As s senior bosses eject and shares crash... is it time to pray for Nutanix?

Analysis Should we be concerned about #Nutanix? Two bosses have left, its share price is falling, and it's now worth just a little less than #Pure Storage. The shares in the #hyperconvergedinfrastructure appliance slinger ended May 1 at $14.46 apiece. They were hovering around $21 on March 7, and $31 on March 2 just before its latest quarterly financial results – with its low expectations for the next three months, attributed in part to salesforce shakeups – sent shares sharply downwards.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/02/nutanix_omg/

AMD's Stock Plummets, Worst Single-Day Drop In More Than A Decade

#AMD reported its quarterly earnings yesterday after the stock market closed, but the company's stock began plunging almost immediately in after hours trading. Now, twelve hours later, AMD has suffered its biggest single-day decline in more 12 years. At the time of publication, AMD's stock has fallen 24.38% to $10.35 per share, which is close to the 26.2% loss it experienced on January 11, 2005.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-stock-ryzen-cpu-share,34314.html

Big Switch Networks Achieves Red Hat OpenShift Prime Designati

#RedHat Summit -- #BigSwitch Networks®, The Next-Generation Data Center Networking Company announced today it has received Red Hat #OpenShift #Container Platform Prime designation. The company will be at Red Hat Summit May 2nd - 4th to demo support for Red Hat solutions including: Red Hat #OpenStack® Platform, Red Hat #Ceph®, Red Hat Enterprise #Linux®, #Ansible by Red Hat and Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform with its data center switching fabric, Big Cloud Fabric ( #BCF ). To learn more, visit Big Switch at BOOTH #303. Big Switch will also participate at the Red Hat Telco NFV Mini Summit, Sunday, 5/7 (immediately following Red Hat Summit). Gregg Holzrichter, CMO, Big Switch Networks will discuss the findings of ACG Research's study: Creating Agility & Efficiency at Scale: The Economic Advantages of Open Architecture Platforms in NFV Deployments (more details on this study below). Big Cloud Fabric has achieved Prime designation for Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform. BCF with Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform dramatically simplifies container networking by offering unified physical and virtual networking. Application teams are able to leverage BCF to painlessly deploy container-based applications without having to worry about detailed networking configuration.

http://news.sys-con.com/node/4070581

Telco Systems and Silver Peak Offer vCPE for SD-WAN

Carrier Ethernet provider #TelcoSystems and software-defined wide area networking ( #SDWAN ) vendor #SilverPeak today rolled out a joint virtual CPE ( #vCPE ) system for managed SD-WAN services. The goal is to enable telcos and service providers to offer new virtualized services. The combined product integrates the Silver Peak Unity EdgeConnect SD-WAN system with Telco Systems’ Verge platform. Verge is a plug-in vCPE based on standard x86 servers, and it provides a virtualized environment for Silver Peak’s SD-WAN to run on, said Ariel Efrati, CEO of Telco Systems.
https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/telco-systems-silver-peak-offer-vcpe-sd-wan/2017/05/

Red Hat and AWS Extend Strategic Alliance to Package Access to AWS Services Within Red Hat OpenShift

#RedHat and #AWS Extend Strategic Alliance to Package Access to AWS Services Within Red Hat #OpenShift Unique offering will allow customers to deploy AWS services from within Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform both on-premises and in the cloud Alliance will also bring closer product alignment to enable new AWS services to be available with Red Hat Enterprise #Linux faster than ever May 02, 2017 08:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today, Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, and Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company and the world’s leading cloud computing provider (NASDAQ:AMZN), announced an extended strategic alliance to natively integrate access to AWS services into Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform. Through this unique offering, Red Hat will make AWS services accessible directly within Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, allowing customers to take advantage of the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud whether they’re using Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform on AWS or in an on-premises environment. Customers will be able to seamlessly configure and deploy a range of #AWS services such as #Amazon #Aurora, Amazon #Redshift, Amazon #EMR, Amazon #Athena, Amazon #CloudFront, Amazon #Route53, and #Elastic Load Balancing with just a few clicks from directly within the #RedHat #OpenShift console.

