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data centre, Datacentre, Expansion, India, News & Analysis, ST Telemedia, STT, Tata communications

ST Telemedia continues expansion in data centre market

Location India. Red pin on the map.ST Telemedia Global Data Centres has expanded its data centre footprint through a joint venture with Tata Communications, where it will now take a 74% majority stake in Tata’s data centre business in India and Singapore.

The new deal expands ST Telemedia’s already healthy presence throughout the world as it adds 14 data centres in various cities across India, including Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Pune, and its three Singapore facilities. The company now has a presence in four major regions, including a strong footprint in two of Asia’s fastest growing economies, India and China.

Tata will retain a 26% share of the joint venture, but will focus on advanced services within the data centre that enable digital transformation. Tata highlighted the new partnership will enable the business to refocus investments on area such as cloud enablement and unified communications.

“This partnership marks another key milestone in STT GDC’s growth,” saod Sio Tat Hiang, Executive Director at ST Telemedia. “Since ST Telemedia’s initial investment in the data centre business in mid-2014, we have made remarkable progress in building a formidable data centre footprint internationally with strategic presence in key economic hubs to capture industry demand.

“The latest addition of India to the STT GDC network will be a major impetus to advance the company’s ambition to be a significant global data centre service provider. We are pleased to partner with an established company like Tata Communications, to pursue opportunities in the growing data centre market.”

ST Telemedia’s data centre market portfolio currently contains a number of organizations including GDS Services, MediaHub, Level 3 Communications and Virtus Data Centres, the latter of which has doubled in size for two consecutive years, making it one of the largest data centre providers in the London area. The company ambitions are to develop the largest global platform of advanced, integrated and carrier-neutral data centres in every major economic centre.

While ST Telemedia has seemingly prioritized the data centre market, the team have made a number of investments additional growth areas including IoT, with an investment in software and managed services company Greenwave, and also big data following its investment in Datameer, an analytics and visualisation company earlier this year.

Data, developer, Enterprise IT, News & Analysis, Streaming, Tibco

Tibco announces stream of new updates

Cloud data sharing conceptTibco has announced four new updates for its Spotfire, LiveView, community support and IoT offerings.

The company’s current focus is on leveraging analytics for augmented intelligence to discover new insights then productively share those insights across the enterprise in the shortest amount of time possible.

“Some in the industry would lead you to believe that computers are going to replace people. We think that’s dead wrong,” said Mark Palmer, SVP at Tibco. “Computers should serve to augment human experience and intellect. At Tibco, we focus our industry-leading visual, advanced, embedded and, streaming analytics solutions on delivering a pragmatic approach to cognitive computing, which we achieve by combining enhanced intelligence features with algorithmic automation capabilities.

“This combination encapsulates the essence of our Fast Data analytics platform – it balances human insight with intelligent technologies for superior productivity and a competitive advantage in end users’ respective markets.”

The Spotfire offering now includes self-service data preparation, management, and utilisation functionality to extend the platform’s analytics capabilities. The team highlighted the product requires no third-party coordination for data preparation, as the inline datawrangling functionality in Spotfire is built-in.

The company has also launched open source, BSD-licensed Accelerator package for Apache Spark and the IoT. The offering includes five subsystems; Connector, for edge connection to IoT and enterprise data; Digester, a stream data preparation layer; Finder, predictive model discovery template; Automator, a streaming analytics-based automation engine for Apache Spark; and Tracker, to monitor predictive models and automatically invoke model retraining.

LiveView now includes a code-free HTML5 operational-intelligence dashboard development platform for use with the Live Datamart. Finally, the team have introduced a new developer community space for sharing end-user-driven technical expertise, insights, and Wiki articles.

Big Data, BusinessObjects, Enterprise IT, News & Analysis, SAP

SAP updates BusinessObjects offering at SAPPHIRE NOW conference

SAP sailingSAP has announced a number of new updates for its analytics solutions portfolio at the 28th annual SAPPHIRE NOW conference.

The company’s business intelligence portfolio, BusinessObjects, will continue to offer solutions on premise and in the cloud, as well as incorporating a number of new features for visualizations and storytelling, data wrangling and blending, geospatial, trend analysis, custom filters, linked stories, notifications and chat.

