Microsoft delivers data platform for the era of ambient intelligence

• Big data survey by IDC and Microsoft shows that organizations have the potential to unlock US$278 billion worth of data dividend in Asia Pacific
• Businesses with a comprehensive approach to data stand to realize 60% increase in return on data assets; deliver mission-critical performance

KUALA LUMPUR — May 8, 2014 — In concurrence with the ongoing ‘Big Data Week 2014 @ Kuala Lumpur’ program happening this week, Microsoft Malaysia (“Microsoft”) held a customer event at the Sheraton Imperial Kuala Lumpur Hotel to announce the launch of new data platform solutions which includes SQL Server 2014, Microsoft Azure Intelligent Systems Service (ISS) which enables Internet of Things; and Analytics Platform System (APS), a low cost Big-Data-in-a-Box appliance. These new data platform solutions enable Microsoft to deliver the most comprehensive data platform to organizations looking to harness greater business value from their information today. Conjunction

Microsoft also shared the results of new IDC research that shows companies that take a comprehensive approach to data stand to realize an additional 60 percent return on their data assets — an Asia Pacific opportunity of US$278 billion.

Carlos Lacerda, Managing Director, Microsoft Malaysia.

Nations, businesses and communities are living in a mobile-first and cloud-first world surrounded by technology that are increasingly connected. In this new world of ubiquitous computing, data is the fuel for intelligent systems and services to improve how we work, live and play. Microsoft envisions a world where we are surrounded by intelligent computing, ushering in an era of ambient intelligence.

Carlos Lacerda, Managing Director of Microsoft Malaysia, stressed the importance of a data culture — one that encourages curiosity, action and experimentation — for everyone and every organization. “The era of ambient intelligence has begun, and we are delivering a platform that allows companies of any size to create a data culture and ensure insights reach every individual in every organization,” Lacerda said.

Built for the era of ambient intelligence, Microsoft’s comprehensive data platform includes new Internet of Things capabilities and provides customers with the building blocks they need to connect their data, refine and analyze it, and deliver insights to people who can take action.

(L-R): Isaac Jacob, Vice President, Enterprise Practice Group, Fusionex; Arun Ulagaratchagan, General Manager, Cloud & Enterprise, Microsoft Asia Pacific.

Most Comprehensive Data Platform for the Data Future

Today, Microsoft expanded its data platform with new products and services, including the following:

• Launch of SQL Server 2014. The latest version of the world’s most widely deployed database delivers real-time performance with built-in in-memory technology and public cloud scale and disaster recovery with Microsoft Azure.
• Limited public preview of the Microsoft Azure Intelligent Systems Service (ISS). This new Azure service helps customers embrace the Internet of Things and securely connect to, manage and capture machine-generated data from sensors and devices, regardless of operating system.
• General availability of the Analytics Platform System (APS). APS combines the best of Microsoft’s SQL Server database and Hadoop technology in one low-cost offering that delivers “big data in a box.”

These new solutions build on 12 months of innovation — including Power BI for Office 365, a cloud-based, self-service business intelligence solution with groundbreaking natural language capability; Azure HDInsight for elastic Hadoop in the cloud; PolyBase to bring structured and unstructured data together in a data warehouse appliance; and Power Query for Excel, which makes it easier for people to discover data — to deliver the most comprehensive data platform with real-time performance built into everything.

IDC and Microsoft Survey on Data Dividend in Asia Pacific
Data is currency for business today. A new research commissioned by Microsoft and conducted by IDC estimates that organizations could realize a “data dividend” of roughly US$1.6 trillion in additional revenue, lower costs and improved productivity over the next four years by putting in place a holistic approach to data that spans datasets, analytics and more. In Asia Pacific, the potential data dividend is US$278 billion over the next four years. The research was conducted among more than 2,000 mid-sized and large organizations in 20 countries worldwide. More information on the methodology can be found at the Microsoft Cloud & Enterprise News Bytes Blog.

According to the survey, the key opportunity areas for organizations in unlocking its data dividend are:

• US$29 billion in customer-facing data scenarios, such as using data to improve customer acquisition, retention, support and pricing optimization. 
• US$88 billion in operations data scenarios, such as using data in process or operations optimization; plant, facilities, equipment maintenance or utilization; demand or supply chain management, logistics and more. 
• US$42 billion in innovation data scenarios, such as leveraging data in product or service improvement or innovation; research and development innovation. 
• US$120 billion in productivity data scenarios, such as using data in human capital, IT optimization, regulatory compliance and more.

“Customers who take a comprehensive approach to their data projects realize a higher data dividend than customers who take a point-by-point approach,” said Dan Vesset, program vice president, Business Analytics and Big Data, at IDC. “This new research shows that by combining diverse data sets, new analytics and insights to more people — at the right time — businesses worldwide can tap into a more than trillion-dollar opportunity over the next four years.”

Malaysian Businesses Bet on Microsoft to Realize Their Data Dividend
Companies today – including in Malaysia – are facing an increasing diversity of data within their own businesses, driven by business applications; unstructured social data; the Internet of Things; and much more. However, many businesses are keeping their data in silos and often in the hands of a small number of people across organizations, who analyze these data sources using older, complex or limited analytics tools.

