Displaying items by tag: data center

The US has been persistent in its global campaign against Huawei and some other Chinese tech giants such as WeChat and TikTok.

Emerging reports have been pointing towards renewed pressure on South Korea and a number of European operators to replace cloud infrastructure and facilities which were supplied by Chinese vendors.

It has been reported that the US has urged Korean authorities to subscribe to its Clean Network initiative, an initiative that was received with a great deal of criticism a few months ago, amidst a call between the two nations’ politicians.

It has been disclosed that Korea left it up to private companies to decide what to do with their equipment and which vendor to use.

For some time now, the US has been carrying out a long-running campaign against Huawei with regards to its 5G equipment. This has drastically affected the supply chain of operators across the world. The US has been relentless in trying to persuade its allies in Europe to also scrap Chinese vendors’ cloud infrastructure, including but not limited to Huawei.

US representatives recently met with Deutsche Telekom and Masmovil to raise security concerns in relation to data center and cloud infrastructure provided by Chinese vendors.

This comes as the US ramped up its efforts to influence tech policies across the rest of the world. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and US Agency for International Development (USAID) signed a memorandum of understanding in an effort to ensure that developing countries avoid working with “untrusted vendors” and encourage them to use “open, interoperable, reliable and secure” infrastructure.

However, despite the US’s efforts to undermine Huawei and other Chinese vendors, there is still no conclusive evidence that justifies their actions to target and harm their business abroad.

US technology colossus Apple is reportedly renegading on a previous commitment that they made to the Irish government on the construction of $1 billion data center in rural Ireland. Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has publicly disclosed that Apple CEO Tim Cook will no longer commit to the ambitious project.

However, the Taoiseach stressed that Dublin would do everything necessary in order to keep the project alive and facilitate whatever Apple needs to see the data center constructed. Apple initially disclosed its intentions to erect the facility in a rural location in the West of Ireland in February 2015. Its decision to go to a rural location was to take advantage of green energy sources located nearby.

However, the project has been subject to lengthy delays due to a number of planning objections over the last two years, and now Apple is eyeing up other potential location for the construction of its new data center. Varadkar met Apple’s CEO, but admitted that Cook did not commit to the proceeding with the project.

The Taoiseach said, “We didn’t get a start date, or a definite commitment or anything like that, but I did stress to Apple that the government would do anything within our power to facilitate the resumption of the project.”

Ireland’s Prime Minister is currently touring the US meeting potential new investors. Ireland relies heavily on foreign multinational companies like Apple for the creation of one in every 10 jobs created across the economy and sees major investments such as data centers as a means of securing their presence in the country.

Apple declined to commit when pressed on whether they remained committed to the project. A similar Apple center which was announced at the same time in Denmark is set to begin operations later this year, whilst Apple also announced in July that it would build its second EU data center in the Nordic region.

The government has said it is considering amending its planning laws to include data centers as strategic infrastructure, thus allowing them to get through the planning process much more quickly. However, such legislation is expected to be met with opposition by those within parliament.

Ireland has a checkered history when it comes to planning permission and previous governments have been brought down due to shady financial agreements between developers and politicians. A change in legislation to facilitate Apple’s attempts to construct their data center is not likely to be well received by the general public still dismayed at the country’s refusal to accept an EU ruling that Apple owed the state €13 billion in unpaid taxes.

Intel launched its new Intel Xeon Scalable processors on July 26. The product provides businesses with “breakthrough performance” to handle tasks such as real-time analytics, virtualized infrastructure and high-performance computing. Half a million of the processors have already been sold to AT&T and others.

The processors will drive “megatrends” such as cloud, analytics and 5G, said Firas Alfanney, Intel’s Data Center Group Sales Director for ME, Turkey, Africa and Russia, at a press conference in Dubai. “All of these trends are driven by data,” he said. “Today, smartphones are generating 30 megabytes per day, and a PC generates about 90 megabytes. When connected cars come into play, they will generate 40 terabytes per day. Data is increasing throughout all ecosystems.”

Businesses need to transform with this massive data growth, he said, in order to keep up with customer demand and provide the best services. For example, hybrid cloud is being promoted within the industry to give enterprises the flexibility to choose between private on-premise cloud and using some public cloud. This is going to be the trend in the future, Firas claims, and Intel’s new processors are the built for big data.

