Data

Keepit crowned a winner in 2024 Cloud Security Awards

Keepit, a provider of SaaS data protection solutions, achieved success in the 2024 Cloud Security Awards programme by being named a winner in the 'Best Security Solution for Data Management / Data Protection' category. Now in its second year and with an expanded range of categories, The Cloud Security Awards programme celebrates the pivotal innovations in cloud-based security solutions from around the globe. In addition to the aforementioned success, Keepit was also a finalist in the 'Best in Information Security' category. Speaking on the company's success, James Williams, CEO of The Cloud Awards, comments, “Keepit has successfully navigated all three rounds of judging during a rigorous selection process, impressing the judges with their innovation and commitment to keeping data and other assets safe, secure, and private. We look on with interest to see what Keepit has in store for its customers throughout the rest of 2024, and beyond. Many congratulations to them, and our other winners.” Michele Hayes, CMO at Keepit, adds, “Keepit supports customers around the globe by future-proofing their security strategies. This accolade underscores our commitment to innovation, security and reliability, and further positions the company as a leader in the cybersecurity industry.” Built for the cloud, the Keepit platform is designed for usability, security and scalability. With a user-friendly interface, robust data security, and the ability to adapt to the user's cloud environment, Keepit ensures the user's data is always accessible and protected. The Cloud Awards is an international programme which has been recognising and honouring industry leaders, innovators and organisational transformation in cloud computing since 2011. The Cloud Awards comprises five awards programmes, each uniquely celebrating success across cloud computing, software-as-a-service (SaaS), cloud security, artificial intelligence (AI), and financial technologies (FinTech). Winners are selected by a judging panel of international industry experts. For more information about the Cloud Awards, click here. For more from Keepit, click here.

Collab seeks to accelerate modern virtualisation adoption

Pure Storage, an IT company that delivers advanced data storage technology and services, and Red Hat, a provider of open source technologies, have announced an optimisation for Portworx by Pure Storage on Red Hat OpenShift to enable streamlined integration and provide enterprises with a more seamless path to modern virtualisation. By delivering a single platform to deploy, scale, and manage modern applications, and a single control plane for both virtual machines (VMs) and containers, Pure Storage and Red Hat can help accelerate time to market and provide a consistent and flexible data experience. Enterprises are increasingly moving applications to containers to speed and scale deployment. However, many enterprises remain significantly invested in large traditional application footprints that run in VMs. Supporting multiple platforms based on both VMs and containers is cumbersome and expensive, and is often exacerbated by the need to re-architect VM-based applications for compatibility with modern frameworks. This can slow development, create operational complexity, and hinder data visibility. In fact, according to a recent survey, more than four out of five (81%) of data management stakeholders are planning to modernise or migrate existing VM workloads to cloud-native options, with 79% citing operational simplicity as a key driver for these plans. Portworx by Pure Storage and Red Hat OpenShift, through Red Hat OpenShift Virtualisation, support both containers and VMs, enabling customers to standardise end-to-end application modernisation at scale. With this latest optimisation and co-development, enterprises can run traditional virtualised applications side-by-side with modern containerised applications, streamlining operations, reducing costs, and bringing the entire application development process together. Portworx brings enterprise-grade data management capabilities to Red Hat OpenShift customers to not only migrate VMs to Red Hat OpenShift but also provide developers with a single, self-service portal to build, test, and deploy applications, with integrated support for storage, data, and the entire application lifecycle management. Benefits include: Faster time to market with enhanced operational efficiency: Enterprises can improve time to production with self-service options for development teams to quickly migrate VMs, and apply cloud-native operational and development practices to VMs, accelerating time to value. Additionally, Portworx and Red Hat offer more cost-effective options for customers to shorten ramp-up time and day two operations resulting in an estimated 63% cost reduction encompassing infrastructure expenses, licenses, and subscriptions when compared to alternatives. Simplified, more consistent development and management: Together, Portworx and Red Hat help simplify the management of VMs and containers with a unified view, and a more consistent set of storage, data, and application management tools, creating better alignment between virtualisation admins and platform engineering teams. Flexibility to deploy VMs and containers anywhere: Enterprises can modernise their VM-based applications by benefiting from the modern storage, data, and application management principles by integrating Portworx with Red Hat OpenShift. This enables enterprises with greater flexibility to deploy VM and containerised applications on any on-premises, cloud, hybrid or multi-cloud infrastructure while maintaining consistent storage and data services. Murli Thirumale, GM, Portworx by Pure Storage, comments, “Enabling integration for Portworx on Red Hat OpenShift represents a pivotal advancement in modern IT infrastructure representing the modern storage and compute building blocks, respectively. By combining the Portworx platform’s robust data management capabilities with the agility and scalability of Red Hat OpenShift, enterprises gain the foundation for building a modern virtualisation stack, achieving the benefits of Kubernetes without rearchitecting VMs. Our collaboration with Red Hat not only accelerates application development and deployment but helps drive enterprise reliability and operational flexibility across complex, hybrid cloud environments.” Mike Barrett, Vice President and General Manager, Hybrid Platforms, Red Hat, comments, “Portworx offers enterprise-class storage capabilities such as high availability, performance, backup and disaster for both VMs and containers running in Red Hat OpenShift. Together, we are providing a powerful solution for enterprises seeking to modernise their application development without the complexities of managing disparate development platforms. “By seamlessly integrating VMs and containers within a unified framework, we offer enterprises flexibility and efficiency in infrastructure deployment, storage management, and the overall application lifecycle. Our partnership with Portworx empowers customers to standardise their IT environments while accelerating their journey towards modern virtualisation.” Archana Venkatraman, Research Director, Cloud Data Management, IDC, adds, “The virtualisation landscape is undergoing rapid transformation, prompting organisations to re-evaluate their IT infrastructures and application architectures, particularly those heavily reliant on VMs. Many are now accelerating the modernisation of monolithic applications into cloud-native or microservices-based architectures. “The integration of Portworx and Red Hat OpenShift arms enterprises with the tools they need to seamlessly integrate containers and VMs on a unified infrastructure while driving efficiency, agility, and significant cost savings.” For more from Pure Storage, click here.

