Investment

Eaton finds gap between digital transformation and energy transition efforts

Eaton has announced new research on the relevance of the energy transition in digital transformation planning for power-critical businesses. Commissioned by Eaton, this S and P Global Market Intelligence report - The Intersection of Digital Transformation and the Energy Transition - highlights that although 77% of companies surveyed expect to transition away from their current power sources, only half are currently executing the digital strategies needed to navigate this shift. In addition, less than a third of companies track key sustainability and energy intelligence metrics, and even fewer (17%) have digitally enabled legacy systems. “We identified a major gap in how businesses are applying digitalisation to realise decarbonisation goals and this research is a wake up call, shedding light on the opportunities for businesses to focus investments and make a bigger impact,” says Aravind Yarlagadda, Executive Vice President and Chief Digital Officer at Eaton. “Businesses need to move far faster on digital transformation. The good news is that the time for action is now, and tools like our Brightlayer digital foundation help businesses gain deeper energy insights that are essential to evaluate worthwhile investments. Our industry-specific software suites are already helping customers meet these challenges.” The study included 1,001 respondents who are involved in digital transformation efforts across four power-critical business sectors in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, including: buildings, data centres, industrials and utilities. “Until now, enterprise transformation projects have focused primarily on optimizing business processes. The coming energy transition will impact digital best practices and processes and will prove an important competitive differentiator for firms that are first to embrace that approach,” says Rich Karpinski, Senior Analyst, 451 Research, part of S and P Global Market Intelligence. Sector research findings Building owners and operators made clear power optimisation and ESG reporting are critical issues. Sustainability is the top goal for this sector, prioritised by 46% of the sector respondent. Yet, building owners are sceptical that smart building initiatives will pay off: the top digital challenges include calculating a favourable cost/benefit analysis (cited by 52% building survey respondents) and a lack of pressing digital use cases (45%). Data centres have embraced digitalisation and are now looking for next-generation digital opportunities to either streamline operations or generate revenue to create competitive advantages. Next-step goals involve increasing use of renewables, cited by 50% of data centre owners; improving energy storage, according to 47% of respondents; and making money selling power back to the grid, chosen by 34%. Industrials have focused digitalisation efforts on perennial challenges like addressing skilled worker shortages. Yet, digitalisation addressing energy transition lags. Only 24% of industrials cited energy and power concerns as a key digital driver for industrial transformation. For industrials to maintain or gain a competitive upper hand, applying digitalisation to the energy transition will be a key advantage. Utilities are facing massive shifts in energy generation as renewables increase along with the need for increased digital intelligence. Digital transformation is essential to new business models and revenue sources, including support for electric vehicles (EV) through customer EV-charging needs (identified by 49% of utility respondents) or EV charging stations themselves (cited by 45%). www.eaton.com www.spglobal.com

Lincoln Rackhouse and Principle Real Estate Investors acquire Atlanta data centre

Lincoln Rackhouse has announced the acquisition of a key data centre located in the heart of Atlanta's high-tech corridor. The strategically located data centre is an enterprise-grade, highly secured facility, ready to be deployed to customers' specific design and power requirements. The 185,000 square-foot facility sits on a 38-acre parcel with more than 7MW of capacity, and a design to expand to over 13MW. Furthermore, the site can support a separate 30MW ground-up data centre development, ideal for today's hyperscalers and operators. According to Data Centre Hawk, Atlanta's data centre market continues to grow due to the favourable business climate, competitive colocation and cloud environments, reasonable power costs, low natural disaster risk and robust connectivity. The city has cultivated a tech hub, with more than 55 colocation providers and enterprises calling it home. “We're proud to partner with Principal Real Estate Investors in a market that's quickly become one of the most robust data centre regions in the US,” states Martin Peck, Executive Vice President, Lincoln Rackhouse. “Our plan is to begin the immediate development of additional turn-key critical floor space, that will ultimately align and address our customer's current and future expansion needs.” “This acquisition of a high-quality asset in such a dynamic market provides an excellent addition to our portfolio of data centres,” comments Ben Wobschall, Managing Director, Portfolio Management for Principal Real Estate Investors. “We're thrilled to be able to bring immediate availability and expansion to accommodate our customers’ growth in the South East.” St. Louis based Ascent will continue to provide facilities management, engineering and construction services to the site. Marketing and leasing will be provided by Digital Crossroad and CBRE's Atlanta based data centre solutions team.