“At Intel we have been talking a lot about industry transformation,” Firas said, “The transformation of old industries adopting new technologies.” For example, farmers today now use drone technology, sensors and satellite imagery to assist them in meeting strong demand. Even in retail, sensors are used to help monitor stock. Data center is the core to support these megatrends, he said.

“Data center and network infrastructure is undergoing massive transformations to support emerging use cases like precision medicine, artificial intelligence and agile network services paving the path to 5G,” said Navin Shenoy, executive vice president and general manager of the Intel Data Center Group. “Intel Xeon Scalable processors represent the biggest data center advancement in a decade,” he said.

The processors are optimized to meet the wide range of performance demands in data centers and communications networks, offering up to 28 cores and up to 6 terabytes of system memory (4-socket systems), and scale to support 2-socket through 8-socket systems and beyond, powering entry-level workloads to the most mission-critical applications.

The processors are also “scalable” and are available at different levels to match the different sizes of enterprises. It’s not “one size fits all” Firas said. The Bronze level processor is for “light tasks” which moves up to Silver for “moderate tasks” and then Gold and Platinum which are “optimized for widest range of evolving/multi workloads”. The Platinum level processors have “scalable performance, hardware enhanced security, and advanced RAS.”

The general availability announcement of the processors follows Intel’s largest data center early ship program with more than half a million Intel Xeon Scalable processors already sold to leading enterprise, high-performance computing, cloud and communication services provider customers.

AT&T, the top telco in the US, has adopted the processors mainly for its ambitions with 5G and to cope with tremendous data growth. The processors require fewer servers and connect more virtual machines, which is ideal for 5G, since 5G is “all about network function virtualization.” The processors also provide the necessary power to run 5G, offer lower energy costs and space efficiency.

The benefits of the processors, Firas said, include a dramatic performance increase of 1.65x on average over previous generation technology. With 58 world records and counting, Intel Xeon Scalable delivers “industry leading performance across the broadest range of networks.”

The processors were architected to help customers accelerate the deployment of cloud infrastructure, transform communications networks and unleash artificial intelligence, said Firas. The product is supported by 480 Intel builders who verified its performance, and received broad support from a variety of technology leaders including Huawei, Lenovo, Nokia, Samsung, ZTE, Ericsson, Microsoft and AT&T.

At Lenovo’s TRANSFORM event held in New York on June 20, the company unveiled an end-to-end data center portfolio that enables customers to harness the power of the “intelligence revolution” and create a strong technology foundation that supports transformative capabilities such as data analytics, high-performance computing, hybrid cloud, artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Lenovo introduced its largest, most comprehensive portfolio of server, storage, networking, software and data center services, as well as a new set of brands poised to take this leading position in customer satisfaction to even greater heights: ThinkSystem and ThinkAgile. The new portfolio of Lenovo solutions will be available in summer 2017.

“Today’s announcements mark a significant day in the next phase of Lenovo’s commitment to advancing the data center customer experience,” said Kirk Skaugen, President of Lenovo Data Center Group speaking at the event.

“Our leadership in x86 server customer satisfaction and x86 server reliability, along with these new ThinkSystem and ThinkAgile brands, and Lenovo’s new portfolio of data center solutions represent the most reliable, most agile, and highest performing data center solutions in the industry. We are confident we can empower our customers to solve their most challenging business problems and become digital disrupters in their own industries.”

This year, Lenovo celebrates 25 years of proven Think quality, performance and reliability, and Lenovo ThinkSystem and ThinkAgile data center solutions provide organizations with fluid resources that can adapt to the evolving needs of a business. According to a recent IDC survey of CIOs and technology leaders, 72 percent of respondents cited supporting digital transformation and business growth as the leading rationale in IT infrastructure decisions.

In the past three years, hybrid cloud significantly matured, while software defined architectures and hyperconverged infrastructure have disrupted the status quo for IT infrastructure in larger businesses, according to Lenovo. In response to these changes, customers face challenges including evolving their infrastructure strategies and considering how to best enable them now and for the future.