Speaking at a media briefing session at the event, Arun Ulagaratchagan, General Manager, Cloud and Enterprise Division, Microsoft Asia Pacific, said, “Microsoft’s goal is to help businesses to unlock insights on their data and make them ubiquitous and real-time, by putting big data to work. Our aim is to help customers increase the return on the data currency by connecting data across their company, connecting it to the world’s data, enriching it through analysis and delivering insights to as many people as possible – as quickly as possible.”

Also present at the media session was Microsoft’s partner and IT specialist in software products and solutions delivery – Fusionex – who concurred with Microsoft’s vision of world that is increasingly data-driven. “With the right data analytics tools, our customers across verticals in Malaysia have seen tremendous improvements in their business decision-making since migrating from competing products to Microsoft’s SQL Server; many have stayed on with the product through its many iterations,“ said Isaac Jacob, Vice President, Enterprise Practice Group, Fusionex. “Customers stay with Microsoft not only because it offers the best technology roadmap, but also because Microsoft is always listening to customer feedback and responds rapidly to improve the product and customer experience. Our customers are putting Microsoft’s platform to work, driving real business results and increasing their data dividend,” Jacob added.

“For over 20 years in Malaysia, Microsoft has been helping enterprises get the most out of their IT investments, contribute to business bottom lines, improve efficiencies and maximize resources. With the world’s most widely deployed database, connected to the cloud through Azure, delivering insights to billions through Office and understanding the world through a new ‘Internet of Things’ service, we have the most complete hybrid data platform that spans the cloud and on-premises, giving customers choice in how they deploy. When you put it all together, no other vendor is delivering all that value to customers,” Lacerda concluded.

NEW HITACHI DATA SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY DELIVERS A BUSINESS-DEFINED APPROACH FOR IT INFRASTRUCTURE

Customers in Malaysia to Gain the Most Available, Automated and Agile IT Environment Required for Today’s Dynamic Business Needs

KUALA LUMPUR — April 29, 2014 — Hitachi Data Systems Corporation (HDS), a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE: 6501), today announced in Malaysia exciting new technologies to accelerate customer success with Business Defined IT – a closer linking of a company’s business and technology objectives that demands a more responsive IT foundation. Called a “Continuous Cloud Infrastructure”, this foundation can drive IT efficiency through a responsive, software-rich architecture that can quickly react to changing needs without continual redesign and disruption. A move toward Continuous Cloud Infrastructure ensures customers can build the most available, automated and agile environment for next-generation data centers.

With this goal in mind, Hitachi today delivers Hitachi Storage Virtualization Operating System (SVOS), Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G1000 (VSP G1000), a new version of the Hitachi Command Suite management platform and significant enhancements to its Hitachi Unified Compute Platform converged computing offerings. Together, these technologies provide the foundation of an IT infrastructure that can adapt to continuously changing business needs, without disruption.

(L to R) Neville Vincent - Senior Vice President & General Manager HDS APAC, Wee Kai Tech - Managing Director, HDS Malaysia and Hu Yoshida - Vice President & Chief Technology Officer, HDS APAC.

“Our customers across industries have told us that to keep up with the frenetic pace of business, they are aligning the IT and business functions more closely than ever,” said Wee Kai Teck, Managing Director, HDS Malaysia. “In order to execute in this business defined world, IT teams are looking to new infrastructure strategies to deploy more continuous, adaptable and scalable infrastructure. Businesses need solutions that don’t require constant and disruptive changes to the technology they support. And that is what we are delivering today.”

Hitachi Storage Virtualization Operating System: Software-Defined Without Compromise
Hitachi Storage Virtualization Operating System (SVOS) is the first stand-alone software implementation of best-in-class Hitachi storage virtualization. This new storage operating system provides a common software architecture that will double the useful life of hardware architectures, span the breadth of the HDS infrastructure portfolio and enhance and amplify the benefits of server virtualization. SVOS customers have greater choice, flexibility and a simplified infrastructure for a future-ready path to the software defined data center without the complicated layers required by competitive offerings.

As an evolution of the successful Hitachi enterprise storage operating systems, SVOS delivers the flexibility of software-defined architectures with the proven capabilities of Hitachi enterprise storage software. Primary features include flash optimization, advanced storage virtualization, automated tiering, nondisruptive data migration and a new native global active device feature that will provide multi-system and multi-datacenter active-active capabilities without the need for an appliance – an industry first.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G1000: The Best Gets Better
The best software is best experienced on the best hardware, so Hitachi is also introducing the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G1000 (VSP G1000), the first available system on which customers can natively deploy SVOS.  This combination of market-leading software and the most reliable hardware on the planet provides customers a rock-solid foundation for mission critical applications in the enterprise.

Continuing Hitachi leadership in high-performance, trusted infrastructure, the system can start small and scale block-storage throughput performance of well over 3M IOPS, over 48GB/sec of usable bandwidth, and NFS ops/sec performance of over 1.2M in unified configurations.

The highly adaptable VSP G1000 helps companies deploy a single platform for all data, by growing to seamlessly accommodate a wide variety of customer needs, including:

A virtualization controller without internal capacity.
Unified storage system with up to 8-node Hitachi NAS Platform (HNAS) clusters.
The highly available infrastructure for Hitachi Content Platform environments.

This flexibility, along with planned data-in-place upgrades mean customers can plan for a significantly longer useful life of this technology because of its ready adaptation to changing business needs, without the pain and expense of constant technology replacements.

