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Alex Tam, Datacentre, Equinix, hong kong, IBX, News & Analysis, Singapore

Equinix to bolster cloud in Hong Kong with $40m expansion

Equinix is investing $40m in expanding its datacentre estate in Hong Kong

Equinix is investing $40m in expanding its datacentre estate in Hong Kong

American datacentre giant Equinix is looking to expand its cloud and colocation footprint in Hong Kong, the company announced this week.

Equinix said it will spend about $40m upgrading its existing Hong Kong datacentres, HK1 and HK2. The latest expansion of HK2 will provide space for an additional 900 cabinets, bringing the total capacity of the datacentre to 2,350 cabinets, while the HK1 expansion will add 275 cabinets.

The company said the upgrades should be completed by Q4, 2015.

“With the strong momentum of cloud and content companies deploying in Hong Kong, as well as datacentre services demand from worldwide customers including many in China, it was a clear strategic business decision to expand our presence in Hong Kong,” said Alex Tam, managing director, Equinix Hong Kong.

“The investment in HK1 and HK2 further positions Hong Kong as an important regional hub, not only for financial services firms but for cloud and content companies as well,” Tam said.

The company said it is expanding the datacentres to cater to growing demand for its cloud services, particularly from local content and media customers  – a client segment it said grew by about 16 per cent year on year.

Equinix seems to be on a streak in the Asia Pacific region and abroad, adding a third datacentre in Singapore in March this year and its first datacentre in Melbourne late last year.

Last month the company also added its sixth datacentre in London, and approached European datacentre incumbent Telecity Group about a potential acquisition.

Financial Results, Marc Benioff, News & Analysis, Salesforce

Salesforce bags $1.5bn in Q1 2016, on track for $6bn annual run rate

Benioff reaffirmed the company's goal of reaching $10bn in annual revenues

Benioff reaffirmed the company’s goal of reaching $10bn in annual revenues

CRM giant Salesforce announced another record quarter this week as it took home over£1.5bn in revenue for Q1 2016, up from £1.44bn the previous quarter. The company claims it is on track to become the first pure-play enterprise cloud company to surpass the $6bn annual run rate mark.

At £1.51bn for the quarter revenue is up 23 per cent year-on-year and the company also reported deferred revenue of $3.06bn, up 31 per cent year-on-year.

Salesforce also raised its fiscal year 2016revenue guidance to £6.55bn, up from £6.52, and said it is on track to be the first pure-play enterprise cloud company to surpass the £6bn annual run rate mark. Full fiscal year 2015 revenue was $5.37bn.

“Salesforce has surpassed the $6 billion annual revenue run rate faster than any other enterprise software company, and our current outlook puts us on track to reach a $7 billion revenue run rate later this year,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and chief executive officer, Salesforce.

“Our goal is to be the fastest to reach $10 billion in annual revenue,” Benioff said, echoing his call-to-arms from the previous two quarters.

Salesforce has recently been the subject of a series of rumours suggesting its potential acquisition by another enterprise technology firm, although Salesforce has repeatedly denied commenting on the speculation. If the rumours are true it’s almost certain another record fiscal quarter would send the asking price to even greater, eye-watering heights.

Axis Technology Software, Big Data, Data as a service, Database, Delphix, Jedidiah Yueh, Michael Logan, News & Analysis

Data-as-a-service provider Delphix buys data-masking specialist Axis

Delphix has acquired data masking and de-identification specialist Axis Technology Software

Delphix has acquired data masking and de-identification specialist Axis Technology Software

Data management provider Delphix has acquired Axis Technology Software, a data masking software specialist, for an undisclosed sum.

Delphix offers software that helps users virtualise and deploy large application databases (i.e. ERP) on private and public cloud infrastructure, while Axis offers data masking and de-identification software, particularly for large financial service firms, healthcare providers and insurers.

Delphix said the move will give it a boost in verticals where Axis is already embedded, and help strengthen its core offering. By adding data masking and de-identification capabilities to its data services suite, the company hopes to improve the appeal of its offerings from a security and privacy perspective.

“We believe that data masking—the ability to scramble private information such as national insurance numbers and credit card information—has become a critical requirement for managing data across development, testing, training and reporting environments,” said Jedidiah Yueh, chief executive of Delphix. “With Axis, Delphix not only accelerates application projects, but also ​increases​ data security for our customers.”

Following the acquisition Michael Logan, founder and chief executive of Axis Technology Software will join Delphix as vice president of data masking, where he will be responsible for driving development and adoption of the feature set Axis brings to Delphix.

