Category Archives: Datacentre

Amazon, AWS, Brent Alderfer, Community Energy, Datacentre, Green America, Jerry Hunter, News & Analysis, sustainability

AWS announces huge solar project following criticisms of its green cred

AWS announced a large solar project, part of its commitment to powering all of its global infrastructure with renewables

AWS announced a large solar project, part of its commitment to powering all of its global infrastructure with renewables

Amazon announced this week that it has teamed up with Community Energy to build and operate an 80 megawatt (MW) solar farm in Virginia, which the companies claim to be the largest solar farm in the state.

The announcement comes just one day after an environmental advocacy group hit out at AWS over its carbon footprint and energy reporting practices.

The companies said the solar farm, to be named the Amazon Solar Farm US East, will start generating approximately 170,000 megawatt hours (MWh) of solar power annually as early as October 2016 – which is roughly equivalent to the amount of energy used to power approximately 15,000 US homes for a year.

Amazon said the power purchasing agreement (PPA) is part of its long-term goal announced last year of powering all of its datacentre infrastructure using 100 per cent renewables. It said as of April this year about a quarter of its infrastructure is powered by renewables.

“We continue to make significant progress towards our long-term commitment to power the global AWS infrastructure with 100 percent renewable energy,” said Jerry Hunter, vice president of infrastructure at Amazon Web Services. “Amazon Solar Farm US East – the second PPA that will serve both existing and planned AWS datacenters in the central and eastern US – has the added benefit of working to increase the availability of renewable energy in the Commonwealth of Virginia.”

Community Energy chief executive Brent Alderfer said: “We are pleased to work with Amazon Web Services to build the largest solar farm in Virginia and one of the largest east of the Mississippi. This project, which wouldn’t have been possible without AWS’ leadership, helps accelerate the commercialization and deployment of solar photovoltaic (PV) technologies at scale in Virginia.”

Earlier this week Green America, a US-based environmental advocacy group, said Amazon is far behind other datacentre operators – including some of its large competitors like Google, Microsoft, Apple and Facebook – in terms of its renewable energy use and reporting practices. Google and Apple have been particularly strong in using or generating renewable energy to power their datacentres, with Apple committed to a number of large solar projects globally.

The group launched a campaign this week aimed at convincing Amazon to alter its environmental strategy. It is calling on Amazon to commit to full use of renewables for its datacentres by 2020 (AWS hasn’t set a target date publicly); submit accurate and complete data to the Carbon Disclosure Project; and issue and annual sustainability report.

Amazon, AWS, Carbon Disclosure Project;, Datacentre, Elizabeth O'Connell, Green America, Infrastructure as a Service, News & Analysis, Todd Larsen

Green America hits out at Amazon for its dirty cloud

Amazon has committed to bolstering its use of renewables, but Green America thinks it needs to go further

Amazon has committed to bolstering its use of renewables, but Green America thinks it needs to go further

Notforprofit environmental advocacy group Green America is launched a campaign to try and convince Amazon to reduce its carbon footprint and catch up with other large cloud incumbents’ green credentials.

Green America said Amazon is behind other datacentre operators – including some of its large competitors like Google, Apple and Facebook – in terms of its renewable energy use and reporting practices.

“Every day, tens of millions of consumers are watching movies, reading news articles, and posting to social media sites that all use Amazon Web Services.  What they don’t realize is that by using Amazon Web Services they are contributing to climate change,” said Green america’s campaigns director Elizabeth O’Connell.

“Amazon needs to take action now to increase its use of renewables to 100 percent by 2020, so that consumers won’t have to choose between using the internet and protecting the planet,” O’Connell said.

Executive co-director Todd Larsen also commented on Amazon’s green cred: “Amazon lags behind its competitors, such as Google and Microsoft, in using renewable energy for its cloud-based computer servers.  Unlike most of its competitors, it also fails to publish a corporate responsibility or sustainability reporting, and it fails to disclose its emissions and impacts to the Carbon Disclosure Project.”

Amazon has recently taken strides towards making its datacentres greener. In November last year the company committed to using 100 per cent renewable energy for its global infrastructure, bowing to pressure from organisations like Greenpeace which have previously criticised the company’s reporting practices around its carbon footprint. But organisations like Green America still believe the company is way off the mark on its commitment.

Green America’s campaign is calling on Amazon to commit to full use of renewables for its datacentres by 2020; submit accurate and complete data to the Carbon Disclosure Project; and issue and annual sustainability report.

An Amazon spokesperson told BCN that the company and its customers are already showing environmental leadership by adopting cloud services in the first place.

