Dell-bashing is a fairly common pastime these days, but I actually think Dell has a golden opportunity to reposition itself as IT visionary if it treats hardware it as what it really is: a delivery mechanism for software and services. Read more »
Cotendo is leveraging Equinix’s global data center footprint to give itself 30 points of presence, letting Cotendo focus on differentiating elsewhere. The companies released details of their partnership Thursday morning, including a quadrupling of Cotendo’s customer base to 400 from 100 in the past two years. Read more »
Despite OpenStack’s continued growth, a combination of product updates and acquisitions from Citrix, Eucalyptus, Red Hat and VMware over the past week demonstrate that the race to become the dominant private cloud provider, as well as win over the enterprise, is far from over. Is one of ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Remember that whole debate over whether moving to cloud computing is a greener option? Well, data center monitoring startup Sentilla is introducing an analytics tool that can predict whether embracing cloud computing (both private and public) is a smart play from an energy bill perspective. Read more »
Fusion-io, a newly public company that makes flash memory components for servers on Monday released the results of its acquisition of IO Turbine, a mere three weeks after it acquired the startup. The combination of the two companies has resulted in a product called ioCache. Read more »
Dell has officially become a cloud provider with the launch of an Infrastructure-as-a-Service cloud built atop VMware technology. The move is just the first in Dell’s three-pronged IaaS attack, which will soon include clouds based on the Microsoft Windows Azure and OpenStack platforms. Read more »
VMware has transformed the enterprise computing model more than any other company in the past decade. Now, with the latest release of vSphere containing several new storage features, VMware is set to disrupt storage. Its parent company, EMC, and NetApp may want to stay alert. Read more »
Embrane, which builds tools that will enable cloud providers to scale out networking services faster and with less complexity, has raised $18 million in second round funding. The networking sector is heating up as virtualization complicates communication between servers and data centers. Read more »
Web applications that are deployed in one or a few data centers can watch their bandwidth costs exceed their server and hosting costs as their applications scale up, according to a paper looking at what telecommunications companies can offer as cloud providers. Read more »
Without thinking about the SLA it’s impossible to compare costs between clouds. An enterprise gigabyte comes with a whole host of services around it, while Amazon’s does not. So while it seems like cost per gigabyte is a good measure, it’s not. Here’s why. Read more »
When we watch YouTube or stream TV through a Boxee, the assumption is that aside from some buffering, the experience will be fine. But add live content and interactive elements to those video streams, and it gets complicated. A new paper shows us how complicated. Read more »
Achieving the ultimate in green building badges — the LEED platinum certification — is pretty rare and is particularly unusual for data centers. But on Thursday GE showed off its new LEED platinum-certified data center in Louisville, Ky. Here are some photos from the green facility. Read more »
Dell’s stock took a dive this morning after it said it lowered its revenue estimates of the year citing weak consumer demand, but while it’s server business remained strong there’s no doubt that Michael Dell, the company’s CEO is navigating a fine line Read more »
Nutanix is counting on mid-size enterprises to drive its adoption of its converged infrastructure appliance. CEO Dheeraj Pandey’s stance is that SMEs have the budgets, the IT demands and the right cultures to justify taking chances on new approaches to infrastructure. He could be onto something. Read more »
The shift in networking and the hype around the OpenFlow protocol has led to a a lot of confusion and overinflation of what OpenFlow can do. To get a bit more grounded in reality, I spoke with NEC about what its customers are doing. Read more »
Amazon Web Services announced a trio of features designed to lure in enterprise users, including dedicated 1- or 10-Gigabit links to its cloud data centers. AWS is doing everything it can to make its services as flexible, reliable and secure as possible for enterprise users. Read more »
There has been a lot of talk about consolidation lately because federal agencies have until Oct. 7 to present their plans for slashing data center footprints by 38 percent by 2015. But how exactly the government will pull this off is still up for debate. Read more »
Thanks to the recession and energy efficiency technology, data centers consumed less electricity than expected between 2005 and 2010, according to a report by researcher Jonathan Koomey. Read more »
Silicon Valley’s fuel cell maker Bloom Energy continues to add customers looking to power part of their data center operations with distributed, cleaner power in California. NTT America plans to install five Bloom fuel cells at one of its data center facilities in San Jose, Calif. Read more »
There are several data-center-efficiency metrics you will need to know to figure out how to differentiate green-cloud-marketing hype from reality. Read more »