“We’ve built a sophisticated platform to secure customer data at Axis, proven at many of the world’s biggest banks and enterprises,” Logan said.

“The integrated power of our platforms will provide our customers the ability to protect their data where and when they need it.”

Axis Technology Software, Big Data, Data as a service, Database, Delphix, Jedidiah Yueh, Michael Logan, News & Analysis

Data-as-a-service provider Delphix buys data-masking specialist Axis

Delphix has acquired data masking and de-identification specialist Axis Technology Software

Delphix has acquired data masking and de-identification specialist Axis Technology Software

Data management provider Delphix has acquired Axis Technology Software, a data masking software specialist, for an undisclosed sum.

Delphix offers software that helps users virtualise and deploy large application databases (i.e. ERP) on private and public cloud infrastructure, while Axis offers data masking and de-identification software, particularly for large financial service firms, healthcare providers and insurers.

Delphix said the move will give it a boost in verticals where Axis is already embedded, and help strengthen its core offering. By adding data masking and de-identification capabilities to its data services suite, the company hopes to improve the appeal of its offerings from a security and privacy perspective.

“We believe that data masking—the ability to scramble private information such as national insurance numbers and credit card information—has become a critical requirement for managing data across development, testing, training and reporting environments,” said Jedidiah Yueh, chief executive of Delphix. “With Axis, Delphix not only accelerates application projects, but also ​increases​ data security for our customers.”

Following the acquisition Michael Logan, founder and chief executive of Axis Technology Software will join Delphix as vice president of data masking, where he will be responsible for driving development and adoption of the feature set Axis brings to Delphix.

“We’ve built a sophisticated platform to secure customer data at Axis, proven at many of the world’s biggest banks and enterprises,” Logan said.

“The integrated power of our platforms will provide our customers the ability to protect their data where and when they need it.”

Asia Pacific, Brendon Riley, Hacking, Network security, News & Analysis, Pacnet, telstra

Telstra’s recent buy Pacnet suffers IT security breach

Pacnet's IT network was hacked earlier this year

Pacnet’s IT network was hacked earlier this year

Telstra’s recently acquired datacentre and cloud specialist Pacnet suffered a security breach earlier this year whereby a third-party managed to get access to its IT network, the telco revealed this week.

Telstra was quick to point out that while the breach occurred on Pacnet’s IT network (which isn’t connected to Telstra’s) before its acquisition of Pacnet was finalised in April, it did do and has since done all it can to try and understand the reasons for the breach and its potential impact on customers.

The company has alerted customers, staff and regulators in the relevant jurisdictions.

Group executive of global enterprise services Brendon Riley said the investigation is ongoing, and that the company will apply its own tried and tested security technologies and techniques to Pacnet’s network.

“Our investigation found a third party had attained access to Pacnet’s corporate IT network, including email and other administrative systems, through a SQL vulnerability that enabled malicious software to be uploaded to the network,” Riley said.

“To protect against further activity we rectified the security vulnerabilities that allowed the unauthorised access. We have also put in place additional monitoring and incident response capabilities that we routinely apply to all of our networks.”

He said the firm is alerting customers of the potential impact of the breach, and hopes that the extra precautions the company has put in place will restore confidence in the firm.

The company has so far declined to comment on the scope or volume of data exposed to hackers.

Telstra seems keen to pre-empt any privacy-related regulatory challenges, something the company has had to deal with in recent years – which, it was eventually found, was due in part to its own negligence.

Last year for instance the firm was fined by the Australian Information Commissioner for making the personal details of almost 16,000 customers accessible via the internet between February 2012 and May 2013 after several spreadsheets containing customer data dating back to 2009 was found through Google Search.

Asia Pacific, Brendon Riley, Hacking, Network security, News & Analysis, Pacnet, telstra

Telstra’s recent buy Pacnet suffers IT security breach

Pacnet's IT network was hacked earlier this year

Pacnet’s IT network was hacked earlier this year

Telstra’s recently acquired datacentre and cloud specialist Pacnet suffered a security breach earlier this year whereby a third-party managed to get access to its IT network, the telco revealed this week.

Telstra was quick to point out that while the breach occurred on Pacnet’s IT network (which isn’t connected to Telstra’s) before its acquisition of Pacnet was finalised in April, it did do and has since done all it can to try and understand the reasons for the breach and its potential impact on customers.

The company has alerted customers, staff and regulators in the relevant jurisdictions.

Group executive of global enterprise services Brendon Riley said the investigation is ongoing, and that the company will apply its own tried and tested security technologies and techniques to Pacnet’s network.