“AWS customers have already shown environmental leadership by moving to cloud computing, which is inherently more environmentally friendly than traditional computing. Any analysis on the climate impact of a datacentre should take into consideration resource utilization and energy efficiency, in addition to power mix,” the spokesperson said.

“On average, AWS customers use 77 per cent fewer servers, 84 per cent less power, and utilize a 28 per cent cleaner power mix, for a total reduction in carbon emissions of 88 per cent from using the AWS Cloud instead of operating their own datacentres. We believe that our focus on resource utilization and energy efficiency, combined with our increasing use of renewable energy, will help our customers achieve their carbon reduction and sustainability goals. We will continue to provide updates of our progress on our AWS & Sustainable Energy page,” she added.

Datacentre, HP, hybrid cloud, News & Analysis, Orlando Bayter, Ormuco, Steve Dietch

Ormuco taps HP Helion for mid-market hybrid cloud offering

Ormuco is partnering with HP on hybrid cloud

Ormuco is partnering with HP on hybrid cloud

Ormuco is partnering with HP to launch a Helion OpenStack-based hybrid cloud solution the company said is designed specifically with workload portability in mind.

Hybrid cloud is still high on the agenda for many CIOs but challenges abound – security and compliance management, service automation and orchestration and of course, workload portability. The company is relying on HP’s implementation of OpenStack to solve some of those challenges, and said its ConnectedCloud offering will help enterprises move their workloads across OpenStack-based private and public clouds.

“Ormuco is entering the cloud services market since there is a vital need for a hybrid cloud solution with streamlined functionality for enterprise customers,” said Ormuco chief executive Orlando Bayter. “HP Helion OpenStack and Ormuco’s new data centres enable us to create environments that focus on service delivery regardless of the underlying infrastructure.”

Ormuco has datacentres in Dallas, Texas; Sunnyvale, California and Montreal, Quebec, and said it has others planned for New York and Seattle as well as an expansion into Europe with datacentres in Frankfurt and London.

The company is a member of HP’s Helion Partner Network, a federation of HP-certified OpenStack cloud incumbents globally that private cloud users can burst into, which is for the time being primarily how the company delivers scale.

“Ormuco requires extensive geographic reach and the ability to meet customers’ in-country or cross-border cloud requirements,” said Steve Dietch, vice president, HP Helion, HP. “With HP Helion OpenStack and the HP Helion Network, Ormuco’s Connected Cloud customers will have access to hybrid cloud services from a global, open ecosystem of service providers.”

Azure, Datacentre, Kevin Turner, Microsoft, Microsoft Dynamics, News & Analysis, Office 365

Microsoft to open two cloud datacentres in Canada

Microsoft is adding two cloud datacentres in Canada

Microsoft is adding two cloud datacentres in Canada

Microsoft is opening two cloud datacentres in Canada, the company said this week. The facilities, one in Toronto, Ontario and one in Montreal, Quebec, will deliver Azure, Office 365 and Microsoft Dynamics to local customers.

The company said the datacentres would help companies and organisation in highly regulated sectors like healthcare, the public sector, higher education and financial services overcome data storage and compliance regulations.

“Companies and organisations that have to adhere to data storage requirements and compliance standards can now take advantage of the advantages offered by Microsoft services here in Canada,” said Microsoft chief operating officer Kevin Turner.

Turner said the announcement speaks to Microsoft’s “deep and growing commitment” to Canada and its public and private sector organisations.

“Now customers will be able to enjoy the benefits of all commercial cloud services on their terms across Canada.”

This is Microsoft’s first big cloud datacentre push since the company announced the launch of Azure in Australia last year. Lately, however, Microsoft has seemed more focused on bolstering its position through hybrid cloud, announcing Azure Stack – a series of updates and architectural changes (more microservices) to its server and cloud technologies aimed at blending the divide between Azure and Windows Server.

Converged Infrastructure, Datacentre, HP, News & Analysis, Paul Morgan, Vendor

HP targets hybrid cloud users with CloudSystem, Helion updates

HP has updated its CloudSystem converged infrastructure offerings

HP has updated its CloudSystem converged infrastructure offerings

HP has updated its CloudSystem platform to include its distribution of OpenStack in a converged private cloud offering. Paul Morgan, HP’s cloud head in EMEA told BCN the company is looking to broaden its support for hybrid cloud deployments.

The HP Helion CloudSystem includes all of HP’s Helion software including CloudSystem (its own private cloud software), Helion OpenStack, Helion Development Platform (it’s Cloud Foundry distribution) and HP Helion Eucalyptus (for AWS workload portability).

