Cloud Computing & Storage

Snowflake and NVIDIA to help businesses build AI applications

At the Snowflake Summit 2023, Snowflake announced that it is partnering to provide businesses of all sizes with an accelerated path to create customised generative AI applications using its own proprietary data, all securely within the Snowflake Data Cloud. With the NVIDIA NeMo platform for developing large language models (LLMs) and NVIDIA GPU-accelerated computing it will enable enterprises to use data in their accounts to make custom LLMs for advanced generative AI services, including chatbots, search and summarisation. The ability to customise LLMs without moving data enables proprietary information to remain fully secured and governed within the Snowflake platform. “Data is essential to creating generative AI applications that understand the complex operations and unique voice of every company,” says Jensen Huang, Founder and CEO, NVIDIA. “Together, NVIDIA and Snowflake will create an AI factory that helps enterprises turn its own valuable data into custom generative AI models to power ground-breaking new applications, right from the cloud platform that they use to run their businesses.” The collaboration represents a new opportunity for enterprises. It will enable utilisation of its proprietary data — which can range from hundreds of terabytes to petabytes of raw and curated business information — to create and fine-tune custom LLMs that power business-specific applications and services.By integrating AI technology, customers can quickly and easily build, deploy and manage customised applications that bring its power to all parts of its business across a variety of use cases. “More enterprises than we expected are training or at least fine-tuning their own AI models, as they increasingly appreciates the value of their own data assets,” says Alexander Harrowell, Principal Analyst for Advanced Computing for AI at Technology Research Group, Omdia. “Similarly, enterprises are beginning to operate more diverse fleets of AI models for business-specific applications. Supporting them in this trend is one of the biggest open opportunities in the sector.” Custom models for healthcare, retail, financial services and more With over 8,000 customers worldwide, the Snowflake Data Cloud gives enterprises the ability to unify, integrate, analyse and share data across its organisations, as well as with customers, partners, suppliers and others. In addition, customers can build and share leading data applications at scale with the data cloud.The company’s unified platform offers industry-specific data clouds to help deliver innovative solutions across multiple verticals and lines of business. The collaboration will further enable customers to transform these industries by bringing customised generative AI applications to different verticals with the data cloud. For example, a healthcare insurance model could answer complex questions about what procedures are covered under various plans. A financial services model could share details about specific lending opportunities available to retail and business customers based on a variety of circumstances.

TREND Networks improves its VDV II cable verifier range

TREND Networks has announced that the VDV II basic, plus, and pro copper cable verifiers will now be Bluetooth-enabled to support enhanced test reporting with the company’s AnyWARE Cloud app and test management system. The new cloud connected verifiers will enable users to quickly, easily, and accurately create and manage test reports, making them ideal for technicians working in voice, data, and video applications.  “All too often, industry-leading test management capabilities are only available for users of the most complex cable testers,” explains Dan Barrera, Director of Product Innovation, TREND Networks. “However, with the latest update to VDV II, we are bringing advanced reporting benefits to an affordable, entry level wire mapper, a type of tester that the majority of installers or technicians need to have in their bag.”  Dan continues, “By covering users from basic to pro, we are ensuring that all users can experience the same time and cost savings, alongside the dependability and accuracy they expect from TREND Networks.” The new models connect reliably to its AnyWARE Cloud app using Bluetooth, storing the test results on the user’s phone in real time. It is as simple as creating a job folder in the app, connecting the tester to a cable, and then sending the test results. Once these are in the app, users can upload to transfer the results to the online system in seconds. There, the test results can be organised, and professional PDF reports can be exported.   This seamless data transfer also benefits project managers. With access to a wider range of test results from their co-workers in the field, in a single web-based test management system, they can now standardise their workflow and improve efficiency. The app already supports testers from TREND Networks, including PoE Pro, LanTEK III/IV/IV-S cable certifiers, and SignalTEK 10G bandwidth tester.   The latest version also uses AnyWARE EXPLORER, offering project managers a simple navigation user interface, like those used on desktop operating systems. This makes it easier to find the specific job needed, sort results, or build out subfolders to organise results by building, floor, room, rack, or panel.   The new VDV II Series retains all the dependable functionality of previous models, which helps users document proper operation and eliminate guesswork when installing, maintaining, and troubleshooting data, voice, and video cabling.  “Wire mapping and cable verification is commonplace, so we already had a great solution for that in the VDV II series,” says Dan. “However, this game-changing update enables a large proportion of installers and technicians to depend on us to change the way they work for the better, maximising efficiencies, even on the simplest jobs.” 