“Hitachi Data Systems participates in our journey to deliver safe, high quality care with better, less wasteful means,” said Richard Carter, systems architect, Seattle Children’s Hospital. “We think this new HDS platform will provide a lean, efficient technology solution that demonstrates unrivaled availability and reliability. The increased assurance through automation and reduced human error could allow us to focus on providing the safest, most effective care possible. The streamlined solution could drive lower costs that support our founding promise to care for every child in our region, regardless of their family’s ability to pay.”

As an IT company, we count on the reliability of our state-of-the-art infrastructure solution for our most critical workloads. Being an existing Hitachi Data Systems enterprise infrastructure solutions customer, we know that HDS technology perfectly addresses our needs of high data growth along with higher performance by delivering sub-millisecond response times. Best of all, it protects our existing investments while seamlessly integrating with our storage architecture without any disruption. As we continue to grow, we are excited about Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G1000 – the next gen platform – as it will simplify storage complexity associated with organizational expansion and provide us with the ability to scale while lowering overall TCO,” said Jitendra Sangharajka, Associate Vice President – Information Systems, Infosys Ltd.

Significant Software and Solution Enhancements Simplify Customer Environments

Hitachi Unified Compute Platform (UCP) and Unified Compute Platform Director 3.5: On top of support for VSP G1000 and SVOS, there are new entry-level configurations of UCP for VMware vSphere and increased capabilities in Unified Compute Director, such as server profiling for simplified provisioning and enhanced disaster recovery integration.

Hitachi Command Suite (HCS): The latest version of the award-winning Hitachi integrated management platform supports the new global storage virtualization features in SVOS, and offers a common REST API across the platform, as well as an updated, streamlined user interface.

Deep Ecosystem Integration and Solution Readiness
These new class-leading technologies come to market with integration across virtualization platforms, databases and a variety of clustering and operating systems platforms, and can be quickly adopted to support a variety of workloads.

In particular, deep collaboration with strategic partners such as Microsoft®, SAP and VMware enables SVOS and the VSP G1000 to be certified in key initiatives like Microsoft Private Cloud deployments, SAP HANA Tailored Data Center Integration and VMware Software-Defined Data Center technology.

Southeast Asia DataCenter and Cloud Congress Unlocks Malaysia as an Ideal Destination for Data Centre Growth

MDeC and global key industry players share insights on the business value of the Malaysian data centre industry within the region

Johor Bahru, 26 March 2014 – The Multimedia Development Corporation today held the Southeast Asia DataCenter and Cloud Congress, featuring key global players from the data centre industry. The congress aims to establish Malaysia as a world class data centre hub with Iskandar Malaysia being one of its primary regions. This is one of the key projects that are part of Malaysia’s Economic Transformation Programme (ETP).

Now in its third iteration, the two-day event highlights Asia Pacific as a growing region for the data centre industry while showcasing Malaysia’s potential as a preferred data centre destination. MDeC, working with the Iskandar Regional Development Authority is confident that Iskandar Malaysia can become the region’s data center hub due to a number of factors such as infrastructure, talent, and geography.

Datuk Badlisham Ghazali, Chief Executive Officer of MDeC said, “Creating and enhancing the data centre industry is an integral part of Malaysia's digital economy aspirations. Our nation’s data centre industry continues on an upward trend, recording over RM630 million in revenue in 2013, a 40% increase from the previous year. With such positive growth within a short period of time, we are confident of Malaysia achieving the world class data centre hub status by 2020”

He added, “As the lead agency for this project, MDeC’s role is to boost the marketability of our data centre infrastructure and service providers through various platforms. This increases the opportunity for industry players to showcase their services and value propositions. We are currently spearheading the establishment of data centre parks, with Cyberjaya and Iskandar Malaysia earmarked as locations for these new facilities.”

There are now 23 data centre providers in Malaysia under the ETP’s Entry Point Project 3 (EPP3), which generated RM630 million in revenues for the year 2013, surpassing the targeted projection of RM563 million by 12%.

2013 was a good year for the data centre industry – it attained five more International Data Centre Organisational Certifications, in addition to the eight certifications that were achieved in the previous year.

The Malaysian Data Centre Directory was also launched in September, as a one-stop guide to Malaysia’s data centre industry players and providers, while October saw the formation of the Malaysian Data Centre Alliance (MDCA). This was a timely effort as it provides the industry with a unified voice and further drives the growth of Malaysian data centre services.

Based on the above initiatives as well as other ongoing activities to support the EPP3’s objective, the data centre industry is set to contribute a total of RM2.462 billion to the country's GNI, RM7 billion in private investments and create 13,290 jobs by 2020. For 2014, the EPP3 is targeting to achieve RM787 million in revenues.

Beyond discussing the growth of the industry in Malaysia, the two-day congress will also look at issues surrounding cloud services, finance and investment, as well as new technological innovation, and data centre megatrends. The line-up of speakers include Datuk Badlisham Ghazali, CEO of MDeC, Steve Wallage, Managing Director of BroadGroup Consulting, Bob Sharon, Founder and CEO of Green Global Solutions, and Markku Lepisto, Technological Evangelist, APAC, and Amazon Web Services amongst other business leaders.

The event sponsors include MDeC, Iskandar Malaysia, Basis Bay, Digital Realty, and Vads Berhad as well as Malaysian Data Center Alliance as the official partner organisation.