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170502005673/en/Red-Hat-AWS-Extend-Strategic-Alliance-Package

Sphere 3D and Datrium Partner to Accelerate Open Convergence Adoption for the Private Cloud Data Center

SAN JOSE, Calif. and SUNNYVALE, Calif., May 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- #Sphere3D Corp. (NASDAQ: ANY), a #containerization, #virtualization, and #datamanagement solutions provider, and #Datrium, the leading provider of #OpenConvergedInfrastructure for private clouds, are pleased to announce Sphere 3D's #HVE line has obtained " #Datriumready " nodes classification. The data center has undergone a momentous transformation since the #UNIX server days when the solution for increasing performance was to buy bigger proprietary RISC based boxes and scale out was considered wishful thinking. Today's data center is built on converged, #hyperconverged, and open-converged technologies that allow for a software centric approach for incredible performance and a lower total cost of ownership (TCO). These transformations have led to an $11.3 billion converged systems market in 2016 per IDCi and a hyperconverged market predicted to grow to almost $5 billion by 2019 according to Gartnerii. Sphere 3D and Datrium have created a series of HVE bundles to accelerate the transformation by incorporating proven solution designs to meet both performance and capacity demands, and scale as needed. Sphere 3D has introduced HVE "Datrium ready" node bundles available in two distinct sets of configurations for different workloads: Server virtualization bundles are benchmarked to provide 50, 100, and 200+ virtual machines with consistent application performance and scalability. Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), bundles are benchmarked to provide 250, 500, or 1000+ virtual desktops with predictable end-user friendly performance and scalability. HVE "Datrium ready" node bundles combine Datrium DVX data nodes with optimized HVE servers as compute nodes. The HVE servers are preconfigured with Datrium DVX software and host-local flash, together with the appropriate networking to support a turnkey implementation. Datrium DVX with HVE "Datrium ready" nodes HVE "Datrium ready" node bundles combine a turnkey experience with advanced features like automatic performance isolation for workload scalability, robust end-to-end data security, and powerful cloud data management capabilities for data protection and disaster recovery. Effectively Datrium DVX with HVE "Datrium ready" node bundles offer a single, open converged infrastructure platform for both high performance, primary application workloads, and cost-effective secondary storage workloads, all at a fraction of the cost and effort of traditional infrastructure alternatives. "Azle Independent School District (ISD) has been partnering with HVE for more than four years. Their VDI products as well as their server virtualization has been a key part of our operations. This past year, we purchased Datrium. The integration of Datrium into our existing HVE server virtualization has been seamless and connected with our network without issue. We are very pleased with our open convergence solution," stated Eddie Alford, Director of Technology, Azle ISD. About Datrium Datrium is the leader in Open Convergence for private clouds. Datrium converges storage and compute in a radical new way—modeled on public cloud IaaS versus traditional converged infrastructure or hyper-convergence—for vastly simpler performance and predictability. The company is led by the founders and early top architects of Data Domain and VMware. Datrium has been named to Gartner's Cool Vendors in Storage Technologies, 2016. For more information, visit www.datrium.com and follow @datriumstorage on Twitter. About HVE HVE ConneXions, recently acquired by Sphere 3D, is a fast growing technology provider of next generation converged and hyperconverged infrastructure. Its engineering philosophy is dedicated to creating Manageable, Scalable, Reproducible, and Predictable (MSRP) solutions based on proven virtualization technologies running on high-performance, next generation platforms. For more information and technical specifications on the HVE product line, visit www.hveconnexions.com. About Sphere 3D Sphere 3D Corp. (NASDAQ: ANY) delivers containerization, virtualization, and data management solutions via hybrid cloud, cloud and on-premises implementations through its global reseller network and professional services organization. Sphere 3D, along with its wholly owned subsidiaries Overland Storage, and Tandberg Data, has a strong portfolio of brands, including HVE ConneXions and UCX ConneXions, dedicated to helping customers achieve their IT goals. For more information, visit www.sphere3d.com. Follow us on Twitter @Sphere3D, @overlandstorage, and @tandbergdata