Reading can expect £1bn economic boost from CityFibre rollout

A new report commissioned by CityFibre has identified that Reading stands to be a huge beneficiary from the rollout of future-proof full fibre infrastructure, which is now well underway across the town. The study by the consultancy Hatch, (Economic Impact of Full Fibre Infrastructure from CityFibre’s Network), estimates that, over a 15-year period, the positive impacts of CityFibre’s £58m investment in Reading will include £625m in productivity and innovation gains, £138m from a widened workforce, £18m in local authority efficiency savings and £384m in increased housing value. Technological benefits are also a major focus of the report, which demonstrates that CityFibre’s network in Reading will help realise £1bn gross added value (GVA) from 5G services, £249m from the Internet of Things and £263m from Smart City initiatives, like intelligent traffic management systems and street lighting. The continuing transition to home and flexible working, supported by full fibre access at home and in the office, is also unlocking access to a larger pool of labour for employers. In Reading, working productivity uplifts are estimated to exceed £35m. The direct impact of network construction is also identified as a major contributor to Reading’s economic growth, creating network construction jobs within CityFibre’s build partners and supply chain. Wherever possible, the new jobs will be recruited locally to support the rollout. As a whole, the UK stands to benefit from over £38bn in potential economic benefits. Productivity improvements and innovation are responsible for the largest impact, driving more than £22bn in GVA gains nationwide. This is due to the positive effect that far faster and more reliable digital connectivity has been shown to have on business productivity and innovation, increasing turnover and contributing to the formation of new businesses and business models. Stacey King, Area Manager for Reading at CityFibre, says: “This report demonstrates just how powerful and essential full fibre is as a catalyst for growth and as a platform for innovation and investment. “Reading is quickly becoming one of the best digitally connected towns in the UK, and the opportunity for residents and local businesses is huge. We thank residents for their patience as we progress with the full fibre infrastructure build here in a bid to offer more people access to some of the best broadband packages available.”

ESR announces over $1bn first close of inaugural Data Centre Fund

ESR has announced the first close of over $1 billion in equity commitments for its inaugural vehicle, Data Centre Fund 1, dedicated to the development of its growing data centre business. ESR DC Fund 1 brings together some of the world’s largest institutional investors, including sovereign wealth and pension funds. ESR will raise a separate discretionary capital sleeve to co-invest into the fund which will likely close the balance of the fund at the hard cap of $1.5 billion. Additionally, the partners have an upsize option of an additional equity commitment of $1.5 billion, that would bring the total investment capacity to as much as $7.5 billion over time. ESR’s current data centre development portfolio comprises data centre projects primely located in major data centre clusters across Asia, including Hong Kong, Osaka, Tokyo, Seoul, Sydney, Mumbai and Singapore, delivering 300MW IT load. Amongst these projects is a key asset the group acquired in Osaka that will be developed into a multi-phase data centre campus with a development potential of up to 95MW IT load to serve both hyperscalers and colocation operators in the rapidly growing Osaka market. Jeffrey Shen and Stuart Gibson, Co-Founders and Co-CEOs of ESR, says: “APAC is the prime market for data centre development and investment in the new era of digitalisation. The substantial first close of our inaugural data centre fund marks a significant milestone for ESR as we continue to grow and scale our digital infrastructure business. We thank our capital partners for their strong support to this exciting effort. “As the largest new economy real estate platform in APAC, we are looking to play into the critical need for digital infrastructure in a big way going forward by leveraging our core competitive advantages with a singular focus to support our capital partners and customers to thrive and capitalise on the continued rise of the new economy and digital transformation in APAC.” Diarmid Massey, ESR Data Centres CEO, highlights: “With nearly $60 billion of New Economy AUM, digital infrastructure is a key strategic focus for ESR Group. Naturally, our ambition is to offset high energy consumption by aligning with our ESG strategy to refurbish, re-develop, convert some of our existing 39.8 million sqm GFA of assets into large and edge data centres, and to explore sustainable options through actual renewable energy generation from the rooftops.” Devashish Gupta, ESR Data Centres CIO, elaborates: “The APAC Data Centre fund is uniquely placed to take advantage of ESR Group’s adjacencies in land, power, fibre origination, strong pipeline of recently acquired data centre specific sites, a dedicated team of experienced data centre professionals, and partnerships with best-in-class data centre operators for co-location assets. Our ability to offer powered shells, fully fitted, and colocation assets to serve hyperscalers, enterprises as well as operators, provides a scalable solution with shorter ready-for-service timelines to our customers; and risk-adjusted strategies to our capital partners.”