Supermicro MicroCloud uses AMD Ryzen for server usage

Supermicro has introduced a new server that gives IT and data centre owners a high-performance and scalable solution to meet the needs for E-commerce, cloud gaming, code development, content creation, and virtual private servers. The new systems are designed to use AMD Ryzen 7000 Series processors optimised for server usage, based on the latest Zen 4 core architecture, which has a maximum boost speed of up to 5.7GHz, including PCIe 5.0 support, DDR5-5200MHz, and up to 16 cores or 32 threads per CPU. The Supermicro MicroCloud is designed to use the latest system technology for a wide range of applications, including web hosting, cloud gaming, and virtual desktop applications. “We are expanding our application optimised server product lines to include the latest AMD Ryzen 7000 Series processors,” says Michael McNerney, VP of Marketing and Security, Supermicro. “These new servers from Supermicro will give IT administrators a compact and high-performance option in order to offer more services with lower latencies to their internal or external customers. By working closely with AMD to optimise the Ryzen 7000 Series firmware for server usage, we can bring a range of solutions with new technologies with PCIe 5.0, DDR5 memory, and high clock rates to market faster, which will allow organisations to reduce costs and offer advanced solutions to their clients.” The Supermicro Microcloud new blade offering, AS-3015MR-H8TNR server, contains a single optimised AMD Ryzen 7000 Series processor, up to 128GB of DDR5 memory, and a TDP of up to 170W. The 3U enclosure contains eight blades, with each blade containing up to two front-accessible NVMe U.2, SAS, or SATA3 drives. It shares cooling and redundant power supplies across the eight blades for a more efficient and uninterrupted operation. IT departments can quickly set up dedicated hosting, a multi-instance environment for workloads such as web hosting, cloud gaming, and remote and virtual desktops, through easy accessibility of the physical nodes and the rear I/O with a flexible remote management interface, including dedicated IPMI port for the eight nodes. “AMD works closely with Supermicro to bring innovative products to market that enable customers to reduce costs while increasing performance for a wide range of workloads. The Supermicro MicroCloud offers customers a compact, low latency solution that can meet the demands of many data centre operators seeking a successful digital transformation,” says John Morris, Corporate Vice President, Enterprise and HPC Business Group, AMD. “The AMD Ryzen 7000 Series processors set a new standard for performance in a compact form factor for cloud and dedicated hosting environments.”

Colt Technology Services has announced the expansion of its Colt Intelligent Communication services (CIC) portfolio to meet growing demand from customers requiring agile, cloud-based global voice solutions. New Colt Cloud SIP is a flexible service which seamlessly connects across its IQ network to platforms from communication service providers (CSPs) such as Genesys, Twilio and Zoom. The service is ideal for companies with a hybrid workforce, looking to boost collaboration and improve their customer experience with a secure, high-performance, cloud-based voice solution which integrates with cloud platforms. It is also extending its Teams voice activation, through direct routing and operator connect to countries such as Slovakia, Luxembourg and Norway. Activating voice can be complex, but the company focuses on automating processes to reduce this complexity for its customers. Businesses benefit from its commitment to customer experience, automation and simplification, while maintaining their existing relationships with providers. Alternatively, businesses can select a new partner within its ecosystem such as Genesys, Twilio or Zoom. The company has spent time establishing voice connectivity with major CSPs; automating and integrating SIP Trunk ordering and provisioning; establishing partner agreements; and making sure services are fully compliant with regulatory standards. Now, it can connect voice services with any cloud vendor that supports a Bring Your Own Carrier (BYOC) capability.   Peter Coppens, VP Product Portfolio, Colt Technology Services, says, “We are excited to welcome global leaders, Genesys, Twilio and Zoom, to our popular partner ecosystem at a time when more and more businesses are moving voice to the cloud. It is a perfect fit for the modern workplace, there is no physical hardware to manage, it is secure and resilient, costs are transparent and it suits a hybrid workforce. Managing providers, contracts and provisioning is the time-consuming part. With Colt Cloud SIP, we solve that problem for our customers, interconnecting their applications to voice services almost anywhere in the world.”