http://news.sys-con.com/node/4070781

Former Dell Software Unit, One Identity, Launches Standalone Partner Program

#OneIdentity is launching its first partner program as a standalone brand. The company was sold to #FranciscoPartners and #ElliottManagement in November as part of a private equity buyout of #DellSoftware. One Identity, which offers identity and access management solutions, is a standalone business unit under #QuestSoftware, which had been part of Dell Software.  The new program, called the One Identity Partner Circle, is a global program with four tiers: registered, silver, gold and platinum. The tiers are broken down by revenue requirements. The program also includes MDF, rebates, training, and incentives for "influence fees" which recognizes partners who are not a reseller but still drive business to One Identity with revenue towards their quota cap. The program is largely based on the same framework as the Quest Software Partner Circle program. [Related: CRN Exclusive: SonicWall Names New CEO As It Closes Dell Spinout Deal] Josh Lewis, director of North American channels and alliances, said the new program is the latest step in a journey that One Identity has been on since its divestiture from Dell and its move towards its own brand. He said One Identity has always worked with partners, but it had been challenging to be part of a larger program under Dell as the company couldn't tailor its program and messaging to meet the types of partners it wants to work with. He said the new program would allow One Identity to focus on more strategic partners. "We're excited about this," Lewis said. "It's a big shift for us … We have been evolving our business. Identity and access management is very much a team sport and with the kind of large deals we go after, we really have to have the rights at the hip with us." Lewis said One Identity is looking to "go deep" with a smaller set of strategic partners, as the company's technology requires a high investment in training and certifications. He said One Identity already has a "robust list of partners" and will look to selectively recruit additional partners where it makes sense. The program builds on a bigger strategy at One Identity to focus on partners for its go to market strategy, Bill Evans, senior director marketing said. He said One Identity has seen a 29 percent year over year growth in partner revenue. As the company's product portfolio grows, Evans said One Identity plans to continue to make investments in partners to maintain its growth rate overall, which is around 70 percent year over year in new license growth. Tim Spires, president of Arlington, Texas-based EST Group, said his business has been partnering with One Identity for nearly five years. Spires said he is excited to see One Identity roll out its new partner program, expecting it will allow his business to sell more of the company's product, which he said is one of his businesses' top products. He highlighted the company's registration and rebate programs, as well as formal training and curriculum as key features of the new program. "There wasn't a really good partner strategy in place before. It was tough, but we wanted to stick with them because they had such a good product. Now that they have put the partner program in place, I know we will be even more successful with their product than in the past," Spires said.

http://m.crn.com/news/security/300084739/crn-exclusive-former-dell-software-unit-one-identity-launches-standalone-partner-program.htm?itc=hp_tax_security

Dell EMC Pushing Ahead With Overlapping Midrange Storage Lines, Offers Capacity Guarantee

