Microsoft data center executive Mike Manos has responded to last week’s ComputerWorld article outlining the reasons Microsoft’s approach to installing data center equipment in shipping containers won’t work. Manos has published a post on his Random Thoughts blog (link via Dave Ohara) addressing the challenges outlined in Eric Lai’s story “6 reasons why Microsoft’s container-based approach to data centers won’t work.” Here’s an excerpt:
My first response was “only six”? You only found six reasons why it won’t work? Internally we thought of a whole lot more than that when the concept first appeared on our drawing boards. … […]
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AT&T has confirmed that it is entering the content delivery market in a bigger way, ending months of speculation about its plans. Here’s an excerpt from Dan Rayburn at the Business of Online Video:
Since December, AT&T has been busy working on the build out and expects to spend between $70-$80 million on infrastructure this year. By the end of 2008, AT&T is aiming to have 400Gbps of capacity online, for all their content delivery services, which would increase their capacity by 4x what they have now. When completed, their content delivery services will be delivered from 32 nodes in 7 […]
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Global Data Center Management (GDCM) is taking the “global” piece of its name seriously. After building a client base of some of the world’s largest enterprise customers from its home base in Great Britain, GDCM is expanding into the U.S. market for data center management software. The London-based firm has opened offices in California, New York and Dallas, and says it is finding strong interest in its nLyte suite.
“This is really the year to get the word out,” said Daniel Tautges, President, USA of GDCM. “I tell people we’re the best software no one knows about.”
In the U.S., anyway. […]
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Velocity is the new conference from O’Reilly that will focus on data center operations with an emphasis on building applications at Internet scale. The conference is scheduled for June 23-24, 2008 at the San Francisco Airport Marriott in Burlingame, Calif. (adjacent to the airport).
Here’s an overview of the Velocity conference from O’Reilly:
Web companies, big and small, face many of the same challenges: sites must be faster, infrastructure needs to scale, and everything must be available to customers at all times, no matter what. Velocity is the place to obtain the crucial skills and knowledge to build successful web […]
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Hewlett-Packard is close to a blockbuster deal to acquire Electronic Data Systems Corp. (EDS) for between $12 billion and $13 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported this afternoon, citing “people familiar with the situation.” HP soon confirmed that it was “engaged in advanced discussions with Electronic Data Systems Corporation regarding a possible business combination involving the two companies.”
Shares of EDS surged $5.27, or almost 28 percent, before a halt closed trading at $24.13. The valuation cited by The Journal implies a price between $24 and $26 a share for EDS. HP stock fell $2.48 (5 percent) to close […]
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This morning’s major earthquake in China, which registered 7.8 on the Richter scale, affected an area known for high-tech development. The epicenter was about 55 miles northwest of Chengdu, where the Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone is home to facilities for IBM, Symantec and Microsoft. News.com updates the status of a large Intel facility:
On Monday, Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said none of its employees in Chengdu were injured, nor was its facility damaged. The chip giant immediately evacuated its roughly 2,000 workers from the plant when the earthquake struck, Mulloy said. The plant has no power or water and is currently […]
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SoftLayer has launched its own content delivery network (CDN), joining a handful of hosting companies that have used multiple data centers to build a CDN platform. The new CDNLayer service will deliver video and rich media files for a flat fee of $20 a month for the first 200 gigabits of data transfer, with a fee of 20 cents per GB beyond that.
“CDNLayer is one more way we provide enterprise-class services to customers of any size,” said Nathan Day, Chief Technology Officer at SoftLayer. “Consumer demand for online video and media-rich websites is exploding. Companies and individuals in every […]
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Iowa and North Carolina are emerging as affordable markets for data center development, according to The Boyd Company of Princeton, N.J., which has issued its 2008 ranking of the most affordable sites to operate a data center in the U.S. The new data updates an initial data center affordability study last year by Boyd, which has since been widely cited by regional economic development agencies seeking to attract data center projects.
The good news: demand for data centers remains strong, according to John Boyd, president of The Boyd Company, who helps many of America’s best-known companies plan real estate expansions. “This […]
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Facebook has arranged new financing to buy $100 million worth of servers, according to Business Week, which says the social networking site struck a “venture lending” deal with TriplePoint Capital, a Menlo Park (Calif.)-based company that specializes in lending money to startups. The $100 million “will be used entirely for servers,” Facebook Chief Financial Officer Gideon Yu told BW.
It’s been clear that Facebook will be a major customer of server vendors since it leased an entire data center building in Santa Clara, California, positioning the company for significant additional growth. As we reported in February, the lease for 86,000 […]
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Do data center professionals in Dallas see the industry differently than their counterparts in New York? How do the views of government data center specialists in Washington compare to those of Internet executives from Silicon Valley?
New research from DataCenterDynamics brings together snapshots from major data center markets around the U.S. throughout 2007, and provides interesting insight into the leading areas of concern and opportunity. The research, gathered at DataCenterDynamics events, provides individual market reports for New York/New Jersey, the Washington DC area, San Francisco/Bay Area, Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex and Chicago.
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