AOL Has 60,000 Servers, Retooling for the Future

AOL runs about 60,000 servers, Manos said, which are spread across five primary data centers in North America and Europe. "We're talking about dramatically reforming what was one of the world's largest Internet companies," said Manos

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Advantages of Disaster Recovery as a Service

Nitin Mishra of NetMagic writes that choosing to go with a cloud disaster recovery service will be governed purely by the business imperative. If an organization has critical applications that should be available within minutes of downtime, it should consider cloud-based DR.

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Green Grid and New Measures of Sustainability

This video gives an overview of new sustainability metrics in addition to Power Usage Effectiveness or PUE. The new sustainability measures for datacenters include Energy Reuse Effectiveness (ERE), Water Usage Efficiency (WUE), and Carbon Usage Effectiveness (CUE).

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Cloud Computing: Could Your Cloud Dissipate?

Nathan Hatch, President of C7 Data Centers, explains one of the central tenants of cloud computing: namely, where is my cloud and why should I care about its location?

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Study Shows Cloud-Based DNS Outperforms in-House Systems

A new vendor-sponsored study of the 1,000 biggest websites quantifies how much better third-party managed service providers are doing at operating DNS services across the Internet cloud than enterprises that run this critical network service themselves.

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How to Build a Turnkey Private and Hybrid Cloud - Three Essential Elements

CIOs and data center managers are hesitant to place important data and applications in the public cloud. As a result, turnkey, ready to go, cloud solutions have become very popular. Here are the three essential elements that should constitute any turnkey private and/or hybrid cloud solution.

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Are The Value of the Cloud and Telecommuting Overstated?

In a recent survey of mid-market IT decision-makers, cloud computing adoption and support for telecommuting had surprisingly low scores. Both are still seen as an option and not an answer.

"SWC Technology Partners surveyed 210 mid-market IT and business leaders and found that cloud computing, at least for the mid-market and even more so in the enterprise, is still very early in its evolution. The survey also revealed a few surprises about the acceptance of telecommuting in the mid-market."

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HP Launches Private Cloud Services

HP has announced that it has launched its HP Cloud Services private beta program. HP says it has made early access available for users to test and provide input on its two initial cloud services: HP Cloud Compute and HP Cloud Object Storage.

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Will Yahoo! Revise It's Hosting Operations Plans?

Carol Bartz is out as the CEO at Yahoo. Does that mean anything for the company's data center and hosting operations? In recent years Yahoo has been overhauling its infrastructure to run its IT infrastructure more efficiently, saving the company many millions of dollars in the process.

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NTT America Launches Disaster Continuity Services for Enterprises

NTT America announced on Monday it has launched a suite of data protection and business continuity services including cloud backup, archiving and compliance, to meet the strict requirements of enterprises. The move comes a few days after NTT America extended its suite of private cloud services to support hybrid cloud requirements.

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Water Main Breaks: A Data Center Challenge!

Could your data center operate if it lost its water supply? This summer's heat wave is causing a jump in water main breaks, causing at least one data center operator to scramble to protect customer equipment.

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NTT America Deploys Bloom Energy Servers Running on Renewable Biogas

NTT America has announced that it has deployed Bloom Energy Servers at its Lundy Data Center in San Jose, Calif., through NTT Worldwide Telecommunications Corporation, a core firm that performs global data center operations in NTT Communications Group.  The Bloom Energy Servers are connected to a natural gas pipeline, and utilize biogas from a California dairy farm to generate electricity on-site.   Key Highlights ·         NTT America's initial deployment consists of five Bloom Energy Servers, with a total capacity of 500kW (kilowatts), or approximately the baseline required to power 500 average homes or five 30,000 square-foot office buildings. ·         NTT America will produce over 4.2 million kilowatt-hours annually, while reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 1.6 million pounds, the equivalent to planting approximately 4,000 trees each year. ·         As part of NTT America's energy efficiency initiatives, the fuel cell option reduces the dependency on the public electric grid, minimizing the company's carbon footprint by using renewable fuels. ·         The fuel cells at the NTT America data center utilize renewable biogas, additionally reducing the carbon footprint through decreased dependency on fossil fuels. ·         Distributed generation means electricity is generated where it will be used, allowing NTT America to reduce the amount of energy loss due to transmission across power lines, increasing efficiency and trimming costs. ·         NTT America's energy efficiency initiatives include hot aisle/cold aisle server rack design, aisle containment solutions, high efficiency computer room air conditioner (CRAC) cooling systems, distributed electricity generation and dynamic temperature sensor/control technology.

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No Surprise Here! - Web Host Heart Internet Finds 50 Percent of Web Designers Forget Mobile User Experience

About half of web designers do not consider mobile web browsers when designing a new website, according to a recent study conducted by UK web host Heart Internet and Design Shack. The survey finds out of 500 UK web designers, only 250 consider the mobile user when designing a website.

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Article: Report: Cloud Computing Catching on in Emerging Markets

While cloud computing gains steadily in the U.S., U.K. and Ger­many (and rather slowly in Canada), it's taking off in emerging markets like Brazil, China and India. According to a study by GfK Cus tom Research, and covered by FineChannel, cloud computing enjoys relatively high penetration rate in emerg­ing markets, regardless of company size.

Report: Cloud Computing Catching on in Emerging Markets
http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2011/07/report-cloud-computing-catchin.php

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UK Survey: High Satisfaction With Cloud Providers

A new survey of UK-based IT shops showed high levels of satisfaction with cloud service providers, but lingering confusion about business interruption issues and the consequences of downtime.