#DELLEMC is doubling down on its decision to maintain two of its only demonstrably overlapping product lines, arguing its legacy #Dell SC #Compellent series and #EMC 's #Unity midrange storage lines are thriving side-by-side rather than cannibalizing each other. "We are fully committed to our entire midrange product family including Dell EMC Unity and the Dell EMC SC Series," Craig Bernero, Dell EMC senior vice president of product development, said in a recent blog. "Each product solves different customer problems and is suited for different environments."  Bernero notes that Dell EMC's midrange storage revenue grew 32.8 percent between the third quarter – the first period Dell and EMC lines were combined after the early September acquisition of EMC by Dell – and the fourth quarter, according to statistics from research firm IDC. [Related: Head-To-Head: Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 Vs. Microsoft Surface Pro 4] Bernero also said internal Dell EMC numbers indicate the company booked double-digit quarter-over-quarter revenue increases in both SC and Unity and saw a "substantial increase" in total customers for both lines in the fourth quarter. However, IDC combined Dell and EMC's pre-acquisition numbers, and the resulting year-over-year comparison shows a more than 17 percent decline in fourth-quarter storage systems revenue to $2.1 billion from $2.6 billion a year prior. Dell EMC has a commanding market share position, finishing the fourth quarter with market share of slightly less than 33 percent compared with nearly 37 percent a year earlier, according to EMC. The more-is-better strategy fits with Dell EMC's commitment to openness and customer choice, but the company doesn't get especially specific when it comes to which customers and environments are better suited to SC Series or Unity storage solutions. The SC Series, Dell EMC says, is the value-priced line aimed at small and midsize businesses, especially when those businesses are already using Dell servers. Unity is being marketed to midsize customers as a general-purpose offering for block and file storage. SC comes in all-flash, disk only and hybrid configurations. Unity is available in configurations for all-flash, converged, hybrid and virtual deployments. Bernero said Dell EMC is launching a new program called the All-Flash Storage Efficiency Guarantee, which guarantees that XtremIO, VMAX All Flash, Unity and SC series all-flash configurations can get a logical storage capacity of at least four times the physical capacity of the drives in their new array, allowing them to cram more data into less space and less management. Michael Pearson, president of DSA Technologies, an Elk Grove, Calif., solution provider that works with Dell EMC, said the vendor's strategy around the SC series and Unity has been consistent and DSA sees distinct paths to selling each line. "We definitely see them as both being viable options in the enterprise space," Pearson said. "Dell EMC needs a competitive all-flash array to compete with both Nimble [Storage} and Pure [Storage], so they're hoping to have that with Unity. Compellent competes with the more traditional storage plays and does that very well."

http://m.crn.com/news/data-center/300084748/dell-emc-pushing-ahead-with-overlapping-midrange-storage-lines-offers-capacity-guarantee.htm

Firstnet Offers Hybrid Cloud Services Powered Exclusively by The Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform

London, UK – 2nd May 2017 – #Nutanix (NASDAQ: NTNX), a leader in enterprise cloud computing, has announced an agreement with Leeds-based managed service provider, #Firstnet Solutions, to offer customers a choice of flexible hybrid cloud services based on the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform. An established provider of managed services in the North of England, Firstnet Solutions recently formed a new entity, Firstnet Data Centres, which opened its first data centre in Leeds. Aspiring to be the first dedicated Tier III data centre in its region, it gives customers a choice of traditional co-location facilities alongside a new mix of managed hosting, virtual desktop and cloud services. These new services will be based entirely on the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform, chosen after exhaustive research and competitive analysis. “We spent months looking at both traditional 3-tier and hyperconverged infrastructure alternatives,” explains Paul Straton, Head of Enterprise Technologies at Firstnet, “none of which matched the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform, which simply re-writes all the rules. It is less complicated and much easier to manage than anything else on the market, featuring a self-healing architecture. It is also hugely scalable and able to deliver the services customers need to build a hybrid cloud infrastructure.” Key differentiators were the single Nutanix Prism management pane for both compute and storage resources, plus the hypervisor neutral virtualisation capabilities of the Nutanix platform. Together, these will enable Firstnet to offer customers immediate managed hosting, quickly followed by VDI services using the built-in virtualization solution, Nutanix AHV, which is included at no additional cost with every Nutanix deployment. In VDI environments where the costs per desktop are very important, the ability to use a robust and certified hypervisor with zero license costs is a great benefit. As a Nutanix partner, Firstnet will provide customers with a complete end-to-end hybrid cloud solution based on the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform. Customers using Nutanix for their on-premise infrastructure can leverage the built-in replication, backup, and DR functions by connecting to the Nutanix clusters hosted by Firstnet. “We are delighted to have Firstnet Solutions as both a customer and a partner,” commented Mark Lewis, Senior Director of EMEA Marketing at Nutanix, “demonstrating the ability to build scale-out infrastructures delivering the advantages of the public cloud but using the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform on-premise and in a service provider’s datacentre.” Since the opening of the datacentre in April, a number of existing customers have already signed up to migrate to the new Nutanix environment. The company also has ambitious plans to offer Nutanix-powered backup and recovery services from a dedicated disaster recovery suite complete with offsite office facilities, similarly, sited within the new Leeds datacentre.