“Our investigation found a third party had attained access to Pacnet’s corporate IT network, including email and other administrative systems, through a SQL vulnerability that enabled malicious software to be uploaded to the network,” Riley said.

“To protect against further activity we rectified the security vulnerabilities that allowed the unauthorised access. We have also put in place additional monitoring and incident response capabilities that we routinely apply to all of our networks.”

He said the firm is alerting customers of the potential impact of the breach, and hopes that the extra precautions the company has put in place will restore confidence in the firm.

The company has so far declined to comment on the scope or volume of data exposed to hackers.

Telstra seems keen to pre-empt any privacy-related regulatory challenges, something the company has had to deal with in recent years – which, it was eventually found, was due in part to its own negligence.

Last year for instance the firm was fined by the Australian Information Commissioner for making the personal details of almost 16,000 customers accessible via the internet between February 2012 and May 2013 after several spreadsheets containing customer data dating back to 2009 was found through Google Search.

CERN, Giri Fox, News & Analysis, Open Source, OpenStack, Rackspace, Tim Bell

CERN, Rackspace to harden federated cloud reference architecture

CERN and Rackspace want to create standard templates for an OpenStack cloud of clouds

CERN and Rackspace want to create standard templates for an OpenStack cloud of clouds

Rackspace and CERN openlab announced plans to redouble their efforts to create a reference architecture for a federated cloud service model.

The earliest implementations of Keystone – the mechanism in OpenStack for OpenStack-to-OpenStack identity authentication and cloud federation – came out of a collaboration between CERN and Rackspace, and now the two organisations plan to extend those efforts and create standardised templates for cloud orchestration.

“More companies are now looking to use multiple clouds to effectively serve the range of workloads they run – blending low-cost, high-performance, enhanced security and optimised environments,” says Giri Fox, Rackspace’s director of customer technology services. “But, we are still seeing the complexity businesses are facing to integrate just one cloud into their business. Federation is an opportunity to re-use that initial integration for future clouds you want to run your business on, making multi-cloud a business benefit choice rather than a business cost one.”

For those of you that aren’t familiar with CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, it operates the Large Hadron Collider which during its tests (which take place intermittently) spits out over 30 petabytes of raw data per year, which then needs to be processed and made available in near real-time for physicists around the world.

But CERN is like many research organisations resource constrained, so relying on federated set of infrastructure to get all of that processing accomplished can help it overcome the capacity limitations of its own datacentres. The organisation relies on multiple OpenStack clouds based in Europe that need to be accessed by thousands of researcher, so it has a strong incentive to develop a robust open model for cloud federation.

“Our CERN openlab mission is to work with industry partners to develop open, standard solutions to the challenges faced by the worldwide LHC community. “These solutions also often play a key role in addressing tomorrow’s business challenges,” said Tim Bell, infrastructure manager in the IT department at CERN.

“After our work on identity federation with Rackspace, this is a very important step forward. For CERN, being able to move compute workloads around the world is essential for ongoing collaboration and discovery,” Bell said.

Alex Reppen, Datagram, M&A, News & Analysis, SingleHop, Zak Boca

SingleHop buys Datagram to bolster enterprise private cloud strategy

SingleHop has acquired Datagram to strengthen its private cloud strategy

SingleHop has acquired Datagram to strengthen its private cloud strategy

Hosting and cloud service provider SingleHop has acquired infrastructure specialist Datagram this week, a move the company says will allow it to expand more quickly into the US hosted private cloud market.

The acquisition comes just a couple of months after SingleHop acquired a similar infrastructure specialist, Server Intellect, which gave the company strong expertise in Microsoft legacy server and cloud technology (where there is increasing confluence).

Datagram provides (mostly VMware-based) hosted private cloud services as well as disaster recovery and colocation, and operates out of five datacentres based in New York, Connecticut, Chicago, Phoenix and Amsterdam, with additional POPs in New Jersey and California.

“Datagram and SingleHop share the same vision of making best-of-breed technology easy to deploy and use for enterprise customers,” said Zak Boca, chief executive of SingleHop.

“The acquisition comes at a time when many enterprises, especially those in the media and entertainment space, are looking for ways to reduce their capital costs, increase their agility and offload routine IT functions to providers. As we move forward, SingleHop is actively considering additional acquisitions that add strategic, accretive benefits to our long term mission of providing the most complete suite of managed hosting and private cloud solutions,” Boca added.

The financial terms of the purchase were not disclosed, and SingleHop said once the deal closes Datagram will continue to operate as an independent business unit of the company, but with added sales and marketing resource from SingleHop.