For more information on the Southeast Asia Data Center and Cloud Congress, please visit http://www.datacentersasia.com

Malaysia and Singapore need to cool off on cooling

Local data centres are too cool according to a recent survey from Enlogic

[Kuala Lumpur – 20 February 2014] A recent survey conducted by intelligent Power Distribution Unit (PDU) provider Enlogic has revealed that data centre operators in Malaysia and Singapore are running their centres far below the recommended temperature range. According to ASHRAE, formerly known as the American Society for Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning, the recommended high end temperature range for class one data centres ranges from 25 to 27 degrees Celsius with an upper limit of 32 degrees Celsius.

The survey of 55 data centre professionals, conducted at Datacenter Dynamics in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, revealed that 82 per cent were running their data centres at temperatures below 25 degrees Celsius. In fact, a full 15 per cent of respondents were running their facilities at even lower temperatures, below 20 degrees Celsius.

Eddie Desouza, Head of Business Operations for APAC, Enlogic says, “This severe over-cooling is adding needless energy costs to these facilities and reducing power utilisation efficiency as well. It’s been estimated that every one degree Celsius baseline temperatures are lowered by, can result in higher energy bills of up to four per cent!”

“While there is no global standard guideline for cooling data centres, most turn to ASHRAE for its recommendations. Notably, our survey revealed that 61 per cent of respondents believed they were aware of ASHRAE’s recommendations. Yet, when asked what the temperature range was, hardly any of the respondents could quote the correct range.”

ASHRAE has revised its guidelines for cooling data centres twice since it published its first guideline in 2004. That year, an upper limit of 25 degrees Celsius was recommended. In 2008, the upper limit was revised to 27 degrees Celsius, and in 2011, the upper limit was again revised to 32 degrees Celsius[i].

Desouza continues, “Once the efficiencies were shared server vendors reviewed the technology to now withstand temperatures of up to 70 degrees Celsius. Vital components such as PDUs have historically been more fragile.  The latest, leading edge intelligent PDUs can withstand temperatures of up to 60 degrees Celsius, allowing managers to push baseline temperatures higher.”

Desouza concludes, “Refusing to raise the baseline temperatures may be a short term view as it does mean data centre managers can keep lower rated technologies in situ.  However, investing in the right technology, especially the right PDU can allow you to reduce overall cost of ownership and increase profitability.”

For further information please visit: http://www.enlogic.com/

[i] http://datacenterpost.com/2013/08/who-exactly-is-ushering-in-ashraes-temperature-guidelines.html

Schneider Electric’s Galaxy 5500 UPS Assists the Manufacturing Industry to Maintain Uptime and High Productivity

The Galaxy 5500 Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) helps businesses to reduce energy and operational costs effectively.

Kuala Lumpur, 20th December 2013 — Schneider Electric, a global specialist in energy management, offers an advanced power management system to businesses in Malaysia particularly to the manufacturing industry. Galaxy 5500 UPS provides a robust and reliable power protection and easy to install system at an affordable price.

Schneider Electric’s Galaxy 5500 UPS is the improved 3-phase product range in the 20-120kVA segment, bringing an effective solution to customers who need highly efficient and reliable power protection. The high efficiency in double conversion or ECO mode in the UPS saves a significant amount of energy costs. The rate of efficiency is up to 94 percent in online double conversion mode, which is higher than other UPS systems with similar features, hence providing lower operational and cooling costs over the long-term.

John Atherton, Malaysia IT Business Vice President of Schneider Electric, said, “A reliable supply of electrical power is critical for both efficient production and financial stability in the industrial facility industry. A momentary loss of power supply may cause the production line to be disrupted and your business to be adversely affected from the downtime. Therefore, it is imperative for end users to understand the importance of a UPS system to ensure constant uptime, productivity and availability in businesses. Proactive power management including UPS products, technology and services can be a major contributing factor to the success of manufacturing businesses.”

The advantage of the Galaxy 5500 UPS is its ability to integrate with Schneider Electric’s StruxureWare for Data Centers, which manages all aspects of the data center, including tracking and monitoring enterprise energy and carbon cost. With full system visibility,

managers can monitor and apply this information to help businesses optimise data centre performance and meet IT business and service oriented goals. The Galaxy 5500 UPS can also be monitored by using Schneider Electric’s Building Management System (BMS), where users can track and monitor energy usage throughout the building, enabling the building to be smarter and more efficient.

Galaxy 5500 UPS provides a high level of power availability through its redundant components in the system, where it helps to increase backup for greater reliability and ensures continuous operation in businesses. It is flexible and upgradeable with its expandable power ranges that offer scalable power levels to accommodate varying power requirements. Furthermore, Galaxy 5500 can be easily integrated with compatible networking and monitoring systems.

With Galaxy 5500 UPS, users can achieve a flat efficiency curve with significant efficiency gains at lower load. Galaxy 5500 UPS also offers optimised total cost of ownership where users can benefit from optimised investment and reduced energy consumption costs.

Tru Blu Beverages Sees Network Sparkle with Silver Peak

Software Accelerates Replication, HTTP, and Optimizes VoIP across Branches and Data Center

Singapore. November 19, 2013 – Tru Blu Beverages, whose Australian-manufactured soft drinks include Waterfords, Pub Squash, LA Ice Cola and Wicked Energy Drink, has achieved sparkling results with Silver Peak data acceleration software. Today the company is supporting its business on a lighter and lower cost infrastructure than what competing WAN optimization vendors could offer.

