Psst, WSJ says the Data Center is Cloud, Duhh

WSJ has a post in its CIO journal that had me laughing this morning.

The Morning Download: Microsoft Shift Shows the Data Center Is the Cloud

[Steve Rosenbush]

Deputy Editor

The Morning Download comes from the editors of CIO Journal and cues up the most important news in business technology every weekday morning. Send us your tips, compliments and complaints. You can get The Morning Download emailed to you each weekday morning by clicking here.

Good morning. The transformation underway at Microsoft Corp. probably is the biggest change that the company has undergone since it discovered the Internet back in the ’90s. The evolution tells us as much about the market as it tells us about the company itself, which is shrugging off the weight of its past.

In recent weeks, the company that once fought for the ability to bundle its applications to its platform launched Office for Apple Inc.’s iPad, open-sourced more of its .NET software framework and renamed its Windows Azure cloud computing platform as Microsoft Azure. ”We are witnessing the biggest shift in attitude by Microsoft since the pivot around the Internet in the late 90′s,” IDC analyst Al Hilwa tells CIO Journal.

I don’t know about you, but I wonder where people thought the Cloud was if it was not in data centers.

Internap uses Schneider Electric in Modular fashion that is flexible and energy efficient

Schneider Electric has a press release on its efforts to help Internap build higher performing data centers.

Schneider Electric Helps Long-Time Customer, Internap, Build High-Performance, Hybrid Data Center in Secaucus, New Jersey

 

WEST KINGSTON, R.I. – April 1, 2014 – Schneider Electric, a global specialist in energy management, today announced a new project with Internet infrastructure provider and long-time customer, Internap, to equip its new hybrid data center in New Jersey with a diverse array of solutions to optimize operational efficiency and reduce costs.

I was able to chat with Randy Ortiz who is the VP of data center design and engineering at Internap leading the integration of Schneider Electric gear.  What became clear in the discussion is Randy’s efforts to be flexible with a modular electrical system also achieve a higher energy efficiency.  The current design can support up to 18kW per rack in the facility for high density server deployments.

“Modular, scalable design is at the core of our data center build outs,” says Randy Ortiz, Vice President, Data Center Design and Engineering, Internap. “With our New York facilities nearing full capacity, we needed to accelerate our growth plans while working with a services provider that meets our demands for operational efficiency and cost savings across several product solutions.

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Here is a video describing the infrastructure in Internap with Randy Ortiz and you can see the 

Internap provides Enterprise Cloud Hosting which means the environments can be more dynamic and higher utilization which means more stress on the electrical and cooling systems.

The state-of-the-art Secaucus facility will serve customers’ growing demand for diverse IT infrastructure services that can address a wide range of application and use case requirements, with high-performance, low-latency network delivery. The data center meets these complex needs with Internap’s full hybrid portfolio that includes scale-out, highly-automated services

What side of Blimp are you on? Green - Facebook, Apple, Google -- Brown - Amazon, Netflix, Twitter, Pinterest

Greenpeace has a blimp that is telling the story of Green Data Centers vs. Brown Data Centers.

It is interesting that it is not just Amazon as the target of dirty data centers, but those who host in AWS - like Netfilx and Pinterest.  Wonder if this will get companies to add the energy content of the cloud provider in part of their decision processes.

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Google's Cloud Event favored over AWS Summits Mar 25-26, 2014

I was in SF this week for three days of conference and meetings.   I didn’t make it to the Google Cloud Event.  I did go to the AWS Summit.  My friends who went to the Google Cloud event said great things about the event and how good the party was.  The same friends and I agreed the AWS Summit Keynote was so boring.  There were hundreds of people who walked out of the keynote.  Why?  The AWS event spent time explaining the AWS stack, going over every component.

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There were friends online were making fun of the presentation being so boring.  This presentation could have been made at a Gartner conference, and even included Gartner quotes

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This messaging made sense given the big push was for Amazon Workspaces.

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If you want to see how boring the AWS Summit Keynote was you can watch the video along with the other 763 views.

Or you can watch the Google Cloud video with the other 6,266 views.

I am taking the time to watch Urs.  Good stuff if you want to develop some Cloud apps.  If I watched the AWS I would probably fall asleep listening to how AWS is right for the Enterprise.

 

 

What is Happening in the European Cloud Market? GigaOm Research Report

I work for GigaOm Research part time and have had a chance to meet Paul Miller another researcher who covers the Cloud and is based out of the UK. Paul and I have discussed the similarities and differences between the US and European Cloud market.  Many of the insights Paul has shared is available to those of you who subscribe to GigaOm Research.  Here is a link to Paul’s report published yesterday.

 

Sector RoadMap: the European cloud infrastructure market

by
Mar. 26, 2014
1Executive Summary

Companies looking to adopt public cloud infrastructure for use in Europe must navigate a complex set of choices in selecting the best service for their needs. The scale, price, and continuing innovation of U.S.-based market leaders such as Amazon, Rackspace, and Microsoft are compelling but undermined to a degree by data protection concerns and last year’s revelations of National Security Agency (NSA) snooping. Less-visible European providers may offer the perception of greater security, a network of data centers more closely aligned to the distribution of customers across the continent, and a support operation better suited to European cultural and linguistic diversity.

This Sector RoadMapTM identifies and categorizes the principal disruption vectors at play in this market segment and profiles a set of the significant solution providers in the space.

Amongst the companies surveyed, those with a strong multi-site European presence found themselves at an immediate advantage. Security and data territoriality remain significant concerns, particularly in Europe, but each of the providers discussed here has a credible position with respect to securing customer data inside the European Economic Area. The clearest point of differentiation for many customers lies in the strength of the partner ecosystem and the extent of interoperability with other systems. Current global market leader Amazon Web Services dominates in both of these vectors for now.