Tag: data centre

Exclusive poaches Arrow and Computerlinks’s David Ellis

Posted on May 11, 2016 by - Moving People, News

dave-ellis-arrow-formerly-computerlinks-2014-320x320French-based Exclusive Group has poached Arrow executive David Ellis to head up the distributor’s global services.

Exclusive says Ellis will use his experience in supporting new and disruptive technologies to roll out new services offerings for the cybersecurity marke, which probably means the outfit’s cloud services.

Barrie Desmond, COO of Exclusive Group, said that the company was  seeing  more global deals and our ability to support these will add even more value to our vendor and channel partners.

“Global services are a key part of our growth strategy over the next three to five years and Ellis will play a crucial role in achieving this. I’m pleased to welcome him on board and looking forward to working with him for what promises to be an exciting journey ahead.”

Ellis  was a key manager for Arrow in EMEA, responsible for vendor business development and the roll-out of new propositions. Before that, he was director of New Technology and Services at Computerlinks before its acquisition by Arrow. In his 13 years with Computerlinks he built and grew an e-Security offering before assuming responsibility for services, emerging technology and market sectors.

He said that Exclusive has built an enviable reputation for disrupting traditional value-add distribution and I’m really excited to now be part of this.

“In my time within the industry I’ve identified and brought to market a number of new technologies and services, and have seen the cybersecurity market evolve at breakneck speed. I can’t wait to start helping our vendor and channel partners achieve even more value from their relationship with Exclusive Group through new global service offerings.”

 

AT&T gets out off of its cloud

Posted on February 3, 2015 by - News

cloudWhile everyone seems to be rushing to get on the cloud, AT&T is downsizing its data centre operations.

The telco is apparently selling some of its data centres worth about $2 billion as it continues its streak of asset sales.

Apparently, AT&T is keen to get its debt loads down and pay off its credit card bill from last Christmas.  It is all a rumour of course, and the story is based on leaks to The Wall Street Journal 

Part of AT&T’s debt problems came because it had to bid high prices for spectrum.  The company said it had spent close to half of the total bids in the record-setting $44.9 billion spectrum sale that concluded last week.

AT&T bagged 251 licences in the  AWS-3 spectrum auction worth $18.2 billion. The company has also been investing to expand its footprint in Mexico to grow its business, as the US wireless market reaches saturation. It said last month it would buy bankrupt NII Holdings wireless business in Mexico for $1.875 billion.

Every silver lining has its cloud

Posted on October 11, 2013 by - News

datacentrebatteriesThe outlook for west London is green with increasing cloud cover, thanks in no small part to a brand spanking new data centre being built not far from Hayes and Harlington railway station.

Called LONDON2, and being built by Virtus, the data centre is due for completion in the summer of 2014. Located just 17 minutes by train from Paddington and less than a mile from Junction 3 of the M4, the site will deliver 11.4MW of IT power, and 65,000 square feet of net customer data centre space.

Virtus says that 100% of LONDON2’s power – all 20MW of it – will come from renewable energy, just like the company’s other data centre, LONDON1 (yes, really).

We checked, so you don’t have to, and we were told that LONDON1’s power sources are as follows:

  • Biomass – 11.299%
  • Off-shore wind – 27.712%
  • Landfill gas – 4.685%
  • Municipal and industrial waste – 8.049%
  • On-shore wind – 48.254%
  • Photovoltaic – 0.001%

We were also told that’s a good indication for LONDON2’s power consumption and that by using “the most advanced, fresh-air evaporative cooling technology, solar panels, ground water from its own well, chimney racks for heat extraction, and efficient UPS systems,” Virtus hopes LONDON2 will be the most energy efficient data centre in London.

In addition to being the physical embodiment of cloud computing, the site will also have extensive office space, board rooms and meeting facilities for hire.

Neil Cresswell, Virtus’ CEO, said: “With the range of energy-saving technologies we are putting in place we will now lead in being able to deliver the most cost-efficient and environmentally friendly data centre solutions, offering significant TCO reductions to our clients in power, cooling, connectivity and services charges.”

LONDON2 will be made up of six data halls, all capable of being subdivided allowing clients to have anything from a cabinet in a shared space to their own suite or data hall with dedicated power and cooling.

EMC releases next gen data centre product range

Posted on September 5, 2013 by - News

DSC_0017EMC hit the hyperbole when it released a refresh of its new mid-range data centre products.

Rich Napolitano, President, Unified Storage Division, EMC told the product launch in Milan yesterday that when people look at the history of datacentre computing they will see this particular product launch as the “day everything changed.”

To be fair the outfit has a lot to be proud of, if even half the stats for the VNX series are true.

The outfit has been the leader in the market with its VNX boxes which are for companies who want a data centre.

According to EMC President and Chief Operating Officer, David Goulden the rise of mobile data has made the data centre a vital part of any IT plan.  Huge amounts of data were flowing into the company which not only needed to be stored, but also used.

One of EMC’s customers, Enrico Parsini, from Conserve Italia, said that active use of the datacentre within his company was being seen as a way of driving down costs for the rest of the business.  This was particularly important in his company which has seen a three years of falling prices in the food industry.

VNX products are based on the idea that if you make Intel’s Sandy bridge cores more efficient and make SD cards run on special software rather than traditional HD methods you can make data centres go like the clappers for less energy and cost.

If what EMC says is true, its channel partners will be able to sell their clients a cheaper box than what they would have previously bought, and still see data centre speed improvements of about 50 per cent.