Facebook engineers have tested a 64-core chip from Tilera and found it ideal for grabbing data quickly from key value stores. This may galvanize the creation of new benchmarks as the debate of which architecture works best for webscale and cloud computing rages. Read more »
On Wednesday Dell said it would buy networking-gear-maker company Force10 Networks. The move was expected since Dell’s rivals in the server space have tied up their networking equipment buys after Cisco launched servers that combined computing and networking in one box. Read more »
Intel has purchased an Ethernet silicon company in a move that mimics the industry trend toward viewing the data center as the computer as computing becomes more distributed. Intel said on Tuesday it would buy Fulcrum Microsystems, a venture-backed company that’s 11 years old. Read more »
IBM shares were trading up Tuesday morning after it reported strong second-quarter results yesterday. While Big Blue got a profit boost from recently released mainframe products, it also gave us some indications for the future growth of the cloud and big data. Read more »
Initially, I was excited to see that someone else sees Las Vegas as the green data center hotspot it should be. But pair Networks’ new Las Vegas data center that runs entirely off the grid does so with relatively little solar power. Read more »
We give Intel a lot of flack here at GigaOM for not being mobile enough or low power enough for scale out computing, but the chipmaker is doing all right in the server category. We discussed how well and the future for servers in this video. Read more »
Behind the cloud are thousands of servers, switches, appliances both physical and virtual, and any number of complicating bits of machinery and software all just waiting to cause a problem. Understanding and monitoring that massive infrastructure is the world of LaunchPad finalist Real-Status. Read more »
Much like Apple’s elegant Time Machine software helps make backing up your MacBook effortless, Zerto wants to make disaster recovery in the cloud as simple. The Structure 2011 LaunchPad company wants to become the disaster recovery solution for companies that rely on the cloud. Read more »
CloudFloor, which launched at Structure 2011 last month, has raised $3.1 million from undisclosed investors to build out its software which purports to show both IT workers and business managers how their cloudy assets are performing against business goals. Read more »
After launching an open server and data center design in April, Facebook is prepping for version 2.0 of its hardware, and huge server buyers are playing along. From Rackspace to major financial services companies, big hardware buyers are getting into Open Compute. Read more »
Paul Froutan, formerly head of global data center infrastructure at Google, is joining cloud-storage pioneer Nirvanix as CTO. The addition will almost certainly improve Nirvanix’s ability to deliver its services, but the larger-scale news is yet another public defection from Google. Read more »
Networking is about to change. It is inevitable that an open-source hardware architecture for the large chassis switch gets released, likely driven by a consortium of large customers. When combined with the external software control enabled by OpenFlow, this will really shake things up. Read more »
Twitter’s data center plans are reportedly in disarray according to sources. A few people shared that the microblogging service, which announced plans to build a Utah data center back in April 2010, had plans to abandon the site and move to a data center in Sacramento. Read more »
Allied Fiber may be able to do something the FCC can’t: help make American broadband just a bit more competitive. In a few weeks it will begin construction on its new type of optical network. It’s six months late, but better late than never. Read more »
For decades, innovation in the chip industry has largely been governed by the needs of personal computers. But thanks to the proliferation of connected mobile devices, the growth of the consumer web and services available online and on-demand, the PC’s influence on chip design is fading. Read more »
Opscode, the configuration management company that has rethought the way to deploy and monitor hardware and software for cloud environments, has emerged from beta and launched a product specifically for the enterprise. Along the way it learned something about enterprise cloud adoption. Read more »
This week, the Open Data Center Alliance released its first deliverables to the world, with the aim to make it easier to compare and contrast commercial solutions and increase technical interoperability between clouds. But to reach new standards, the alliance must overcome significant challenges. Read more »
While Facebook, Google and Yahoo have been pretty vocal about their green data center designs, turns out eBay’s has been innovating around reducing the energy consumption of its data centers, and also looking into how to source clean power for its facilities. Read more »
Atlanta-based data-center-efficiency startup JouleX has raised $17 million from Sigma Partners, Flybridge Capital Partners, Intel Capital, Target Partners and TechOperators. As energy prices rise, energy generation facilities are stretched and hyperscale becomes normal, companies like JouleX should find it easy to spread their message. Read more »
The majority of data center operators are relying on server virtualization, hot and cold aisle containment and power monitoring software to make their operations more energy-efficient, according to data released today by an industry research group. And many data center operators are eying the cloud. Read more »