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Virtualization: A Stepping Stone For An Easier Path to the Cloud

Is the idea of cloud computing still a bit ominous for your company? Not to worry. If you are already virtualizing some of your enterprise apps, then you've been gaining great experience that will help ease your transition, says analyst Laura DiDio.

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Two Paths for Data Center Location

Some data centers can be built anywhere, and some can't…

 

When selecting a site for a data center, enterprises are faced with two categories - locations of corporate convenience or more remote locations where resources are cheap and plentiful, the local climate is friendly or increased security is provided.

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Survey: CIOs See Promise in Public Cloud Storage

A new survey from CIO shows that public cloud storage adoption is strong in the enterprise and poised for a big increase over the coming year, despite concerns over security and performance.

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Rackspace Offers Cloud DNS Beta to UK and US Customers

Web hosting provider Rackspace announced on Thursday that it has launched its Rackspace Cloud DNS beta to all UK and US cloud customers, according to a blog post on its website. Last week, Amazon Web Services expanded its DNS service Route 53 edge with new locations in Stockholm, Sweden. AWS' DNS service launched late last year.

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Zynga to Boost Investment in Data Centers

Well, they do have a lot of traffic…

 

After talk of numerous data center leases, effective use of Amazon's clouds and hyper-growth capacity management, social gaming company Zynga hopes to raise $1 billion in an IPO, and says investment in data centers is a priority.

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TradeStation Extends Services Contract with Savvis for Market Data and Colocation Facilities

TradeStation has extended its existing services contract for network services for an additional two years, and is expanding the scope of the agreement with Savvis to include colocation facilities. Low-latency is a big factor for TradeStation.

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Domino's Pizza chooses Rackspace hybrid hosting system in the UK

Domino's pizza has selected Rackspace's integrated cloud hosting and dedicated managed hosting service RackConnect to provide its online business demands. They will be paid in coupons!

Domino's Pizza chooses Rackspace hybrid hosting system for new online platform - SC Magazine UK

Cloud Lessons & LeMans Racing

I have to admit I hadn't considered motor sports and cloud together…

 

"Migration to cloud infrastructure and motor car racing have some interesting parallels. As Henry Ford II found out in 1964, just pulling together a team (solutions framework) with the right skills and components doesn't mean your plan is fool-proof. Factors outside the framework can still ruin your..."

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Are You Making Your Data Centers Cloud-Friendly?

From CIO.com: Data center construction is growing ever more complex and expensive as data center facilities expand to meet enterprises' seemingly limitless computing needs.

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NetHosting Announces Support for CentOS 6

July 5, 2011 -- Web host NetHosting announced recently that its hosting services will support CentOS 6. CentOS 6 was supposed to be launched on Monday, according to the press release.

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Forget public; private clouds: The future is hybrids! says Rackspace

The cloud is a platform, like that of the desktop and mobile industries, where the same issues occur. So how can these issues be alleviated? "Open source is the answer," according to Lew Moorman, Chief Strategy Officer and President of the Rackspace Cloud. "Just like Apache built the web, open source cloud solutions will drive standards to eliminate these issues."

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NTT America Names New Executives in Support of MNC Customer Growth

NTT America has filled three key executive positions that focus on corporate sales and streamlined corporate processes. Michael DeVito is appointed the new vice president for enterprise solutions. Reporting to the head of the Enterprise Solutions Business Unit, Mr. DeVito will have responsibility for both the business management and network services teams, which operate the Arcstar network, determine pricing, product marketing and bid management, and deliver enterprise sales. Mr. DeVito comes to NTT America with more than 20 years of leadership experience in building and managing highly successful technology services businesses in competitive global markets across Europe, Asia Pacific and North America. He has held executive positions at BT Global Services, Equant Network Services (now Orange Business), Qwest and MCI. His strength in Fortune Global 1000 sales, leadership in enterprise network services and tenure in the industry will enable NTT America to better serve enterprise customers that have growth goals to expand their business globally. Reporting to Michael DeVito, Bryan Tam has been promoted to vice president and head of enterprise sales. In this role, he is responsible for day-to-day management of the sales team focused on Fortune Global 1000 and multinational corporation (MNC) sales for public and private network services, colocation, unified communications and managed security services. Mr. Tam has more than 28 years of experience in management, solution selling and global relationship building. He joined NTT America 10 years ago and previously was regional vice president of enterprise sales for the Northeastern, Central, and Southeastern regions of the United States. Mr. Tam has significant sales experience with Fortune Global 500 companies, is an expert on information technology in China and India, and speaks several Chinese dialects. He is also actively involved in a variety of company-wide initiatives including NTT America's Kaizen (continuous improvement) programs. To further strengthen NTT America and contribute to the next level of competitiveness, Jun Nojima has been appointed to the newly created role of chief administrative officer (CAO). In this role, Mr. Nojima will have responsibility for corporate marketing, human resources, corporate strategy and legal.  He will work to increase NTT America's efficiencies as an organization, while interfacing with other NTT group companies in a more holistic fashion. Mr. Nojima is a 23-year veteran of NTT, and brings a wealth of experience and contacts to the office of the CAO. Most recently, he led the Enterprise Solutions Business Unit as the vice president and head of sales and marketing, a position to which he was appointed in January 2010. Previously, Mr. Nojima was head of global marketing for NTT Communications at the Tokyo headquarters. He received his Masters of Business Administration from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management in 2009. "The wealth of experience with global 1000 companies that Mike, Bryan and Jun bring to the table ensures that NTT America has the best leadership to continue the growth of our business in the upcoming years," said Kazuhiro Gomi, president and CEO of NTT America. "We welcome Mike on board and congratulate Bryan and Jun on their new positions."