Alex Reppen, chief executive of Datagram said: “Two decades of exponential growth in data creation has spurred the need for solutions that allow organizations to both store and manage increasing volumes of data in a cost-efficient manner. Together with SingleHop, we are now able to offer our customers a far greater degree of management and control over their data at a time when the demands of workload management is stifling innovation in many organisations.”

Antonio Muniz, Clinkerhq, CloudBees, Jenkins, M&A, Manuel Recena, News & Analysis, Sacha Labourey

CloudBees buys ClinkerHQ to strengthen Jenkins cloud

CloudBees has acquired ClinkerHQ to strengthen its Jenkins-based cloud service

CloudBees has acquired ClinkerHQ to strengthen its cloud-based Jenkins CI service

Belgium-based CloudBees has acqui-hired ClinkerHQ, a continuous delivery and open source software development specialist based in Spain.

CloudBees was originally founded as a java platform as a service, but the company now focuses almost exclusively on providing solutions based on Jenkins CI, which includes a cloud-based version of the continuous integration and job execution monitoring platform. ClinkerHQ offers a software development and monitoring ecosystem that boasts strong native integration with Jenkins CI among other open source technologies, but both platforms are quite similar.

CloudBees said the two DevOps’y companies will complement one another and help bolster the reach of CloudBees’ service.

“To serve the growing requirements of our customers and meet the needs of organizations investing in continuous delivery, CloudBees needs to extend its talent base and development resources,” said Sacha Labourey, chief executive officer and founder of CloudBees.

“ClinkerHQ’s experience in product development and consulting on Jenkins and CD-related projects will bring a unique combination of deep industry experience to the CloudBees product management and engineering teams,” Labourey added.

The acquisition will see ClinkerHQ’s seven-person team join CloudBees, including the company’s founders Antonio Muniz and Manuel Recena.

“We are excited to join such a highly respected organization as CloudBees and contribute to the industry-leading work being done in the continuous delivery area with Jenkins,” Muniz said.

The companies said ClinkerHQ customers will be given the option of moving to the CloudBees or staying on ClinkerHQ until the end of their contract.

CloudBees’ $23.5m funding round in January this year put the company in a good position to make small acquisitions like ClinkerHQ, which has a very similar offering. In fact, back in February, when Jenkins celebrated its 10th anniversary as an open source project, a blog post penned by ClinkerHQ co-founder and chief executive Recena alludes to this very fact when he thanks companies committed to open source tech broadly speaking.

“And, on that last point, we must give a special mention to CloudBees. We say this last point in a low voice so no-one can hear us, as we say in Spain. More than a few times we’ve had to answer the questions: ‘What does ClinkerHQ provide compared to CloudBees?’ and ‘Why would ClinkerHQ be a better solution?’”

Funding, IBM, News & Analysis, Sellpoints, Stephen Gold, Watson, WayBlazer

IBM backs WayBlazer, Sellpoints to show its commitment to Watson

IBM is investing in companies that use the Watson cloud service

IBM is investing in companies that use the Watson cloud service

IBM announced this week it has invested in two companies, WayBlazer and Sellpoints, which are using cognitive computing to enhance their travel planning and shopping applications. The move seems intended to show IBM’s commitment to Watson-as-a-service, the company’s cloud-based cognitive computing service which launched last year.

WayBlazer, a travel planning and shopping service, uses IBM’s Watson cloud service to help personalise holidays and create personalised travel recommendations for each customer from a slew of social and financial data.

Sellpoint uses Watson to do much the same thing, but for large retail and manufacturing firms looking to bolster their ecommerce sites without having to invest loads by way of internal development resource.

IBM said the investments in WayBlazer and Sellpoint were part of a $5m series A and $7.5m series C funding round, respectively, but the company declined to disclose the financial terms of its involvement.

“IBM is committed to helping our partners accelerate the development and delivery of Watson enabled apps into market where we see endless opportunities for cognitive computing to transform entire industries,” said Stephen Gold, vice president, IBM Watson.  “WayBlazer and Sellpoints are terrific examples of how cognitive computing technology can be used to help organizations redefine customer engagement and drive much deeper, meaningful and relevant consumer experiences.”

Brian O’Keefe, chief executive officer of Sellpoints said: “With the natural language and cognitive computing capabilities of Watson, we’re able to deliver a more personalized, relevant and enjoyable experience, and drive a much deeper level of engagement with customers.”

IBM said the investments were part of the $100m it committed to Watson last year. But it hasn’t always made it clear that it was pursuing direct investments into companies willing to use its technology, which could be an expensive proposition in the long run. The company continues to be relatively quiet on the financial performance of the Watson unit.