“SAP is enabling companies to lead in the digital economy by significantly simplifying the platform, providing best-in-class analytics and a superior user experience,” said Stefan Sigg, SVP for SAP Analytics. “SAP BusinessObjects remains the most relevant analytics in the industry — and we offer the best end-to-end capabilities both on premise and in the cloud in the market today.”

One enhancement has focused more on the integration and collaboration efforts of the business, as the offering can now connect and blend existing data sources such as the SAP ERP, SAP SuccessFactors solutions, Salesforce, and Google Drive (amongst others), on a single platform without having to move data into the cloud environment. The offering now also includes predictive analytics capabilities leveraging powerful built-in algorithmic models, to enhance data-driven decision making capabilities.

SAP also updated its BusinessObjects Enterprise offering, which has been mainly designed for on premise analytics. Enterprise organizations have a choice of premium, professional and standard editions, which offer a variety of services including enhancements which make the platform Internet of Things–ready.

The company also launched one of its newest cloud offerings, the Digital Boardroom (see below), which has been built on the BusinessObjects platform. The Digital Boardroom is real-time business intelligence and ad hoc analysis portal, which provides executives with information sourced from all SAP S/4HANA Lines of Business data to provide a “single source of truth for the company”.

Digital Boardroom

AWS, Database, Datacentre, News & Analysis

AWS announce launch of X1 Instances for EC2

Cloud in my handAWS has announced the availability of X1 Instances for Amazon EC2, which it claims is the most memory available in any SAP-certified cloud instance available today.

The X1 instances have 2 TB of memory, and are powered by four 2.3 GHz Intel Xeon E7 8880 v3 processors delivering 128 vCPUs. The X1 instances also offer up to 10 Gb per second of dedicated bandwidth to Amazon Elastic Block Store, which the team believe is well suited to support large-scale in-memory databases, big data processing, and high performance computing.

“Amazon EC2 provides the most comprehensive selection of instances, offering customers, by far, the deepest compute functionality to support virtually any workload,” said Matt Garman, VP at Amazon EC2. “We’ve had a Memory Optimized instance family (our R3 family) for a while that is quite popular for high performance databases, in-memory analytics, and enterprise applications; however, customers have increasingly asked for even more memory to help run analytics on larger data sets with in-memory databases, generate analytics in real time, and create very large caches.

“With 2 TB of memory – 8 times the memory of any other available Amazon EC2 instance, and more memory than any SAP-certified cloud instance available today – X1 instances change the game for SAP workloads in the cloud. Now, for the first time, customers can run their most memory-intensive applications at scale with the elasticity, flexibility, and reliability of the AWS Cloud, rather than having to battle the complexity, cost, and lack of agility of colo or on-premises solutions.”

The X1 Instances are available via request in a number of AWS regions, including US East, US West, EU (Germany and Ireland), Asia Pacific (Tokyo, Sydney and Singapore), and will be available in the remaining areas over the next few months.

Big Data, Enterprise IT, HANA, Huawei, News & Analysis, OpenStack, SAP

SAP’s HANA launches on Huawei’s FusionSphere cloud platform

Huawei MWC 2016Huawei and SAP have announced the general availability of the SAP HANA platform on Huawei’s OpenStack cloud platform FusionSphere 5.1.

The announcement follows a long-standing partnership, dating back to 2012 when Huawei became a SAP global technology partner, which saw the team open a co-innovation centre at Huawei’s Shenzhen campus last year, which was tasked with advanced the teams capabilities in the cloud computing and big data market segments.

“SAP is the world’s largest provider of enterprise application software, and SAP HANA is leading enterprise software innovation right now,” said Zhipeng Ren, President of the Huawei IT Cloud Computing Product Line. “Huawei’s FusionCloud solution support for SAP HANA is widely accepted in the market. With the open cloud computing strategy, Huawei builds a win-win cloud ecosystem through an open, enterprise-class cloud platform.

“Based on OpenStack open source architecture, Huawei FusionSphere has made thousands of enterprise-class enhancements, and is an ideal cloud infrastructure platform for SAP HANA and critical enterprise applications. In the meantime, our joint initiatives with SAP are intended to create more value for customers to achieve their goals.”

Over the course of the relationship, SAP’s HANA offering has been made available on a number of Huawei platforms including FusionCube, FusionServer RH2288H V2/V3, FusionServer RH5885H V3 and FusionServer RH8100 V3. Huawei claims that since FusionSphere can run business applications that have traditionally been run on premise, the platform will create a number of new opportunities for mass processing of big data on the cloud.

