Category Archives: News & Analysis

Alibaba, Aliyun, Asia Pacific, Datacentre, Equinix, Infrastructure as a Service, Intel, Meeras, News & Analysis, PCCW, Singapore, Singtel

Alibaba to set up cloud datacentre, HQ in Singapore

Alibaba is adding a datacentre in Singapore, where it will also place its international HQ

Alibaba is adding a datacentre in Singapore, where it will also place its international HQ

Alibaba’s cloud computing division Aliyun revealed plans to set up a datacentre in Singapore, where it also plans to base its overseas business headquarters.

The Singapore datacentre, its seventh globally, will host the company’s growing suite of cloud services and link up with its existing datacentres in Beijing, Hangzhou, Qingdao, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Silicon Valley.

“The cloud datacentre in Singapore is a key milestone in our strategy to help businesses of all sizes innovate and scale, wherever they are based, and however they choose to grow,” said Sicheng Yu, vice president of Aliyun. “Aliyun offers a unique combination of services for success in the cloud, including high-volume cloud-based transaction support and quality assurance for cloud computing services.”

Singapore will also be home to the company’s international headquarters, where its global business outside of China will be managed.

Aliyun claims demand for its cloud services is growing at a whopping 82 per cent, with revenues from its cloud services more than doubling year on year. The company said it has over 1.8 million cloud customers as of June this year.

Last month Aliyun’s parent Alibaba announced plans to plough $1bn into its cloud computing division, which cloud give it the scale it needs to compete more effectively with the likes of Amazon and Google. In addition to the Singapore datacentre, which is scheduled to go live in September this year, the company also plans to add cloud datacentres in the Middle East, Japan, and in various countries in Europe as part of that investment.

At the time the company said it also plans to use the funds to expand its partnerships through its recently announced Marketplace Alliance Program, a move that sees it partnering with large tech and datacentre operators, initially including Intel, Singtel, Meeras, Equinix and PCCW among others to help localise its cloud computing services and grow its ecosystem.

Ericsson, Internet of Things, IoT, News & Analysis, SK Holdings

Ericsson strikes global IoT partnership with SK Holdings

Ericsson and SK Holdings are partnering on IoT

Ericsson and SK Holdings are partnering on IoT

Swedish networking company Ericsson has announced the establishment of a collaboration partnership with Korean tech conglomerate SK Holdings to develop a global ICT ecosystem that will support Ericsson’s IoT platform, reports Telecoms.com.

SK Holdings is the owner of one of Korea’s major operators – SK Telecom – but also has interests a number of other areas of ICT. “Drawing from our strength in ICT services and solutions, we will enhance ICT competitiveness and strengthen our presence in global markets by forging partnerships with leading global companies in the areas of IoT, cloud networks and Big Data,” said Park Jung-ho, CEO of SK Holdings. “We will create a strong collaborative ecosystem with global ICT and solution companies for our global target markets and target industries.”

“Our IoT platform has opened up great opportunities for businesses across industries,” said Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg. “We look forward to working together with SK Holdings C&C to build a strong ICT ecosystem to realize and capture the benefits of the Networked Society.”

The actual announcement concerned the signing of an ‘extensive memorandum of understanding’ on 12 August. It committed the two companies to jointly develop IoT platforms specialized for certain industries, such as healthcare and transportation. In that sense it seems to be an extension of Ericsson’s recently announced strategy to diversify beyond telecoms. The two companies will also collaborate on other new ICT services, as well as security solutions that encompass both networks and data.

In other IoT partnership news Stream Technologies, which provides the IoT-X platform for managing connected devices, has got together with Link Labs, which specialises in developing LoRa networks, to develop a LoRa IoT platform.

“Link Labs are a perfect partner for deploying LoRa carrier grade LPWA networks,” said Tracy Hopkins, SVP of Low Power Networks for Stream Technologies. “Not only do they support the LoRaWAN open ecosystem and like Stream are active members of the LoRa Alliance, they also have Symphony Link which offers a different feature set for private networks… In this complex ’market of markets’, partnerships that make deployment simple and deliver on the business model are the very key to success.”

“We are very excited to be working with Stream’s IoT-X platform to bridge the gap between Link Labs’ LoRa Symphony Link networks and other IoT and M2M technologies,” said Bryan Eagle, VP of Biz Dev and Marketing at Link Labs. “Having simple, ease of management across multiple networks is a huge benefit for our customers. They deploy different technologies for different applications but want a single platform to manage them and Stream can deliver that.”