Vertiv announces the opening of head office in South Africa

Vertiv has announced the official opening of its African head office and a customer experience centre, based in Johannesburg, South Africa.  According to Wojtek Piorko, Managing Director, Vertiv Africa, the formal opening of the South African premises forms an important part of the company’s ‘Africa for Africa’ initiative, and underscores the organisation’s investment in the region. “Vertiv is placing a strong business focus on Africa, as well as expanding our local network of authorised partners and service providers. Our ‘Africa for Africa’ project also emphasises the importance of meeting our local clients’ needs, of which the opening of the African head office and local customer experience centre play a key role,” explains Wojtek. The Johannesburg Customer Experience Centre provides customers with the opportunity to engage with Vertiv’s diverse range of critical infrastructure solutions for applications from the edge of the network to the cloud. These include: Vertiv SmartCabinet: a complete cabinet solution for a multitude of environments, providing intelligent and integrated infrastructure for any type of IT. Vertiv Liebert EXS: compact and flexible three-phase uninterruptible power supply (UPS) with high-efficiency operation. Vertiv Liebert EXM2: highly reliable monolithic UPS designed to provide industry-leading performance and efficiency up to 98.8%, for mid-size critical applications. In addition to the products displayed at the centre, it offers the experience of its large-scale modular data centres, power and thermal management solutions through virtual reality (VR) to customers. Wojtek clarifies, “Using our VR offering, the Vertiv Virtual Showroom, clients can embark on a unique virtual trip to experience Vertiv's capabilities, giving both novices and seasoned experts of Vertiv products a way to fully understand the entire layout of the critical digital infrastructure.”  Users wear a headset and use hand controllers to navigate the VR environment, interact with equipment, and watch animations that demonstrate a product’s value and key features. They can observe the spatial placement of its rack and row solutions, as though they were actually on site. They are also able to customise a Vertiv VR rack by placing servers, power, thermal, and storage devices into the unit.  “This experience gives decision-makers a deeper understanding of the entire infrastructure at work,” Wojtek adds. “In addition, our new centre will provide presales, sales, and product training, as well as full service certification courses for Vertiv’s authorised service partner network.” 

VAST Data in conjunction with Commvault, has announced that the two companies are enabling Expedient to deliver Service Level Agreement (SLA) to its customers, without the conventional expense associated with legacy infrastructure. Expedient is a full stack cloud service provider to transform its IT operations through multi-cloud solutions and manage infrastructure services. The service provider selected VAST to help drive greater operational efficiency and performance for customers with data protection services from Commvault, and has seen an additional data reduction since moving to VAST’s data platform, on top of Commvault’s front-end deduplication. “With VAST and Commvault, Expedient is partnering with the best software companies in the industry to deliver the most innovative IT solutions in the market,” says Bryan Smith, Chief Executive Officer, Expedient. “Our customers depend on us to manage their IT infrastructure to allow them to focus on their core business, and through these partnerships, we are improving the performance, reliability, and scalability for our customers, resulting in a higher service level and improved recovery time. That translates to better business outcomes for the short and long term.” VAST has enabled Expedient to retire its legacy Direct Attached Storage (DAS) target, in order to achieve: Rapid ransomware recovery Infrastructure consolidation at scale Improved data reduction through Commvault + VAST integration 80% less power, space, cooling Archive economics with NVMe performance Bryan continues, “We were very impressed with VAST’s consistently high data transfer and secondary data reduction. For instance, normally, sealing a deduplication database would cause storage consumption to increase as it requires all new data signatures and blocks. However, as VAST was able to identify the incoming blocks, it was able to deduplicate that data regardless.” “Together with VAST, we are enabling solution and service providers like Expedient to help their customers recover their historical backups at a much faster rate to ensure their business and operations continue to run undisrupted,” says Alan Atkinson, Chief Partner Officer at Commvault. “As we finalise our new validated design based on this successful use case, we are excited to see how our partners and customers will take advantage of this deep integration.”