·       Watch the Tru Blu video: http://blog.silver-peak.com/tru-blu-drinks-to-faster-replication-http-and-optimized-voip

The daily average of 800 gigabytes (GB) of data pushed through the firm’s network was reduced to 100 GB when optimized by Silver Peak.  Overall data transfers were accelerated by 91 percent, while HTTP performance improved by 96 percent, email by 34 percent, storage replication by 57 percent, and SIP traffic by 42 percent.

“No other vendor could optimize all of our network traffic and applications like Silver Peak,” said Joe Esposito, Tru Blu Beverages national IT manager. “Riverbed and others only really optimized web traffic and file servers. Very few vendors could handle VoIP, which runs on UDP, and no company could address the real-time packet problems we were experiencing.  We have definitely improved the way we do business with Silver Peak.”

Fortinet Secures NEC Cloud Platform

FortiGate Next-Generation Firewalls to be Front Line of Defense for NEC’s MasterScope Virtual DataCenter Automation Software 

MALAYSIA, September 30, 2013 – Fortinet - a world leader in high-performance network security - today announced its FortiGate network security platform has been selected by NEC as the next generation firewall for its MasterScope Virtual DataCenter Automation cloud platform software. The NEC software, announced in May, supports automatic configuration, deployment and operation of cloud (Infrastructure as a Service) environments within enterprise and service provider data centers. While the platform is initially geared for the Japanese market, NEC plans to expand sales to additional markets, including North America, Europe and Asia.

The MasterScope Virtual DataCenter Automation software is the first cloud platform software to utilize software-defined networking (SDN), which automates cloud operations through OpenFlow, the communications protocol that gives access to the forwarding plane of a network switch or router over the network. The software is linked to the company’s Programmable Flow Controller PF6800 and enables centralized control of virtual servers and virtual networks. NEC’s cloud platform makes it possible to automate operations for changing network settings arising from virtual server retrieval requests from users, a process that has up until now been time consuming for server administrators.

Fortinet’s FortiGate network security platform is the first third-party next-generation firewall to be certified by NEC to protect its cloud platform. Since 2010, NEC and Fortinet have worked together to deploy the FortiGate platform as the security resource in the SDN environments NEC has built. Today, the integration of FortiGate in MasterScope Virtual DataCenter Automation represents another step in enhancing the security of SDN environments in the cloud.

“We are pleased to be extending our relationship with Fortinet to our new secured cloud platform. The customer feedback to date has been overwhelmingly positive,” said Akinori Itou, general manager, System Software Division, NEC. “By combining our strength in cloud platform development with Fortinet’s strength in network security innovation, we believe we are perfectly positioned to offer our customers a secure software defined cloud platform that offers high levels of reliability, usability and simplified operability.”

“Software defined networking is more than a buzzword. It’s a reality. But the question on minds today is how to secure them,” said Norio Kubota, country manager for Fortinet Japan. “We believe we’ve found an answer with our collaboration with NEC. With their MasterScope Virtual DataCenter Automation software, we are able to automatically route all of a customer’s internal and perimeter traffic through our next-generation firewalls, which greatly improves the customer’s security posture while reducing provisioning time and costs for operators.”

The FortiGate Advantage
To protect the company’s MasterScope Virtual DataCenter Automation cloud platform software, NEC’s specifically chose Fortinet’s FortiGate-3000 series and FortiGate-1000 series next generation firewalls (NGFW). These network security appliances provide exceptional throughput, ultra-low latency and a wide range of configuration options for next generation environments that have requirements for lightning fast transactions, such as financial services, Voice over IP (VoIP), BYOD/Mobile and Web 2.0 applications. The broad network security capabilities of these appliances address several critical market dynamics:

·           Soaring bandwidth demands due to the increasing use of content-rich social media and Web 2.0 applications
·           The explosion of mobile devices accessing these applications -- increasingly through Wi-Fi connections -- that require an application firewall with the ability to process millions of connections per second
·           More frequent and increasingly sophisticated attacks employing the latest detection evasion techniques being launched from the application layer

The FortiGate product family combines firewall, application control, IP Sec and SSL VPN, intrusion prevention, on-device and cloud-based sandboxing, antimalware and Web filtering into a single device with all features turned on for a single price. All FortiGate devices provide native dual-stack support for IPv6 traffic out of the box as Fortinet has been a leader in protecting IPv6 networks since 2007, achieving both IPv6-Ready and JITC certifications in 2008.

All FortiGates integrate the purpose-built FortiOS operating system with custom FortiASIC processors and the latest-generation CPUs to provide broad, high-performance security.

For more information on MasterScope Virtual DataCenter Automation, please visit: http://www.nec.com/en/global/prod/masterscope/vdcautomation/

Silver Peak Integrates with VMware Network Virtualization to Automate Deployment of Virtualized Network Services

Delivers Point/Click Traffic Redirection and Workload Acceleration over Virtualized Networks for the Software-Defined Data Center

Singapore. August 28, 2013 – Silver Peak, the leader in accelerating data movement and virtualized network services, today announced integration of its data acceleration software with VMware NSX™, the platform for network virtualization. The integration uses Silver Peak’s “Agility” software to provide point-and-click traffic redirection and workload optimization from one virtual machine (VM) to another across VMware NSX virtualized networks.