https://www.nutanix.com/press-releases/2017/05/01/firstnet-offers-hybrid-cloud-services-powered-exclusively-nutanix-enterprise-cloud-platform/

Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform Shrinks Data Center Footprint

With a growing number of business critical legacy applications already certified to run on its hyper-converged – and tightly specified – systems, #Nutanix is now eyeing the enterprise need for more elasticity for these apps. And it sees the MSPs as obvious partners to deliver the same #hyperconvergence, with added elasticity, in the cloud.

SUMMARY:

With a growing number of business critical legacy applications already certified to run on its hyper-converged – and tightly specified – systems, Nutanix is now eyeing the enterprise need for more elasticity for these apps. And it sees the MSPs as obvious partners to deliver the same hyper-convergence, with added elasticity, in the cloud.

Is there room, or indeed a need, for a new type of cloud service on the block? Well, according to Sunil Potti, the Chief Product and Development Officer at hyper-converged computing specialist, Nutanix, there most definitely is.

In most peoples’ minds there are already three types of cloud. There is the public cloud, the production model if you like, for smaller businesses, the highly elastic applications of enterprise users, and applications development, DevOps and the like.

Then there is the on-premises (perhaps with a bit of co-location thrown in) private cloud, where large enterprises try for the best of both worlds – on-premise elasticity. Indeed, Potti prefers to call private clouds on-premise public clouds, so in his view that is only two types of the same cloud.

The third cloud type – hybrid – is itself arguably just an amalgam of the other two, so maybe there is really only one cloud in the end. But Potti does see the need for a different, enterprise-specific – type of cloud that offers them a specific type of service. It is a service type for which a delivery vehicle – the Managed Service Provider (MSP) community is perfectly suited:

My opinion is that there is a new type of cloud, an ‘AWS Inside the enterprise’, coming through. Now the on-prem enterprise guys want to use the exact same tooling and environments wherever their applications run.

Even with established business critical legacy applications there is a growing need for some elasticity in the resources available.

There are two factors in play here. One, these applications continue to deliver value to the business, rather than be pensioned off and replaced by new alternatives; and two, developments such as hyperconverged architectures now offer the potential to allow such applications to move into faster, cloud-deliverable environments.

