Friday, October 19, 2012

One big cluster: How CloudFlare launched 10 data centers in 30 days

from http://arstechnica.com:

>> As a result, the company's "data centers" are usually at most a few racks of hardware, installed at co-location facilities that are major network exchange points. Prince said that most of his company's data centers are set up at Equinix IBX co-location facilities in the US, including CloudFlare's primary facility in San Jose—a facility also used by Google and other major cloud players as an on-ramp to the Internet.

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Hacked Nokias add haptic dimension to calls

from www.wired.co.uk:

>>A pair of hacked Nokia N900 phones are capable of providing an extra sensory dimension to phonecalls by allowing users to send one another touch messages.
The ForcePhone prototypes were built by the Helsinki Institute of Information Technology in collaboration with Nokia Research to investigate haptic communication options. It could also provide users with the option of squeezing the handset during a call to trigger a vibration in the paired receiver, referred to as a "pressure message".

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Equinix CTO Lane Patterson joined business and technology journalist Stephen Pritchard

from GigaOM: 

>>According to Equinix CTO Lane Patterson, CIOs are still learning what can and what can’t be done in the cloud. Ultimately, it’s a matter of trust.

New Clustrix Relationship with Equinix Expands Global Reach of its Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) Offerings

First Mission-critical, Scale-Out DBaaS Now on the European Continent

— /PRNewswire/ -- Today at GigaOm's Structure Europe, Clustrix, the scale-out SQL database for Big Data applications, announced a new relationship with Equinix, the global interconnection and data center company. Clustrix selected Equinix as a data center provider to meet the growing demand for its MySQL-compatible, scale-out database from its European installed base, new customers, and cloud partners.
Equinix's Amsterdam data center is the ideal venue for Clustrix's Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) debut in Europe. Equinix's co-location data center services and world-class security combined with low-latency access of Clustrix's mission-critical, high-performance DBaaS is an ideal solution for fast growing companies in Europe.
"With more than one-third of our customers and strategic cloud partners located in Europe, the Equinix infrastructure is a natural fit for the deployment and delivery of Clustrix's DBaaS," said Roland Schmidt, Sr. Director of Business Development at Clustrix.
"Equinix is pleased to be working with Clustrix to expand its reach to European customers and cloud partners. By deploying innovative new services from Equinix hubs, Clustrix is taking advantage of a confluence of bandwidth providers and complementary cloud services to meet the needs of European customers, expand its global reach, and scale rapidly in line with growing customer demand," said Lane Patterson, CTO at Equinix.
The Equinix relationship is a foundational element of Clustrix's scale-out SQL solution for Big Data applications around the globe.  As part of the Equinix ecosystem, Europe-based Clustrix customers can scale-out their services while simultaneously reaping the benefits of stable pricing. Amsterdam's emergence as Europe's leading location for hosting, Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and cloud presence facilitates global expansion of Clustrix's customer relationships and strategic partnerships, such as that with GoGrid, which deploys its cloud at Equinix in Amsterdam. This enables Clustrix's DBaaS presence in GoGrid's Amsterdam cloud with the same proximity, low latency, high performance, and superior SLA delivery as in GoGrid's San Francisco-based cloud.
With Equinix's worldwide and world-class data center reach, Clustrix rapidly extends the deployment and delivery of its DBaaS in Amsterdam today and wherever business demand dictates in the future. For mission-critical DBaaS needs on an infrastructure commensurate with the levels of quality, reliability and availability enterprise customers require, visit Clustrix at: http://www.clustrix.com

Read more here: http://www.heraldonline.com/2012/10/16/4339343/new-clustrix-relationship-with.html#storylink=cpy

Equinix scopes Melbourne for next data centre

from www.itnews.com.au:

>>Global data centre operator Equinix has confirmed its staff are actively scouting the Melbourne real estate market for a location to build its next data centre.
The company’s Australian managing director Tony Simonsen told iTnews Melbourne was the most attractive and underserved market in Australia.

Monday, October 15, 2012

The Transition From Legacy IT And Its Potential Consequences On Microsoft

Read the whole post at Seeking Alpha: 

>The transition from Legacy IT (PC-based) to Hybrid IT (PCs + Smartphones + Tablets) is on the way, and, according to some experts, it will soon lead to a new future called Next Gen IT (Smartphones + Tablets mainly).
PC companies have adopted several strategies to deal with this new landscape, including creating new categories like "ultrabooks" and other ultra-thin notebooks to drive sales, or reducing prices to lure more customers. Unfortunately for them, PC shipments are set to decline in 2012 for the first time in 11 years, according to iSuppli, and smartphone sales beat those of PCs for the first time ever in 2011, while recent tweets from Asymco's Horace Dediu seem to paint an even darker picture for PC producers - and Microsoft (MSFT), the absolute leader in PC software sales.
Microsoft and the Gang of Four

Sunday, October 14, 2012

Network-Neutral Data Centers Lead Gains Year-To-Date

Read the whole article at Seeking Alpha: 

>>Time for an update on the performance of data center related stocks, that include companies operating colocation facilities and CDNs.
As a reminder, we do not track larger companies, like Amazon (AMZN) or Google (GOOG), as their revenue/stock performance is mainly influenced by their retail or advertising platforms, rather than their data center (or cloud computing) operations.
Here is a short summary of how the companies under our radar screen behaved in August and September 2012: