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We often think of computers as a very modern phenomenon, but there were actually plenty of computers around 50 years ago. They just weren’t an everyman commodity, instead limited to goverment and corporate use. And they certainly weren’t small. Some of them had imaginative names like Whirlwind, Colossus and Pegasus, while others were slightly less poetic with names like Z4, AN/FSQ-7 and ENIAC.

Below we have listed as many as 19 examples of computers from the early days, pioneering efforts that although cutting edge in their day now look lovingly retro.

These computers didn’t use the same kind of components as we do today. The computers in the 1940s and 1950s were mostly based on vacuum tubes. Transistors showed up late in the game, and integrated circuits were just a distant dream and didn’t start showing up in computers until the 1960s, and then in very limited capacity. How tempting it would be to travel back in time and show the engineers of these computers a normal modern-day PC, just to see their reaction.

We have listed the completion year for each computer, although often work on them had begun several years earlier (they were huge projects). We’ve arranged them in chronological order, oldest first. Please note that these are just a sample, there are plenty we didn’t include (in order to make this a blog post and not a book ).

Z4

Year: 1944

Designed by the legendary German engineer Konrad Zuse, the Z4 was a follow-up to its pioneering predecessor, the Z3 computer he built in 1941 (the world’s first programmable, automatic computing machine). The Z4 used about 4,000 watts of power and ran at approximately 40 Hz. It had 64 32-bit registers, the equivalent of 512 byte of memory. One addition took 0.4 seconds.

Above: The Z4 computer, as seen in a German museum (in Munich).

Colossus

Year: 1944

Two generations of Colossus, the Mark 1 and Mark 2, were used by British codebreakers to decrypt coded German messages at the end of WW2. It processed 5,000 characters per second (it could process faster, but then the paper tapes holding the data would break). The existence of Colossus and other British codebreaking machines remained secret until the 1970s out of fear that widespread knowledge would encourage more efficient encryption algorithms.

Above, top: The Colossus in its heyday. Note the punched paper tape running on the right side. Above, bottom: A reconstructed Colossus.

ENIAC

Year: 1946

When the ENIAC was announced in 1946 the press immediately started calling it a “Giant Brain”. ENIAC was the world’s first general-purpose electronic, digital computer and is probably the most famous of the ones included in this article. It weighed 27 tons. Among other things, ENIAC was used for calculations for the creation the hydrogen bomb. Programming the machine could take weeks, since after the program had been figured out on paper you first had to manipulate the various switches and cables that controlled the programming and then follow that with verification and debugging.

Above, top: The ENIAC in all its glory. Above, bottom: Old-school programming?

Whirlwind

Year: 1951

The Whirlwind was the first computer to use video displays for output. The first version had 512 byte of main memory and could do 20,000 instructions per second, although a switch to a different kind of memory later doubled its performance and made it the fastest computer of its time.

Above, top left: The Whirlwind. Above, top right: Closeup of the circuitry. Above, bottom: The control room.

UNIVAC I

Year: 1951

An acronym for UNIVersal Automatic Computer, the UNIVAC I was the first US-produced commercial computer. It was designed by the inventors of the ENIAC. A total of 46 systems were built and delivered. It weighed 13 tons (29,000 pounds), ran at 2.25 MHz and could perform 1,905 instructions per second. The UNIVAC I cost up to $1.5 million per system.

Above: The UNIVAC I, built by Remington Rand (see their nifty logo top left in the image).

WITCH

Year: 1951

Short for the Wolverhampton Instrument for Teaching Computing from Harwell, the WITCH was also known as The Harwell Dekatron Computer. It was slow (a multiplication took 5-10 seconds), but this was justified by its ability to run long periods of time unattended. It could therefore be left on its own with a large amount of input data. At one point it was left running over the Christmas and New Year holiday and was still working when the staff came back 10 days later.

Above: The WITCH in use. Is it just us, or do they look a bit confused?

BESK

Year: 1953

Pingdom being Swedish, we had to include this Swedish computer from 1953. BESK stands for Binär Elektronisk SekvensKalkylator, which is Swedish for Binary Electronic Sequence Calculator. The main memory was 512 40-bit words, the equivalent of 2,560 byte. An addition could be performed in 56 microseconds, and a multiplication in 350 microseconds. For a short time it was the world’s fastest computer. Small aside, “besk” means “bitter” (as in taste) in Swedish, but besk is also an alcoholic beverage from the south of Sweden. The name was a pun sneaked in by the computer’s creator, who had previously had the computer name COGNAC rejected by officials.

Above: The control panel for the Swedish BESK computer.

IBM 702

Year: 1955

The IBM 702 had been announced as early as 1953, but the first production model wasn’t installed until 1955. It was a commercial computer that could be leased from IBM. The system could have a maximum of 11,000 7-bit characters of main memory, i.e. roughly 10 kilobytes. It could do 3,950 additions or subtractions per second, but multiplication and division was significantly slower.

Above: An IBM 702 installation.

IBM NORC

Year: 1954

The IBM Naval Ordnance Research Calculator was arguably the first supercomputer and was the most powerful computer of its time. It could perform 15,000 operations per second, and the first version had 2,000 64-bit words of main memory, roughly the equivalent of 16 kilobytes.

Above: Various angles of the IBM NORC.

IBM 305 RAMAC

Year: 1956

This computer is most famous for being the first commercial computer delivered with a hard disk drive. The hard disk drive could store a total of just under 5 MB and consisted of 50 24-inch diameter disks. The 305 RAMAC was one of the largest computers IBM ever built. (If you find ancient hard drives fascinating, check out our post about the history of computer data storage.)

Above: Yes, those huge units in the foreground are hard disk drives. Each storing a massive 5 MB…

Bendix G-15

Year: 1956

The Bendix G-15 weighed 450 kg (950 lb) and cost around $60,000. It had 2,160 29-bit words of memory, the equivalent of about 7.6 kilobyte. The G-15 has sometimes been called the first personal computer, although there are disagreements about this. More than 400 were made.

Above: The Bendix G-15. It looks like a very big tower desktop computer. Kind of.

Pegasus

Year: 1956

The British computer Ferranti Pegasus was designed and built to be cheap and reliable. It had 5,120 40-bit words of memory, the equivalent of 25 kilobyte, plus 56 words (280 byte) of fast memory. A Pegasus 2 from 1959 is still operational at the Science Museum in London. It is the world’s oldest working digital computer.

Above: A Pegasus 2 at the Science Museum in London. The cabinet was built by Rolls Royce, hence the use of car door handles for the doors. Note also the inserted clock at the short end.

AN/FSQ-7

Year: 1958

A successor to the Whirlwind, based largely on the design of the never-realized the AN/FSQ-7 was developed by IBM in collaboration with the US Air Force to be used with the SAGE air defense system. It is sometimes incorrectly referred to as the Whirlwind II. One computer took up 2,000 sqm of floor space (roughly half an acre) and weighed 275 tons. They are the largest computers ever built (52 of them were made). The AN/FSQ-7 could perform about 75,000 instructions per second.

Above, top: An installation of the AN/FSQ-7. Each cabinet a built-in phone to save time when calling in problems (seen here at the short end of the nearest cabinet). Above, bottom: SAGE control consoles. A sign of different times: each console had a built-in cigarette lighter and ashtray.

IBM 7090

Year: 1959

A typical IBM 7090 system cost $2.9 million and was designed for large-scale scientific and technological applications. Among other things, it was used by NASA to control space flights. A 7090 system is featured in the movie Dr. Strangelove. In 1961, a later version, the 7094, became the first computer ever to sing (the song Daisy Bell). This was the inspiration for a scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Above:The IBM 7090. Trivia: The second man on the left is Smith DeFrance, founding director of the NASA Ames Research Center.

AKAT-1

Year: 1959

The Polish AKAT-1 was the world’s first transistor-based differential analyzer, designed specifically to solve systems of differential equations. It was never mass produced due to the country’s policies at that time.

Above: The AKAT-1.

Datasaab D2

Year: 1960

Never massproduced, the Datasaab D2 was a concept computer build in Sweden. It weighed “only” 200 kg and could be placed on a desktop. It held the equivalent of 15 kilobyte of memory and could perform 100,000 additions per second. It was a prototype designed to test the feasibility of computerized navigation aid in aircraft. Datasaab was the computer division of the aircraft manufacturer Saab, which made fighter jets for Sweden.

Above left: The Datasaab D2 in its entirety. Above right: Closeup of its control panel.

BRLESC I

Year: 1962

The name is an acronym for Ballistic Research Laboratories Electronic Scientific Computer. It was, as its name suggest, designed primarily for scientific and military tasks. It could do five million operations per second and had 4096 72-bit words of memory, the equivalent of 36 kilobyte.

Above: The awesome-looking console for the BRLESC I computer.

Honeywell 200

Year: 1963

The Honeywell 200 and its successors were introduced to compete with affordable commercial computers from IBM (specifically the IBM 1401). The native assembly language used to program the Honeywell computer was named Easycoder. Yes, at that time, assembly language was considered easy to code in. Honeywell ran an ad campaign over several years that they called the Liberator, using various very creative sculptures made from computer parts (one example available here).

Above: The H200 at work.

UNIVAC 1108

Year: 1964

The transistor-based UNIVAC 1108 supported up to three CPUs and up to 262,144 36-bit words of memory (more than 1 MB). The memory used integrated circuits (quite rare at the time) instead of the thin film core memory used in its predecessor, the 1107.

Above: A later model of the 1108 from 1969.

Final words, acronyms and the MANIAC

As you can see from some of the examples above, acronyms were highly popular. Some scientists were so fed up with this acronym mania that they started mocking it. There was for example a computer called MANIAC (I and II), which stood for Mathematical Analyzer, Numerical Integrator, and Computer.

We always think it’s fascinating to look back and see how things were in the early days of computing. It truly illuminates how far we have come. Today we have more computing power in our pocket than what would fit in entire buildings in the past. Our most modest smartphones widely exceed the performance and storage capacity of these early behemoths.

Data sources: Almost needless to say, Wikipedia was an invaluable starting point when researching this post, which in turn uses a ton of other places as data sources. Too many to mention here.

Image sources: Z4 by Clemens Pfeiffer; Colossus old image by UK government, rebuild image by MaltaGC; ENIAC images are from the US Army; Whirlwind top left from Computerhistory.org, circuitry by Dpbsmith, control room from MIT; UNIVAC I from US Army; WITCH from the Computer Conservation Society; BESK by Liftarn, IBM 702 from the US Federal Government;IBM NORC images from Columbia University; IBM 305 RAMAC from the US Federal Government; Bendix G-15 by unknown author (stored by Wikipedia); Pegasus; AN/FSQ-7 from US Air Force, SAGE consoles by Steve Jurvetson; IBM 7090 by NASA; AKAT-1 by Topory; Datasaab D2 images by Lars Aronsson; BRLESC I from US Army; Honeywell 200 image from unknown source; UNIVAC 1108 by the manufacturer.

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Retro delight: Gallery of early computers (1940s – 1960s)

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IBM today announced plans to build a new data center in Auckland, New Zealand, investing $58 million (NZD $80 million) in a partnership with local developer Highbrook Development Ltd. The 56,000 square foot facility, which will feature a first phase of 16,000 square feet of data center space, will be located in the Highbrook Business Park in East Tamaki and be fully operational by late 2010. Additional data center pods will be developed as demand rises.

The New Zealand project is one of three new IBM computing facilities in Asia that were announced today. IBM is also building a new data center in Seoul, South Korea and a cloud computing lab in Hong Kong.

The Auckland data center will include a free cooling system which will leverage outside air during colder months, reducing the need for chillers.

“This is a highly significant investment in New Zealand’s future technological infrastructure,” said Jennifer Moxon, Managing Director of IBM New Zealand. “It is the result of long term strategic planning and signals IBM’s commitment to enable New Zealand to become a world class technology center and advances the growth of the digital economy.”

“IBM’s new facility is core infrastructure for the 21st century digital economy that the Government and ICT industry are mutually striving to develop,” said Brett O’Riley, Chief Executive Officer, NZICT Group. “It heralds the explosion of software as a service and cloud enabled computing which will drive a step change in productivity and innovation, while its design establishes the benchmark for green ICT in this country.”

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IBM Announces Data Centers in Pacific Rim

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Which energy efficiency technologies work together to produce the best combined savings? IBM and Syracuse University will gather data on this question in an innovative new facility that combines on-site power distribution using microturbines, absorption chillers, the reuse of waste heat in nearby buildings, DC power distribution, and rear-door liquid cooling for each cabinet. Check out our a photo tour providing a detailed look at the technologies and equipment powering the Syracuse facility.

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Inside IBM’s Green Data Center Testbed

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IBM and Syracuse University today celebrated the construction of a new Green Data Center (GDC) designed to showcase multiple energy-saving technologies. The $12.4 million, 12,000-square-foot data center will feature on-site power generation, DC power distribution, chillers and cabinets equipped with water-cooled rear-door heat exchangers. Syracuse University will use the data center for its IT equipment, and also provide detailed analysis of its energy efficiency. IBM has supplied $5 million in electrical co-generation equipment and servers, and use the facility to showcase its “green” data center technology. The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) is contributing $2 million to the project. This video tour is guided by Chris Sedore, VP IT & CIO, Syracuse University and Ez Khalifa, Professor of Engineering, Syracuse University.

For more coverage of information about energy efficiency, check out our Green Data Centers Channel. For additional video, check out our DCK video archive and the Data Center Videos channel on YouTube.

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Video Tour: IBM’s Green Syracuse Data Center

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Attendees at the Gartner Data Center Conference tour the IBM Portable Modular Data center (PMDC) on display on the expo floor Tuesday at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas.

LAS VEGAS – IBM is getting serious about data center containers. Big Blue brought one of its 40-foot Portable Modular Data Center (PMDC) containers to the Gartner Data Center Conference, where it shares the expo floor with the HP and SGI containers that have been regulars at industry conferences for several years now. Today IBM announced a formidable lineup of partners who will help it outfit the containers to customer specifications.

Partnerships are critical to IBM’s strategy in the container market, where it has followed a different path than several of its competitors. Rather than advancing a particular design vision, IBM has positioned its container as perhaps the most flexible of the major container offerings, promising to customize the PMDC to each customer’s requirements. That includes the basic container configuration, as IBM offers its “data center in a box” in 20, 40 and 53-foot sizes, and can either place the mechanical and electrical gear in a separate container or have it share a single container with racks of IT gear.

Introduced in 2008
IBM introduced its container product in May 2008 as part of a broader rollout of modular data center designs for pods and zones within larger environments. The higher profile of the IBM container at the Gartner Data center Conference likely reflects growing interest in containers among the enterprise companies that make up a substantial chunk of the attendees for the Gartner event.

Big Blue offers its container through a partnership with AST Global, the Spanish company that makes the containers, which it showed off at the CeBIT conference earlier this year. APC by Schneider Electric, Eaton Corporation, Emerson Network Power, Panduit, Anixter, Siemon, and Vette Corp.

Sams: Partners Provide More Options
“These partnerships allow IBM to produce a broader lineup of solutions to provide cost-effective and flexible data center alternatives from mid-size companies to large enterprises requiring remote and temporary data center capacity,” said Steven Sams, vice president of Site and Facilities for IBM Global Technology Services. “Consequently, IBM offers the most comprehensive range of options for clients, with the IBM Data Center Family, to support their business growth in a cost-effective manner.”

The PMDC can support multiple technology vendors and multiple systems in an industry standard rack environment and enables complete access to both the front and rear of the IT equipment from within a physically and environmentally secure container.

Racks on Rails
One of the most interesting features seen in the PMDC are the rails embedded in the floor, which allow racks of servers and storage to slide back and forth to allow staff access for maintenance. This also provides flexibility in positioning the cabinets within the container. The 40-foot unit on display here in Las Vegas includes UPS models from several vendors, as well as a separate area for chillers that has an open roof.

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IBM Steps Up Its Partner-Driven Container Game

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Elisabeth Stahl is the Chief Technical Strategist, Performance Marketing for IBM Systems and Technology Group.

Anyone who took Psychology 101 in school remembers Maslow’s hierarchy. In this groundbreaking 1943 paper, Abraham Maslow outlined a pyramid to demonstrate the five distinct levels of human “need.” His pyramid showed basic, physiological needs at the bottom, more sophisticated needs at the top, all leading to the ultimate, final phase characterized by a profound level of “self-actualization” of identity and purpose.

However, this theory assumes that only personal growth can be achieved by moving through the five levels. In an interesting twist, we can actually apply Maslow’s hierarchy to data center energy efficiency, allowing us to ultimately realize the maximum potential for our IT organizations.

ELISABETH STAHL
IBM

The world has grown passionately interested in energy efficiency within the data center in the last several years. As energy prices climb and organizations outgrow their power and cooling limits, it becomes imperative for data center managers to address IT energy efficiency through green initiatives. Many of us have become intimately familiar with recommendations for improving the efficiency of our data centers. Create those hot and cold aisles, use those pillows and baffles, update those cables and that lighting, consolidate and virtualize, and maybe try some innovative water cooling technology.

So what is the hierarchy for IT energy efficiency and how can we realize the full potential? Let’s outline it step by step:

• Level One: The lowest level of this hierarchy is when energy is still seen as a basic commodity; it has no influence on data center choices. The infrastructure is not monitored and many hot spots exist on the data center floor;
• Level Two: The next level assumes that some thermal monitoring is performed. Some simple decisions have been made to help the infrastructure such as straightforward consolidations and elementary server virtualization;
• Level Three: In this stage, organizations have implemented tools to start actively monitoring IT and non-IT assets such as air conditioners.
• Level Four: Next, we focus on more significant optimization including monitoring metrics such as the power usage effectiveness (PUE), more sophisticated virtualizations using storage and the network, and even potentially employing free cooling which can save thousands of dollars in cooling costs while simultaneously cutting back on greenhouse gas emissions.
• Level Five: Finally, the highest level, the “self-actualization” of data center energy efficiency, can be reached. Here we have the ultimate cooling and powering infrastructure. We see exploitation of the virtualized environment with significant workload management capabilities. This level is most notable for introducing the data center finally as an actual Energy Producer.

How cool is that? We can effectively take the heat we don’t want in the data center and basically reuse it where we need it while saving energy and lowering emissions.

Companies around the world are already implementing this innovative heat reuse approach, sometimes referred to as “district heating,” in a concentrated effort to reach their full potential as an energy producer. For example, by working with IBM, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich is building a first-of-a-kind water-cooled supercomputer dubbed Aquasar that will directly repurpose excess heat for the university buildings. The system, which also features a water-cooling system, is expected to cut energy consumption by 40% and carbon-dioxide emissions by up to 85%, resulting in dual IT savings.

Through adopting this final level of the IT energy efficiency hierarchy, we can build a scalable, flexible, and green data center that is dynamic in its infrastructure. Through this “self-actualization” we can potentially save on energy costs; as a producer we might also even be able to make money as well.

Industry Perspectives is a new content channel at Data Center Knowledge highlighting thought leadership in the data center arena. See our guidelines and submission process for information on participating in Industry Perspectives.

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Reaching Self-Actualization in IT Energy Efficiency

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The interior of a 40-foot container inside the new Microsoft Chicago data center, packed with servers on either side of a center aisle.

One of the keys to the success of shipping containers is standardization, as detailed by author Marc Levinson, whose book explains how containers “made the world smaller and the world economy bigger.” Standardizing on a 40-foot size spurred the international growth of intermodal freight transport by either rail, ship or truck.

Is there a similar boom in store for data center containers? That may depend on whether the industry can agree on a standard for modular designs, including those using containers. Microsoft, for one, is doing its best to nudge the data center industry toward the use of standard Pre-Assembled Components (PACs), which is how the company describes the server-filled containers in its new Chicago data center.

Some may see Microsoft’s “container farm” as an outlier – an anomaly representing a particular approach unlikely to be replicated in other data centers. Could Microsoft’s effort instead represent a tipping point in a broader movement towards modular data center design? The company’s cloud operation is large enough to focus vendors’ attention on the concept, which could result in an ecosystem that lowers costs for end users.  

‘Standard Platform’
Microsoft aspires to create a container-based “standard platform that our industry can innovate around,” providing common interfaces and an RFP (request for proposal) process that allows many vendors to develop products and compete for business.

But Microsoft isn’t alone in this effort, and some industry executives warn that Microsoft’s vision of a containerized future may not work for everyone. Two other industry heavyweights, Digital Realty Trust and IBM, are also standardizing their designs around modular systems and repeatable designs that can drive the cost and delays out of data center construction, while leveraging the power of bulk purchasing and RFPs with large numbers attached to them.

Server-filled containers are just the beginning of Microsoft’s PAC strategy, according to Microsoft’s Daniel Costello, who said the company will also issue RFPs for containerized electrical and mechanical equipment. “For us, it’s about pre-manufactured modularization,” said Costello. “The same thing that’s happened to servers will happen to the back of the house.”

What happened with servers? When a company buys 2,000 servers at a time, server markers pay attention. And when a company plans to repeat that purchase 100 times, vendors begin jumping through hoops.

Container Competition Heats Up
When Microsoft announced its plan for a container data center in Chicago, only Sun Microsystems, Rackable Systems (SGI) and Verari had container products. With Microsoft planning to fill the Chicago site with between 250,000 and 400,000 servers – at a time when enterprise server sales were slowing – the container competition heated up as IBM, HP and Dell soon offered their own “data center in a box” offerings.

“We’re trying to create an ecosystem,” said Microsoft data center architect Christian Belady. “Think about a world where everyone is doing this. It’s truly about commoditization. We don’t have any problem with (vendors) knocking on our doors. Ultimately, what will drive acceptance is cost.”

Cost is also the driving factor in Digital Realty Trust’s push toward an “industrialization” of data center design and construction, featuring pre-assembled or modular components that can be quickly brought together at a construction site. Digital Realty has built more than 1 million square feet of Turn-Key Datacenter space and now operates more than 80 mission-critical buildings.

Who Sets the Standard?
The industry has a way to go before the vision of “one size fits many” modular data centers can come together, according to Digital Realty’s Michael Manos, who previously worked on the Microsoft team that planned the Chicago facility.

“There is no set industry standards when it comes to data center containers,” Manos wrote in a recent blog post. “This means that each vendor might have their own approach on what goes in, and what stays out of the container.

“Some look to the widely publicized Microsoft C-Blox specification as a potential basis for a standard,” Manos adds. “This is their internal container specification that many vendors have configurations for, but you need to keep in mind that’s based on Microsoft’s requirements and might not meet yours. Until the Green Grid, ASHRAE, or other such standards body starts looking to drive standards in this space, its probably something to be concerned about.”

IBM, meanwhile, is building data centers for clients based on four modular designs – including a container – that Big Blue announced in 2008. A growing number of vendors are offering containerized mechanical and electrical equipment, including the PowerHousefrom Active Power (ACPW) and modular chillers from MultiStack.

While the cost benefits of modularity and PACs are intriguing, not all the players in the data center business can bring the same bulk-purchasing power to bear as Microsoft or Digital Realty.

Microsoft is sharing its process because it believes the benefits can drive better efficiencies for the entire data center industry. “Every one of these vendors who sell to use can sell the designs to other customers,” said Costello. “We ‘d be ecstatic if they sold it to someone else.”

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A Standard for Data Center Containers?

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Here’s a roundup of news announcements from the data center and hosting industry:

• Key milestone to 100 Gigabit Ethernet demonstrated. At the SC09 conference in Oregon Monday Infinera, Internet2, Juniper Networks and Level 3 demonstrated 100 Gbps data transport between Seattle and the SC09 show floor in Portland.  The 100 Gbps of test data was sent via a single slot on the Juniper T1600 Series Core Router, populated with a new 10
  

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Forrester recently published a report on the security of cloud computing that grossly exaggerates the security threats. To point out few specific instances:

This is a data center design 101. One of the biggest misconceptions the organizations have about the cloud computing is that they don’t have control over where their information is being stored. During my discussion with the Ron Markezich, corporate vice president of Microsoft Online, at the launch of Microsoft’s Exchange on the cloud he told me that Microsoft already supports the regional regulatory requirements to store data in regional data centers. Cloud is fundamentally a logically centralized and physically decentralized medium that not only offers utility and elasticity but also allows the customers to specify policies around physical locations.

