Articles from Sophie Curtis

1. Red Hat: The Integrated Stack Is Critical Explore Home - eWeekEurope.co.uk (Nov 3 2011) Embedded virtualisation makes more sense than having a layer of software sitting below the operating system, says Navin Thadani When it comes to choosing a product to virtualise your data centre, the choice can be overwhelming. VMware’s vSphere is the undisputed leader in the market, and recent announcements at the company’s VMworld conference in Copenhagen show that the company is not only expanding its enterprise cloud portfolio, but also sharpening its focus on the small and medium business market. However, there are plenty of reasons not to choose VMware. As Microsoft points out, the recent changes made by VMware to its licensing model with the release of vSphere 5 earlier this year have upset some customers. Under the company’s new vRAM-based pricing, VMware now charges per virtual machine so, in theory, the more that customers virtualise their machines the more they end up paying. (Read Full Article)

   Comment Mentions:   Europe   IBM   Emea

2. UK Leads In Private Cloud Adoption Explore Home - eWeekEurope.co.uk (Oct 21 2011) Cloud Computing Businesses in the UK are pushing into the cloud at a faster-than-average rate, according to VMware The UK is one of the most advanced markets for data centre virtualisation in Europe, with some British enterprises now reaching the point where 70-80 percent of their x86 estates are virtualised. So said Dave Wright, VMware’s vice president of technology services in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), speaking to eWEEK Europe at the VMworld conference in Copenhagen. On average, organisations in the EMEA region have server estates that are 30-35 percent virtualised. The proportion increases for larger enterprises at the higher end of the market. However, in the UK, enterprises are moving closer to a model where the majority of their applications are running on virtual machines or in private clouds. (Read Full Article)

   Comment Mentions:   Europe

3. Colt Launches Private Cloud Services In Europe Explore da.feedsportal.com (Oct 21 2011) Cloud Computing Companies in Europe will be able to access private cloud services from local data centres by the end of 2012 British telecoms company Colt is extending its enterprise cloud services into mainland Europe, to help companies on the continent store and access data securely, in accordance with their local data protection requirements. Colt already offers private dedicated clouds for its customers in Europe, as well as enterprise public cloud services built on VMware’s vCloud data centre technology. However, the expansion will enable customers to access local enterprise private cloud services from local data centres by the end of 2012. (Read Full Article)

   Comment Mentions:   Europe   United Kingdom

4. BlackBerry Users Worldwide Suffer Major Outage Explore Home - eWeekEurope.co.uk (Oct 10 2011) RIM’s BlackBerry data services are down across EMEA, as the company announces a new acquisition BlackBerry owners across the UK and Ireland have been suffering from a major data outage, with some sources reporting that the problem is affecting customers throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). “Some users in EMEA are experiencing issues. We’re investigating, and we apologize for any inconvenience,” tweeted BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) at around 3pm BST today. The outage began for some customers at around 11am this morning, with Vodafone UK customer services claiming that the outage had affected 80 percent of UK BlackBerry users on all mobile networks. T-Mobile UK support also tweeted that there was “an issue with Blackberry services”. (Read Full Article)

   Comment Mentions:   Europe

5. Data Centre Investment Beats The Downturn: Report Explore Home - eWeekEurope.co.uk (Sep 7 2011) The data centre sector is beating the economic downturn, with investment expected to exceed $35bn in 2012 Investment in data centre infrastructure will exceed $35 billion (£22bn) during 2012, a new report by DatacenterDynamics Research has found – with around a tenth of that money to be invested in the UK. The DatacenterDynamics Industry Census 2011, based on responses from 5,400 data centre owners and operators from around the world, found that the global data centre industry is set grow 16 percent over the next 12 months, helping the sector to beat the global downturn. Beating the downturn The Western United States is to receive the largest investment of $3.5 billion (£2.5bn), closely followed by the UK with $3.35 billion (£2.1bn) and China with $3.1 billion (£1.9bn). However, in terms of percentage growth in data centre investment, South East Asia will far outstrip other ... (Read Full Article)

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6. Data Centre Managers Warned On Cooling Regulations Explore Home - eWeekEurope.co.uk (Jul 20 2011) Servers Around 2,500 UK cooling companies are trading illegally, as fluorinated gases contribute to the greenhouse effect IT and data centre managers are being urged to check whether their air conditioning equipment installers are compliant with the EU’s current Fluorinated Gas regulations (F-GAS), which are designed to minimise environmental damage from refrigerant gases. Fluorinated gases (F gases) are powerful greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming if released into the atmosphere. Their effect can be much greater than carbon dioxide. F gases currently make up about 2 percent of the UK’s annual greenhouse gas emissions. (Read Full Article)