Datacentre, Facebook, HP, IBM, Intel, Mike Yang, News & Analysis, Open Compute, Open Source, Quanta, Rackspace, server

Quanta intros Intel RSA Open Compute proof of concept

Quanta is mashing up Intel's RSA and Open Compute designs

Quanta is mashing up Intel’s RSA and Open Compute designs

Taiwanese datacentre vendor Quanta has introduced an Intel Rack Scale Architecture (Intel RSA) proof of concept rack solution based on Open Compute specifications which the company is pitching at hyperscale datacentre operators and cloud providers.

Intel RSA is the chip vendor’s own modular architecture design that disaggregates compute, storage and networking and weaves them together in a fabric it claims makes resources easier to pool and pod.

Now Quanta has developed a proof of concept for a server that blends Intel’s RSA specs and Open Compute designs.

The hardware vendor, which already offers hardware based on Open Compute designs, claims will significantly reduce datacentre energy consumption and costs, reduce vendor lock-in and ease management and maintenance.

“Datacentres face significant challenges to efficiency, flexibility and agility,” said Mike Yang, general manager of QCT. “Working with Intel on the Intel RSA program, we have developed our product lineup based on Open Compute to give customers the utmost in efficiency and performance, supported by open standards.”

“In addition, we provide manageability from the chassis level and rack level, up to pod level, so customers can easily pool resources across these levels to support dynamic workloads,” Yang said.

ODMs like Quanta have gained strong share in the hyperscale datacentre space because of their cost competitiveness, and at the same time the Open Compute project, an open source hardware project founded by Facebook a few years back, seems to be gaining favour among large cloud providers. Facebook, IBM, HP and Rackspace are among some of the larger providers building out Open Compute-based services at reasonable scale.

Fujitsu, Hardware, Infrastructure as a Service, News & Analysis, OpenStack, Primeflex, Radhesh Balakrishnan, Red Hat, server, Vendor

Fujitsu, Red Hat partner on OpenStack-based private clouds

Red Hat and Fujitsu are partnering to develop OpenStack converged infrastructure solutions

Red Hat and Fujitsu are partnering to develop OpenStack converged infrastructure solutions

Fujitsu and Red Hat have jointly developed a dedicated solution to simplify the creation of OpenStack private clouds.

The Primeflex is a converged compute and storage combines Fujitsu’s server technology with Red Hat OpenStack and Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform software, and backed by Fujitsu’s professional services outfit.

The companies said the OpenStack-based converged offering will speed up cloud deployment.

Harald Bernreuther, director global infrastructure solutions at Fujitsu said: “Primeflex for Red Hat OpenStack can underpin any organisation’s plan to transform their business model by leveraging cloud computing. By opting for an OpenStack-based solution, organisations can run new cloud-scale workloads while also optimising costs.

“Primeflex for Red Hat OpenStack extends the philosophy of cost optimisation, through simplifying system maintenance and consolidating technology updates across the entire system stack, all the way from the underlying hardware through to the operating system,” Bernreuther said.

Red Hat said there is value in driving strong integration between software and hardware in the cloud space.

“OpenStack is a rapidly-growing, open source cloud infrastructure platform that is cost-effective, open, flexible and highly scalable,” said Radhesh Balakrishnan, general manager, OpenStack, Red Hat.

“We are excited about Fujitsu’s offering based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform to deliver private cloud infrastructure solutions and we look forward to continuing the collaboration to provide customers with an innovative cloud platform for digital business initiatives,” he said.

Red Hat isn’t the only OpenStack vendor boosting its converged infrastructure strategy as of late. In July Mirantis unveiled plans to work with a range of vendors, initially Dell and Juniper, to deliver OpenStack-based converged infrastructure solutions for enterprises.

IBM, Infrastructure as a Service, Jim Zemlin, Linux, mainframes, News & Analysis, server, Tom Rosamilia

IBM announces Linux mainframe app development cloud

IBM is trying to keep mainframes relevant in the cloud era

IBM is trying to keep mainframes relevant in the cloud era

IBM is open sourcing a large set of Linux mainframe code and launching the LinuxONE Developer Cloud, a cloud-based platform for developers to create applications for a Linux server based on the mainframe.

The LinuxONE Developer Cloud, which will be deployed in select IBM datacentres globally, will provide developers access to a cloud-based development, piloting and testing environment for Linux-based mainframe workloads.

The move coincides with the company’s launch of a portfolio of Linux mainframe services, called LinuxONE, that IBM says are optimised to run cloud-native workloads like Dockerized apps and NoSQL databases.