"We’ve got to talk about AI"

Centiel, a global Uninterruptible Power Supply manufacturer, looks at the role of AI in relation to data centres while exploring some of the challenges and opportunities. There is much talk about how data centres will deal with AI (machine learning). One major challenge is that AI requires three times the power needed compared to normal servers. Facilities will also need extra space to house additional equipment to manage and power the data. We are already seeing AI in use in our daily lives. On LinkedIn we are invited to use AI to help us write a social media post and ChatGPT has caught the imagination of copywriters across the world. However, this is just the start. AI’s capability will grow exponentially over the next few years. This phenomenon is set against a society already struggling to provide enough energy and infrastructure for existing services. Data centres are already placing a huge strain on the national grid and we also have EV chargers and additional homes to add to the grid. We must look at alternatives. At Centiel, members of our team have been at the forefront of technology for many years bringing to market the first three-phase transformerless UPS and the first, second, third and fourth generations of true modular, hot-swappable three-phase UPS. Most recently, we turned our attention to helping data centres achieve net-zero targets. Following four years’ development we recently launched StratusPower a UPS to provide complete peace of mind in relation to power availability while helping data centres become more sustainable. StratusPower shares all the benefits of our award-winning three phase, true modular UPS CumulusPower - including '9 nines' (99.9999999%) availability to effectively eliminate system downtime; class leading 97.6% on-line efficiency to minimise running costs; true 'hot swap' modules to eliminate human error in operation – but now also includes long-life components to improve sustainability. Large data centres can need 100MW or more of power to support their load and in the future, they will need to generate their own power through renewables like photovoltaic arrays, perhaps located on the roofs of their buildings, or wind farms located in adjacent fields. Currently, mains AC power is rectified to create a DC bus that is used to charge batteries and provide an input to an inverter. But what about a future where the DC bus can be supplied from mains power and/or renewable sources? There is little doubt that future grid instability and unreliability will need to be corrected by the use of renewables, and StratusPower is ready to meet this future. The product is built with the future of renewables in mind, ensuring stability and reliability as we transition to cleaner energy sources. With a power density greater than 1MW per M2, StratusPower also offers a compact solution. Al is set to put more strain on infrastructure and power supplies which are already struggling to cope. However, the technology is now available to harness alternative energy sources, and our team of trusted advisors at Centiel can discuss the options to help future-proof facilities in the face of the AI revolution. We’ve got to talk about AI, so why not give Centiel’s team a call? To learn more, visit www.centiel.co.uk. For more from Centiel, click here.