   Comment Mentions:   IBM

7. Forrester: The Cloud Is Inherently Green Explore Home - eWeekEurope.co.uk (Jul 5 2011) Cloud Computing , Servers The cloud is inherently green, but cloud service providers need to broaden the scope of their green credentials Service providers promoting the green benefits of cloud-based infrastructure have focused heavily on energy and resource efficiency, and have tended to ignore other green issues such as renewable energy and e-waste, according to a new report by Forrester Research. (Read Full Article)

   Comment Mentions:   Forrester Research

8. Quarter Of UK Government Departments Shun The Cloud Explore Home - eWeekEurope.co.uk (Jun 22 2011) Cloud Computing Despite UK government commitments to the G-Cloud, 6 out of 25 departments have no cloud prospects Nearly a quarter of government departments have no plans whatsoever to adopt cloud computing, despite previous commitments to push ahead with the technology and create a unified ‘G-Cloud’. According to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request by Lewis Communications, six out of 25 ministerial departments – including the Treasury – said that no plans had been put in place to implement a cloud strategy. (Read Full Article)

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9. Does HPC Belong In The Cloud? Explore Home - eWeekEurope.co.uk (Jun 21 2011) Cloud Computing The cloud makes high performance computing more widely available – but introduces several problems of its own, says John Hengeveld High performance computing is preparing to go mainstream, with Intel and others laying out their plans to provide exascale computing performance by the end of the decade. But the high cost of ownership and complex architecture needed for running supercomputers is deterring many organisations from buying into the technology. (Read Full Article)

   Comment Mentions:   Intel

10. Greenpeace Sets Deadline For Facebook To ‘Unfriend’ Coal Explore Home - eWeekEurope.co.uk (Feb 7 2011) Fossil Fuel Greenpeace has asked social networking giant Facebook to make a promise on Earth Day (22 April), to stop using coal-fired electricity. The environmental campaign group’s “Unfriend Coal” campaign has singled out Facebook in its war on dirty tech, because of the company’s decision to site its first wholly-owned data centre in Oregon, using electricity from PacificCorp, an energy company which makes two thirds of its power using coal. Greenpeace wants Facebook to promise to increase its use of clean energy, develop a plan to mitigate its climate footprint and become coal-free by 2021. It has also asked the company to educate its users about how its services are powered, and advocate for clean energy at a local, national and international level. (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Greenpeace   Facebook

11. Hydropower Makes Data Centre Carbon Neutral Explore Home - eWeekEurope.co.uk (Dec 14 2010) Fossil Fuel , Hydro IT hosting company UKFast is claiming to be the first carbon neutral hosting company in Britain, after achieving the PAS 2060 (Publicly Available Specification 2060) certification of carbon neutrality published by the British Standards Institution. Colombia, Antioquia Department - La Cascada The PAS certification confirms that all of UKFast’s in-house CO2 emissions have been offset – from staff travel to data centre emissions. The offsetting has been achieved through contributions to three large-scale hydroelectric power schemes in Columbia (left), Brazil and Turkey. (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Europe

12. Uk Crc Energy Scheme Becomes A ‘Stealth Tax’ Explore Home - eWeekEurope.co.uk (Oct 21 2010) Cap and Trade , Carbon Reduction Commitment The coalition government has been accused of imposing a ’stealth tax’, following an announcement in the Spending Review that the Treasury will keep revenues raised through its Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC). The CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme is a cap and trade scheme, started in April 2010, which forces large organisations to monitor their emissions and purchase allowances for each tonne of CO2 produced by the energy they use. The more CO2 an organisation is responsible for, the more allowances it has to purchase, so there is a direct incentive for these organisations to reduce their emissions. (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Carbon Reduction Commitment   Facebook   CBI

13. Broadcom Unveils New EEE Silicon Chips Explore Home - eWeekEurope.co.uk (Oct 4 2010) Networking Deploying end-to-end silicon in data centres can bring energy savings of more than 70 percent, according to Broadcom. Semiconductor vendor Broadcom has today announced a new range of silicon-based products that comply with the Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE) standard – a new IEEE standard for Ethernet chips that enables data centres to realise energy savings of 70 percent or more, compared with current Ethernet equipment. The new portfolio, which Broadcom claims is the broadest in the industry, includes a wide range of switch silicon, GbE and 10GbE physical layer devices (PHYs), as well as network interface controllers. The company claims that end-to-end silicon and software solutions enable faster deployment of energy efficient networks. (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Facebook