http://diginomica.com/2017/05/02/nutanix-sees-new-cloud-horizon-msps-delivering/

Cloudera - Investors Approve IPO Amidst Growth And Narrowing Losses

#Cloudera (CLDR) has gone public, as demand for the shares was relatively solid. Shares opened up 20% higher as the final price had already been raised from the indicative pricing range. Investors buy into Cloudera´s promise on delivering on growth amidst an increasing hyperconnected world. While Cloudera delivers on solid topline sales growth, this growth is coming down as the company continues to post sizable, although narrowing losses. The company operates in a crowding field as it is hard to judge the competitive position of the firm amidst rapid changes in technology and competition in the field. At current valuations the pricing seems largely "fair" as I see no convincing reasons to either go long or short. A Play On A #Hyperconnected World Cloudera has developed a platform for data management, machine learning and advanced analytics, all being very hot areas at this point in time. The company collaborates extensively with open source techniques for data management. Founded in 2008, Cloudera has been around for nearly a decade and has quickly grown its business, counting large multinationals among its clients. Cloudera's platform allows customers to get an integrated suite of capabilities needed for data management, machine learning and analytics in an agile, scalable and cost effective solution. As it is widely accepted that great data and interpretation of that data is a key competitive advantage going forwards, corporate customers are in need to connect all their data generating devices in one infrastructure. The Hybrid open source software model (HOSS) allows corporate customers to take advantage of Cloudera´s platform which runs on standardized inexpensive hardware architecture. The open nature of the platform allows or a smooth integration with the cloud services hosted by all the major parties like AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. Cloudera offers its platform on a subscription basis and focuses on the largest 8,000 global companies as well as large public organizations. These larger companies have much data and complex IT environments, which makes that Cloudera´s offerings can have the greatest impact in these organizations. As of January of 2017, Cloudera has some 500 of these 8,000 largest corporations are a client, combined making up 73% of sales. With billings approaching $320 million a year in 2016, average revenues of these large clients amount to nearly half a million. Part of this growth has been enabled by an extensive partnership which the company closed with Intel in 2014. This partnership solution resulted in optimized integration with Intel's processors and architecture, while Intel made a large cash infusion into the business as well. The high profile deal furthermore gave Cloudera a public reputation in the marketplace and serious financial backing as Intel paid roughly $750 million to buy a near 20% stake in the business. This vote of confidence undoubtedly comforted many customers to use Cloudera´s solutions.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4067532-cloudera-investors-approve-ipo-amidst-growth-narrowing-losses

Join VMware at Dell EMC World 2017 to Realize Dev-Test to Production

#DellEMC World is bringing together for the first-time #DellTechnologies family of brands all in one place, all at one conference on May 8-11, 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada. As a strategic aligned business sponsor, #VMware will be there to support the Dell EMC community and participate in sessions, share demos, and promote making Digital Transformation a reality. If you are heading to Dell EMC World 2017 next week in Las Vegas, connect with us to learn how VMware’s Cloud Native Apps portfolio and open source technologies enable developers and IT from dev-test to production. VMware subject matter experts will be onsite to walk you through demos and use cases for securely developing, deploying and managing container-based applications.
https://blogs.vmware.com/cloudnative/join-vmware-dell-emc-world-2017-realize-dev-test-production/

SAP Cloud Platform extends Industry 4.0 manufacturing technology

#SAP announced two partnerships that enable SAP Cloud Platform to extend #IoT and #robotics in manufacturing. The partnerships with #Mitsubishi Electric Europe and KUKA AG were made at the HANNOVER MESSE industrial trade show, held recently in Hannover, Germany.

SAP and Mitsubishi Electric Europe announced that SAP will participate in the Mitsubishi Electric e-Factory Alliance partner program. The partnership enables Mitsubishi Electric's automation applications to operate with SAP Cloud Platform, and by using SAP's IoT features Mitsubishi Electric can transfer preselected data from the automation applications to SAP Cloud Platform. This extends Mitsubishi Electric's e-Factory to partners and customers to offer value-added IoT-based services for the manufacturing and process industry sectors, according to SAP.

The new IoT-based services include remote device and connectivity management, monitoring production status and asset availability, and predictive maintenance that allows operators to benefit from the long-term analysis of factory data.

http://searchsap.techtarget.com/news/450417957/SAP-Cloud-Platform-extends-Industry-40-manufacturing-technology

Amazon Hits Record High As Analyst Cites Ad Sales Threat To Google

#Amazon .com (AMZN) shares hit a record high Monday as the e-commerce giant received a price target hike from FBN Securities, following a first-quarter earnings report showing new revenue segments and strong ad sales growth that could threaten #Google -owner #Alphabet (GOOGL) down the road. FBN Securities analyst Shebly Seyrafi raised his price target on Amazon to 1,050 from 925 and maintained an outperform rating.

http://www.investors.com/news/technology/amazon-gets-price-target-hike-as-quarterly-results-spur-confidence/