Digital Realty partners with Oracle to accelerate AI growth

Digital Realty, a global provider of cloud and carrier-neutral data centre, colocation, and interconnection technologies, has announced a collaboration with Oracle to accelerate the growth and adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) among enterprises. The strategic collaboration aims to develop hybrid integrated innovations that address data gravity challenges, expedite time to market for enterprises deploying next-generation AI services, and unlock data and AI-based business outcomes. As part of this collaboration, Oracle will deploy critical GPU-based infrastructure in a dedicated Digital Realty data centre in Northern Virginia. This deployment, which leverages PlatformDIGITAL - Digital Realty’s open, purpose-built global data centre solution - will cater to a wide range of enterprises and AI customers, helping them to address critical infrastructure challenges, including those experienced with NVIDIA and AMD deployments. By leveraging the expertise and resources of both Oracle and Digital Realty, customers with mixed requirements can benefit from a tailored and efficient offering that meets their specific needs for GPU-based infrastructure. This announcement further strengthens Digital Realty's existing partnership with Oracle, which currently encompasses multiple deployments across the globe, 11 Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) FastConnect points of presence, a global ServiceFabric presence, and a recent Oracle Solution Centre deployment in one of Digital Realty’s Frankfurt data centres. In the fourth quarter of last year, Digital Realty successfully implemented an OCI Dedicated Region deployment for a major financial services customer, showcasing the potential of the collaboration between Oracle and Digital Realty in meeting enterprise customers' hybrid cloud requirements. Patrick Cyril, Global Vice President, Technical Sales & Customer Excellence – Revenue Operations, Oracle, says, “We’re excited to be working with Digital Realty to bring innovative solutions to the market that empower our enterprise customers workloads and their ecosystems to harness the boundless possibilities of AI. Together, we're not just pioneering technology; we're unlocking a future where every challenge is met with unparalleled innovation and every opportunity is maximised.” Chris Sharp, Chief Technology Officer at Digital Realty, comments, “We’re delighted to build upon our relationship with Oracle and enable the next generation of hybrid and private AI adoption among enterprises. Together, we're bringing the extensive capabilities of the cloud to enterprises’ private data sets through secure interconnection, unlocking new data-driven business outcomes.” Digital Realty states that its collaboration with Oracle signifies a significant step forward in the advancement of AI technologies. Furthermore, the company hopes that by combining their expertise and resources, together they can revolutionise the AI landscape and empower enterprises to unlock the full potential of their data. For more from Digital Realty, click here.

DE-CIX report reveals growth in turnover and data exchange

DE-CIX, an operator of Internet Exchanges (IXs), has released the company’s Annual Report for the financial year 2023, which confirms continued strong growth in global turnover and data exchange. Global revenues of all company parts continued to grow, reaching €63 million (£53.8m), an increase of 8 million (up 14%) compared to 2022. Reflecting the trend of previous years, connected customer capacity on the DE-CIX Internet Exchanges grew by 14% to more than 140 terabits, and connected networks ended the year at over 3,600 worldwide. With close to 60 exabytes of data throughput globally during 2023, DE-CIX experienced 23% growth in total traffic volume. DE-CIX Frankfurt, one of the largest IXs in the world, achieved peak traffic speeds exceeding 16 Terabits per second (Tbit/s), while the global peak traffic across the company’s interconnected platforms rose to over 22 Tbit/s. In terms of geographical expansion, the interconnection specialist took platforms into operation in a further 14 metro markets in 2023, increasing its reach to more than 50 metro markets globally, spanning North America, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Six DE-CIX-owned IXs (five in the Nordics and one in India) and three DE-CIX as a Service IXs (two in Africa and one in Jordan) were taken live during the year, while two further IXs were launched in Mexico. The first three of DE-CIX’s new model of dedicated Cloud Exchanges were also added to the global footprint during the year, in the USA and Japan. Technical work was also undertaken on a further six platforms, taken live in early 2024. The interest in DE-CIX’s enterprise-facing services grew strongly in 2023, with a 50% increase in cloud connections year on year and close to 4 terabits of booked capacity to clouds by the end of the year. The company extended its backbone network to circumnavigate the planet and interconnect the vast majority of its operations, enabling globally-operating enterprises to build their own worldwide networks using the DE-CIX infrastructure. In addition, the company established a Customer Success Management, Presales and Consulting team in 2023 to support the design, implementation, and delivery of customised solutions for enterprises and large-scale customers, providing a service unique in the enterprise interconnection market. “With the continued success and growth of DE-CIX around the world in 2023, we see 2024 as a pivotal point in the history of the company. Twelve years after our first international expansion, we have now built up a crucial geographical presence around the globe to achieve our strategic goals,” comments the company's CEO, Ivo Ivanov. “We enable organisations of all types and sizes to provide secure, scalable, and controllable digital experiences for their customers and staff by leveraging the strength and reliability of a global interconnection ecosystem. This has become even more critical for both infrastructure providers and enterprises with the current and sustained boom in AI. “The whole realm of innovation demands digital infrastructure networked in a fine mesh to allow data to flow where it is needed. These infrastructures must also be interconnected with the relevant recipients to allow the seamless interweaving of human and artificial intelligence in order to create societal and economic benefits for people and businesses. At DE-CIX, we are working with our excellent team and our valued partners to make this future a reality.” For more from DE-CIX, click here.