The rapid adoption of server virtualization and hybrid cloud infrastructure has resulted in a completely new operational model for deploying and managing application workloads in today’s software defined data centers. The network has historically been a barrier to achieving the full benefits of virtualization and workload mobility because of complex physical network topology, manual configuration of network equipment, and a reliance on vendor-specific expertise. Silver Peak Agility combined with VMware NSX can help overcome these challenges by enabling rapid, on-demand deployment of network services in virtualized data centers. Silver Peak redirects and optimizes traffic between VMs without the need for complex router configurations and networking expertise. This allows virtualization administrators to quickly and easily optimize the performance of individual workloads between data centers, remote offices and the cloud with increased simplicity.

“Networking technology can be complex to implement through the eyes of non-networking IT personnel, but as the network transforms from a hardware model to a software delivery model, it becomes essential for non-networking professionals to enable and manage network services at-will,” said David Hughes, CEO of Silver Peak. “Our core competencies in WAN optimization and virtualization have Silver Peak uniquely-positioned to help customers automate and optimize the deployment of virtualized network services across their software defined data centers.”

“VMware NSX™ will set the standard for network virtualization, decoupling networking functions from the underlying physical infrastructure and automating network services to dramatically simplify IT service delivery,” said Hatem Naguib, vice president, cloud networking and security, VMware. “By combining VMware NSX with Silver Peak, customers will be able to move data at accelerated rates between VMs in separate virtualized data centers.”

Virtualized wide area network (WAN) optimization software has already proven to be a critical requirement for moving more data over longer distances, and in less time. The software-based approach is a fast and cost-effective way to overcome bandwidth, distance and quality challenges that hinder data mobility performance for disaster recovery and access to localized resources across multiple data centers, including cloud and MSP environments. Silver Peak Agility combined with VMware NSX will enable a smooth transition to network virtualization while maximizing current investments, maintaining service levels, and assuring application performance over distance. Silver Peak’s support for networking and security within the VMware vCloud® Suite also helps cloud managers easily scale from a few applications to thousands of optimized applications.

“Silver Peak is a pioneer in virtualized network services and we share a common commitment to enabling the software defined data center architecture,” said Justin Giardina, CTO at iland, a leading global VMware vCloud Powered® provider. “Silver Peak’s Agility allows our customers to easily accelerate and optimize workloads without the need to reconfigure their networks. This results in dramatically faster time to value for our customers and up to 20x faster data movement for applications like replication and disaster recovery leveraging iland Enterprise Cloud Services.”

“Silver Peak has already demonstrated its leadership in accelerating virtualized network services with WAN optimization software,” Hughes added. “Now, Silver Peak is partnering with VMware to address the next step: simplifying and automating the deployment of these services across virtualized data centers.”

Pricing and Availability 
Silver Peak virtual WAN optimization software is available today for free self-service trials from the Silver Peak software marketplace. Silver Peak Agility integrated with VMware network virtualization is available today for no additional charge as part of Silver Peak’s Global Management System (GMS) 6.2. Silver Peak GMS pricing starts at US$4,995.

MCAFEE DATA CENTER SUITE PROVIDES ELASTIC SECURITY FOR HYBRID DATA CENTERS

McAfee Data Center Server Security Suite Discovers all Workloads, Protects Servers, and Securely Enables the Cloud  

VMworld, SAN FRANCISCO / SINGAPORE, —Aug. 27, 2013 – McAfee today announced a new version of its data center security solution that addresses enterprises’ growing need to leverage the scalability and cost savings of running workloads in public clouds like Amazon Web Services. When enterprises move workloads to a public cloud, they want to know their data is protected.

The McAfee Data Center Server Security Suite for Server provides complete visibility to all workloads in hybrid data centers so enterprises can securely expand into any cloud environment. This added flexibility gives organizations elastic security that is auto-deployed when new virtual devices are provisioned either on-premise or in the public cloud.

The new McAfee Data Center Security Suite for Server allows organizations to:
• Discover all workloads including those from VMware’s vCenter and Amazon Web Services to provide the security administrator with complete visibility of the security status.

• Protect every physical and virtual machine in the hybrid data center with fine-grained policy management and data center trust attestation with ease-of-use manageability with McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator.
• Expand compute capacity securely into the private and public cloud and ensure identical security posture between on-premise and cloud-based machines.
McAfee Data Center security optimizes security, flexibility and manageability of virtual environments with its MOVE AV functionality, finally providing a simplified security solution for companies investing in virtualization for data centers, applications and desktops.

“The McAfee MOVE AntiVirus solution has provided us with an excellent resolution for our complex IT infrastructure which contains dozens of assorted operating systems in use,” said Rick Snyder, Endpoint Security Manager at Boston Scientific. “Our organization handles sensitive data from customers, vendors, business partners and our own internal activities. Maximizing performance, while continuing protection across multiple internal entities, is a high priority for our IT department, as is providing reporting on its effectiveness.

McAfee MOVE has been integral in achieving these simultaneous goals by giving us the ability to offload all scanning of data into a gateway virtual appliance. This streamlined and efficient approach saves resources and maintains our security posture.”

Customers now have complete visibility to all workloads on-premise and in the cloud, which then enables them to secure all important workloads. With the ability to expand their compute resources into the public cloud while also securing these workloads, customers can now maintain their security posture even in the public cloud.