“Fifteen years ago IBM surprised the industry by putting Linux on the mainframe, and today more than a third of IBM mainframe clients are running Linux,” said Tom Rosamilia, senior vice president, IBM Systems.

“We are deepening our commitment to the open source community by combining the best of the open world with the most advanced system in the world in order to help clients embrace new mobile and hybrid cloud workloads. Building on the success of Linux on the mainframe, we continue to push the limits beyond the capabilities of commodity servers that are not designed for security and performance at extreme scale,” Rosamilia said.

As part of the move the company is contributing tens of thousands of lines of code to the recently created Open Mainframe Project, formed by the Linux Foundation to optimise Linux deployments on mainframes.

“Linux on the mainframe has reached a critical mass such that vendors, users and academia need a neutral forum where they can work together to advance Linux tools and technologies and increase enterprise innovation,” said Jim Zemlin, the Linux Foundation executive director.

“The Open Mainframe Project is a direct response to the demands of Linux users and the supporting open source ecosystem to address unique features and requirements built into mainframes for security, availability and performance,” Zemlin said.

Datacentre, Enterprise IT, IBM, Netflix, News & Analysis

Netflix to retire on-prem datacentres by summer’s end

Netflix is making big changes to how it architects its service

Netflix is making big changes to how it architects its service

Netflix said it plans to move its last remaining on-prem systems to the cloud in a move aimed at streamlining its datacentre strategy.

According to a recent report in The Wall Street Journal’s CIO Journal, while its entire customer-facing business runs on AWS, Netflix said the company is planning to completely retire its own datacentres later this summer.

While most of its internal applications also run in the public cloud the company still uses its own infrastructure to store backups of its video collection, and for persistent failover.

It is clear Netflix has until very recently continued to invest in that infrastructure. Earlier this year the video streaming giant swapped 16 existing storage systems for three XIV systems to reduce datacentre floor space used by about 80 per cent and boost its database transactions-per-minute.

It was also testing IBM’s recently announced Spectrum Storage software, which is designed to optimise storage and ease management within hybrid cloud environments.

Moving all of its systems and applications to the cloud will complement a massive architectural overhaul announced earlier this year.

The company said rising demand for its service, which is mostly deployed on AWS infrastructure from multiple locations (initially just in the US) has prompted an effort to simplify its architecture so that it can scale more rapidly and reduce outages.

“Over the past 7 years, Netflix streaming has expanded from thousands of members watching occasionally to millions of members watching over two billion hours every month.  Each time a member starts to watch a movie or TV episode, a “view” is created in our data systems and a collection of events describing that view is gathered.  Given that viewing is what members spend most of their time doing on Netflix, having a robust and scalable architecture to manage and process this data is critical to the success of our business,” the company said at the time.

Infrastructure as a Service, Managed cloud services, News & Analysis, Rackspace, Taylor Rhodes

Rackspace to add AWS to Fanatical Support services

Rhodes: "We are positioned to become the dominant service provider for these cloud platforms"

Rhodes: “We are positioned to become the dominant service provider for these cloud platforms”

Rackspace is currently developing a Fanatical Support offering for AWS customers, the company’s latest move aimed at shifting its business towards managed cloud services.

Speaking about the company’s second quarter financial results earlier this week Rackspace president and chief exec Taylor Rhodes said the company plans to extend its Fanatical Support and managed cloud services to the AWS platform “later this year.”

“As I’ve advised you in earlier calls, we don’t expect significant revenue for managed services on other cloud providers in 2015, but we’re excited about the prospects for this business. We estimate that the addressable market is in the multiple billions of dollars annually and is growing in the high-double digits,” Rhodes explained in a call with analysts and journalists.

“Because of our scale and reputation for Fanatical Support, we are positioned to become the dominant service provider for these cloud platforms,” he said.

The new comes about a month after Rackspace announced it would extend its Fanatical Support services to Microsoft Azure’s public and private cloud infrastructure. The company said customers will be able to buy either bundled Azure infrastructure with support, or just support services. The offerings will be available first in the US, with plans for an international rollout “through early 2016.”

Azure Data Factory, Big Data, Cloud Dataflow, Database, Google, Microsoft, News & Analysis

Google, Microsoft punt big data integration services into GA

Big cloud incumbents are doubling down on data integration

Big cloud incumbents are doubling down on data integration

Google and Microsoft have both announced the general release of Cloud Dataflow and Azure Data Factory, their respective cloud-based data integration services.