The offering comes in two flavours: the CS200-HC, which is being pitched as an entry-level hyper converged system aimed at SMBs and enterprises and can scale up to 32 nodes (pricing will be announced later this year but Morgan suggested the cost would float around the $2,000 mark for three years with support and maintenance); and the CS700x/700, which is cabinet-sized, aimed at larger enterprises and can scale up to 100 blade servers.

The software loaded on top comes in two versions: Foundation, which includes the Development Pack and OpenStack; and Enterprise, which ships with everything the Foundation package offers as well as OneView, Matrix, and Eucalyptus service templates, and includes more robust architecting and publishing capabilities.

The company said it has expanded support for HyperV, enhanced VMware networking, and added a number of OpenStack ancillary services under the hood including Heat (for orchestration) and Horizon (for dashboarding). It’s also added OneView – its converged infrastructure operations management software – to the mix.

“We definitely think that down the road many of the applications and workloads we see today will be hosted in the public cloud,” Morgan explained. “But in reality many of those applications don’t move over so easily. The cloud journey really does start with hybrid, which is where we think we can add value.”

Morgan said that converged offerings can help IT departments save big because they improve automation and deliver orchestration and automation without needing to radically change applications. He added that some of its customers have saved upwards of 30 to 40 per cent using its CloudSystem offerings.

“That’s where these converged offerings can play a role – in delivering all of the agility and cost savings cloud brings and which enterprises are looking for when they refresh their hardware, but not necessarily forcing them to rush off and overhaul the application landscape at the same time.”

blade server, Datacentre, Marc Rouanne, Networking, News & Analysis, NFV, Open Source, OpenStack, Phil Twist, Vendor

Nokia eyes the cloud infrastructure market with OpenStack, VMware-based servers

Nokia is offering up its own blade servers to the telco world

Nokia is offering up its own blade servers to the telco world

Nokia Networks revealed its AirFrame datacentre solutions this week, high-density blade servers running a combination of OpenStack and VMware software and designed to support Nokia’s virtualised network services for telcos.

“We are taking on the IT-telco convergence with a new solution to challenge the traditional IT approach of the datacentre,” said Marc Rouanne, executive vice president, Mobile Broadband at Nokia Networks.

“This newest solution brings telcos carrier-grade high availability, security-focused reliability as well as low latency, while leveraging the company’s deep networks expertise and strong business with operators to address an increasingly cloud-focused market valued in the tens of billions of euros.”

The servers, which come pre-integrated with Nokia’s own switches, are based on Intel’s x86 chips and run OpenStack as well as VMware, and can be managed using Nokia’s purpose-built cloud management solution. The platforms are ETSI NFV / OPNFV-certified, so they can run Nokia’s own VNFs as well as those developed by certified third parties.

The company’s orchestration software can also manage the split between both virtualised and network legacy functions in either centralised or distributed network architectures.

Phil Twist, vice president of Portfolio Marketing at Nokia Networks told BCN the company designed the servers specifically for the telco world, adding things like iNICs and accelerators to handle the security, encryption, virtual routing, digital signal processing (acceleration for radio) that otherwise would tie up processor capacity in a telco network.

But he also said the servers could be leveraged for standing up its own cloud services, or for the wider scale-out market.

“Our immediate ambition is clear: to offer a better alternative for the build-out of telco clouds optimized for that world.  But of course operators have other in-house IT requirements which could be hosted on this same cloud, and indeed they could then offer cloud services to their enterprise customers on this same cloud,” he explained.

“We could potentially build our own cloud to host SaaS propositions to our customers, or in theory potentially offer the servers for enterprise applications but that’s not our initial focus,” he added.

Though Twist didn’t confirm whether this was indeed Nokia’s first big move towards the broader IT infrastructure market outside networking, the announcement does mean the company will be brought into much closer competition with both familiar (Ericsson, Cisco) and less familiar (HP) incumbents offering their own OpenStack-integrated cloud kit.

Datacentre, GPU, Hardware, News & Analysis, Nvidia, Vendor, Virtualisation

Nvidia: ‘Cloud to generate $1bn for the firm in a few years’

Nvidia's chief exec believes cloud will generate over $1bn for the firm in just a few years

Nvidia’s chief exec believes cloud will generate over $1bn annually for the firm in just a few years

Chip maker and GPU specialist Nvidia Corp said it expects cloud computing to generate over $1bn in revenues for the firm in the next few years, according to a report from Reuters.

Speaking to reporters at Computex Nvidia’s chief executive officer Jen-Hsun Huang also said the company expects cloud revenues to grow between 60 and 70 per cent each year.

A number of cloud service providers have borrowed from the high performance computing world to add GPU acceleration to their services in a bid to cope with diminishing returns on CPU performance.