How to select the right racks and enclosures for your physical infrastructure environment

Marc Garner, VP Secure Power UK and Ireland, Schneider Electric Digital transformation has been a key focus for businesses for many years, but post-pandemic many organisations’ efforts have accelerated. IDC forecasts that direct digital transformation (DX) investment growth between 2022-2024 will hit $6.3 trillion – equating to 55% of all ICT investment by the end of 2024. Data centres are the very heart of the digital economy and their infrastructure, especially in micro data centres and edge computing environments, form the basis of many digital transformation efforts. Architectures and requirements, however, will differ from one business to another, and the mission-critical systems that underpin these projects can mean the very difference between success and failure. As such, it pays to pay close attention to the choice of components.   Changing environments Today choices around racks, enclosures and other physical infrastructure need to be made according to the critical environment in which they’re being hosted. This can range from a server rooms and network closets in offices, to edge data centres and colocation facilities. Each environment will differ in the way it’s been designed to accommodate IT equipment and critical applications, with resilience often the main priority. The majority of server, storage and network equipment is designed for mounting in 19in racks, based upon the standard established by the Electronic Industry Alliance (EIA). However, one of the most popular IT racks sizes is 600mm (24in) wide, 1070mm (42in) deep, and 42U tall, where 1U or rack unit, measures 1.75in (44.45mm). Today, most data centres support standardised rack configurations to host a variety of IT equipment (ITE) densities and form factors that may require additional accessories. Increasingly, 48U, 52U and even 58U racks are being installed to increase the volume of IT equipment in the same rack footprint. Outside of enterprise facilities, which have adequate cooling and environmental control, small server rooms and branch offices can often play host to mission-critical IT. In the era of IT infrastructure everywhere, these environments can typically be unsecured, unmonitored, and space constrained – conditions which can lead to system downtime or ‘close calls’ that require immediate attention. The networks edge As the demand for infrastructure at the edge increases, preconfigured micro data centres are often selected to standardise designs, reduce complexity, and increase speed of deployment. Gartner, for example, estimates that by 2025, 75% of enterprise data is expected to be created and processed at the edge, and recent research from IDC found that 50% of respondents are investing in edge computing, to ‘improve cyber security’, and that systems resiliency and reliability also remained key factors in decision making. There are also several factors driving the proliferation of data and its consumption at the edge. First among them is the demand for low-latency applications, including digital streaming from film, TV and music platforms. Secondly, the rise in IoT connected devices, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning are driving digital transformation in almost every industry. Nevertheless, having a standardised system built on pre-integrated hardware is essential to increase reliability at the edge. Data centre modernisation is also a hot topic, given the focus on improving energy efficiency and sustainability within the sector. In both on premises and legacy data centres, row-based architectures utilising hot or cold aisle cooling configurations can offer a host of benefits including faster deployment, greater resilience and increased energy efficiency. A simple approach to rack selection A rack is often the very foundation of digital transformation, but choosing the right system is essential. To simplify the selection process, Schneider Electric recommended a four-stage approach: Identify the attributes of all IT and non-IT equipment to be mounted, and establish some basic parameters, such as dimensions and load capacity. The attributes of non-IT equipment such as rack power distribution units (PDUs), automatic transfer switches (ATS), rack-mounted uninterruptible power supply (UPS) and so on, should also be considered. Remember, network racks are generally wider than server racks due to their cabling requirements. Select IT rack dimensions and load capacity based on the attributes of equipment, and here there are three key factors to consider: Firstly, the growth plan of the equipment - if future requirements are unknown, it may be worth specifying over-sized racks to enable higher rack density requirements.Secondly, higher rack densities generally equate to greater rack weight. Therefore, ensure that racks (and the facility floor) are capable of supporting weights at the highest rack densities.Thirdly, specify vendor-neutral racks, which often means the widest range of equipment can be accommodated from the largest number of manufacturers. This also means end-users can also plan for changes over the lifecycle. Select your rack preferences, which might include colour, door style (curved or angled), the type of door lock or physical security and seismic bracing. Regardless of preferences chosen, design criteria and system uptime should remain the key priority. For example, any change to the front or rear rack door should not restrict airflow to the critical IT equipment. Finally, select your IT rack accessories to improve operational efficiency. Accessories can be utilised in one of several ways. For example, to improve cooling performance through airflow containment, to reduce the risk of downtime through power capacity and cable management, or to reduce physical threats and human error through remote monitoring and Data Centre Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software.

