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Tuesday, January 10th, 2017
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| 5:03a | Switch Gets All A’s, Four Providers Fail Green Data Center Test by Greenpeace The green data center report cards are in, and not all data center providers will be proud to show theirs to parents. Greenpeace gave four out of 14 data center and CDN service providers overall failing grades for efforts to clean up the energy mix that powers their data centers. One of the four is an American company – DuPont Fabros Technology – and three are Korean: Korea Telecom, LG, and SK. The environmental activist organization rewarded the efforts of Las Vegas-based Switch with an A (the only A on the list), while Silicon Valley-based colocation giant Equinix received a B, and San Francisco’s Digital Realty Trust is bringing home a C. Greenpeace publishes its Clicking Clean report periodically in an effort to pressure the biggest data center operators and users – companies responsible for building much of the internet infrastructure – to source renewable energy for their facilities, invest in renewable energy generation, and use their influence as big energy customers with utilities and regulators to bring more renewable energy on the grid and make it easier to obtain. Data centers in the US collectively consumed 70 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2014 or 2 percent of the country’s total energy consumption, according to the latest data available from the US Department of Energy. Growth of the industry’s overall energy consumption has slowed down substantially, due primarily to gains in energy efficiency. Read more: Here’s How Much Energy All US Data Centers Consume In recent years the price of renewable energy has come down enough to make it at least competitive with coal energy, while more and more corporations have set renewable energy goals for their operations, boosting demand for renewables powering the data centers they outsource their IT infrastructure to. But while the current market environment is favorable for green data centers, the Greenpeace report warns, the incoming US presidential administration may slow that momentum, with President-elect Donald Trump having promised to “roll back climate policies and revive the use of coal.” Read more: How Renewable Energy is Changing the Data Center Market Because the incoming government will be hostile to efforts to combat climate change and at best agnostic on renewables, the advocacy portion of Greenpeace’s scoring system will become especially important, Gary Cook, the organization’s senior corporate campaigner and lead author of the report, said in an interview with Data Center Knowledge. “Advocacy in the coming years is going to be a more important thing,” he said. “Hopefully more companies will continue to step up.” Here’s the scorecard for colocation and CDN providers from the Clicking Clean 2017 report by Greenpeace (click to enlarge):
The scorecard for data center and CDN providers is one of nine scorecards in the report, grouping companies by the nature of their business. The report card that’s sure to attract the most attention is the one for the biggest cloud, internet, and IT companies, such as Amazon Web Services, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Alibaba, Baidu, Oracle, and IBM. Google, Facebook, and Apple lead this pack, each receiving an A as the final grade. Tencent and Baidu are the two Fs on the list. There are also separate scorecards for video and audio streaming services, messaging, search, social media, blogs, and e-commerce. Here’s the scorecard for the biggest cloud and IT companies from the Clicking Clean 2017 report by Greenpeace (click to enlarge):
Switch, operator of the massive Switch SuperNAP data center campuses in Las Vegas that’s also building near Reno, Nevada, and outside of Grand Rapids, Michigan, appears in the report for the first time. The company has pledged to power 100 percent of its data center operations with renewable energy. It spent two years in court fighting for permission to leave utility NV Energy in Nevada so it can source renewables from other generators and secured a supply of renewable energy for its future Michigan campus. Greenpeace praised Equinix for having been the first major colocation provider to commit to being 100 percent renewable, but said the company’s efforts to meet that goal to date have been subpar. The report criticized the company’s claim that its two wind energy deals in Texas and Oklahoma would make its entire North American operations renewable. It characterized the claim as “a significant step backwards, and far below best practice demonstrated by Switch, Apple, and other sector leaders who have deployed renewable electricity at a local or regional level for each facility.” Cook acknowledged that Switch has a much smaller footprint than the likes of Equinix and Digital Realty, global players who need to procure a lot more renewable energy to power their operations. We’ll be doing more coverage of the report throughout the week. You can download the full report here: Clicking Clean: Who is Winning the Race to Build a Green Internet? |