HPC and cloud revenue at Nvidia was $79m for the recently reported Q1 2016, up 57 per cent year-on-year, and the company has over the past year or so announced some large deals with companies like Baidu, Facebook, Flickr, Microsoft and Twitter, largely around its Tesla and GRID offerings.

Last year it also struck a deal with AWS to add GPU-accelerated instances to its growing roster of services.

Nvidia has said much of its growth in recent quarters has come from datacentre, cloud, gaming and automotive, and that its deals with virtualisation incumbents VMware and Citrix are helping to give it a strong boost in the enterprise. Speaking to journalists and analysts in February this year Huang said its deal with VMware alone means about 80 per cent of the world’s enterprises now support its GRID GPU virtualisation technology.

Datacentre, Equinix, John Hughes, M&A, News & Analysis, Stephen Smith, TelecityGroup

Equinix, Telecity reach merger agreement as Interxion gets kicked to the curb

Equinix and Telecity Group are merging, which will boost Equinix's presence in the EU

Equinix and Telecity Group are merging, which will stregthen Equinix’s presence in the EU

Equinix and TelecityGroup have agreed the terms of a merger that will see the American datacentre incumbent pay $2.35bn for all issued Telecity shares.  The deal also means the proposed merger between Telecity and Interxion is dead in the water.

Under the terms of the merger each Telecity shareholder will be entitled to receive £5.72 for each share and 0.0327 new Equinix shares. Following the merger’s completion Telecity shareholders will hold just over 10 per cent of the shares in the combined group.

John Hughes, executive chairman of the board of TelecityGroup will also be joining the Equinix board.

“On behalf of the Board of TelecityGroup, I am very pleased to recommend the combination of TelecityGroup and Equinix to our shareholders today. Having carefully considered all our options, the Board believes this is a compelling offer and an excellent outcome for shareholders, employees and customers,” Hughes said.

“Through this transaction, our customers will have new global opportunities for their connected datacentre requirements.  The combination of Equinix and TelecityGroup services and people will ensure the expanded business leads the way in the provision of highly-connected data centre services for customers in Europe and all over the world.”

Stephen Smith, chief executive officer and president of Equinix said TelecityGroup will “considerably strengthen” its current offerings in Europe and help reinforce its position in the interconnection business.

“The transaction will allow Equinix to benefit from increased scale and extend the global reach of our platform. We believe our offer is compelling to TelecityGroup shareholders who will realise significant value for their holdings while having the opportunity to participate in the future strengths of the combined business,” Smith said.

“We are especially pleased to be welcoming John Hughes onto the Board of the combined business and will greatly benefit from his experience in the technology space,” he added.

The move also means that the proposed merger between TelecityGroup and Interxion is dead. When news broke of the merger talks earlier this month Equinix’s board called Interxion out, claiming an Equinix merger would be more beneficial from the perspective of shareholders.

If the merger is approved TelecityGroup will give Equinix a stronger presence in the UK and extend its footprint into new locations with identified cloud and interconnection needs including Dublin, Helsinki, Istanbul, Milan, Stockholm and Warsaw, something Equinix is clearly willing to splurge on. Telecity’s market cap when news of the potential merger originally broke earlier this month stood at £1.4bn, so Equinix is paying a premium of around £950m.

Ark Data Centres, Capita, Datacentre, Huw Owen, News & Analysis, Peter Hands

Capita to deploy private cloud service in Ark datacentres

Capita is deploying its private cloud solution in Ark's UK datacentres

Capita is deploying its private cloud solution in Ark’s UK datacentres

IT services specialist Capita struck a deal with Ark Data Centres this week that will see the company deploy its private cloud service in Ark datacentres.

Capita IT Enterprise Services said that deploying in Ark’s facilities would mean the company spends one tenth of the capital cost compared to that of maintaining its existing facilities, making it more competitive as it moves further into the cloud services segment.

Peter Hands, executive director, Capita IT Enterprise Services said: “Ark Data Centres offers modern facilities which integrate its innovation in cooling technology, dynamic monitoring, modularity, security by building not site, guaranteed power usage effectiveness (PUE) and speed. Combined with our expertise in cloud based services, we’re in prime position to deliver the availability that our customers need, with the flexibility and security that they want and with the reduced carbon footprint that everyone seeks.”

Capita will be deploying the private cloud solution on VCE Vblocks initially in one installation with about 28 cabinets worth of space, with two further installations planned across Ark’s datacentres.

Ark has sites in Hampshire and Wiltshire.

“At Ark we are fully focused on delivering data centres. Just datacentres, but those that are the very best,” commented Huw Owen, chief executive of Ark Data Centres. “We don’t attempt to sell further up the IT services stack. As a result, all Ark customers enjoy a professional relationship of integrity and complete trust.”

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.