DataBank completes expansion of third Atlanta data centre

DataBank has announced that it has completed the expansion of ATL3, one of the company’s three Atlanta area data centre locations. The expansion began in late 2021 and added more than 22,000 square feet of data centre space, bringing the total capacity to more than 44,000 square feet of white space and total raised floor space to 72,000 square feet. The construction project also increases the site’s total power from 1.5MW to 6MW. “We’ve been looking forward to completing this expansion project to further support our customers’ infrastructure needs and growth,” says Tony Qorri, DataBank’s Vice President of Construction. “Bringing this additional capacity to Atlanta aligns well with DataBank’s growth in the region’s data centre market and underscores its position as one of the prime emerging internet hubs in the South East United States.” Atlanta’s data centre leasing activity is the third highest in North America. According to Lisa Calhoun, a partner with the Atlanta based investment firm, Valor Ventures, growth is on an upwards trajectory marked by $1 billion of venture capital investments over the last year alone, representing an influx in demand for cloud storage. This investment is driven by thriving industries like healthcare IT, fintech, logistics, and manufacturing – sectors heavily dependent on strong communications infrastructure. Located in the Historic West End district, DataBank’s ATL3 colocation facility is a carrier-neutral interconnection hub with access to 10-plus on-site carriers and many internet, fibre, interconnect, and cross-connect options. The facility features security measures including dual-factor biometric authentication, 24-hour dedicated security guards, perimeter fence, mantraps, and CCTV.