Google’s Cloud Dataflow is designed to integrate separate databases and data systems – both streaming and batch – in one programming model while giving apps full access to, and the ability to customise, that data; it is essentially a way to reduce operational overhead when doing big data analysis in the cloud.

Microsoft’s Azure Data Factory is a slightly different offering. It’s a data integration and automation service that regulates the data pipelines connecting a range of databases and data systems with applications. The pipelines can be scheduled to ingest, prep, transform, analyse and publish that data – with ADF automating and orchestration more complex transactions.

ADF is actually one of the core components of Microsoft’s Cortana analytics offering, and is deployed to automate the movement and transformation of data from disparate sources.

The maturation and commoditisation of data integration and automation is a positive sign for an industry that has for a very long while leaned heavily on expensive bespoke data integration. As more cloud incumbents bring their own integration offerings to the table it will be interesting to see how some of the bigger players in data integration and automation, like Informatica or Teradata, respond.

Akhil Gupta, Box, DropBox, News & Analysis, Storage as a Service

Dropbox promotes former Google engineer to infrastructure lead

Akhil Gupta DropboxDropbox has promoted one of its lead engineers, Akhil Gupta, to vice president of infrastructure, the latest in a series of executive shakeups at the firm.

Gupta has been with Dropbox for the past three years and has helped the company develop its infrastructure strategy. As vice president of infrastructure he will continue to oversee physical and technical infrastructure operations and security, and lead the company’s datacentre scale-out globally.

Before joining Dropbox Gupta spent seven years with Google, managing the search giant’s advertising technical infrastructure.

The infrastructure appointment comes amidst a broader executive shakeup at the cloud storage firm.

Last month the company hired Thomas Hansen, who most recently served as worldwide vice president of small and medium business at Microsoft where he led SME sales globally, to the newly created role of global vice president of sales & channel. It also hired former Twitter product management specialist Todd Jackson as Dropbox’s first vice president of product.

With the new hires Dropbox is looking to bolster its position in the enterprise, the quickest way to gaining seats, against rivals like Box, which heavily targets niche verticals and large traditional organisations as well as startups and smaller firms. Dropbox claims to have over 100,000 business and 400 million users on its platform while Box maintain it has closer to 44,000 organisations as customers.

GIC, Information Management, John Gannon, M&A, Michael A. Brown, News & Analysis, Symantec, The Carlyle Group, Vendor, Veritas

Symantec to sell IM business Vertias for $8.9bn

Symantec is selling its IM business to an investor consoritum

Symantec is selling its IM business to an investor consoritum and refocusing on security

Digital security heavyweight Symantec announced this week it would sell its information management business, Veritas, to a group led by The Carlyle Group together with GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, for a total of $8.3bn.

The move confirms Symantec will continue to focus on security following the announcement last October that the company would split in two, with its IM business and security business going separate ways.

“Since the Board first announced the separation of Veritas, we have been preparing the company to operate independently and evolving our business strategy, while continuing to deliver industry-leading solutions to our customers. We are thrilled to partner with The Carlyle Group and GIC, which have a strong track record of successfully growing businesses and share our dedication to Veritas’ strategy and success,” said John Gannon, Symantec executive vice president and Veritas general manager.

“Veritas will continue to provide next-generation information management solutions to serve the world’s largest and most complex environments, including multiple cloud deployments, managed services and on-premise infrastructure,” Gannon said.

Symantec expects to receive $6.3bn in cash for Veritas, and has authorized a $1.5bn increase to its existing share repurchase program, bringing the total to $2.6 billion, yielding a total of $8.9bn from the sale. Veritas was originally acquired by Symantec for $13.5bn in 2005.

Michael A. Brown, Symantec president and chief executive said: “This transaction strengthens our financial foundation, paving the way for Symantec to grow its security business and increase its lead as the world’s largest cybersecurity company. We believe the agreement with the investors, including The Carlyle Group and GIC, delivers an attractive and certain value for the Veritas business, and is in the best interests of all stakeholders.”

The divestment isn’t terribly surprising giving Symantec’s messaging at the tail end of last year. Upon announcing the company would split Brown said its security and IM businesses each face unique market opportunities and challenges.

“It has become clear that winning in both security and information management requires distinct strategies, focused investments and go-to market innovation,” he said at the time.

Now it seems Symentec is refocusing exclusively on security, and said the sale would give it a much needed cash influx to help it fund both organic and inorganic growth through targeted acquisitions.