| 4:45p | Networks Are a Highway – Ride It to the Enterprise Future Sean Goodyear is Product Manager for Legrand. To understand the future of networking, you need only look at the trajectory for the exploding Internet of Things (IoT) market and its “need for speed.” Gartner estimated that, at the end of 2016, more than 6.4 billion connected “things” would be in use. All these tablets, smartphones, and other devices are pulling data and interacting with data centers, meaning we face a continuously growing demand for both speed and bandwidth. Enterprise computing is being stretched to the limit by IoT, and the capacity of earlier-generation networks is fast proving inadequate to the demands of today – and certainly of tomorrow. If you think of networking as a highway, then you would want to expand the current 2-lane thoroughfare into an 8-lane expressway. However you want to think of it, the point is that networks must be designed to handle much more than their current capability. And businesses that adapt their network accordingly will be better positioned to succeed. But such intelligent networks require unified wired and wireless access to accommodate the explosion of devices in the IoT. Just as the global automotive supply chain keeps up with expanding vehicle technology and applications, networking products are evolving and expanding to reflect the IoT expansion. Take switch technologies, for example. Right now they are dominated by products in the range of 10G. Within two to three years, however, 40G switches should completely take over from 10G products. From there? Well, 100G switches are beginning to ship right now…look for them to displace 10G and 40G switches soon after 2020. And you can expect this most recent displacement to happen much more quickly than the adoption of 40G switches (over 10G). For some, the switchover is already underway. Tech giants like Microsoft and Facebook are currently shifting from 40G to 100G network fabrics in their data centers. Amazon and Google are presumably close behind in ramp – from 40G Ethernet network fabrics up to 200G, 400G, and higher as soon as possible. So new products delivering the future are just now starting to be seen. They’ve been around, but are only now becoming more adopted – and they are expensive. They will eventually follow the oft-seen downward curve in pricing, but right now enterprise customers are paying the price to get the latest and greatest technology. Cloud computing storage companies, large financial institutions,and search engine businesses are primary customers for this new technology and are willing to invest a premium for next-generation offerings. These customers will pay high rates because they require a next-generation network that is strategically developed and optimized for the most current requirements. This next-gen network is unified and consists of wired and wireless, virtual private network (VPN), building, and energy control. Vendors selling next-generation network products must understand the market transitions to help customers enter this new era of adoption. Even though much of the technology is new, smart vendors will maintain a consistent posture as far as guaranteeing features, application testing, etc. The winners will be those vendors that can provide a robust product offering that supports enterprise networks now and into the +400G future. Opinions expressed in the article above do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Data Center Knowledge and Penton. 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. |
| 5:03p | Kaminario Doubles Fundraising Goal as Flash Storage Market Grows (Bloomberg) — Kaminario Inc., a flash-storage company that develops its products in Israel, closed a fundraising round of $75 million — nearly double the expected amount — and will use the money to expand in Asia and Europe and boost technology development to gain market share. The Needham, Massachusetts-based company competes with multinational giants such as Dell Technologies Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., and counts Priceline Group Inc., Kenneth Cole Productions Inc. and Telefonica SA among its customers. Kaminario says its technology, which delivers storage solutions for online retail, gaming and finance companies, is luring customers away from the larger companies. “We are growing exponentially, doubling the company’s top line in the past four years,” founder and Chief Executive Officer Dani Golan said in a telephone interview. He attributed the company’s success to building flash storage “from the ground up,” instead of adding it to legacy products as competitors did. “It’s really about the ability to access data faster and more consistently,” he said. Global market intelligence firm International Data Corp. expects global sales of flash storage, which uses the type of fast computer memory that’s found in smartphones, to rise to $7.7 billion in 2020 from $4.2 billion last year and make up 70 percent of the enterprise storage market. Beyond the industry giants, other flash storage companies include Pure Storage Inc. and Nimble Storage Inc. A third, SolidFire Inc., was acquired by NetApp for $870 million last year. Kaminario, which has raised a total of $218 million from Waterwood Group, Sequoia Capital, Lazarus Management Co. and Silicon Valley Bank, among others, would like to stay private “as long as we can,” Golan said. “We aren’t in a hurry to go public, but this is certainly the direction.” In an August report, IDC said Kaminario, which