“Enterprises must stay compliant and meet government regulations and that is a typical barrier for organizations who want to move workloads into the cloud,” said Rishi Bhargava, vice president of data center security at McAfee. “With McAfee’s latest Data Center Server Security Suite and its elastic security, enterprises are now empowered to do just that. McAfee provides comprehensive security from servers to networking to storage.”

To see a demo of the new McAfee Data Center Security Suite for Server and other solutions such as McAfee Network Security Platform now integrated with VMware NSX™ network virtualization platform, stop by McAfee #635 at VMworld, August 25-29.

Avaya Announces Software-Defined Data Center Framework and Roadmap

• Leverages OpenStack’s cloud operating system to deliver open, multi-resource service orchestration and automation
• Avaya Fabric Connect technology to be integrated into the OpenStack framework simplifying movement of Virtual Machines within and between Data Centers.    
• Will enable enterprises and service providers to turn up cloud-based services in minutes with scalability up to 16 million tenanted applications

Malaysia, August 23, 2013 —Avaya today announced its Software-Defined Data Center framework, which is designed to deliver productivity, agility and time-to-service enhancements to businesses operating highly virtualized data centers.  The Avaya Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) framework aims to break down traditional data center silos that require weeks or months to turn up an application and replace it with a simple five-step process that takes minutes.  Avaya will demonstrate this capability at VMworld 2013 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco from
August 25 – 29.

The Avaya SDDC framework includes an orchestration process that combines, customizes and commissions compute, storage and network components.  Use of the OpenStack cloud computing platform will allow data center administrations to deploy virtual machines, assign storage and configure networks through a single graphical user interface.  Avaya Fabric Connect further enhances the OpenStack environment by removing restrictions in traditional Ethernet VLAN / Spanning Tree-based networks to enable a more dynamic, flexible and scalable network services model than exists today.

The Avaya SDDC framework is based on the following components:
• Avaya Fabric Connect technology as the virtual backbone to interconnect resource pools within and between data centers with increased flexibility and scale
• An Avaya OpenStack Horizon-based Management Platform, delivering orchestration for compute (Nova), storage (Cinder/Swift) and network via Avaya Fabric Connect (Neutron)
• Open APIs into the Avaya Fabric Connect architecture for ease of integration, customization and interoperability with other Software-Defined Networking architectures

The Avaya SDDC framework can ultimately provide the following benefits to businesses:
• Reduced Time-to-Service: cloud services enabled in minutes through a five-step process
• Simplified Virtual Machine Mobility: simple end-point provisioning enabling virtual machine mobility within and between geographically dispersed data centers
• Multi-Vendor Orchestration: coordinated allocation of data center resources via a single interface to streamline the deployment of applications
• Scale-out Connectivity: services scale to more than 16 million unique services, up from the limitation of 4000 in traditional Ethernet networks
• Secure Multi-Tenancy: leveraging network, compute and storage layer abstraction and isolation
• Improved Network Flexibility: overcomes current VLAN challenges to deliver a load-balanced, loop-free network where any logical topology can be built, independent of the physical layout

Avaya’s Software-Defined Data Center framework is the first phase of Avaya’s Software-Defined Networking roadmap.  Avaya Fabric Connect is available today on a wide range of networking platforms including Virtual Service Platform 9000, Ethernet Routing Switch 8800, Virtual Services Platform 7000 and Virtual Services Platform 4000.  The Avaya Horizon-based Management Platform and open APIs will be generally available next year.  Future initiatives include the extension of Fabric Connect and Orchestration to deliver end-to-end service creation and delivery from data center to desktop.

Google, IBM, Mellanox, NVIDIA, Tyan Announce Development Group for Data Centers

Marks industry first as IBM offers POWER technology for open development

SAN FRANCISCO, August 6, 2013 – Google, IBM, Mellanox, NVIDIA and Tyan today announced plans to form the OpenPOWER Consortium – an open development alliance based on IBM's POWER microprocessor architecture. The Consortium intends to build advanced server, networking, storage and GPU-acceleration technology aimed at delivering more choice, control and flexibility to developers of next-generation, hyperscale and cloud data centers.

 The move makes POWER hardware and software available to open development for the first time as well as making POWER IP licensable to others, greatly expanding the ecosystem of innovators on the platform. The consortium will offer open-source POWER firmware, the software that controls basic chip functions. By doing this, IBM and the consortium can offer unprecedented customization in creating new styles of server hardware for a variety of computing workloads.  

 “The founding members of the OpenPOWER Consortium represent the next generation in data-center innovation,” said Steve Mills, senior vice president, and group executive, IBM Software & Systems. “Combining our talents and assets around the POWER architecture can greatly increase the rate of innovation throughout the industry. Developers now have access to an expanded and open set of server technologies for the first time. This type of ‘collaborative development’ model will change the way data center hardware is designed and deployed.”

 “We are happy taking part in the OpenPOWER Consortium and its mission to further accelerate the rate of innovation, performance and efficiency for advanced data center solutions,” said Gilad Shainer, vice president of marketing at Mellanox Technologies. “Open source and community development are key to enabling innovative computer platforms and better serve the scalable and emerging applications in the areas of high-performance, Web 2.0 and cloud computing. Mellanox’s mission is to provide the most efficient interconnect solution for all compute and CPU architectures and deliver the highest return-on-investment to our users.”

 As part of their initial collaboration within the consortium, NVIDIA and IBM will work together to integrate the CUDA GPU and POWER ecosystems.
 
