All posts by Business Cloud News

Alliance stakeholders include National Taiwan University, Asia Pacific, Asus, Big Data, Big Data Alliance, National Taiwan University of Science as well as firms like IBM, News & Analysis, open data, Taipei, Taiwan

Taipei Computer Association, Government launch Big Data Alliance

TCA, government officials launching the Big Data Alliance in Taipei

TCA, government officials launching the Big Data Alliance in Taipei

The Taipei Computer Association and Taiwanese government-sponsored institutions have jointly launched the Big Data Alliance, aimed at driving the use of analytics and open data in academia, industry and the public sector.

The Alliance plans to drive the use of analytics and open data throughout industry and government to “transform and optimise services, and create business opportunities,” and hopes big data can be used to improve public policy – everything from financial management to transportation optimisation – and create a large commercial ecosystem for new applications.

The group also wants to help foster more big data skills among the domestic workforce, and plans to work with major local universities to train more data and information scientists. Alliance stakeholders include National Taiwan University, National Taiwan University of Science as well as firms like IBM, Far EasTone Telecommunications and Asus, but any data owners, analysts and domain experts are free to join the Alliance.

Taiwanese universities have been fairly active in partnering in partnering with large incumbents to help accelerate the use of big data services. Last year National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) in southern Taiwan signed a memorandum of understanding with Japanese technology provider Futjistu which saw the two organisations partner to build out a big data analytics platform and nurture big data skills in academia.

Akira Arima, Datacentre, George Macricostas, News & Analysis, NTT Com, RangingWire

NTT Com subsidiary RagingWire launches California datacentre

RagingWire claims the new facility gives it the largest datacentre in California

RagingWire claims the new facility makes it the owner of the largest datacentre in California

RagingWire Data Centers, a subsidiary of Japanese telecoms giant NTT Com has cut the ribbon on its latest datacentre, known as California Sacramento 3 or CA3.

RagingWire is among a number of incumbents (Alibaba, Time Warner, Equinix) to bolster their cloud presence in the state as of late.

The 180,000 square foot facility packs 14 megawatts of power and 70,000 square feet of server space. It is located and fully integrated with the company’s 500,000 square foot datacentre campus in Sacramento, which includes two other datacentres (CA1 and CA2); the company said when combined the campus creates the largest datacentre in the state of California (680,000 square feet).

“Today is a big day for RagingWire, our customers, and our partners,” said George Macricostas, founder, chairman, and chief executive of RagingWire Data Centers. “The CA3 data center is the next step in RagingWire’s U.S. expansion and a new component for the global data center portfolio of NTT Communications. CA3 is truly a world-class datcentre.”

The move marks another big expansion for NTT Com, which together with its subsidiaries operates over 130 datacentres globally. The company said the latest facility is aimed at companies operating in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley.

“RagingWire has been a strategic addition to the NTT Communications family of companies. We look forward to working with you to deliver information and communications technology solutions worldwidem,” said Akira Arima, chief executive of NTT Communications.

Alibaba, Aliyun, Asia Pacific, Enterprise IT, News & Analysis, Sinopec

Sinopec taps Alibaba for cloud, analytics services

Sinopec is working with Aliyun to roll out a series of cloud and big data services

Sinopec is working with Aliyun to roll out a series of cloud and big data services

Aliyun, Alibaba’s cloud services division is working with China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (Sinopec) to roll out a set of cloud-based services and big data technologies to enable the firm to improve is exploration and production operations.

In a statement to BCN the companies said they will work together to roll out a “shared platform for building-based business systems, big data analytics” and other IT services tailored to the petroleum industry.

“We hope to be able to use Alibaba’s technology and experience in dealing with large-scale system architecture, multi-service data sharing, data applications in the large-scale petrochemical, oil and chemical industry operations,” Sinopec said.

The two companies also plan to explore the role of cloud and big data in connected vehicles.