Equinix completes $3.6 billion deal to buy 29 data centers from Verizon

#Equinix completes $3.6 billion deal to buy 29 data centers from #Verizon Posted 4 hours ago by Ron Miller (@ron_miller)  Equinix, an international data center company based in Redwood City, California, announced today that it has completed the purchase of 29 data centers from Verizon for $3.6 billion. The deal was announced in December. Verizon owns AOL, which owns TechCrunch. The acquisition greatly expands Equinix’s footprint, including giving it access to Latin America through a data center in Bogotá, Colombia, along with a new presence in Houston, Texas and Culpeper, Virginia. The jewel in the acquisition, however, might be the new Miami location, because it acts as a key internet connection point. “As the fourth largest Internet exchange point in the U.S., [the Miami location] hosts the termination points of 15 subsea cable systems and more than 120 global networks interconnecting to approximately 150 countries,” the company wrote in a statement. Equinix was also especially interested in the Culpeper facility, which it called “one of the most secure and technologically sophisticated data center campuses in the eastern U.S.” Taking ownership of Culpeper should allow the company to grow its government business. With this purchase, Equinix now owns a total of 179 data centers worldwide. It’s worth noting that these data centers are co-location facilities, which are essentially data center rental facilities where companies bring their own servers, storage and other hardware and rent space inside someone else’s facilities. The vendor takes care of all the maintenance and management of the overall facility, including access to the internet, power, cooling, security and so forth. Equinix didn’t just buy the facilities themselves, it also got 250 of Verizon’s employees in the deal, who become Equinix employees today and will continue to run the buildings. They also get 1,000 Verizon customers who are using the data centers, of which 600 are new to Equinix. Verizon isn’t just cutting and running after the sale. Equinix reports it will continue to be a customer and partner selling Equinix co-location services, even after the deal closes. The idea is to pair Equinix’s services with Verizon’s security, network and advanced communications services. Verizon doesn’t have to worry about maintaining the facilities, collects a substantial cash payment and still can continue to sell those services to customers. Equinix gets to own the facilities and gets access to new markets and new customers, as well as taking advantage of Verizon’s sales and marketing clout.

https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/01/equinix-completes-3-6-billion-deal-to-buy-29-data-centers-from-verizon/

Red Hat's cloud love affair

Sure, #RedHat is a major #Linux company. Indeed, most would say it's the Linux company, but moving forward, what Red Hat wants to be is the private cloud company.

Red Hat's annual gathering of developers, customers, and partners, Red Hat Summit, in Boston proves this point. What's the biggest news coming out of the conference? According to Red Hat it's that "this week alone, more than two dozen enterprise customers are at Red Hat Summit to speak about their production deployments on OpenShift."

http://www.zdnet.com/article/red-hats-cloud-love-affair/

Cisco grabs-up SD-WAN player Viptela for $610M

#Cisco has padded its #SDWAN portfolio with fellow player #Viptela for $610 million. The deal will be a homecoming for Viptela’s top execs as current CEO Praveen Akkiraju is a former Cisco and #DellEMC. Co-founders of Viptela Amir Khan and Khalid Raza were engineers at Cisco.

http://www.networkworld.com/article/3193784/cisco-subnet/cisco-grabs-up-sd-wan-player-viptela-for-610m.html

New Materials Conduct Electricity at the Speed of Light

EXPLORING 2D MATERIALS Two-dimensional materials have been creating a buzz recently, ever since scientists were able to isolate graphene. Research into other 2D materials abounds, as these have potential applications in a wide range of fields, including #photovoltaics, #semiconductors, and electrodes. Now, researchers from the University of California, Irvine (UCI), and elsewhere have explored the physics behind these 2D materials and their potential to push computing to new levels of power and speed. In particular, the UCI researchers published a study in the journal Nature that details the development of 2D quantum materials that have breakthrough electrical and magnetic attributes that can make topological quantum computers — which are still theoretical — and other advanced electronics possible. “Finally, we can take exotic, high-end theories in physics and make something useful,” said Jing Xia, UCI associate professor of physics and astronomy. “We’re exploring the possibility of making topological #quantumcomputers for the next 100 years.”