Artificial intelligence, Dell, News & Analysis, Security Intelligence, Threat Detection

Dell Security targets small organizations with AI product launch

Dell office logoDell has launched a new AI-based security solution, Threat Defence, which has been designed specifically for smaller organizations with limited or no IT resource.

The new offering utilizes machine learning and AI technologies to prevent threats from entering an organizations perimeter, as opposed to simply detecting them once inside. Dell claims the new offering stops 99% of malware execution, as the machine learning components of the software will adapt and learn from the malware for future threat detection.

“Today’s malware attacks are non-discriminant and can impact organisations of all sizes,” said Brett Hansen, Executive Director for Data Security Solutions at Dell. “Smaller businesses are often at risk as traditional anti-virus and threat protection solutions can be resource intensive or beyond the means of growing businesses. With Dell Data Protection Threat Defence, Dell is addressing the needs of this under-served segment with an effective advanced threat prevention solution that is easy to manage and reflects the multi-platform reality of modern businesses.”

The launch builds on growing security concerns within world of smaller organizations, as a recent survey from Dell claimed 69% of SMB’s state data security is a burden on their company’s time and budget, with 65% holding back mobility plans due to ongoing security concerns. The Threat Defence aims to provide a more secure platform for businesses who want to become more mobile. Although Dell has a healthy reputation for security within the enterprise market, this is seemingly one of the first moves by the company to diversify the customer base, and reach into new market segments.

Additional features include a low-footprint, the company claims only 1-3% of CPU resources will be used, the ability to safe-list certain files and applications which have a tendency to throw out false-positives, as well the ability to upload suspicious files to the cloud for analysis. Through the analysis, Dell can update the software remotely to improve detection capabilities of malware crossing an organizations perimeter.

The offering will be available on a subscription basis in the United States and select countries around the world starting in mid-June 2016.

Enterprise IT, News & Analysis, Saas, Sales Performance Management, Wipro, Xactly

Wipro and Xactly partner to increase customer sales performance

Concept for male tennis playersWipro and Xactly have launched a new partnership to offer sales performance management solutions to customers as a SaaS model.

The new partnership claims the new solutions will enable an organizations leadership team to bridge the gap between their business goals and sales performance. The sales performance management is estimated to be valued in the region of $715 million (2015) with both Wipro and Xactly believing the market still has healthy growth potential.

“Sales Performance Management is a key priority for organisations, across the board,” said Hiral Chandrana, SVP for Business Application Services at Wipro Limited. “Companies can optimise their sales performance processes through effective incentive compensation design for their employees and tools to measure the same. We are confident that Wipro’s extensive experience in transforming the front-office sales process coupled with Xactly’s incentive compensation cloud products will deliver the right platform to accelerate business outcomes for our clients.”

The Wipro and Xactly partnership will aim to combine software products, which focus on managing employee performance, monitoring margins, and mitigating risk, with Wipro’s consulting experience in transforming the sales functions, to improve the performance of customer’s employees.

“We are always looking to partner with like-minded industry leaders who understand the importance of using incentives to drive the right behaviors and are aiming to shape the next wave of this industry,” said Nitin Mathur, VP of Worldwide Professional Services at Xactly. “Wipro’s global reach and services expertise complements our mission of helping companies use compensation as a strategic lever to drive better sales alignment, retention, and performance.”

cloud security, cybersecurity, DNS Firewall, Infoblox, Malware, News & Analysis, Threat Intelligence

Infoblox bolsters off-premise security capabilities

Security CCTV camera in office buildingInfoblox has released its DNS Firewall as a service, extending its services to roaming devices off-premise, which will be available towards the end of 2016.

The new service will offer protection to customers roaming outside the corporate perimeter, as well as within, by offering a single pane of glass for protection from malware and cyberattacks. The cloud-service works through providing actionable network intelligence to customers to strengthen their operational and security postures. It also delivers unified reporting and single-policy configuration, which Infoblox claims are capabilities not available through purely cloud-based DNS services.

“Enterprise networks do not have the luxury of being walled gardens any more, not with employees bringing their own devices and accessing data from everywhere,” said Scott Fulton, EVP of Products at Infoblox. “Infoblox DNS Firewall as a service helps our customers by providing the same industry leading protection for on- and off-premise devices, helping organisations to build enterprise networks that are more available, secure, and smart.”