Just last month Aliyun opened its first overseas datacentre in Silicon Valley, a move the Chinese e-commerce giant said will bolster its appeal to Chinese multinational companies.

The company has already firmed up partnerships with large multinationals including PayPal and Dutch electronics giant Philips. The company has five datacentres in China.

It would seem a number of large oil and gas firms have begun to warm to the cloud as of late. Earlier this week Anadarko Petroleum Corporation announced it had signed a five year deal that would see the firm roll out PetroDE’s cloud-based oil and gas field evaluation analytics service.

colocation, Datacentre, Equinix, Europe, News & Analysis, Russell Poole

Equinix announces sixth London datacentre

Equinix has announced five new datacentres globally in the past month

Equinix has announced five new datacentres globally in the past month

Datacentre giant Equinix has announced the launch of its sixth London-based International Business Exchange (IBX) datacentre.

Equinix said the datacentre, LD6, will offer customers the ability to leverage its cloud interconnection service – which lets users create private network links to Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud services among others.

The company said the $79m facility, which is located in Slough, is extremely energy efficient (LEED gold-accredited), and utilizes mass air cooling technology with indirect heat exchange and 100 percent natural ventilation.

It measures 236,000 square feet (8,000 square meters) and has capacity for 1,385 cabinets, with the ability to add another 1,385 cabinets in phase two of the facility’s development. Once phase two is complete, the Equinix London Slough campus will provide more than 388,000 square feet (36,000 square meters) of colocation space interconnected by more than a thousand dark fiber links.

“LD6 is one of the most technically advanced datacentres in the UK. It has been designed to ensure that we can continue to provide state-of-the-art colocation for our current and future customers,” said Russell Poole, managing director, Equinix UK. “This latest addition to our thriving London campus sets new standards in efficiency and sustainability.”

The facility is among five new datacentres announced last month. Equinix announced plans in March to roll out new state-of-the-art datacentres in New York, Singapore, Melbourne and Toronto.

Big Data, Big Query, Google, Infrastructure as a Service, News & Analysis

Google boosts cloud-based big data services

Google is bolstering its big data services

Google is bolstering its big data services

Google announced a series of big data service updates to its cloud platform this week in a bid to strengthen its growing portfolio of data services.

The company announced the beta launch of Google Cloud Dataflow, a Java-based service that lets users build, deploy and run data processing pipelines for other applications like ETL, analytics, real-time computation, and process orchestration, while abstracting away all the other infrastructure bits like cluster management.

The service is integrated with Google’s monitoring tools and the company said it’s built from the ground up for fault-tolerance.

“We’ve been tackling challenging big data problems for more than a decade and are well aware of the difference that simple yet powerful data processing tools make. We have translated our experience from MapReduce, FlumeJava, and MillWheel into a single product, Google Cloud Dataflow,” the company explained in a recent blog post.

“It’s designed to reduce operational overhead and make programming and data analysis your only job, whether you’re a data scientist, data analyst or data-centric software developer. Along with other Google Cloud Platform big data services, Cloud Dataflow embodies the kind of highly productive and fully managed services designed to use big data, the cloud way.”

The company also added a number of security features to Big Query, Google’s SQL cloud service, including adding row-level permissioning for data protection, made it more performant (raised the ingestion limit to 100,000 rows per second), and announced its availability in Europe.

Google has largely focused its attention on other areas of the stack as of late. The company has been driving its container scheduling and deployment initiative Kubernetes quite hard, as well as its hybrid cloud initiatives (Mirantis, VMware). It also recently introduced a log analysis for Google Cloud and App Engine users.

Brendan Hannigan, CrossIdeas, cybersecurity, IBM, Lighthouse, News & Analysis

IBM makes cyber threat data available as a cloud security service

IBM is launching a cybersecurity cloud service

IBM is throwing its hat into the cybersecurity ring

IBM has unveiled a cloud-based cybersecurity service which includes hundreds of terabytes of raw aggregated threat intelligence data, which can be expanded upon by users that sign up to use the service.

