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At the Data Center Jobs Board, we have a new job listing from Universal Electric, which is seeking a Northern European Regional Sales Manager. This position will be responsible for increasing profitability through the development and implementation of international growth strategies in Northern Europe. Click here for more information or to apply.

Are you hiring for your data center? You can list your company’s job openings on the Data Center Jobs Board, and also track new openings via our RSS feed.

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Data Center Jobs: Universal Electric

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Here’s a roundup of data center headlines from around the world – Singapore, South Africa and Australia:

• ACTIV expands to Equinix Singapore.  Equinix (EQIX) announced last week that ACTIV Financial, a provider of market data content and technologies, will expand operations to Equinix’s Singapore International Business Exchange (IBX) data center as a part of its global expansion.  Being in close proximity to the major trading venues and exchanges in Asia allows ACTIV to provide customers with low latency access to its high-volume market data services.  ACTIV currently leverages Equinix facilities in Chicago, New York, Frankfurt and London.  “ACTIV delivers more than one million updates per second including hard to process content such as equity options depth feeds, order book data, and the latest feeds from exchanges around the world,” said Timothy Neo, Managing Director, Asia Pacific, ACTIV Financial.
• Photo tour of the Polaris Data Centre. Australian iTnews has a photo gallery of the Polaris Data Centre, built in the newly-developed town of Springsfield, Queensland.  The five story, $241 million data centre is among five data centres shortlisted by the Australian Federal Government.  The facility opened in January 2009 and houses equipment from companies such as NEC, HP, Suncorp and others.  Polaris was designed for 20 megawatts at full capacity, holds 1.5 million litres of water in onsite water tans, and is served by a dual ring of diverse dark fibre.  The iTnews article contains photos inside the Queensland data centre.
• PIPE International selects Equinix Sydney.  Equinix (EQIX) announced that PIPE International has selected it as a key interconnect provider for its new PIPE Pacific Cable (PPC-1) undersea cable.  PIPE is also currently located in Equinx data centers in Tokyo and San Jose.  The newly laid PPC-1 undersea cable runs 6,900 km from Guam to the Equinix Sydney campus and has a capacity of 2.56 terabits per second.  “The new PPC-1 cable system will also enable our customers to increase the resilience of their international network and provide additional redundancy,” said Samuel Lee, President, Equinix Asia Pacific.
• TeleHouse launches data center in South Africa. TELEHOUSE Europe, a subsidiary of KDDI announced that they will open the data center TELEHOUSE CAPE TOWN in Cape Town, Republic of South Africa.  KDDI is a large Japanese telecommunications provider that has been growing its business in developing countries; including a recent partnership with Bangladeshi bracNet.  TELEHOUSE Europe is a part of KDDI Group’s European local subsidiary and will be the first data center opened by a Japanese telecommunications carrier in Africa.  The new data center is based on a partnership between TELEHOUSE Europe and Teraco Data Environments, the first carrier-neutral data center in South Africa.

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Roundup: Equinix, Telehouse, Polaris

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In the UK, one of the largest web hosting and domain name providers recently grabbed one of the biggest dedicated hosting providers.  Namesco Limited acquired Poundhost as of November 19, 2009 with assurances all around that no discernible disruptions or changes would be noticed by Poundhost customers.  The combination of these two companies is one that is consistent with Namesco’s tradition of acquiring leaders in web host providers and domain name registrars.

Namesco

Namesco began as two separate internet entities – Names.co Internet Services Limited and Webcall.com Limited – back in 1996 and 1997.  The two were combined in 2000 and became Namesco Limited.  Namesco is a subsidiary of the Italian services firm, Dada SPA.

The company has a long-standing tradition of “evolution through acquisition.” In 2004, Namesco acquired Simply.com Limited, another domain registrar in the UK, and added over 90,000 domain names under its wings.  A year later, the company acquired NDO Limited and was able to greatly improve its clients connectivity.  In 2008, Namesco snatched up Register365, Ireland’s largest web hosting provider at that time.

Through its strategic acquisition, Namesco has managed to claw its way to being the fourth largest domain name and web hosting provider in the UK.

Poundhost

Poundhost Internet Limited received its name in 2001 when the company started offering web hosting services the cost of £1 per megabyte.  The company desired to fit the need of providing high quality internet hosting while simultaneous being cost effective.

A part of the BlueSquare Data Group, this dedicated hosting provider prides itself on bypassing third party support and second tier network providers and has its own 24

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In the past few weeks, there have been some major shifts in the BitTorrent community which have had a resounding impact on the larger world of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing. They’ve led to some of the largest BitTorrent sites completely changing focus, or figuring out smarter ways to continue sharing files illegally.

Meanwhile, Adobe announced a massively interesting inclusion in their upcoming Flash player 10.1 update – a seemingly innocuous version number that is adding some world-changing P2P technology to Flash video streaming.

I’d like to discuss these opposing trends of illegal versus more legitimate uses of P2P technology, and what they ultimately mean for how we use the Web.

The times are a-changin’ for The Pirate Bay, Mininova, and BitTorrent

First, The Pirate Bay shut down their tracker for good. The site used to boast having “the world’s largest Bittorrent tracker,” but is now opting for a different approach.

The Pirate Bay is using a combination of DHT (a de-centralized P2P network) and PEX (peer exchange, a method for gathering peers) to share files directly between peers without the use of a traditional tracker. They’re also doing away with torrent files by offering “magnet links”, which send torrent data directly to BitTorrent clients.

Mininova, another popular BitTorrent site, recently announced that they’re going completely legit by removing all of their copyright-violating torrents. Mininova has historically been more cooperative with authorities when it came to cracking down on copyright infringement, but such a drastic move from them is still surprising.

The fate of these two BitTorrent mainstays is a direct response to recent legal pressure, and it’s also telling for the future of the protocol. One gives up illicit activities completely, and the other finds a way to further remove themselves from blame. Honestly, I’m not sure how long The Pirate Bay can keep up their efforts without going completely private, especially if smaller BitTorrent sites are forced to go legitimate like Mininova.

Overall, legitimacy seems to be the wisest course of action for BitTorrent sites that don’t want to be as confrontational as The Pirate Bay. It also falls in line with the changing tide we’ve been seeing with commercial use of P2P techniques for the past few years. Gone are the days when P2P just referred to illicit file sharing. Now, many companies are relying on P2P networking as a key component of their products.

Adobe adds P2P multicasting to Flash player 10.1

In short, multicasting is the notion of distributing one piece of content from one source to many destinations – all without the load of delivering it to everyone requesting it. On large local networks – streaming a corporate event, for example – this often occurs right at the routers. With Flash player 10.1, Adobe is making it possible for content distributors to multicast content by having viewers transparently share the stream.

According to Adobe, this will allow Flash video streams for huge events with millions of viewers – even for something as large as the US presidential inauguration. Flash player 10.1 will also allow developers to build more traditional P2P applications within the browser, or as a standalone application via Adobe Air.

Spotify shares the music love

One of the most hotly anticipated services for many music lovers is Spotify, a currently Europe-only service that utilizes P2P to allow users to instantly stream music. The Spotify application looks like a cousin to iTunes with Napster as another close relative, as it should – the service marries the desire for free tunes with the legitimacy of iTunes.

The best explanation I’ve found for Spotify’s P2P tech comes courtesy of Wikipedia:

The contents of each client’s cache is summarized in an index which is sent to the Spotify stream hub upon connecting to the service. This index is then used to inform other clients about additional peers they can connect to for fetching streamed data for individual tracks being played. This is accommodated by each client, upon startup, acting as a server listening for incoming connections from other Spotify users, as well as intuitively connecting to other users to exchange cached data as appropriate.

Other P2P uses, past and present

For years now, Blizzard has been using BitTorrent to distribute updates for World of Warcraft, and let’s not forget how useful it is for downloading large files like Linux disk images. The struggling video service Joost also relied on P2P to distribute its content with its initial desktop application, though they have since done away with P2P to focus on streaming Flash directly from their site. (The Flash player 10.1 update should be a huge boon to them.)

P2P has a legitimate place in the future

While broadband speeds are increasing worldwide, there will still be many reasons to adopt P2P methods for distributing content in the future. Primarily, it severely reduces the bandwidth load for content distributors, and it prevents the danger of overloaded servers for important events. For users, it means more reliable content delivery overall (since there may be no single point of failure), and reduced costs since content providers are saving money as well.

There’s no denying that illegal uses of BitTorrent and other P2P technologies will continue, but on the other hand P2P technology will also help legitimate efforts to offer free and inexpensive ways to legally access content. Spotify, for example, could make many users give up illegal music downloading due to its convenience and ease of use.

As legitimate means of accessing content become more widely available, many users will find less reason to pirate. How ironic it is that P2P, once seen merely as the source of content providers’ woes, could potentially be their savior.

About the author:
Devindra Hardawar is a tech/film blogger and podcast host. You can find him writing at the Far Side of Tech and Slashfilm.

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How P2P is finding legitimacy as BitTorrent sites struggle to change

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Google made a huge splash when it announced its plans for the Chrome operating system, a web-centric OS where essentially everything is run through a web browser. One great promise of Google’s Chrome OS is the arrival of low-cost, lightweight hardware, since most of the storage and other data handling is done in the cloud. Perhaps that 100-dollar computer will finally become a reality.

But there is a problem. A rather big one. The strength of the Chrome OS, that it makes maximum use of online resources, also limits its potential adoption. To have any real use of the OS you need a decent Internet connection, and that has some significant implications we need to look at.

5 billion without Internet access

Before we even discuss broadband, let us first get one piece of statistic out in the open: 74% of the world population doesn’t have Internet access. At all.

In other words, 5 billion of the world’s 6.8 billion people will have little use for Google’s Chrome OS because they don’t have Internet access.

This is the current Internet penetration shown by region:

• Africa: 6.8%
• Asia: 19.4%
• Europe: 52%
• North America: 74.2%
• South America and Caribbean: 30.5%
• Australia and Oceania: 60.4%
• Middle East: 28.3%

Google’s Chrome OS is a great idea. Put as much as possible into the cloud, and keep the physical device as a “thin client” to access this functionality. However, this great depence on Internet connectivity has left the OS virtually useless for the vast majority of the world population, especially those who would have benefited the most from a low-cost, lightweight computer.

Now that a $100 computer is actually starting to look plausible, it’s ironic that those in true need of one won’t be able to use it. It will remain a luxury item, a secondary computer to those better off.

An even bleaker outlook: broadband

The numbers so far have been about Internet access, any kind, but to properly use a Web OS like the Chrome OS, you really need a broadband connection. This disqualifies an even larger percentage of the population. The mere thought of downloading and uploading documents and other data over an old dial-up connection makes us shiver.

So how common is broadband? Not as common as you might expect. For example, in the United States, 74.1% of the population has Internet access, but as of 2008, only 57% were accessing the Internet over a broadband connection. You could say that this makes Chrome OS unusable to 43% of the US population.

These countries are just a few examples to give you an idea of what the broadband penetration tends to look like. More examples can be found on ITIF’s homepage.

And remember that “broadband” isn’t always very good either. It’s usually defined as 256 kbps and up, and that lower spectrum of the broadband definition is hardly a performance monster. Downloading just one megabyte over a 256 kpbs connection takes more than 30 seconds even under ideal circumstances. Many web pages are larger than that.

So even among those who by definition have broadband Internet access, many will have far from an ideal experience of Chrome OS.

Final thoughts (and a happy ending?)

Don’t get us wrong, we at Pingdom like the concept behind Google’s Chrome OS. It’s just that we haven’t seen anyone mention this whole dilemma, so we wanted to shine some light on the actual implications of an OS that is virtually useless without Internet access.

That said, we’d like to end on an optimistic note. The idea behind the Chrome OS does hold a lot of promise. In a sense it’s a throwback to the old days of mainframes and terminals, where computing resources and storage are centralized and accessible by modest hardware on the user end. As Internet penetration spreads, more and more people will be able to benefit from this often cost-saving model where they don’t have to spend so much on hardware.

Data sources:
Broadband penetration data from ITIF (2008).
Internet penetration data from Internet World Stats (2009).