New capabilities for MongoDB platform unveiled

MongoDB has announced new capabilities for its MongoDB Atlas platform that make it faster and easier to build, deploy, and run modern applications with the performance and scale organisations require. MongoDB Atlas is one of the most widely distributed developer data platforms in the world, and tens of thousands of customers and millions of developers rely on its operational database and integrated data services to power business-critical applications across cloud providers. The general availability of MongoDB Atlas Stream Processing makes it easier to use real-time data from a wide variety of sources to run highly responsive applications. MongoDB Atlas Search Nodes on Microsoft Azure give organisations more flexibility for optimising the performance and cost of generative AI workloads that drive intelligent applications at scale. MongoDB Atlas Edge Server reduces the complexity of managing data for distributed applications that span locations from the cloud to on premises to devices at the edge. “Customers tell us they love MongoDB Atlas because it provides an integrated set of capabilities on one platform that can store and process their organisation’s operational data across all of their applications,” says Sahir Azam, Chief Product Officer at MongoDB. “Customers also tell us that MongoDB’s highly flexible and scalable document data model is a perfect fit for powering modern applications that can take advantage of generative AI and their real-time proprietary data. The additional services we’re launching today for MongoDB Atlas not only make it easier to build, deploy, and run modern applications, but also make it easier to optimise performance while reducing costs.” The new MongoDB Atlas capabilities announced today enable organisations of all sizes across industries to build, deploy, and run next-generation applications with the security, resiliency, and durability today’s business environment demands. Specifically, they can now: Simplify building highly responsive applications with streaming data. Now generally available, MongoDB Atlas Stream Processing enables developers to take advantage of data in motion and data at rest to power event-driven applications that can respond to changing conditions. Streaming data - coming from sources like IoT devices, customer browsing behaviours, and inventory feeds - is critical to modern applications because it allows organisations to create dynamic experiences as end-user behaviours or conditions change. However, streaming data is highly dynamic, and inflexible data models are not ideal for building event-driven applications that need to continuously adjust to the real world. Because it is built on a flexible and scalable data model, MongoDB Atlas Stream Processing allows organisations to build applications that analyse data in motion and at rest and make adjustments to business logic in seconds. For example, organisations can build applications that dynamically optimise shipping routes based on weather conditions and supply chain data feeds, or can continuously analyse financial transaction data feeds and purchase histories for AI-powered fraud detection in near-real time. By using MongoDB Atlas Stream Processing, organisations can do more with their data in less time and with less operational overhead. Optimise the performance and efficiency of generative AI applications. MongoDB Atlas Search Nodes - generally available on AWS and Google Cloud, and now in preview on Microsoft Azure - provide dedicated infrastructure for generative AI and relevance-based search workloads that use MongoDB Atlas Vector Search and MongoDB Atlas Search. MongoDB Atlas Search Nodes are independent of core operational database nodes and allow customers to isolate workloads, optimise costs, and reduce query times by up to 60%. In addition to helping optimise performance and cost, MongoDB Atlas Search Nodes enable organisations to run highly available generative AI and relevance-based search workloads at scale for the most demanding applications. For example, an airline company can use MongoDB Atlas Search Nodes to optimise the performance and scale an AI-powered booking agent experiencing a surge in usage by seamlessly isolating the vector search workload and scaling the required infrastructure - without resizing the required compute or memory resources for their operational database workload. Deploy applications that seamlessly connect from the cloud to the edge. Now available in public preview, MongoDB Atlas Edge Server gives developers the capability to deploy and operate distributed applications in the cloud and at the edge. MongoDB Atlas Edge Server provides a local instance of MongoDB with a synchronisation server that runs on local or remote infrastructure and significantly reduces the complexity and risk involved in managing applications in edge environments. With MongoDB Atlas Edge Server, applications can access operational data even with intermittent connections to the cloud. For example, a hospital system can use MongoDB Atlas Edge Server to help enable applications running on patient healthcare devices to remain functional during power outages and connectivity disruptions. With Atlas Edge Server, their data will automatically synchronise once connectivity is restored. MongoDB Atlas Edge Server also supports data tiering to prioritise the synchronisation of critical data to the cloud, reducing network congestion. And, MongoDB Atlas Edge Server maintains a local data layer to reduce latency and enable faster actions based on real-time data. With MongoDB Atlas Edge Server, organisations can seamlessly run highly available, modern applications closer to end-users with less complexity. For more from MongoDB, click here.