Infinidat advances partner portal and expands channel sales with STaaS

Infinidat has announced new moves to advance its strong position in partnering, supporting and co-selling with channel partners, accelerating adoption of storage-as-a-service (STaaS), and significantly enhancing partner sales enablement. Infinidat will roll out a new global version of its partner portal in July, rebuilt from the ground up, to train and equip solution providers worldwide to grow their revenue at a faster pace and deliver their customers true business and technical value with Infinidat’s platforms. In addition, the company announced that it has integrated Infinidat’s STaaS solution into Arrow Electronics’ ArrowSphere in North America. “Our latest investments for our partners to have best-in-class tools and access to leading-edge ecosystems reflect our ongoing, strong commitment to our channel-centric model for go-to-market execution,” says Eric Herzog, CMO at Infinidat. “We’re streamlining and simplifying the partner experience to boost channel participation and success. We’re making it easier for solution providers to sell Infinidat’s industry acclaimed enterprise solution portfolio, including enhanced AIOps capabilities, industry-leading real world application performance with the lowest latency, and the rollout of our innovative InfiniSafe technology across our platforms for groundbreaking levels of cyber resilience, all with the choice of flexible consumption models.” Partner portal gets a makeover Infinidat has rebuilt its partner portal to deliver an enhanced experience for the channel. It is designed to catapult partners forward with dynamic and relevant information to enable competitive advantages. The new portal features the following: Easier navigation to simplify use of the knowledgebase and enablement tools in the portal in support of new and expanding market opportunities.Refreshed, modernised, and expanded content, including detailed information about the new InfiniSafe technology on InfiniBox and InfiniGuard. In addition, localised content in different languages for its global partner ecosystem.Streamlined training experience to make partners more technically adept to sell Infinidat’s portfolio for mutual benefits. Accreditation, also, continues to be part of the program. “We have been a strong partner of Infinidat for several years, and their partner support, programs, and portal have been top-notch,” says Jan Veith, Sales Director, Hansen & Gieraths IT Solutions GmbH. “We are very excited about the new, streamlined Infinidat partner portal and how it will help us grow our business, deliver better solutions leveraging Infinidat’s award-winning platforms, and keep our teams up-to-date on all things Infinidat.” Infinidat has worked with third-party vendors to bring state-of-the-art capabilities into its new portal for channel partners. One of them is Highspot, the sales enablement platform that increases the performance of sales teams by bridging the gap between strategy and execution. “We’re proud that Infinidat has chosen Highspot's sales enablement platform to deliver the right resources to their channel partners at the right time within their new partner portal,” says Gwen Sheridan, Vice President of Customer Services, Highspot. “With Highspot, Infinidat’s partners can utilise rich content, guidance and insights to effectively engage buyers and improve sales performance.” Infinidat’s STaaS solution integrates into ArrowSphere in North America  Arrow’s ArrowSphere platform helps channel partners manage, differentiate, and scale their cloud business. Its marketplace includes leading hyperscale providers, as well as public and private IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, HaaS and cloud software offerings, such as Infinidat’s STaaS. “Infinidat is creating more value for its partners by leveraging ArrowSphere to more easily deliver to customers Infinidat’s storage-as-a-service offering,” comments Shannon McWilliams, Vice President of Supplier Alliances, Arrow. “Storage-as-a-service is a significant revenue growth opportunity for channel partners. Providing a new option for integration, automation, and streamlined ordering of enterprise storage, Infinidat’s STaaS now joins the increasing list of solutions available ‘as a service’ through Arrow’s award-winning cloud management platform, ArrowSphere.”