The new completely redesigned ThinkSystem portfolio by Lenovo, based on Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors, brings the gold-standard for the industry under a single unified brand spanning servers, storage and networking systems.

ThinkAgile is a completely new software-defined solutions portfolio built on the foundation of Lenovo ThinkSystem platforms: it adapts to changing IT needs while reducing complexity and cost created by silos in traditional IT. Even better together, the ThinkSystem and ThinkAgile portfolios empower customers to create the foundation of a future-defined data center with “simplicity, agility and flexibility, and future-proofed preparation.”

Often, customers find the price for technological advancement and advanced IT capabilities are complexity and confusion, according to Lenovo. The new ThinkSystem portfolio of servers, storage and networking solutions allows customers to address these concerns by giving them the ability to streamline IT infrastructure; this leads to increased service levels of data center operations that tie directly to business growth.

The ThinkSystem portfolio is engineered to work seamlessly with an organization’s previous investments, without the need to completely re-architect the data center. In addition, with the Lenovo ThinkAgile portfolio, integrated solutions adapt to changing IT and business needs by delivering the speed, simplified management and agility of cloud services while retaining the much-valued control and governance of on-premises IT.

Its pre-integrated, pre-built and pre-tested offerings deliver “robust new capabilities” to customers’ data centers, including automated lifecycle management, decreased TCO and reduced need for IT resources to maintain the platform. These solutions include the ThinkAgile SX series for Microsoft Azure Stack, as well as the ThinkAgile SX rack level solutions that integrate networking with hyperconverged offerings for a seamless customer experience.

Also, with the pace of technology innovation continuing to accelerate, customers will increasingly require the flexibility to adjust to changes and ensure the infrastructure they implement today stays relevant for their future needs. Lenovo designed the ThinkSystem and ThinkAgile solutions, such as the ThinkSystem SD530 high-performance computing offering, to support workloads spanning large data analytics applications to high performance computing, artificial intelligence and the largest hyperscale environments.

Lenovo is “committed to delivering transformational experiences for both its customers and the industry” and also announced the delivery of one of the most powerful systems – among the first in the world based on Intel Xeon Platinum processor family – to Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC).

The BSC MareNostrum 4 supercomputer, tasked with jobs in science and engineering research, incorporates 48 racks with more than 3,400 nodes with next generation Intel Xeon processors and a central memory of 390 Terabytes. Its peak power will be over 11 Petaflop/s, allowing the center to test and analyze the performance of the most recent developments in the field of supercomputing.

The newly launched x86 ThinkSystem platform provides us with ten times more processing power than the previous MareNostrum supercomputer, allowing BSC to continue the type of scientific research that enhances humanity's efforts to seek new knowledge and drive progress. Our experience with Lenovo has been easy and tightly integrated to overcome our challenges and achieve success, and we look forward to future collaboration," said Sergi Girona, Operations Director, BSC.

The world’s increasing consumption of data, combined with the trend of businesses and service providers outsourcing their data center facilities rather than owning and managing them, has resulted in significant growth in multi-tenant data centers (MTDCs). In fact, one analyst firm has predicted that total operational square footage of global MTDCs can reach approximately 177 million by the end of 2018.

To address this shift in the data center market, CommScope has formed the Multi-Tenant Data Center (MTDC) Alliance as part of the PartnerPRO™ Network. MTDC Alliance members will be able to offer optimal network infrastructure solutions for customers who need to deploy this technology in multi-tenant environments.

“Over the years, a shift has taken place in which companies increasingly outsource IT needs to shared environments in which data centers are viewed as an operating expense,” said Stephen Kowal, senior vice president, Global Partners, CommScope. “By leasing third-party data center white space, enterprises can remain focused on their core businesses while enjoying optimal data center availability, reliability and cost control.”

Demand will continue for MTDCs from hyperscale data center operators, service providers, cloud providers and enterprises; however, with the increased competition, it is becoming harder to differentiate on build quality alone.

That is why CommScope, a leader in communications network infrastructure solutions, formed the MTDC Alliance, assuring customers who work with our certified partners in the PartnerPRO Network that quality enterprise solutions, like our industry leading SYSTIMAX®, NETCONNECT®, and Uniprise® solutions, are being deployed in MTDCs.