 “The OpenPOWER Consortium brings together an ecosystem of hardware, system software, and enterprise applications that will provide powerful computing systems based on NVIDIA GPUs and POWER CPUs,” said Sumit Gupta, general manager of the Tesla Accelerated Computing Business at NVIDIA.

 "OpenPOWER will bring a new wave of innovation to next-generation data centers," said Albert Mu, general manager of Tyan Computer and vice president of MiTAC International Corp. "A strong ecosystem built around OpenPOWER will bring a range of new technology choices to market, offering more capabilities for Tyan's customers."

Schneider Electric StruxureWare Enhancement Enables Holistic Management of Data Center Infrastructure across Business Segments

New management capabilities break down barriers between IT, facility and executive stakeholders 

Kuala Lumpur, 5th June, 2013 — Schneider Electric, a global specialist in energy management, today introduced StruxureWare for Data Centers v2.0, an integrated suite of Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software engineered to manage data centers across multiple domains, providing businesses with actionable intelligence for an ideal balance of high availability and peak efficiency throughout the entire data center lifecycle. Designed to integrate data center performance with business goals and provide new levels of insight to c-suite executives, updates to the solution include: the addition of specialized applications for enhanced monitoring and management support for facility managers, additional power capping capabilities for further control of power consumption at the server level for improved IT management, and a new StruxureWare Portal for increased visibility into business and data center key performance indicators (KPIs) with customizable vi ews across the various company stakeholders.

“Data center environments traditionally rely on siloed IT and facility management tools that alienated the executive team and made it difficult to optimize physical infrastructure while balancing efficiency and financial demands,” said Soeren Brogaard Jensen, Vice President, Solution Software, Schneider Electric. “With StruxureWare for Data Centers v2.0, Schneider Electric is providing a holistic approach to managing the data center by integrating IT, facilities and now the executive suite through the use of DCIM, allowing businesses to make the right decisions based on shared data – helping them make the most of their energy.”

Bridging the gap between IT, facilities and the c-suite executive, StruxureWare for Data Centers v2.0 is an open, modular, fully scalable and integrated DCIM solution that breaks down the typically siloed information that often prevents a holistic and intelligent view of the mechanical, electrical and IT aspects of center operation.

According to a recent Gartner Market Trends report, the challenge is for companies to find funding for (DCIM) for an existing data center. The reasons revolve around tight budgets and budget ownership. The facilities team has its budget, and so does the IT department. Both would benefit from DCIM, but neither has prebudgeted for it, and therefore neither wants to take money away from another project to pay for it. Therefore, the impetus often has to come from the executive level to get this done.*

Application programming interfaces (APIs) and EcoStruxure™ web services allow for data-sharing between applications and enhance data accuracy and availability. These components seamlessly integrate with third-party applications, other StruxureWare software suites and EcoStruxure physical infrastructure components, enabling businesses to manage their data centers across multiple domains. Asset alignment functionality that complies with regulatory requirements delivers an audit system for monitoring and management and provides input into the financial management of the business. Service assurance capabilities help data center managers easily resolve issues related to system availability through cross-department integration and automated impact analysis.

The StruxureWare for Data Centers suite has been extended with several applications aimed at providing facility managers with in-depth support through building management systems, utility, power and power distribution monitoring and management, reinforcing the balance between IT and facilities, and enabling the business to make informed decisions based on shared data.  

The StruxureWare for Data Centers suite consists of:

●          Resource Advisor for tracking and managing enterprise energy and carbon costs.
●          Data Center Operation for managing data center assets, and operational and capital costs; incorporates multi-tenant, space and cage management as well as integrated tenant billing.
●          Data Center Expert for monitoring and controlling data center power, cooling and security.
●          Power Monitoring Expert for advanced power monitoring, analysis and power quality.
●          Cooling Monitoring Expert for advanced cooling monitoring and automation.

StruxureWare for Data Centers has also been strengthened on the IT side by enabling Data Center Operators to further control power consumption at the server level through power capping capabilities provided through Intel DCM technology – resulting in reduced OpEx, optimized utilization of existing servers and delayed equipment investment.

An end-to-end DCIM software suite, StruxureWare for Data Centers v2.0 enables IT and facility managers to monitor, operate, analyze and optimize the power, cooling, security and energy usage from building through IT systems – from floor, to cage, to rack, to server and virtual machine. The addition of StruxureWare Portal aggregates information from all applications across the StruxureWare framework for a customizable and easily-sharable single-screen view of a wide range of information, offering increased visibility into business and data center KPIs. The StruxureWare Portal facilitates communication with external resources, can easily be adapted to corporate branding guidelines and can be accessed via laptops, tablets and smartphones.

StruxureWare for Data Centers serves as one facet of Schneider Electric’s global StruxureWare initiative.  The complete line of StruxureWare solutions are designed to provide an integrated software platform intended to simplify energy management and optimize energy usage in all types of buildings, data centers and industrial facilities.

Currently available through Schneider Electric or its partners, all new offerings and updates within the StruxureWare for Data Centers suite continue to be compatible with existing components of the InfraStruxure Management Software portfolio.

For more information on Schneider Electric’s complete line of DCIM solutions, visit www.apc.com/struxureware.

*Gartner: Market Trends: Total Addressable DCIM Market Will Reach $1.7 Billion by 2016, November 2012