The offerings capitalize on the threat intelligence technology which Infoblox acquired through buying IID in February 2016. IID was acquired for approximately $45 million as a means for Infoblox to increase its threat detection capabilities, as a means to differentiate Infoblox from other DDI vendors.

IID’s cloud-based platform for threat intelligence federation allows customers to share threat intelligence, which has been highlighted as another potential growth area for Infoblox, though this is a competitive marketplace already. Companies such as iSight already have a healthy presence in the threat intelligence market segment, though Infoblox does have a number of partnerships with these vendors, inherited through recent acquisitions, which the team does not expect to change moving forward.

data centre, Datacentre, hybrid cloud, London, News & Analysis, Virtus

London’s Virtus Data Centres doubles annual revenues

VirtusLondon based Virtus Data Centres has announced it has doubled its revenues over the last twelve months, though the team haven’t released any specific numbers to substantiate the claim.

The company has recorded a healthy number of new customers throughout the period, including T-Systems which runs its private and public cloud operations from the London2 location in Hayes, as part of a five year transition project to close its private data centre in Feltham. Virtus has 40MW of capacity across its three locations, having acquired the London4 site in Slough during the latter stages of 2015 from Infinity SDC.

“Our aim is to combine cutting edge design and technology with transparent and agile commercials to offer the very best tailored solutions and service for our customers,” said Neil Cresswell, CEO at Virtus Data Centres. “This unique approach to data centre service delivery is the reason we see continued growth across all business lines with the likes of T-Systems and Symantec collocating in our leading facilities. It’s been a fantastic start to the year, and one which we seek to improve upon.”

The company, which has been in operation since 2008, offers traditional retail and wholesale colocation models, through three locations in the London area (Enfield, Hays and Slough) will a fourth set to open early next year. Virtus also boasts to have the highest total colocation MW sales of any operator in the London market throughout 2015, according to findings from CBRE, and is only one of four data centre operators in London to have been awarded Tier III design certification from the Uptime Institute. Virtus has also been expanding its credentials and capabilities in recent months, achieving supplier status with the Crown Commercial Service as part of the G-Cloud 7 initiative.

Recent expansion initiatives have been driven through investment from ST Telemedia, which was announced last year in June. As part of the agreement, ST Telemedia will make what it claims is a ‘significant investment’ into Virtus committing to a 49% via a Joint Venture with Virtus’ existing owner Brockton Capital. ST Telemedia has a healthy track record when it comes to data centre companies having launched i-STT in 2000 which was later merged into Equinix (it has now divested), as well as investments in Level 3 Communications and GDS Services.

AWS, GE, Intel, Internet of Things, IoT, Microsoft, News & Analysis

IoT revenues grow to $6.7bn in Q4 2015

Development projectA new study from Technology Business Research (TBR) has found IoT’s revenues have grown to $6.7 billion over the course of Q4.

The research, which focused on the industry’s largest IoT players, including AWS, GE, Google, Intel and Microsoft amongst others, highlighted strong year-on-year growth as tier one vendors aim to drive profits in a relatively open marketplace. A lack of competition, high-profits and immature regulations/standards, are driving IoT up the priority list for tier one vendors currently.

“Effectively, every type of IT and operational technology (OT) vendor will have a stake in the growing commercial IoT market, as IoT solutions will drive increased use of diverse IT and OT products and services,” said TBR Devices and IoT Analyst Dan Callahan. “In addition to building interest in established IT products, commercial IoT will create growth in specialized business consulting, hardware, network, development, management and security components.

“IT and OT vendors that are quick to capture IoT opportunities within their current customer base, and attract new ones through developer programs and investing in growing mindshare, will enjoy additional, immediate, revenue opportunities.”

The ongoing adoption of cloud computing and the increasing pressure to capitalize on the growing amount of data available to organizations, were highlighted as drivers for the adoption of the technology, as customers aim to increase operational efficiency and the effectiveness of the decision making process. TBR believes the 21 benchmarked companies are gaining an advantage in the attractive IoT market due mainly to minimized competition. A lack of standards and security concerns around the technology has set a high barrier to entry for tech companies, though there is a healthy value chain in which smaller organizations can capitalize.

North America is seen as the leading region to integrate IoT and develop an early adopter community, accounting for just over 40% of the activity. APAC and CALA represented 24.8% and 5.5% of the market, respectively, whereas EMEA accounted for the majority of the remainder.