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74% of the world, Google’s Chrome OS is not for you

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Several stories from recent weeks highlight the vibrant data center industry in Europe. Here’s a roundup:

European data centre revenue set to double
A report published by Tariff Consultancy Ltd notes that European data centre revenue is “set to more than double over the five year period from 2010 to 2015, with net raised floor space to increase by 70%, driven primarily by price increases.” The report gives pricing and forecasts for 19 of the EU25 countries and analyzes pricing of a standard 19″ rack, a small cage space and a 50 KVA suite of space for each of the countries.  It also dives into trends impacting data centres such as raised floor capacity in markets, revenue per square meter forecasts, electricity pricing, pricing per rack and cage, and the most expensive data centre countries.

Savvis received EuroFIT award
Financial technology publication Waters published their innagural EuroFIT awards earlier in the month, to recognize Europe’s hottest financial IT products and services.  In the category of Best Datacenter Hosting Provider, Savvis (SVVS) took the award as a company capitalizing on the rising demand for data center services.  Equinix was listed as an honorable mention in the category. A little over a year ago Savvis marked the completion of a global data center expansion by opening a 37,500 square foot facility on the outskirts of London in Slough. The award also noted that Savvis services seven of the top ten Fortune 500 financial services and banking firms. Amazon (AMZN) won the Best Cloud Provider award as an “overwhelming leader in the field.”

The Bunker selected by Cimar
The Bunker announced that it was selected by Cimar (UK) Limited to provide managed ultra secure hosting of its radiology image sharing web service. The Bunker delivered a scalable platform to Cimar built on Microsoft technology.  Howard Jenkinson, managing director of Cimar said “absolute information security is a pre-requisite for any digital service carrying sensitive patient information.”  Click here for a video of ‘The Bunker’ and details of a July 2009 130,000 square foot expansion.

Tata Communications London outage
Several reports came in late last week regarding an outage experienced at Tata Communications’ London data center.  Apparently a power cut followed by generator and UPS failures caused the two hour outage Thursday evening in the Stratford facility.  Grid power was restored around 7:30pm that day as servers came back online.  Colocation provider C4L posted a detailed timeline of the Stratford Tata outage. The Register also reported on the outage. They mention that a Tata spokeswoman was still looking into what caused the outage and the subsequent failure of backup power.

Node4 plans fourth data center
Data centre and communications specialists Node4 announced plans for their next data centre site, to be located in Northampton. Plans are being finalized for the facility and customers are expected to move in by the end of 2010.  The DC4 data centre will house up to 600 racks and will feature N+1 or N+N UPS, generators and climate controls. The DC3 facility in Wakefield opened in July 2009.

Investment Forum for Data Centres
Broad Group will host the 3rd annual International Finance and Investment forum for data centres December 3rd in King’s Place, London. In this forum financiers, investors, private equity firms and others will come together to discuss data centre geographic location choices, data storage infrastructure investment and other critical issues, as well as generate new ideas and opportunities for future development.

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European Data Center Revenue May Double

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UK data center services provider Telecity Group operates eight data centres in the London market offering more than 24,000 square meters of customer space. The newest of these is Telecity’s Powergate data center, which offers 5,000 square metres of customer space and 10 megawatts (MW) of power capacity. The data centre, which opened in 2008, has been designed to provide 4 kilowatts (kW) of customer power per rack as standard, with high density zones offering up to 20 kW per rack. The faciloity is supported by 12 diesel backup generators. Here’s a 5 minute video tour:

For more coverage of ithe European data center market, check out our Data Centres Europe Channel. For additional video, check out our DCK video archive and the Data Center Videos channel on YouTube.

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Video Tour: Telecity Powergate Data Center

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The 3rd International Finance and Investment Forum for data centres will take place in London on Dec. 3 at King’s Place, and will focus on the emergence of data centres as a new asset class. Panels at the event will examine the financing options for data centres, investment performance and the focus of future investment, a review of market demand and drivers, financing expansion and M&A, the importance of internationalisation in data centre expansion and a special review of Data Centres in Emerging Markets.

Researched and produced by BroadGroup Consulting, the forum brings together data centre owners with investors, financiers, analysts, private equity and law firms. Although Data Centres are holding up relatively well in the slowdown and investment appears to continue from existing players. Speakers at the event will include Harry Beusker (Equinix Europe), Anthony Foy (Interxion), Guy Willner (Teraco South Africa), Steve Wallage (BroadGroup Consulting), Peter Hopper (DH Capital), Mark Lambourne (TREGlobal) and Chris Crosby (Digital Realty Trust).