“With our global network of 179 data centers across 44 markets, Equinix is thrilled to be part of the CommScope MTDC Alliance to offer enterprise customers the optimal data center deployments that best fits their needs,” said Greg Adgate, vice president of global technology partners and alliances at Equinix.

“Our facilities offer the broadest geographic reach, the largest choice in cloud and network providers, and the most efficient interconnection options for companies looking to lease data center space. We look forward to working with CommScope and their customers as part of this initiative,” Greg added.

MTDC infrastructure makes advanced technologies such as cloud computing and virtualized data centers available to companies of all shapes and sizes; from small- and mid-sized business to large enterprises, while also allowing flexible and easy expandability as the business grows. By outsourcing data center services instead of building, hosting, maintaining and upgrading them, MTDC tenants can realize significant operating and capital expenditures saving.

Today, the PartnerPRO Network has active partners in 88 countries and serves as a resource with thousands of distributors, installers, integrators and consultants worldwide.

Facebook announced that it is building a ninth data center to be located in Papillion, Nebraska. It will be powered by 100% clean and renewable energy and will create thousands of jobs in the community over the next few years.

To grow the market for the clean energy they need, Facebook worked with the Omaha Public Power District to create a new renewable energy tariff (facebook.com/green) that will now be available to all companies. 

Facebook has data centers in North Carolina, Oregon, Forest City, Lulea, Altoona and Prineville, and is now building new data centers in New Mexico, Fort Worth, Texas, Los Lunas, Clonee, Odense, Ireland and Denmark.

Over a thousand local construction roles will be created when construction is underway, where the data center will encompass two buildings near Highway 50, with an underground tunnel built under the highway to link the two new sites. Once complete, the data center will employ around 100 workers.

Advanced data centers like this are basically giant machines that make up the technical infrastructure for the Facebook community. It takes a lot of computing power to support that community, so they are going to keep building new data centers around the world.

Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group, announced that it has expanded its data center in Hong Kong by more than doubling the capacity to address the increasing demand for secure and scalable computing services in Asia Pacific.

As part of Alibaba Cloud's strategy to expand its global network coverage, the expanded Hong Kong data center will meet enterprises' demand for high availability and disaster recovery, along with greater access to diversified service offerings such as data storage and analytics, enterprise-level middleware, and cloud security services.

"Since our entry into Hong Kong in 2014, Alibaba Cloud has become one of the largest public cloud providers in the market in less than two years. More companies have come to realize the importance of changing their traditional IT mind-set to embrace the new data technology," said Mr. Ethan Yu, Vice President of Alibaba Group and General Manager of Alibaba Cloud Global. "We are confident that the expanded data center facility, together with our scalable and secure cloud offering, will better meet the needs of the digital transformation in key local sectors such as hospitality and financial services."

This development marks the company's latest expansion on top of recent data center openings in Germany, Australia, Japan and the United Arab Emirates. To date, Alibaba Cloud has established physical presence in 14 global economic centers including mainland China, Singapore and the United States.

As the gateway to China's economy, Hong Kong has become one of the most popular destinations in Asia Pacific for business expansion and investment. Hong Kong also leads the region in terms of cloud adoption as more and more businesses tap into cloud computing for benefits such as operational efficiency and innovation. The city reached the top in Asia Cloud Computing Association's Cloud Readiness Index 2016.

Since 2014, Alibaba Cloud's Hong Kong team has offered tailored solutions across many sectors, including financial services, retail, hospitality and media. The company also brought advanced cloud security offerings to the market. In August 2016, Alibaba Cloud launched cloud-based Anti-DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) security products together with PCCW Global, the international operating division of HKT, Hong Kong's premier telecommunications service provider. With Anti-DDoS as part of its cloud service, Alibaba Cloud has a proven record of protecting customers against DDoS attacks.

In 2016, Alibaba Cloud became the first Chinese cloud computing company that attained ISO/IEC 20000-1:2011, the latest certification for IT service management standards. It also achieved Singapore Multi-Tier Cloud Security (MTCS) standard Level 3 and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DDS) over the last year.

Hong Kong Telecom plans to construct a fiber optic link connecting Tseung Kwan O Industrial Estate (TKOIE) and Chai Wan.