The product puts other hardware makers on the back foot.  While they have been touting the use of virtual computers, some even have hybrid systems for sale, they do not have the speed options of the EMC machines.

EMC said that many people were expecting it to just announce a refresh of the product, when it actually announced that it was going to change everything.

This is partly because the hardware is ahead of the competition and is already gearing up for its next generation.

It is the first time that we have heard of companies coming up with a use for Intel’s multicore products and making them work properly.  With Chipzilla planning more cores on its chips in coming months, EMC will have an easy upgrade path.

Part of the product’s success has been because of the involvement of Cisco and VMWare.

Satinder Sethi, Vice President, Data Centre Group, Cisco said that his company partnered with  EMC to speed its customers’ journey to the cloud.  These include allowing  custom-designed infrastructure, validated reference architectures via EMC VSPEX Proven Infrastructure, and pre-integrated converged infrastructure with VCE Vblock Systems.

Cisco kit and software integrated with offerings from EMC and VCE have generated significant momentum with customers and partners.

“Cisco and EMC have hundreds of joint channel partners and thousands of joint customers around the world.  Together, Cisco and EMC plan to accelerate this success with our mutual channel partners,” he said.

He added that EMC’s next-generation VNX technology will complement Cisco’s Unified Compute and Unified Fabric solutions, helping customers maximise their existing infrastructure and further simplify cloud deployments.

 

 

Logicalis scores Juniper Network Elite status

Posted on July 3, 2013 by - News

JuniperLogicalis has nabbed itself Elite Partner status for Advanced Security at Juniper Networks’ partner advantage programme, the top level for partners.

Logicalis has got itself Firewall/VPN & IDP and Policy and Access Control authorisations, which the company hopes will score it some more brownie points with companies thinking of hiring it.

MD at Logicalis UK, Mark Starkey, said the company had worked with Juniper Networks for quite some time, so getting the Elite status should help it sell itself to businesses concerned with advanced security in emerging trends like mobility and cloud.

“This accreditation provides us with access to the latest technologies and advanced training at Juniper,” Starkey said.

Darryl Brick, director of partners UK&I at Juniper, said that Logicalis is now offering advanced security from data centre through to small and medium enterprise, so customers can “take advantage of some of the most advanced security technology and services in the market”.

Oracle’s new G Cloud data centre is for Oracle

Posted on May 16, 2013 by - News

consultoracleOracle’s claims that it will be opening a data centre to support the UK government’s G Cloud service for the public sector are perfectly true, but appear to be designed as a boon to Oracle rather than the UK as a whole.

While G Cloud could, of course, always do with more power, an Oracle spokesperson confirmed to ChannelEye that the data centre will primarily be for existing or potential Oracle partners.

“Oracle will make Platform as a Service available to Independent Software Vendors (ISVs),” the spokesperson said. “Oracle’s PaaS provides Oracle Database and Java as a service, hence will be available to ISVs who run on this Oracle platform”.

“These ISVs will likely be existing Oracle partners, but we of course welcome new partners to join the Oracle Partner Network,” the spokesperson added. “The ISVs themselves need to have their cloud services accepted onto the CloudStore catalogue”.

Although presented as a helpful boost to the British economy, the plan appears to be fully Oracle’s with a light dab of spin.

“This investment is funded solely by Oracle,” the spokesperson said, “justified through our internal business case criteria and assessment of market opportunity, and is being made in advance of any contracts or orders from government”.

Daisy Group contracted to manage 2e2 Data Centre Business

Posted on February 15, 2013 by - News

DaisyDaisy Group has been appointed by Oakley Capital Private Equity to manage the 2e2 Data Centre Business.

The 2e2 Data Centre was rescued by Oakley after its parent business 2e2 Group went into administration. However, Oakley decided to pass the responsibility over to Daisy.

Daisy has said it will work with existing data centre employees of the business to provide data and hosting services from its data centres in Gateshead and Reading. It said that combined together, these data centres would double the amount of data centre power available to the Group’s customers, increasing from 2Mw to 4Mw.

Matthew Riley, chief exec of Daisy, said customers would also get the opportunity to work with a long-term partner with “proven expertise” in the data and hosting market.

He added that Daisy is now placed to provide stability to existing 2e2 customers and “offering further expertise and resource to Daisy customers”.

Emerging markets open up to increased data centre investment

Posted on January 21, 2013 by - News

datacentrebatteriesAccording to a report from Tariff Consultancy Ltd, which focuses on data centre development in 11 emerging markets, Russia and Turkey are way ahead of the pack.

TCL looked at Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Russia, Serbia, Turkey, and the Ukraine. Of these, the four largest are Russia, Turkey, Ukraine and Bulgaria respectively, though in the group, Russia by itself is expected to account for half of all data centre floor space by the end of the year.

Generally speaking, the size of the data centres are relatively small, TCL noted. In the 11 regions, the average size was just over 800 square markets, which is a great deal less than in established markets. The largest facility has up to 10,000 square metres of raised floor space. However, over the next five years, the total space should rise to 143,000 square metres, up from 109,000 at present – or a 30 percent increase going into 2018.

Pricing will also increase, with the average rack space rental increasing 10 percent up to 2018. The most expensive pricing is in the Russian market.

Trends outlined in the report mirror a transformation in the regions which are seeing more and more development and investment, both from foreign investors and by government, with a view to boost economic growth in the countries. This could also, of course, prove a boon to channel players looking for new markets to open up in. Ultimately, TCL concludes, the development of data centre space in these emerging markets proves high spec housing and hosting is no longer exclusive to established markets.