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Finance & Investment Forum for Data Centres

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

• Ciena acquires Nortel Ethernet assets. Ciena Corporation announced that they were selected as the successful bidder in the auction for all of the optical networking and carrier Ethernet assets of Nortel’s Metro Ethernet Networks business.  Ciena has agreed to pay $769 million for the assets.  Ciena CEO Gary Smith said the purchase is “bringing together complementary technologies in switching and transport to create an innovative powerhouse with the scale to challenge the industry status quo and offer customers a practical path for transitioning to automated, optical Ethernet-based networking.”  In 2008 Nortel saw $1.36 billion in revenue from the assets to be acquired.
• Equinix adds to European Ethernet Exchange.  Earlier in the month Equinix announced that submarine transport cable provider Hibernia Atlantic was expanding with Equinix in New York. Now European-based carriers Exponential-e and Tinet have signed up to participate in the recently announced Carrier Ethernet Exchange platform.  The initial deployment locations include London, New York, Chicago and Silicon Valley.  The goal of the project is to provide Ethernet Network to Network Interconnections (E-NNI).  VP of Engineering at Exponential-e Mukesh Bavisi said “Equinix already plays a strategic role in our peering relationships with other Tier 1 service providers, so it is a natural choice that we leverage its carrier-rich interconnection hubs to develop an Ethernet interconnection infrastructure.”  According to Infonetics Research demand for carrier Ethernet services is set to double within five years.
• Rackspace offers complete Verisign SSL line.  Rackspace announced that they expanded an agreement with Verisign allowing them to directly sell, install and renew Verisign SLL Certificates to their customers.  Additionally the entire line of certificates is now available as a self-service option via the MyRackspacecom customer portal.  “Trust is the most valuable currency on the Internet today, and trust is what VeriSign SSL and EV SSL protection delivers for Web site operators the world over,” said Michael Lin, vice president and general manager of SSL at VeriSign.

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Roundup: Ciena, Equinix, Rackspace

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This farmland near Lockerbie, Scotland could become one of the world's largest data center developments. Construction is slated to begin next year on a $1.5 billion project by Lockerbie Data Centres.

A massive $1.5 billion data center project near Lockerbie, Scotland is a step closer to reality after receiving the blessing of local planning officials. Lockerbie Data Centres Ltd. proposed building the £950 million project, which it says may generate a total of £3.5 billion in investment in the region. 

Planning officials at the local Dumfries and Galloway Council have recommended the company’s application be approved by the town council, which will meet Nov. 25 to discuss the project. The developers hope this will lay the groundwork for construction to begin in mid-2010 and opening for business in late 2011.

Lockerbie Data Centres plans to build 250,000 square meters (about 2.6 million square feet) of data center space at the Peelhouses farm property, which is adjacent to the Steven’s Croft biomass power facility. There is also a wind farm within 8 kilometers of the site, and the developers hope to have these renewable sources provide approximately half the energy used by the facility. Waste heat from the Lockerbie data centers will be reused in other facilities on the campus, and the cool Scottish climate will support using fresh air “free cooling” throughout the year.  

The development will include a new business park providing around 18,000 square meters (about 195,000 square feet) of hi-tech office space, as well as a horticultural research and commercial greenhouses park that will bring additional jobs. The data centre itself will create 50 jobs with another 10 jobs for estate management.

The master development plan (PDF, 33 MB) calls for a series of modular one-story data centers that will be partially built into the landscape the facilitate “green roofs” to make the design more appealing in its aesthetics and sustainability. The data center will be developed in phases as dictated by market demand.

“We are delighted that planning officers have recommended for approval one of the most exciting projects currently taking place in Scotland,” said David King, Project Director of Lockerbie Data Centres Ltd. “This is a major enterprise program that will be of considerable benefit, not only to Dumfries and Galloway, but to the whole of Scotland, creating thousands of jobs.

“Feedback from the local community has been extremely positive and this development will put Dumfries and Galloway firmly on the map as world leaders in data centre provision,” King added.

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Progress on $1.5 Billion Scotland Data Center

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