Dubbed, ‘Ultra Express Link’ the 3km submarine cable is expected to be completed in 2017. Hong Kong Telecom says it will foster the development of TKOIE to become Asia’s data center hub.

HKT Group Managing Director, Alex Arena, said: "The building of Ultra Express Link demonstrates once again not only our leading position in solid fiber infrastructure in Hong Kong, but also our dedication to build Hong Kong into a regional data center hub.

“The new cable, together with the existing extensive fiber infrastructure provided by HKT, will allow us to meet the rising demand for high speed and high capacity connectivity requirement from data center operators.”

Arena claimed that HKT was the only operator to provide full diversity with different options of cable route across Hong Kong. “We have full fiber coverage in all data centers in Hong Kong, particularly with diversity paths in all data centers in TKOIE,” he said.

IBM has opened a new data center in Korea, in Pangyo outside Seoul, in collaboration with SK Holdings C&C. IBM said the new center would support growing demand across the country for cloud computing services.

The two companies’ relationship for the new data center follows an existing partnership that offers hybrid cloud capabilities to the gaming, IT, manufacturing and retail industries.

They also plan to make a cognitive cloud platform available at the new data center, “enabling local startups and IT developers to create cognitive apps and industry-specific services that leverage Watson.”

IBM said clients in Korea would benefit from faster time-to-market, improved performance, support for industrial-strength public and hybrid cloud, and access to IBM's global network of 47 cloud data centers “so they can manage their data more securely and efficiently across global markets to drive expansion.”

The new facility is modeled on IBM's standardized pod design. It will have the capacity for thousands of physical servers and offer the full range of cloud infrastructure services, including bare metal servers, virtual servers, storage, security services and networking, according to IBM.

Developers in Korea will also have access to Bluemix, IBM's cloud platform, and more than 150 APIs and services spanning key areas such as cognitive, blockchain, Internet of Things and big data.

IBM said that local universities were also participating by cultivating future cloud talent. IBM and SK Holdings C&C have been teaming with leading universities, including Dankook University, Ewha Woman's University and Sungkyunkwan University, providing students with education and training based on the IBM cloud.

IBM said the new facility was its ninth cloud data center in the Asia-Pacific region, and part of its growing global network of 47 cloud data centers. “With access to a local on ramp for IBM and SK Holdings' Cloud services, Korean enterprises and start-ups can accelerate their digital transformation, business innovation and global expansion,” IBM said.

Robert LeBlanc, senior vice president, IBM Cloud, said the company’s strategy was designed to “fuel new ecosystems to spur innovation and collaborate with companies who understand the local market." He added: “Together, we are able to bring the local expertise, platform and data services that gives Korean customers the ability to compete on a global scale."

Singtel has launched a suite of software defined network and hybrid cloud services. They include the Data Center and Cloud Connect Service (DC Connect), billed as a first-of-its-kind software-defined network service for Singapore. It allows firms to easily access and move their data seamlessly between public and private clouds in more than 20 data centers using a single connection.

The DC Connect service also provides latency of less than one millisecond, and a secure web portal for companies to dynamically adjust their cloud network requirements and manage costs in a pay-as-you-use manner.

Singtel also plans to launch the Cloud Life Cycle Service (CLS), saying it “allows firms to understand and chart a progression pathway between their present and future states of cloud maturity, as part of their digital strategies.”

Singtel has also introduced Liquid Sky, a platform that “allows companies to orchestrate the setup and operations of their hybrid cloud environments.” SingTel says it enables tasks such as provisioning, governance, spend management, configuration and catalogue development to be automated and scheduled via predefined workflows.

Bill Chang, CEO Group Enterprise at Singtel, said: “After the initial euphoria to adopt cloud, many enterprises typically face challenges in rolling out hybrid cloud environments because of the technical complexities and capability shortfalls involved. This suite of services allows them to implement their cloud operations more easily.”

Singtel has picked up a trio of awards for its cloud services in recent months. It received the Telco Cloud Service Provider of the Year award at the 2016 Frost & Sullivan Asia Pacific ICT Awards, won Best Cloud Computing Adoption Project – G-Cloud at the Cloud & DevOps World Awards 2016 and Telco Cloud of the Year at the Telco Cloud Forum Awards 2016.