Amazon EC2 fully supports HIPAA [pdf] with few customers already using it. It is rather strange that people think of cloud as a closed and proprietary system against an on-premise system. A CIO that I met few weeks back told me that “on-premise systems are like an on-premise vault that you don’t have a key to”. The cloud vendors are under immense pressure to use open source and open standards for their infrastructure and publicize their data retrieval and privacy policies. In fact many people suggest that the United States should force the public companies to put their financial information on the cloud so that SEC can access it without any fears of the companies sabotaging their own internal systems. The cloud vendors have an opportunity to implement a common compliance practice across the customer. The customers shouldn’t have to worry about their individual compliance needs.

And the rest of the landscape is not? What about T.J. Maxx loosing 45.7 million credit and debit cards of shoppers, Ameritrade loosing backup tapes that had information of 200,000 of its customers, and UPS loosing Nelnet’s backup tape that had personal information of approximately 188,000 customers?

Staying in current operational role still requires the IT to be compliant. Just because the information is stored on-premise it does not automatically make the system compliant. I would expect the the role of operational IT to change from a tactical cost center to a strategic service provider. If the IT does not embrace this trend they might just become a service consolidation organization. The role of a security officer will evolve beyond the on-premise systems to better understand the impact of the cloud and in many cases help influence the open cloud standards to manage and mitigate the security risks.

I partially agree. The customers should absolutely pay attention to what they are signing up for and who will own what. The critical aspect of the IP is not the ownership but the IP indemnification. After the SCO case customers should know what are their rights as a customer if someone sues a cloud provider for IP infringement.

This is what happens when we apply the same old on-premise contracts to the new SaaS world. There are no copies of the software to be returned. Customer simply stop receiving the “service” when the relationship ends. Vendors such as Iron Mountain advocates the role of a SaaS escrow for business continuity reasons. It is up to the customers to decide what level of escrow support they need and what’s their data strategy once the relationship with a SaaS vendor ends. It is certainly important to understand the implications of SaaS early on but there is absolutely no reason to shy away from the cloud.

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Debunking The Cloud Security Issues

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Security and lack of an acceptable SLA are customers’ top adoption fears to move to cloud computing. IBM’s recent announcements to further advance their cloud computing initiative known as Blue Cloud should help alleviate these fears to some extent. IBM announced their partnership with Juniper for their hybrid cloud initiative to provide secured private cloud with better SLA. IBM also announced new offerings for the cloud – Tivoli storage as service and a new set of cloud management tools to align with what a typical CIO would look for when migrating to the cloud. In addition IBM is pushing some of their existing offerings on the cloud that customers can now use off Amazon’s EC2 on pay-as-you-go subscription model.

IBM has been experimenting with the concept of a private cloud for a while. One of such experiments included creating a private virtual cloud inside the firewall to deploy some of the regions of SecondLife with seamless navigation in and out of the firewall. The partnership with Juniper to leverage its EX series MPLS switch would allow IBM to have better QoS from Layer 2 to Layer 4. In simpler words, MPLS switch would allow the network operators to have much better control over what kind of data can be routed across what paths across private and public clouds based on dynamic network conditions such as congestion, failure etc. ensuring predictable SLA. This should alleviate some of the security concerns of the customers who want to stay on a private cloud and want a better SLA. IBM is in great position to offer tiered SLA due to the hybrid nature of their cloud deployment.

So, what about Juniper?

Juniper has been competing with Cisco since its inception and has lately struggled to differentiate. Last year Juniper made a splash by announcing a data center infrastructure solution with the EX series switches and the SRX dynamic appliance. Juniper’s partnership with IBM is an introduction of a networking player into the cloud computing game that will give Cisco and others run for their money. Cisco’s Nexus switch and the data center offering, HP’s networking switch Pro Curve, and now Juniper’s partnership with IBM are signs of vendors looking for adjacent market potential essentially blurring the boundaries
between data center infrastructure, networking hardware, and traditional storage. The vendors are eager to ensure their presence in the evolving “cloudware” category by leveraging existing investment and customer-base with partnership opportunities.

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IBM’s Blue Cloud Meets Juniper To Alleviate Cloud Computing Adoption Fears

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