STACKIT and Dremio partner to pioneer data sovereignty

Dremio, the unified lakehouse platform for self-service analytics and AI, and STACKIT, a data-sovereign cloud provider in Europe and part of the IT organisation within Schwarz Group, today announced a strategic partnership that provides European organisations with the first fully managed, cloud-based modern lakehouse offering capable of meeting today’s stringent data residency requirements. Unveiled at Dremio’s annual user conference, Subsurface Live, this collaboration reportedly marks a significant milestone in STACKIT's mission to expand its expertise and product range in data and AI across Europe. Data residency requirements are the legal and regulatory stipulations that dictate where a company's data must physically reside. This means that physical servers hosting a business's data need to be located within a specified country or region to comply with local laws. With this partnership, STACKIT not only embraces open standards like Apache Iceberg, but also reaffirms its commitment to empowering customers with data sovereignty and freedom from vendor lock-in. By leveraging Dremio's unified lakehouse platform, STACKIT is set to overhaul data management by enabling organisations to transition seamlessly from traditional data lakes to high-performance and agile data lakehouses. Walter Wolf, Board Member of Schwarz IT, comments, “Our approach to data sovereignty hinges on leveraging open standards to facilitate seamless integration with applications spanning various business domains. Dremio serves as a solid foundation for this endeavour due to its emphasis on open formats such as Apache Iceberg.” Key benefits of the STACKIT and Dremio partnership include: ● Lower total cost of ownership: Customers can expect up to an 80% reduction in costs associated with analytics and AI projects thanks to Dremio's efficient data processing capabilities.● Faster time to market for analytics and AI: With Dremio, analytics and AI projects will see a significant boost in productivity enabling organisations to complete projects five to ten times faster than conventional methods.● Improved discoverability and governance via Iceberg Data Catalogue: Leveraging Git-inspired versioning, Dremio provides a robust data catalogue that supports data integrity, governance and traceability throughout the entire data lifecycle.● Flexibility and scalability: With the ability to run on any infrastructure, Dremio offers unparalleled flexibility and scalability allowing customers to adapt to changing business needs seamlessly. With its open lakehouse architecture, Dremio allows users to access and process data independently on the STACKIT platform through a data lakehouse service that ensures data protection and promotes data sovereignty. Together, the two companies enable businesses to derive valuable insights from sensitive data while adhering to the highest standards of data privacy and security. Thanks to the partnership, STACKIT customers can expect a significant cost reduction, flexible and consumption-based billing options, and overall affordability in their data residency and sovereignty efforts. Andreas Vogels, Central Europe Lead at Dremio, comments, "The collaboration between Dremio and STACKIT not only empowers organisations with the freedom to scale their data operations seamlessly but also ensures they can derive actionable insights from their data without constraints, no matter where the data resides. By leveraging Dremio's cloud-native architecture and STACKIT's commitment to digital sovereignty, customers can unlock the full potential of their data while maintaining control and flexibility in their cloud strategy.” Customers will be able to access the new data lakehouse service via a private preview, with support from STACKIT's data and AI consulting team to guide them through the initial steps. For more from Dremio, click here.

