Google makes 24/7 carbon free commitment – as Microsoft’s underwater data centre resurfaces

Google has announced the goal of running its business on carbon-free energy everywhere by 2030 in what the company is describing as its 'most ambitious energy goal yet.'

The commitment includes all its Google Cloud data centres and campuses worldwide, with the company saying in a statement it was 'eliminating its entire carbon legacy, effective today.'

Previously, Google said it had become fully carbon neutral - for every kilowatt hour of electricity consumed, a kilowatt...

By | 14 September 2020 | Data Centres

Alibaba Cloud extends reach to Europe, US and Asia Pacific through Equinix partnership

Data centre and interconnection provider Equinix has announced it is extending access to Alibaba Cloud for customers from 17 metros globally, including sites in Europe, Asia Pacific, and the United States.

The move will see Alibaba be able to access markets including Dubai, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Jakarta, London, Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo. US metros, such as Chicago, Dallas and Denver, are also included in the partnership.

This is not to say Alibaba Cloud does not...

By | 8 July 2020 | Alibaba

Why the future of cloud infrastructure is all about the interconnection fabric

The future of cloud infrastructure means the traditional wide area network (WAN) needs to be architected and engineered differently to become a dynamic, automated, interconnection fabric between globally distributed data centre in the core and at the edge.

With the arrival of 5G networks and Industry 4.0, distributed cloud architectures are in the spotlight. Time-sensitive applications, such as industrial automation and autonomous vehicles, will use artificial intelligence (AI)...

By | 3 July 2020 | Architecture

Cloud IT infrastructure spend still going up amid Covid-19, says IDC

Times may change, but the song remains the same: IDC's latest Worldwide Quarterly Cloud IT Infrastructure Tracker has pegged an increase in cloud spending with outlay on traditional infrastructure falling off a cliff.

The figures for Q1 2020 showed vendor revenue from sales of IT infrastructure products for cloud environments, including server, enterprise storage and Ethernet switch, went up 2.2% year on year, while non-cloud investments went down 16.3%.

The Covid-19...

By | 29 June 2020 | Data Centres

AWS launches Cape Town region as cloud case for Africa becomes increasingly viable

The race for cloud supremacy in Africa is heating up among the hyperscalers, with Amazon Web Services (AWS) the latest to launch a cloud region in the continent.

AWS' new Cape Town region means the Seattle-based cloud infrastructure giant now claims 73 availability zones within 23 geographic regions worldwide. Cape Town, like any new region launched, will have three availability zones - separate but interlinked data centre locations to ensure both low latency and business...

By | 24 April 2020 | Amazon

2020 to be a ‘bumper year’ for data centre M&A – amid Covid-19 – as value surpasses 2019 total

Data centre real estate remains an extremely valuable commodity if the 2020 deal figures to date are anything to go by - with the impact of Covid-19 on cloud services not expected to weaken the market.

According to the latest note from Synergy Research, data centre merger and acquisition (M&A) deals for the first four months of this year have already surpassed the 2019 total.

The primary cause for this upswing is due to 'mega-deals' being back in fashion: the $8.4...

By | 24 April 2020 | Data Centres

Hyperscale operators invest hard in data centres amid modest overall capex, says Synergy

In the land of the hyperscale cloud operators, all remains relatively rosy in the garden. New data from Synergy Research shows that hyperscale operator capex set a new record in the most recent quarter.

In total, more than $32 billion was laid down in the fourth quarter of 2019, beating the previous record set by Q418. Synergy noted that a lot of spend – and strategy – was going into data...

By | 26 March 2020 | Data & Analytics

Realising the impact of unsecured container deployments: A guide

A recently published report by StackRox on the state of containers and Kubernetes security has revealed the statistics related to security concerns in data centres with containerised workloads. 94% of respondents out of 540 IT and security professionals who participated in the survey had experienced security incidents in the last 12 months. Misconfigurations and human errors were the primary issues which came out of the survey.

By | 20 March 2020 | Containers

Half of Indian enterprises will operate hybrid multi-cloud environments by 2021, predicts IDC

Half of the enterprises in India will be operating in a hybrid multi-cloud environment by 2021, according to predictions from analyst firm IDC.

The finding appears as part of the company’s India-contextualised Worldwide Cloud Predictions for 2020 and beyond. Alongside this, by 2021, IDC predicted that 30% of Indian enterprises will deploy unified VMs, Kubernetes, and multi-cloud management...

By | 24 February 2020 | Data Centres