At about 700TB, IBM’s X-Force Exchange service is being pitched by the firm as one of the largest and most complete catalogues of cybersecurity vulnerability data in the world.

The threat information is based on over 25 billion web pages and images collected from a network of over 270 million endpoints, and will also include real-time data provided by others on the service (so effectively, the more people join, the more robust the service gets).

“The IBM X-Force Exchange platform will foster collaboration on a scale necessary to counter the rapidly rising and sophisticated threats that companies are facing from cybercriminals,” said Brendan Hannigan, general manager, IBM Security.

“We’re taking the lead by opening up our own deep and global network of cyberthreat research, customers, technologies and experts. By inviting the industry to join our efforts and share their own intelligence, we’re aiming to accelerate the formation of the networks and relationships we need to fight hackers,” Hannigan said.

Last year IBM made a number of acquisitions to bolster end-point and cloud security (CrossIdeas, Lighthouse) and adding cyber threat detection to the mix creates a nicely rounded security portfolio. But the move also put it in direct competition with a wide range of managed security service providers that have been playing in this space for years and going after the same verticals (oil & gas, financial service, retail, media, etc.), so it will be interesting to see how IBM differentiates itself.

Gartner, Internet of Things, Mike Walker, News & Analysis

Garter: IoT requires new architecture strategy

The IoT will require a new architectural approach, Gartner claims

The IoT will require a new architectural approach, Gartner claims

Enterprise IT professionals and architects will need to develop new architectures in order to help mitigate the technological, legal and reputational risks associated with delivering Internet of Things services, Gartner claims.

It has been suggested by some industry specialists that the Internet of Things has the potential to cripple existing datacentre infrastructure from a technical perspective, and could also create new or heightened risks around data security and regulatory compliance.

That said, Gartner believes developing the right architecture to handle the wealth of data generated by IoT sensors will be key to ensuring infrastructure can keep pace with new services being rolled out, and help deal mitigate other non-technical risks.

Mike Walker, research director at Gartner said enterprises need to understand not just the opportunities this wealth of information can generate but the risks as well. He said the anticipated data growth may require organisations to develop new competencies around regulatory compliance, and reassess the impact of security breaches on corporate reputation.

“Enterprise architects need to determine the potential impact, both positive and negative, of IoT technologies and then create actionable deliverables that can define which business opportunities should be pursued as result,” Walker said.

“The first step is bringing together various business unit and IT leaders to explore how the IoT can impact their respective business domains, and agree on actionable business scenarios that will require deep collaboration between them.”

Walker suggested that organisations create internal competency centres to help coordinate activities across internal stakeholders.

“Organisations must understand the profound impact new sources of information will have. Enterprise architects are best positioned to discuss and enable the most lucrative opportunities in partnership with business unit and IT leaders. At the same time, they must work with chief data officers and security officers to structure this data in a way that mitigates the worst risks of pursuing these opportunities,” Walker added.

Chris Dedicoat, Cisco, DHL, Internet of Things, Logistics, Markus Kückelhaus, News & Analysis, supply chain operations

DHL, Cisco claim Internet of Things will give $1.9tn boost to supply chain, logistics

Deutsche Post DHL and Cisco are looking at how IoT will unlock extra value in the supply chain and logistics sectors

Deutsche Post DHL and Cisco are looking at how IoT will unlock extra value in the supply chain and logistics sectors

DHL and Cisco, which are collaborating on a joint Internet of Things initiative looking at how IoT can improve decision-making in warehouse operations, claim the technology could give A $1.9tn boost to supply chain and logistics operations.

The two companies, which recently inked a report on IoT in logistics, are looking at how IoT sensors strategically embedded in warehouse inventory, stock locations and vehicles and connected to cloud-based services via Wi-Fi can improve warehouse operations through the use of analytics.

“At Deutsche Post DHL Group we have a deeply held belief in the positive powers of global trade. Yet, as our Global Connectedness Index 2014 revealed, the overall level of global connectedness remains surprisingly limited,” said Ken Allen, chief executive officer of DHL Express and Board Sponsor Technology.