HPE announces extension of HPE GreenLake private cloud portfolio

Hewlett Packard Enterprise has announced partnership with Equinix to extend the HPE GreenLake private cloud portfolio at Equinix International Business Exchange (IBX) data centres. It will pre-provision HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud Enterprise and Private Cloud Business Edition at Equinix data centres around the world, giving customers access to a range of private cloud offerings, for greater speed, agility, flexibility, and choice in their hybrid cloud strategy. HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud Enterprise is API-enabled and is an automated, flexible, scalable, and enterprise-grade private cloud with a simple modern experience. It has been designed with modular infrastructure and software, and supports the deployment of bare metal, virtual machines, and container workloads in a self-service mode. With simple rate-card pricing that delivers a pay-as-you-go consumption model, it offers six workload-optimised instances for general purpose, compute, memory and storage.HPE also expanded its private cloud portfolio with the addition of Private Cloud Business Edition. It allows customers to spin up virtual machines (VMs) across hybrid clouds on demand and self-manage their private cloud from VMs to infrastructure with AIOps-driven simplicity. With an intuitive cloud operational experience for management and seamless integration for data protection, customers can store, manage and protect data across on-premises, edge and public cloud while providing data availability and efficiency. It provides flexibility with self-service agility, as well as the option to pay up-front or pay-as-you-go.  Both editions will be pre-provisioned and available on a rolling basis at Equinix IBX data centres in metro areas such as Frankfurt, London, Silicon Valley, Singapore, Sydney, Toronto, and Washington DC. It aims to provide customers with a wide range of workload management and payment options to cover a broad spectrum of their private cloud needs. “Increasingly, global organisations are turning to digital infrastructure providers to help transform IT investments by distributing private cloud infrastructure at the edge, close to clouds, users, and applications, to enhance enterprise network capabilities that can enable rapid scaling and security, minimise latency and ensure availability of applications,” says David Tapper, Program Vice President at IDC. “By deepening their partnership, HPE and Equinix can assist customers in their hybrid cloud strategy by providing managed cloud services that provision standardised private clouds and simplify integration with public cloud providers, add capacity on an as-needed basis, and enable shorter time commitments. Together, this should help organisations achieve critical objectives such as improved productivity, lower costs and enhanced ROI.”

Expereo reveals CIO global trends and insights

New research of global CIOs launched from Expereo has revealed that large global enterprises are moving ‘Faster to the Future’ with an increased focus on technology investment to fuel growth through global expansion. The research of over 650 CIOs in global enterprises across Europe, US and APAC shows that half of global CIOs (51%) have secured increased technology budgets specifically to deliver growth and overcome existing challenges. This is positive news for over a third (35%) who claim that their global business ambitions are constrained by legacy connectivity and management systems. It also identifies that organisations may be missing growth opportunities by failing to prioritise regions with some of the world’s fastest growing economies, due to perceived complexity and challenges to market entry. Ben Elms, Chief Revenue Officer at Expereo, comments, “As organisations focus on driving growth through global expansion, there are clearly complexities and challenges to overcome. The business' critical nature of connectivity in today’s world combined with an increasingly complex landscape, from security, regulation, skills and often challenging physical and geo-political infrastructure, mean it’s no easy task. However, it is achievable. Those that find a way to simplify, automate and scale their operations will be in the best position to reap the rewards and growth that this can deliver.” The future is bright According to the research, global CIOs describe their organisations’ attitudes to growth as optimistic (34%) and nearly a third (30%) as ambitious for the next 12 months. Over half (51%) of respondents claim global boards have already increased technology budgets to help drive this. Security (61%), automation and analytics (59%), and 5G (58%) were identified as the top three areas set for increased tech investments globally in the next four months, closely followed by public/hybrid cloud (55%), edge computing and IoT (both 54%), SD-WAN (45%) and SASE (51%). CIOs claim that this investment will drive global growth by ensuring prioritisation of increased innovation (50%), increased automation (47%) and expansion into new markets (45%). More markets, more problems Almost half (46%) of CIOs claimed that establishing and managing connectivity in new markets is the single most critical factor in ensuring successful global expansion, and 42% said that their board views global connectivity as a business asset critical to growth, but there are challenges that need to be overcome. In fact, when asked specifically about the biggest challenge to delivering global growth in new regions, 37% said that effectively establishing connectivity in new regions is one of the major challenges in their role, 37% a major challenge for their organisation and 35% that their organisations’ business ambitions are constrained by legacy connectivity. Additional challenges identified were security environments (35%), skills and resource retention (35%), complicated physical and geopolitical infrastructure (33%), regulation and compliance (32%), and legacy systems and local knowledge (both 31%). Perceived complexity an obstacle to global growth Responses indicated that global enterprises may be failing to prioritise the fastest growing economies due to perceived complexities. When asked about where their organisation saw the biggest opportunity for growth, North America and Europe dominated the top five. North America (37%) took the throne, followed by Western Europe (32%), Eastern Europe (26%), Northern Europe (25%) and South America (25%). Although South America appears in the top five, it also ranks as the most technologically challenging region to do business in regarding the local knowledge of providers (29%), agility (28%), robust connectivity (28%), scalability (27%), and performance visibility (28%). Interestingly, it is also seen as a more challenging security environment than China (27%) compared to China’s 26%. Given that the IMF’s most recent World Economic Outlook Report showed that growth projections in advanced economies was 1.4% for 2024, while emerging and developing markets was 4.2%, it is surprising that neither the Greater China Area or Central and South Asia appear in the top five priority regions for growth. Each includes two of the fastest growing economies in the world - China and India. Perhaps this is due to both appearing consistently in the top five most challenging regions in terms of local technology provider knowledge (25% and 22% respectively), agility (26% and 24%), robust connectivity (25% and 23%), security (26% and 25%) and performance visibility (both 25%). Ben continues, “Realising the growth opportunities that global expansion can deliver will be critical to the world economy in these challenging times. CIOs need to completely focus on supercharging this strategic growth wherever they are doing business in the world, not grappling with unnecessary logistical and connectivity challenges. That’s what Expereo is here for. We simplify and automate this, allowing our customers to get on with business.”