currently gets most of its sales from North America, was well-positioned to gain market share in Europe due its commitment to low-cost systems and innovation. “The storage market has always been very aggressive, with very entrenched players,” said Stu Miniman, senior analyst at Wikibon, an open-source research community. But for companies like Priceline, Kaminario is “well positioned and has a good story” because its product is easy to scale as website traffic grows. “They’re hitting the big guys’ blind spot,” Miniman said. Some of the money raised in the latest round will go to integrating emerging hardware technologies. The company is also collaborating with hardware companies like Intel Corp. and Samsung Electronics Co. to ensure when new products hit the market, “we can adapt very fast,” Golan said. The funds also will go toward boosting sales in Asia, particularly China. “The market is very early, and no one is clearly king of the hill yet,” said Steve Duplessie, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Inc. Kaminario must convince buyers to choose them over more established players, he said, but added that they’re succeeding at that so far. “If they can take advantage of their technical advantages before the other guys catch up, they absolutely could be the next big thing,” Duplessie said. |
| 5:15p | Health Chain Pays $475,000 HIPAA Penalty for Delay in Telling Victims, Authorities  Brought to you by MSPmentor The first HIPAA breach penalty of 2017 is calling attention to a lesser-discussed aspect of the federal laws regulating protected health information (PHI): The HIPAA Breach Notification Rule. Presence Health of Illinois has agreed to pay $475,000 to settle a case alleging the healthcare network waited more than 100 days to notify patients, authorities and the media that a breach of private medical information had occurred. Under HIPAA rules, covered entities must notify victims “without unreasonable delay and within 60 days” of discovering a breach. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights (OCR) must be notified simultaneously, and any breach involving more than 500 individuals must also be publicized in major media outlets where the victims reside. “Covered entities need to have a clear policy and procedures in place to respond to the Breach Notification Rule’s timeliness requirements,” OCR director Jocelyn Samuels said in today’s statement. “Individuals need prompt notice of a breach of their unsecured PHI so they can take action that could help mitigate any potential harm caused by the breach.” Presence Health operates hospitals, doctors’ offices, long-term care, senior living, mental health and hospice facilities. MSPs continue to realize lucrative opportunities managing networks, data and compliance issues for clients in the healthcare industry. But the attractive business opportunities can carry substantial risk in the event protected health information is mishandled. HIPAA requires third parties that handle electronic PHI, or ePHI, to be formally designated as “business associates.” Last year, HIPAA-covered entities and their business associates faced an enforcement crackdown that resulted in a combined $23.5 million in settlement fines, up from just $6.2 million in all of 2015. Until today, all of the settlement payments stemmed from violations of the HIPAA “Security Rule,” which governs how ePHI is to be handled securely. Monday’s announcement marks the first-ever settlement payment for violation of the HIPAA “Breach Notification Rule.” In the Presence Health case, OCR was notified on Jan. 31, 2014, that paper copies of operating room schedules had gone missing on Oct. 22, 2013, from the Presence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Joliet, Ill. As a result, PHI of 836 people was compromised, including names, birthdates, medical record numbers, dates and types of procedures, surgeon names and types of anesthesia. OCR also determined that victims were not properly notified in several other breaches that involved fewer than 500 individuals. Presence Health blamed the delays on “miscommunications between its workforce members.” OCR’s full guidance on breach notifications is available on the agency’s website. This article first appeared here, on MSPmentor. |
| 11:24p | Carter Validus Buys Navisite’s Boston Data Center for $37M One of the two Carter Validus REITs has acquired a data center in Andover, Massachusetts, fully leased to two tenants, one of whom is the Charter Communications-owned hosting and managed cloud provider Navisite. The REIT paid $37 million for the 135,000-square foot facility outside of Boston. Carter Validus Mission Critical REIT II acquired its first property in 2014 and today owns close to 50 properties. Like its sister company Carter Validus Mission Critical REIT, the real estate investment trust buys fully leased healthcare facilities and data centers in secondary US markets. Its recent acquisitions include a data center in the Los Angeles market leased to AT&T, a Somerset, New Jersey, data center leased to Datapipe, and a Franklin, Tennessee, data center leased to Peak 10. Navisite shares the Andover facility with an IT company that provides weather forecasting solutions to clients around the world. Carter Validus did not specify the second tenant’s name. |
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