Cisco commits to help accelerate a more inclusive, digital United Kingdom

By 2030, a more inclusive digital society could add £168 billion to the UK economy. That is why Cisco has committed to help accelerate economic growth across the UK through digital inclusion and innovation. Through investment in partnerships, projects and initiatives focussed on creating opportunity for people, organisations, industries, and regions across the UK, Cisco will expand its Country Digital Acceleration (CDA) programme, which has formed the core of Cisco’s decade long investment in UK innovation. Aligned to both the national and regional ambitions of the UK, the programme will focus on industries and public services best positioned to benefit from digital acceleration, aiming to support improvement on key issues such as digital skills, productivity, sustainability and the UK’s levelling up agenda. Guy Diedrich, Senior Vice President and Global Innovation Officer, Cisco comments “Today we mark a decade of collaboration between Cisco, the UK government, industry and academia to accelerate digital outcomes for the UK.” He adds, “From initiatives to train hundreds of thousands in digital skills, connect the most remote parts of the UK with 5G, and partnerships to foster a culture of innovation, we are helping cement the UK’s place as a leader in fields such as AI and quantum computing. We are extremely proud of what we have achieved together and delighted to be furthering our commitment to help the UK realise the potential of a more inclusive, digital economy - where no one is left behind.” New research from the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR), commissioned by Cisco, finds that a more inclusive digital economy, that connects everyone in the UK, equips them with digital skills, and digitises key industries and public services, has the potential to not only add £168bn to the UK economy, but will provide societal, industrial and regional benefit. David Meads, Chief Executive, Cisco UK & Ireland says “As a nation, we have a heritage of invention that comes from all corners of the UK. With the power of technology, we believe that economic opportunity can follow that tradition.” He adds “Organisations are looking to digital to improve the way they work, operate, and compete on a global scale, but to fully embrace a more digital economy, with talent and innovation to support, there are fundamental issues that we must address. From the role of digital in creating more equitable opportunity and across the UK, to how we as a technology industry lean in to help close the digital skills gap.” Cisco’s CDA programme, which is a long-term partnership programme with governments, industry and academia, will focus on initiatives in sectors that underpin the UK economy and provide critical services that have opportunity to benefit from digital. From healthcare to education, utilities and transport infrastructure. In addition, the programme will align to emerging sectors – including those with a focus on technology to drive sustainable outcomes towards national net zero targets. To encourage innovation in industry and to recognise the need for support and guidance to bring solutions to life, Cisco will launch the first Fast Future Innovation Awards in the UK. From September, organisations will be able to enter to win one of three prizes to realise their ideas.

The Barcelona Supercomputing Centre and Lenovo announce partnership

A research agreement has now been signed between the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre and Lenovo to advance research in multiple Spanish and EU priority sectors for high-performance computing. Through this collaboration, Lenovo will invest $7 million over three years to advance precision medicine through the use of supercomputing, the design and development of open-source European chips and the creation of more energy-sustainable supercomputers and data centres. The event took place at the BSC-CNS headquarters with its Director, Mateo Valero, its Deputy Director, Josep Maria Martorell, and Executive Vice President of Lenovo and President of Lenovo Infrastructure Solutions Group, Kirk Skaugen. Mateo Valero, Director of the BSC-CNS states: “I am very proud of this important collaboration with Lenovo as we continue our longstanding work together tackling the great challenges of these priority lines of research from the Spanish and European Commission's agenda. This research collaboration will generate significant returns for the region, not only human and scientific, but also technological and economic." Noam Rosen, EMEA Director, HPC & AI at Lenovo says, “We are excited to announce the agreement to jointly develop novel European supercomputing technologies for the exascale era, which extends from our six year partnership with BSC. Our shared goal is to embrace open architecture to support scientists and researchers with smarter, more efficient and sustainable supercomputing platforms. This agreement, and our investment contribution, are just the latest examples of Lenovo’s ongoing commitment to Europe, joining our new manufacturing facility in Hungary and the AI Innovation Centre Germany. Lenovo is passionate about helping researchers at BSC solve one of humanity’s greatest challenges and is proud to support BSC’s leadership driving European innovation in HPC.” Supercomputing: key to advancing precision medicine The exponential increase in the production of genomic data produces multiple petabytes of information, requiring the use of high-performance computing (HPC) resources for analysis, such as those of the MareNostrum supercomputer at the BSC-CNS. The efficient analysis of large-scale genomic data will be key to advancing precision medicine and the generation of new treatments against diseases such as cancer. Thus, one of the collaboration projects between Lenovo and the BSC-CNS is aimed at improving and accelerating precision medicine using supercomputing. In this context, the BSC-CNS team, led by the researcher Miquel Moretó, will study genomic analysis algorithms to design new accelerators that will be integrated into the HPC platforms of the future that will serve to improve the efficiency of these highly sophisticated analyses. The algorithms created and optimised by the BSC-CNS team will target GOAST (Genomics Optimisation and Scalability Tool) developed by Lenovo to optimise and improve genomic analysis. In addition, these analysis tools will be extended to other disciplines such as epigenetics, metagenomics, microbiology, virology, and other areas of life and health sciences. More sustainable and energy-efficient supercomputers The growing need to provide researchers with more powerful supercomputers and data centres requires considerable increases in energy consumption, which is no longer sustainable. An estimate of the consumption of some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world can be around 25MW, which is equivalent to the consumption of a medium-sized city. The joint research between BSC-CNS and Lenovo will seek to build more energy-efficient, sustainable and lower-cost supercomputers and data centres. The group (coordinated by the researcher Julita Corbalán) will lead this challenge at the BSC-CNS. In 2016, this team developed, together with Lenovo, new system software (EAR, Energy Aware Runtime) for the optimisation and energy efficiency of HPC tools, and together with the UPC launched the spin-off EAS (Energy Aware Solutions) to continue advancing in this direction. This new research project will seek more powerful, flexible, and robust systems for energy-saving within infrastructure solutions, such as software for energy optimisation and management. They will look to incorporate new technologies developed by INTEL within the algorithms recently developed by Corbalán's team. The project will also seek to extend and monitor energy expenditure to the entire infrastructure architecture. European autonomy in chip design In 2019, the BSC announced the creation of the European Laboratory for Open Computing Architecture (LOCA), whose mission is to design and develop chip technology within Europe, based on open -RISC-V instruction set architecture. This laboratory, led by researcher John D. Davis, was born as a collaborative project with companies, foundations, and academic institutions to create open-source hardware that guarantees transparency, competitiveness, and technological autonomy. The incorporation of Lenovo in this project will help facilitate progress towards this priority objective for Europe. In the same context of LOCA, the BSC also recently announced the creation of a joint laboratory with INTEL to develop chips with European technology. The collaboration between BSC-CNS and Lenovo is the continuation of joint work that dates to 2016, aimed at studying the use of artificial intelligence in the field of precision medicine or the sustainability of supercomputers, amongst others.