Cloud Industry Forum appoints new Director and Chairman

The Cloud Industry Forum (CIF) has announced that Ian Jeffs, the Infrastructure Solutions Group Country Manager at Lenovo UK & Ireland, has been appointed as Director and Chairman to usher in the next phase of cloud adoption and collaboration in the UK. With his extensive expertise in the technology industry and commitment to driving cloud innovation, Ian is well positioned to work with CIF’s CEO to lead it in its mission to promote best practices and standards within the cloud computing industry. The CIF is an industry body dedicated to driving cloud adoption and supporting organisations in their digital transformation journeys. As Chairman, Ian will spearhead its strategic initiatives, collaborating with industry leaders, policymakers, and stakeholders to shape the future of cloud computing in the UK. Ian re-joined the Lenovo family in 2020 after 12 years and was part of the first team to establish the PC business in the country after its acquisition of ThinkPad from IBM in 2004. With a career spanning 25 years in senior roles in the PC and data centre industry, he has been successful in creating thriving sales, marketing and channel businesses in large technology organisations including Tech Data, Arrow and IBM. David Terrar, CEO, CIF comments, “Ian brings a wealth of experience and a deep understanding of the technology landscape. He has successfully led Lenovo's UK ISG business, demonstrating strong leadership and fostering partnerships to drive growth and deliver exceptional customer experiences. Ian's appointment as Chairman of the CIF is a testament to his reputation and the trust placed in him by the industry.” Under Ian’s guidance, the CIF aims to further its mission of promoting innovation, transparency, trust, accountability, equity, diversity, and inclusion in cloud services, helping its members do a better job. With his strategic vision and extensive industry knowledge, he will play a pivotal role in shaping policies, guidelines, and industry best practices, fostering innovation and advancing cloud adoption. "I am honoured and excited to take on the role of Chairman at the Cloud Industry Forum," says Ian. "Cloud computing is transforming businesses across industries, and it is crucial that we continue to foster collaboration and set industry standards to ensure its secure and efficient adoption. I look forward to working with the CIF and its members to drive innovation, enable digital transformation, take a stand on key issues, and shape the future of cloud technology."

Cato Networks has announced a new SASE throughput record, achieving 5Gbps on a single encrypted tunnel with all security inspections enabled. “Once again, Cato has set the mark for SASE at scale,” says Gur Shatz, Co-Founder, President, and COO of Cato Networks. "Pushing the boundary of SASE throughput worldwide is more than an engineering achievement. It demonstrates how quickly a platform with a cloud-native architecture can make new technology globally available."  As larger enterprises adopt SASE, higher capacity connections are needed for interconnecting data centres and private clouds. Cato meets that need with leading support for 5Gbps throughput on a single, encrypted tunnel regardless of security inspections. Previously, Cato supported a maximum of 3Gbps per tunnel. The improved throughput underscores the benefits of a cloud-native architecture. It nearly doubled the performance of the Cato Socket without requiring any hardware changes. This was only possible because Cato runs the compute-intensive operations that normally degrade edge appliance performance, in the Cato Single Pass Processing Engine (SPACE) running across Cato PoPs. By improving SPACE, all edges connected to the Cato SASE Cloud gain increased throughput. Replacement of the Cato Socket is not required. By contrast, SASE solutions implemented as virtual machines (VMs) in the cloud or modified web proxies remain limited to under 1Gbps of throughput for a single tunnel. This limitation forces enterprises to have their edge appliance create and manage multiple tunnels and load-balance their traffic between them. Cato is also delivering 5Gbps connections to other cloud providers. The new Cato cross-connect will enable private, high-speed layer-2 connections between Cato and any other cloud provider connecting to the Equinix Cloud Exchange (ECX) or Digital Reality. The Cato cross-connect meets the need for multicloud and hybrid cloud deployments that demand reliable, high-throughput connections. It also enables channel partners to deliver Cato SSE 360 into legacy deployments by establishing a network-to-network interface (NNI) into the Cato SASE Cloud.