Scientists in California plan to prove whether data centres can save power by cutting out the AC power. Researchers from both the private and public sectors are conducting an experiment to see whether they can cut power costs in large computing environments such as a data centre, by removing the alternating current (AC).

Global provider of managed solutions and business connectivity services Easynet, has announced its sale from BSkyB (Sky) to Lloyds Development Capital, the private equity arm of Lloyds Banking Group for £100 million.

Further exploiting its dexterity as an independent global provider, Easynet will continue with its strategy to deliver high quality, complex international managed networks and managed hosting services to businesses around the world. Chief Executive Officer, David Rowe, who founded Easynet in 1994, will remain in the role with the full backing of LDC.

French fibre network operator Neo Telecoms has extended its sales activity in the US by opening a new point of presence in Chicago, Illinois, mainly aimed at clients in the financial sector. It has installed a Juniper MX960 router to deliver IP MPLS services with circuits optimised in Europe to minimise latency.

Few companies have as large a technical infrastructure as Intel, so the high profile vendor's decision to invest heavily in virtualization is a major endorsement of this data centre technology. Chip giant Intel has detailed its efforts to rein in spending on its own IT infrastructure, which includes a big investment in virtualization.

Former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Mark Hurd was hired as a co-president of Oracle, in a move that could fuel a new competition between the two giant tech companies.

"Mark did a brilliant job at HP and I expect he'll do even better at Oracle," said Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, in a statement announcing Hurd's hiring.

Source: Mercury News

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The internet may soon be a greener place thanks to new research that looks set to slash the carbon footprint of our surfing by introducing nanotechnology to computer servers. Computer servers are often housed in giant warehouses, known as "server farms" and generate huge amounts of heat, which in turn requires huge amounts of power to fuel cooling systems.

In a first-of-its-kind program for the data centre industry, wholesale data centre provider Digital Realty Trust is guaranteeing the completion of its Turn-Key Datacenters, Custom Data Centers, and POD Architecture Services projects on time, and on budget.

Cisco and AdInfa have collaborated to manage data centre energy consumption through the deployment of the InSIte power management system. Cisco’s Technical Marketing Engineering Labs are at the heart of the company’s sales success. With 1800 such labs around the world, they account for around 70% of the company’s power bill and provide an environment where equipment was typically left running 24 x 7. Cisco has committed to reducing its green house gas emissions by 25% in absolute terms by 2012 compared to 2007 so something had to be done to reduce lab energy consumption.

IT giant IBM has revealed that it plans to spend US$1 billion on data centre facilities around the globe in order to support IT services delivery to emerging markets.

The money will go towards building new data centres and expanding existing facilities. This will help IBM to access emerging markets such as Egypt, Argentina and China, the company said, which it hopes will contribute a quarter of its revenues by 2015.

Source: Information Age

RF Code has announced a new solution enabling data centres managers to track and manage assets down to the rack level, in both fully enclosed and open racks. The new solution leverages infrared and RFID technology “localize” or pinpoint asset location in a specific rack. When coupled with the active RFID technology to track assets in large, dense metal environments, this automated infrared approach allows data centres to track assets down to the server level.

HP has agreed to acquire security software provider ArcSight for US$1.5 billion. The acquisition of ArcSight will support HP's drive to server the data centre market, a central focus of its strategy of growth. Security software could support customers in managing the data centres.

Organisations are increasingly choosing SaaS to deploy software. It makes sense. Consider that it is typically installed faster. It is a non-capital expenditure with predictable costs. The popularity and growing acceptance of SaaS was proven after Hyland Software opened a European data centre in the U.K. in July 2009. Today, the company is managing the processes and data of approximately 100 customers in this one location.

Glowpoint, a provider of managed services for telepresence and video conferencing, has announced that it has signed an alliance agreement with Equinix, to offer carriers direct access to Glowpoint’s managed video services through the Equinix Carrier Ethernet Exchange, the only private Layer 2 Carrier Ethernet Exchange that offers Ethernet-based services across North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific.