The 2D materials were observed under extremely cold temperatures using a fiber-optic Sagnac interferometer microscope, a sensitive magnetic microscope built by Xia. It can handle and accurately analyze minuscule material samples.

BREAKTHROUGH MATERIALS FOR QUANTUM COMPUTERS

The UCI researchers developed a compound called #chromiumgermaniumtelluride (CGT), a superthin carbon film. Just like #graphene, CGT can potentially replace silicon in next-generation computers. However, unlike graphene, CGT also has magnetic properties that also make it a viable material for a computer’s memory and storage systems.

In another study, published in the journal Science Advances, the UCI team observed another 2D material. Under the Sagnac interferometer, they found that in the interface between bismuth and nickel there’s “an exotic superconductor that breaks time-reversal symmetry.”

Both materials conduct electronic signals carried by Dirac or Majorana fermions — and not by electrons, as in silicon. Because they don’t have mass, these particles can move almost at the speed of light, and are ideal for braiding operations that are needed in quantum computing.

“The issue now is to try to achieve this at normal temperatures,” Xia said. A separate study that appeared in Nature Materials explores just that, proving that it’s possible to stabilize 2D surface states. This is necessary for working quantum computers, as existing ones are already limited by extreme conditions that allow quantum bits (qubits) to function. Qubits are at the heart of what makes quantum computers powerful. Unlike regular binary bits, qubits can be 0s and 1s at the same time, allowing them to process information better. 2D materials can create better processors to handle these qubits.

Once quantum computers become workable in regular conditions, they are expected to change the way research is done, allowing us to solve the world’s most complex problems faster than ever before.

https://futurism.com/new-materials-conduct-electricity-speed-light/

PSSC Labs Introduces Affordable, High Performance All Flash Storage on Unique Enterprise Server Designed Specifically for Hadoop

LAKE FOREST, Calif., May 1, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- #PSSCLabs, a developer of custom #HPC and #BigData computing solutions, today announced it now offers the option of complete flash storage for its #CloudOOP 12000 enterprise server, built specifically for #Hadoop. The faster storage option means PSSC Labs can now offer increased data analytics speeds and improved performance, making the CloudOOP 12000 the ideal enterprise Hadoop solution. The CloudOOP 12000 now supports the new Micron 5100 series Solid State SATAIII (SSDs), with up to 14 x Micron SSDs (2 drives dedicated for operating system and 12 drives for data storage). The all flash storage option provides durability, reliability, and faster performance at a price point that makes the technology affordable to more enterprise users. The #Micron SSD's offer faster speeds that traditional non-flash storage, and when combined with the CloudOOP 12000's made for Hadoop server, can achieves near real time performance for data analytics.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/pssc-labs-introduces-affordable-high-performance-all-flash-storage-on-unique-enterprise-server-designed-specifically-for-hadoop-300448604.html

ARM Windows 10 Laptops From Lenovo And Microsoft Expected Soon

It has only been a few weeks since #Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf said during an investor call that we might see #Windows10 laptops powered by ARM processors by the end of this year. He mentioned that the company’s Snapdragon 835 processor would expand into mobile PC designs running Windows 10. According to a new report, #Lenovo and Microsoft might be the first companies to launch ARM Windows 10 laptops. Microsoft is trying its hand at ARM-based PCs for the second time after Windows RT, a version of Windows 8 it created for ARM-based computers, failed to take off. It will enable these processors to run the full desktop version of Windows 10 which means that users won’t get a watered down experience.

http://www.ubergizmo.com/2017/04/arm-windows-10-laptops-lenovo-microsoft/