Object First selects Vitanium as UK partner for Ootbi launch

Object First, the developer of Ootbi (Out-of-the-Box-Immutability), the ransomware-proof backup storage appliance purpose-built for Veeam, has announced Vitanium as its first partner in the UK market. Object First states that this new partnership demonstrates its commitment to delivering customers an innovative and secure data protection solution to the region. "As one of the largest markets in Europe for Veeam, the UK presents a significant growth opportunity for us," says Mark Haddleton, EMEA Channel Sales Director at Object First. "We are excited to partner with Vitanium, a company known for its expertise in data protection and strong partnership with Veeam." Ootbi is a ransomware-proof and immutable appliance-based solution designed specifically for Veeam customers. It offers secure, simple, and powerful backup storage with out-of-the-box immutability and zero access to root. It is a secure, simple, powerful storage appliance that is purpose-built for mid-size Veeam customers. Vitanium, a UK-based company with over 20 years of experience delivering enterprise backup innovations, is well-positioned to support Object First's growth strategy in the UK market. With a team of certified Veeam engineers and ISO 27001/ ISO 9001 accredited data backup services, Vitanium offers agile, dynamic, and secure data protection services to MSPs, Enterprise customers, and end-users in various sectors. “In response to the ever-present threat of ransomware, we've observed a notable shift in customer preference for data protection solutions that are both highly effective and easy to manage, says Paul Houselander, Technical Director at Vitanium. “Our search for a solution prioritised ease of deployment, secure and immutable storage capabilities, scalability, and the ability to handle modern workload demands efficiently. Opting for Ootbi by Object First was a clear choice. The tight Veeam integration enables our customers to safeguard their backups with on-premises immutable object storage purpose-built for Veeam, ensuring the highest level of protection is achieved.” By partnering with Vitanium, Object First gains access to a team of certified Veeam engineers and taps into the company's extensive partnership with Veeam, which has spanned nearly half a decade. This collaboration opens up new avenues for both parties, allowing them to reach a broader customer base and deliver unmatched value to clients.

Data throughput record set at Europe’s largest Internet Exchange

A new data throughput record has been set at Europe’s largest Internet Exchange (IX), DE-CIX Frankfurt. In parallel to the quarter-final second leg of the UEFA Champions League, on April 16 at 9.21pm (CEST), more than 17 terabits per second (Tbit/s) (to be specific, 17.09 Tbit/s) of data flowed over the IX for the first time. 17 terabits per second corresponds to 5.7 million videos in HD quality being streamed simultaneously. In an analogue world, 17 terabits per second is equivalent to around 3.9 billion A4 pages of text – i.e. a stack more than 420 kilometers high, almost 50 times higher than Mount Everest. This means that data traffic at one of the world's largest Internet Exchanges has increased by 20% overall since the beginning of 2023 and by almost 60% since the beginning of 2022. Looking at the past five years, data throughput at DE-CIX Frankfurt has almost tripled. Dr. Thomas King, Head of Technology at DE-CIX, comments, “Shortly before the start of the European Championships, Germany, the home of this year’s tournament, seems to be slowly catching soccer fever. We already saw last year that the UEFA Champions League matches are a real streaming magnet. This trend is continuing unbroken in 2024. After all, watching live sport over the Internet has several advantages over linear television. Fans can watch the highlights of the game again at any time, and they can view games flexibly via the device of their choice. Whether on the couch or on the go with a smartphone – online streaming has a great future.” DE-CIX is a leading Internet Exchange operator and has been playing a decisive role in shaping the guiding principles of the Internet of the present and the future in various global bodies since 1995. As an operator of critical IT infrastructure, DE-CIX bears great responsibility for the smooth, fast, and secure exchange of data between people, enterprises, and organisations. At its more than 50 locations in Europe, Africa, North America, the Middle East, and Asia, DE-CIX offers its customers peering, cloud connectivity, and other interconnection services. The DE-CIX interconnection ecosystem is accessible from data centres in over 600 cities worldwide and connects thousands of network operators (carriers), Internet service providers (ISPs), content providers, and corporate networks from more than 100 countries. With a data volume of almost 40 exabytes per year (as of 2023) and almost 1,100 connected networks, DE-CIX in Frankfurt, Germany, is one of the largest Internet Exchanges in the world. What is a terabit per second? What does a data throughput of 17 terabits per second mean? A terabit per second, Tbit/s or Tbps, is a dimension for the transmission speed of data. The next lower data rates are specified in gigabits per second (Gbit/s) and megabits per second (Mbit/s). One terabit per second is 10³ Gbit/s, 106 Mbit/s, 109 kbit/s or 10 12 bit/s, i.e. 1,000,000,000,000 bits per second. 17 terabits per second is equivalent to over 5.7 million videos in HD quality being streamed simultaneously. In an analogue world, 17 terabits per second corresponds to around 3.9 billion A4 pages of text, a stack more than 420 kilometers high – almost 50 times higher than Mount Everest. If one bit were equivalent to one milliliter of water, 17 terabits would fill 3.7 million bathtubs. For more from DE-CIX, click here.