14. Juniper Calls Time On Spanning Tree Protocol Explore Home - eWeekEurope.co.uk (Sep 27 2010) Networking Cisco and Juniper both want to kill spanning tree, for simpler data centres, but don't agree on how to do it. New network architectures will simplify data centres and eliminate the hated spanning tree protocol, says Juniper - a goal which Cisco is also approaching from a different direction. Juniper Networks’ Project Stratus, due in 2011, will “flatten” data centre networks to a single data plane, and the company says it will do away with Spanning Tree, a clumsy protocol designed to cope with the complexities of multi-layer networks. Cisco has promised the same thing - but the two companies are taking a different approach, says Juniper. (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Cisco   Facebook

15. Network Vendors Play The Green Card Explore Home - eWeekEurope.co.uk (Sep 24 2010) Carbon Footprint , Networking Data centres could make "huge" energy savings through lower energy networks, says Juniper. The contribution of networking equipment to a data centre’s carbon footprint is often neglected, largely because the amount of energy used by the network is a relatively small proportion of the overall consumption of a data centre. However, with the data demands on networks constantly growing, networking companies are coming under increasing pressure to offer greener switches – to deliver savings in cost as well as carbon. This translates into an opportunity for network switch makers to distinguish themselves from each other – and also to put pressure on the market leader, Cisco. While the network giant promises to support greener data centres, its rivals are increasingly using hard power consumption figures – and green commitments – as a competitive bargaining chip with customers. (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Europe   Cisco   Juniper Networks

16. Greenpeace Spoof Slates Facebook’s ‘Dirty Data’ Explore Home - eWeekEurope.co.uk (Sep 16 2010) Fossil Fuel , Microblogging , Networking A Greenpeace animated video called "The So Coal Network" is taking on the Facebook movie, "The Social Network". Greenpeace has created a short animated film called “The So Coal Network”, which attacks the social network for its use of coal-fired electricity, although Greenpeace says its data centre is one of the world’s greenest. The Greenpeace movie is timed to coincide with the release of “The Social Network” – a movie about the founders of Facebook. The Social Network, due for release in October, is based on Ben Mezrich’s 2009 book The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding Of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal. The film stars Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg and former pop-sensation Justin Timberlake as Sean Parker – founder of Napster and one-time Facebook president. (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Greenpeace   Facebook

17. Sustainable Practices Can Lead To Business Savings Explore Home - eWeekEurope.co.uk (Sep 1 2010) Carbon Footprint Technology specialist Capgemini says putting energy efficiency at the forefront of business will give long-term cost benefits to organisations. According to Paul Anderson, programme director for infrastructure outsourcing at Capgemini, sustainability is set to become ‘critical’ to businesses, as it comes under increasing scrutiny from governments and regulators. “It will be high on the agenda because of everyone becoming more aware of the requirements,” said Anderson. “In regards to business, for elements of sustainability and greening there can be massive savings and it will bring down the scale of their overall carbon footprint.” (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Facebook   CRC

18. Environment Agency Plants Itself In Green Data Centre Explore Home - eWeekEurope.co.uk (Aug 17 2010) Microblogging The UK Environment agency is using Capgemini's Swindon data centre claimed to be the world's greenest, with a PUE of 1.08. The Environment Agency will be one of the first customers of Capgemini’s new Merlin data centre, due to launch on 17 September, which has been branded “the greenest data centre in the world”. Located in Swindon, the facility will reportedly set a new global standard for energy efficiency, with a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) rating of 1.08. Known as Merlin, it will also be one of just a handful of data centres in the UK to be certified Tier 3 by the Uptime Institute, for being highly resilient, extremely green and ultimately secure. (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Uptime Institute   Facebook

19. Newcastle Data Centre Achieves Breeam Excellence Explore Home - eWeekEurope.co.uk (Aug 11 2010) The first of two new data centres at Cobalt Park in Newcastle has been named as one of the greenest in the United Kingdom, after being awarded a BREEAM Excellent rating at the design stage. The new facility, known as DC1, was assessed against a broad range of environmental impacts, including energy, pollution, land use and materials, achieving an overall score of 75.78 percent. The centre is also on track to achieve a PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) energy efficiency rating of less than 1.3, the company claimed. (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   United Kingdom   Facebook

20. Juniper ‘Flattens’ Data Centre Networks Explore Home - eWeekEurope.co.uk (May 21 2010) Cloud Computing , Networking Juniper Networks has this week announced a new set of software, services and partnerships, as part of an agressive play against data centre networking market leader Cisco. At an EMEA press summit in Barcelona, Juniper’s chairman, chief technical officer and founder, Pradeep Sindhu, explained that the company’s “new network” for data centres can cut time to operation by up to 50 percent, and eliminate up to 35 percent of data centre networking costs. (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Cisco   Facebook   IBM

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