BSI recognises Corero Network Security as a provider of DDoS defence for critical infrastructure

Corero Network Security has received the BSI DDoS mitigation service provider qualification. The BSI has recognised the increase in the number of cyber attacks, both in number and intensity. Cyber breaches can affect any organisation, not only financially but also damaging its reputation and its customer’s trust. To give organisations a better chance of withstanding an attack, BSI recommends that organisations improve their cyber defences by partnering with a service provider with a high level of specialised knowledge. To help organisations make an informed choice, BSI has compiled a list of recognised DDoS mitigation service providers, including Corero Network Security. Qualifying for BSI recognition involved completing a rigorous selection criteria. The audit included a comprehensive technical assessment, where Corero proved its capacity to identify and handle both massive DDOS incursions as well as the smaller, sub-saturation attacks which are becoming an increasingly common threat. A technical review of DDoS protection solutions was conducted, and all supporting documentation reviewed. Corero’s CEO Lionel Chmilewsky comments on the achievement, “This acknowledgement from BSI comes as result of our continuous investment into our solutions, R&D, as well as our significant growing presence in the EMEA market. We are extremely proud to be the only on-premise DDoS protection provider to be qualified by such an important organisation. This is a major step towards expanding our success in the DACH region.” Corero’s mission is to make the internet a safer place by protecting against the downtime and disruption caused by DDoS attacks. Corero is enabling organisations around the globe to maintain business continuity in the event of DDoS attacks, with its SmartWall DDoS protection solution. As DDoS attacks continue to grow in magnitude, frequency, and sophistication, it is no longer safe to address this growing problem with traditional blackholing or manual interventions. Corero’s real-time automatic approach is the only way to effectively prevent DDoS-downtime as it blocks over 98% of attacks in seconds, with no operator intervention required. Its ongoing market growth is being further propelled by multiple new product enhancements which ensure we continue to do so.