New micro modular data centre system with AI features

Vertiv, a global provider of critical digital infrastructure and continuity solutions, today introduced the Vertiv SmartAisle 3, a micro modular data centre system that utilises the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI), providing enhanced intelligence and enabling efficient operations within the data centre environment. Now available in Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand, the SmartAisle 3 can be configured up to 120kW of total IT load and is ideal for a wide range of industry applications, including banking, healthcare, government, and transportation. Building on the previous Vertiv SmartAisle technology, the SmartAisle 3 is a fully-integrated data centre ecosystem consisting of racks, uninterruptible power supply (UPS), thermal management and monitoring, and physical security. The latest iteration of the SmartAisle comes with AI functionality and self-learning features that help significantly optimise the micro data centre operational and energy efficiency. Each carriage or rack cabinet has a Smart Power Output Device or POD, which seamlessly manages the power distribution to rack PDUs and serves as a monitoring gateway that oversees carriage conditions including temperature, humidity and door status. With built-in cabling integration, front and rear carriage sensors, the SmartAisle 3 also eliminates the hassle of complex on-site cabling installation and saves on data centre white space. Moreover, the SmartAisle 3 further reduces the complexity of on-site setup with its one-click networking feature, which effortlessly configures the data centre system. It also has an AI self-learning function that intelligently monitors and adjusts temperature depending on the operating environment, helping to achieve energy savings by as much as 20% compared to systems without AI features, while maintaining optimum operation conditions. Cheehoe Ling, Vice President, Product Management at Vertiv Asia, explains, “As demand for data-intensive applications continues to rapidly grow, many businesses are requiring their data centre infrastructure to be deployed quickly and efficiently, and to be as scalable as possible. Vertiv enriched the Vertiv SmartAisle 3 with AI features to help our customers simplify their data centre operations, so they can have greater flexibility in their business operation and to help them achieve their energy efficiency goals. “The speed at which AI is evolving not only demands a workforce that is technically proficient. but also a digital economy built on infrastructure designed to scale,” says Faraz Ali, Product Manager IMS at Vertiv Australia and New Zealand. “By integrating AI directly into data centre operations, we’re giving businesses across Australia and New Zealand the opportunity to keep up with their AI ambitions. The new system’s automated intelligence makes light work of balancing critical infrastructure at optimum energy efficiency and power resilience, offering time back to critical talent, while promoting scalability as workload requirements expand.” With an intuitive 15-inch touch screen control panel and an option to upgrade to a 95-inch local door display, the Vertiv SmartAisle 3 provides enhanced system visibility and assists in troubleshooting to enable the system to operate at peak efficiency. The SmartAisle 3 includes the Vertiv Liebert APM modular uninterruptible power supply (UPS) system, the Vertiv Liebert CRV 4 in-row cooling, and the Vertiv Liebert RDU 501 intelligent monitoring system. It also comes pre-installed with a flexible busbar system that streamlines the overall system design by reducing power distribution installation complexity. The latest iteration of the SmartAisle 3 is part of Vertiv’s growing portfolio of flexible, fully-integrated modular solutions. With its combination of Environmental Management System (EMS), AI functionality and 'carriage' type rack architecture, the SmartAisle 3 can help customers boost operational efficiency through comprehensive intelligent monitoring and management, ease of installation, quick deployment time and highly efficient operating conditions, thus allowing customers to better adapt to the needs of today’s diverse compute environments. For more from Vertiv, click here.