Savvis expanded its geographic footprint earlier this year with the acquisition of Fusepoint Managed Services in Canada. Savvis CEO Jim Ousley said the company’s international push will continue. The company, however, will pursue partnerships rather than purchases. Ousley, speaking y at a Bank of America Merrill Lynch conference, said the company hopes to ink an international partnership in India by year’s end. He said the partnering thrust will continue next year, with Australia, Brazil, and China on the list.

AboveNet, a provider of high bandwidth connectivity solutions, has announced it is expanding its international network to key European markets with growing demand for dedicated, high performance and high bandwidth services. Customers will be able to connect seamlessly between the US, London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Paris.

Expanding its business analytics offerings yet again, IBM. is acquiring data warehouse appliance vendor Netezza for approximately US$1.7 billion in cash. The two companies have entered into a definitive agreement calling for IBM to purchase Netezza stock in cash, for US$27 per share, the companies have jointly announced.

Hurricane Electric, a native IPv6 Internet backbone and colocation provider, is on the growth path again. Now the service provider has built three new points of presence at Comfluent in Denver, Colorado Equinix Singapore and The Northwest Access Exchange in Portland, Oregon.

Confluent and Equinix Singapore customers will now be exchange or "peer" directly with Hurricane Electric's Internet backbone.

Source: Fierce Telecom

Talk about green data centres usually focuses on servers and how to cool them. But network switches usually get more or less ignored. There are good reasons for this, as the network probably amounts to a few percent of the energy needs of a data centre. But that proportion is increasing, and data centres need greener switches, as well as switches that can handle specific needs - or at least that’s the view of Stephen Garrison of data centre Ethernet provider Force10.

PhoneFactor, a global provider of phone-based multi-factor authentication, has released the results of its recent survey on the role of security in cloud computing adoption. The results point to a strong interest in cloud computing, but an equally strong fear about the security implications.

An often-overlooked aspect of data centre transformation is what to do with the older assets as newer systems come online. Much of the retiring IT equipment can possess sensitive data, may be sources of significant economic return, or at least need to be recycled according to various regulations.

IBM plans to buy Blade Network Technologies, a privately-held company that specializes in data centre switches, as large technology vendors compete to offer broader and more advanced technologies for corporate data centres.

Dell plans to announce a new system later this week that combines its servers, storage and other technology, becoming the latest tech giant to push a variant of the all-in-one setups.

Equinix, a provider of global data centre services, and Bloomberg, the leading global provider of financial data, news and analytics, have announced a strategic partnership to provide secure and reliable colocation, connectivity choice and interconnection services for Bloomberg’s data services and Bloomberg Tradebook.

The UK data center market will lead in capacity over the next five years, with space more than double France or Germany by 2014. The UK has the greatest breadth of offerings with more than 150 data center providers. Increasing data center demand and investment across western European markets, and the factors that restrict this growth form the background to a new report from BroadGroup – the third bi-annual European Data Centre Market.

To meet the increasing demand for the full range of cloud services, Verizon Business is enhancing its data centres around the globe. Within the next year, Verizon Business will expand its flagship cloud computing services suite – Computing as a Service– into centres in San Jose, Calif.; London; and Canberra, Australia. In addition, CaaS data canters to serve U.S. government customers will come online in Miami and Culpeper, Va., during the first quarter of 2011.

Hibernia Atlantic has announced plans to construct the industry’s first trans-Atlantic submarine cable in a decade. By building on a straighter path than other undersea cables across the Atlantic, network planners at Hibernia anticipate that the cable will shave 5 milliseconds or more off the return-path latency between New York and London.

The International Data Centre Group, the first global data centre alliance, announces today that two leading data centre operators, Teraco Data Environments Pty of South Africa and LCL of Belgium have joined its alliance network.