“There is huge potential for countries to further increase their connectedness and prosper through trade, integration and technology. We believe the Internet of Things will be a primary enabler of this global transformation,” Allen added.

The companies said there is potential for IoT to expand beyond the warehouse and into supply chain,logistics operations and freight transportation, and could have a “game changing” impact on ‘last mile’ delivery for consumers. Cisco reckons that value to sit in the region of $8tn worldwide over the next decade.

But Markus Kückelhaus, vice president Innovation & Trend Research, DHL Customer Solutions & Innovation said there’s still much to do before that value can be realised.

“The Internet of Things is the connection of almost anything – from parcels to people – via sensor technology to the web and both Cisco and DHL believe this will revolutionize business processes across the entire value chain including supply chain and logistics,” Kückelhaus  said. “We’ll need to understand how all components in the value chain converge and this will require a comprehensive collaboration, participation and the willingness to invest to create a thriving IoT eco system for sustainable business processes.

Chris Dedicoat, president, EMEAR for Cisco said: “Digitization and the expansion of the Internet of Things is a catalyst for growth, which is driving new economic models and enabling organizations to remain competitive and embrace the pace of change happening globally. This report clearly demonstrates that digitization and the IoT will deliver long term efficiencies and growth opportunities across a wide range of industries.”

Ben Uretsky, Datacentre, DigitalOcean, Frankfurt, Germany, News & Analysis

DigitalOcean drops into Frankfurt

DigitalOcean is among a number of US-based incumbents moving into Germany

DigitalOcean is among a number of US-based incumbents moving into Germany

In a bid to tap further into the European market DigitalOcean has expanded its presence in Germany with a new datacentre in Frankfurt.

The dev-focused cloud provider already has a presence in Amsterdam and last year partnered with Equinix to make its cloud platform available in one of the company’s London-based Tier III datacentres.

“We’re here to give our full support to developers throughout the world by offering a simple, ideal cloud solution and infrastructure experience for hosting applications,” said DigitalOcean co-founder and chief exec Ben Uretsky. “Innovative companies in Germany deserve the best tools possible in order to continue to grow and succeed.”

The company also said it wanted to appeal to local companies with strong data residency requirements, a common theme among cloud providers throwing their weight into the German market.

Germany – particularly Berlin – has a big startup scene, but putting the datacentre in Frankfurt means it can benefit from being close to a number of large fibre interconnections. Other US-based incumbents to move into Frankfurt over the past few months include IBM (which also partners with Equinix) and AWS.

The facility is DigitalOcean’s third datacentre in Europe and tenth globally.

Acronis, Appointment, Crenshaw, Infrastructure as a Service, News & Analysis, Rackspace, Red Hat, VeriSign

Rackspace taps former VeriSign, Red Hat exec to lead strategy, product engineering

Scott CrenshawRackspace has appointed Scott Crenshaw to the role of senior vice president of strategy and product. Crenshaw, who formerly hails from VeriSign, will oversee the company’s corporate strategy, business development and product and engineering portfolio.

Crenshaw most recently served as senior vice president of products at VeriSign, where he led the development of the company’s new products and services. Before that he served as vice president of strategy and chief marketing officer at Acronis, a data backup and recovery solutions provider, and spent a number of years at Red Hat, where he served as vice president and general manager of the cloud business unit.

He also holds a number of patents related to subscription service provision and monitoring.

“We are excited to have someone of Scott’s caliber and experience joining our team,” said Rackspace president and chief executive officer Taylor Rhodes.

“Throughout his career, Scott has established a strong track record of developing winning strategies, managing and growing unique product offerings and working collaboratively with colleagues and customers. Scott will work closely with our marketing, sales, support and other critical functions to drive compelling product offerings and the best customer experience in the industry.”

Crenshaw said: “I am thrilled to be a part of this talented team at such an exciting moment in the company’s history.”