement the changes necessary to maintain compliance. Selecting a vendor that already has compliance expertise allows your organization to allocate that time to focus on what matters most to the organization’s success. While many vendors offer compliance assistance, it’s important to vet each potential vendor to ensure their compliance capabilities meet your industry’s requirements and that they are willing to take on the liability in case something goes wrong. For example, the PCI compliance requirements financial institutions must adhere to are different than the HIPAA compliance requirements healthcare organizations need to follow. Companies’ should check that their vendor has a successful track record in meeting and maintaining compliance across industries, in addition to specializing in the company’s specific industry, to justify the vendor’s ability to accurately safeguard your organization. Another important aspect to make sure your company stays ahead of the curve is to constantly assess emergency security risks and threats. One of the easiest ways to achieve this is with pre-determined metrics surrounding the organization’s security needs that can be used as a benchmark. While you can’t always count on a vendor to inspect everything and have them prove they are doing it right, you can keep track of this through internal metrics. Conclusion Checking off your compliance checkbox isn’t the same thing as having a proven security strategy in place or meeting a reliable security maturity level. Re-evaluate your data storage vendor and make sure they are providing regular audits to highlight how they are keeping your data safe, beyond the basic industry compliance standards. This will ensure your vendor has earned your business, knowing that you’ll be on top of the latest industry security trends and will be constantly keeping your customer, employee and company data secure. 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)
4:48p	Tiny Bank-Beating Trading Firm Doesn’t Use Any Human Traders (Bloomberg) — One of the world’s fastest-growing trading shops doesn’t have any traders. XTX Markets Ltd. has emerged as a foreign-exchange powerhouse, relying on programmers and mathematicians to fuel its rise into the global top five earlier this year. Now, after becoming a formidable player in currencies, XTX has its sights set on growing in stocks, commodities and bond markets. But in a world where the difference between profit and loss can be tiny fractions of a second, XTX says it relies more on smarts than speed. Instead of building microwave networks to ferret out prices a microsecond before anyone else, XTX uses mathematical models that are tuned with massive data sets. It says its technology has computing power comparable to some of the world’s top supercomputers. XTX’s rise comes amid a market shift: In an arms race where just about anyone can lease ultra-fast trading systems, it’s harder than ever to get an advantage simply by being fast. That may have opened up an opportunity for firms with sophisticated statistical models, says Greenwich Associates. As XTX co-chief Zar Amrolia sees it, a key trial for the London-based firm comes when it competes in even more markets that are dominated by high-frequency traders, particularly in the U.S. Speed vs. Smarts “Can a smart, machine-learning approach beat probably a less sophisticated algo which is faster?” Amrolia said. “That’ll be a really exciting test.” XTX’s other Co-Chief Executive Officer Alex Gerko, 36, points out that some of its 74 employees would still call themselves traders. But their jobs aren’t really recognizable to the humans who used to fill football-field-sized trading floors. “We don’t have any human decision making in trading,” said Amrolia. “We do have trading analysts who look at the algorithms and see if they’re functioning well in the market and doing what we designed them to do.” Proprietary traders haven’t submitted completely to their machines. There’s still an element of human interaction with the trading systems, said  Mark Spanbroek, vice chairman of the FIA European Principal Traders Association. “It’s like autopilot,” said Spanbroek, who formerly worked at automated trader Getco Europe Ltd. “The pilots are sitting there to navigate it through bad weather.” Instead of old-school traders, XTX has analysts like the one who stepped in when the pound plunged last week. At about 12:07 a.m. in London, an employee saw multiple alerts showing the British currency had strayed way outside its normal range. The pound’s early morning ride — at one point a 6.1 percent drop — triggered XTX’s risk controls and halted trading. Flash Crash After consulting senior staffers, the alerts were overridden shortly after and XTX fired up its trading algorithms again. Platform operators including FastMatch Inc. say electronic specialists have lately provided more bids and offers — in other words, much-needed liquidity — than banks when trading goes haywire. While profits in some bank businesses have evaporated, they’re going to remain vital for global finance, says Greenwich Associates’ Kevin McPartland. XTX ranked fourth in spot currency trading in Euromoney Institutional Investor Plc’s annual survey, but was ninth overall, well behind Citigroup Inc. at No. 1. Electronic specialists Tower Research Capital LLC, Jump Trading LLC and Virtu Financial Inc. also made the top 50. “The parts of the banks’ trading business that have become less profitable since the financial crisis is where the principal trading firms are stepping in,” said McPartland, head of research for market structure and technology at the firm. Banks do have advantages — they’re armed with immense resources and have their own top quants. Wall Street also has cutting-edge technology and can copy others’ lucrative strategies to push smaller firms out of business. An upstart’s success hangs on being more nimble and innovative. Even before the pound’s plunge, XTX had argued that liquidity was evaporating because balance sheets — the market-making shock absorber known as inventory — had evaporated, too. Bank of America Corp.’s analysts said last week that foreign-exchange transactions have a 60 percent greater impact on prices than just two years ago. XTX’s balance sheet is part of its pitch. XTX doesn’t always have to dart in and out of trades because, more like a traditional bank market maker, it takes risk using capital. Prices change in microseconds in some markets, but the firm touts holding periods that can last 10 minutes or more. It has 100 million pounds ($122 million) of regulatory capital. XTX isn’t the only electronic trading company that takes trading risk, but doing so is a change from the past when most such firms didn’t commit capital at all, Greenwich Associates says. KCG Holdings Inc. has about $500 million of regulatory capital and shareholder equity of $1.45 billion. Speed Bumps XTX executives also favor speed bumps that neutralize the advantages of the fastest trading firms, arguing that some lightening-fast trading does little more than arbitrage prices between markets. Such strategies could end up costing an investor because subsequent trades will be more expensive, XTX says. A challenge for XTX is finding and recruiting talent to create its intellectual fuel for trading. The competition to lure the world’s top mathematicians and technologists isn’t just against Wall Street and other computerized traders, as XTX is now also up against tech giants like Google. Forget MBAs, XTX is looking for uncommon traits like “extreme quantitative skills and a good understanding of technology,” said Amrolia, 53, who has a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Oxford. The competition between trading firms and Silicon Valley startups for top talent is a relatively new phenomenon, says Denis Ignatovich, former head of the central-risk trading desk at Deutsche Bank AG, where he started in 2007. Startup Gold “When I was getting into this industry, things like Facebook seemed so out there,” said Ignatovich, who went on to help found an artificial intelligence firm called Aesthetic Integration. “It seemed random for someone to go and strike gold with a startup.” And if foosball tables, PlayStations and other tech firm perks aren’t enough to draw the brightest minds, XTX gives most employees equity in the company. Ultimately, however, talent will go there to prove themselves, learn from some of the best minds and, hopefully, make some money, Ignatovich said. If it works, the new breed of trading firms perhaps someday will make even more bank operations go the way of MySpace or VHS. “They will hone their market making skills and we will see a number of them become big established names,” said Niki Beattie, a Merrill Lynch alum who now heads adviser Market Structure Partners. “Over time, yes, these guys can replace what banks did.” (Comment on this)
4:54p	New Hostway CEO Sees Huge Opportunity in Mid-Market Enterprise Space Brought to You by The WHIR Emil Sayegh, Hostway Services CEO, has only been at the company since September, but he already has lots of plans for growing its customer base, particularly in the mid-market enterprise space. Sayegh, who spent nearly five years at Codero Hosting as CEO and president, said that Hostway is well-positioned to capture this market. “In the next 12 months we’ll be focused on getting the Hostway story out to the market and to customers, and attracting more customers to the Hostway family,” Sayegh said in an interview with The WHIR. “We’re going to do that through really figuring out how to take our enterprise offerings to the next level.” Part of this includes focusing on compliance, including solutions around HIPAA and PCI, but it will also include more packaged apps like Magento and WordPress, Sayegh said. He said that part of Hostway’s differentiation is its data center footprint which has locations in the U.S. and Canada. “There’s a gap in the market for mid-market enterprises where they really don’t want to manage their Magento installation; they don’t want to manage their ecommerce sites anymore,” he said. “I think Hostway could come in and fill that gap in the market with a really robust, enterprise-grade, grown up enterprise offering for Magento and WordPress.” Hostway’s approach is certainly part of a larger trend seen in the hosting industry where companies who were previously generalists have really carved out a niche, targeting certain customers with specialized technology offerings. Over the past few years WordPress in particular has been more of a focus for hosting providers such as GoDaddy. “Everyone is having good success; the big companies in this space are having good success. It’s not all AWS, it’s not all Azure, this is going to be coopetition, but you still have to specialize,” he says. “The winners in this market are going to be the ones that pick the vertical and specialize. If you go too broad you’re not going to be recognized for something that you’re a specialist in.” In order to offer this specialization, Hostway’s team has acquired certifications and expertise along the verticals of e-commerce and compliance to serve customers. “The people at Hostway really are top notch. I’ve been in this industry for a long time and I’ve had the pleasure to work with a lot of them,” he said. “If you start looking these customers require – it’s not all cookie cutter,” Sayegh said. “We have a very strong architecture, solution engineering team that helps these customers figure out what technologies they need for these verticalized offerings.” This first ran at http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/new-hostway-ceo-sees-huge-opportunity-in-mid-market-enterprise-space (Comment on this)

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