Customers are increasingly demanding energy-efficient hosting, says managed service provider NetBenefit.
News Datacentre
IBM, HP Server Sales Hit By Recession
Quarterly server revenue has shrunk at IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Sun Microsystems, as the global economy slows down, according to IDC. The one positive area is blade servers
Google outage was due to “overload”
A two hour blackout of Google mail was blamed on "data centre overload" and new code bugs, by the company's official blog.
“Disjointed” IT could delay recovery, says CMA
We need working broadband and 3G to get out of the recession, communications managers have warned
Cloud services ‘pose legal risks’
Outages are only part of the problem for services on the web, says a City Law firm, warning cloud customers may face lawsuits over performance and data protection
Gmail Failure: Reality Bites for Cloud Computing
Update: Gmail is back, after a two-hour outage. The company has not yet said how many people were affected, but twitter traffic from round the world reveals a major outage. That's a pain for millions of ordinary users - but it could be a disaster for those planning to sell application services in the cloud.
Birmingham Gets Pay-Per-Month Disaster Recovery
The Midlands now has a cloud computing data centre, which lets local companies grow without huge IT investments, says ADA Technology Services.
“iTunes Of IP” Eases Address Management
Managing IP addresses on an enterprise network could be easier thanks to a new module, which network appliance maker Infoblox says is the iTunes of networking.
UK’s VeryPC Launches 12TB Storage Server
UK-based low-energy system maker VeryPC has announced new models, including a storage processor with up to 12TB of storage and dual Intel Xeon processors with up to 48GB or RAM.
Experts Say Dump The NAC Word
Network access control is a useless marketing buzzword; users and vendors should just get on with security management, experts have said.
Mini-Notebooks Power 2008 PC Growth
Figures just released for PC shipments in Q4 2008 reveal the big inroads made by mini-notebooks into the Western European portable market, which drove sales for various leading manufacturers.
UK Companies Streamline 2009 IT Expenditure
The first results of an annual IDC survey reveal that UK enterprises are approaching 2009 IT budgets with caution and prioritise cost-cutting and efficiency projects.
Green Ethernet Standard to Unleash Marketing Blitz
A standard for energy-efficient Ethernet, due in 2010, will unleash a barrage of green marketing, promising savings for IT managers
What Will It Take To Make IT Go Green?
Whether they act to stave off a global crisis, or a meltdown in their own budgets, IT professionals need to have better information if they are going to clean up their act.
Can Sustainable IT Avoid False Accounting?
Now the word is out: there is money to be made in sustainable IT, we can expect the usual feeding frenzy as vendors try to cash in. This time, we can't afford to fall for phony greenwash.
UK Government to cut IT budget by billions
The UK government will slash its IT spending, in a bid for greater standardisation and simplification, according to Treasury advisor Martin Read.
Ghosts in the machine help E.ON cut server costs
The energy provider has consolidated its data centres across Europe amid rising power prices
IBM’s Cloud Announcements – Not Just Fluff
System management announcements can be vague; stir in the cloud and you have a recipe for complete incoherence. But IBM's cloud announcements have substance, analysts say.
Intel Delays ‘Tukwila’ Chip Again
Intel has delayed the four-core "Tukwila" `version of its Itanium processor, originally billed as the first 2 billion transistor chip and scheduled for 2007.
Intel Plans Eight-Core Nehalem and Smarter SOCs
Intel will give details of a 2.3 billion transistor, eight core processor, and smarter system-on-chip (SOC) modules that include wireless networking and graphics on the die itself, at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference, 8-12 February.
Citrix: the Virtual Route to Sustainable IT
Sustainable IT departments will have to weather some big changes. One of the largest is the move to virtual servers. What, we asked Citrix, is so green about virtualization?
New Citrix XenDesktop Release Enhances Desktop Virtualization, User...
The new release of Citrix's XenDesktop product aims to make desktop virtualization cheaper and friendlier for office workers, by increasing the number of desktops that one server can support while improving multimedia and voice delivery. In looking to differentiate its desktop virtualization products from what VMware is offering, Citrix is focusing on providing products for virtualization that offer what the company hopes is an end-to-end solution from the data centre to the server to the individual desktop.
Sun Enhancements to OpenSolaris Take Aim at Linux
Sun Microsystems' OpenSolaris 2008.11 includes improvements around software package management and incorporating community packaging efforts. The updates to the free Solaris-based OS shows that Sun will not follow IBM and HP in letting Linux take over the platform space once dominated by Unix.
IBM Building Next Generation of BlueGene Supercomputers
IBM and the U. S Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have signed a new contract to build the next generation of IBM's BlueGene supercomputers at the famed DOE facility. The first IBM BlueGene supercomputer, called “Dawn,” will have a top processing speed of 500 teraflops. The second IBM system, dubbed “Sequoia,” will offer 20 petaflops of performance and surpass the records Big Blue set when it installed the massive Roadrunner system for the DOE in 2008.
Next Windows 7 Milestone: Release Candidate
How ready is Windows 7? Ready enough so there will be no Beta 2. Microsoft plans to go directly from Beta 1 to release candidate.
CIRBA Virtual Machine Capacity Planning Tool Gets Upgrade0
CIRBA announced Version 5.1 of its virtualization capacity management tool on the 28th January, 2009. I'll be reviewing CIRBA 5.1, and here's why. As virtual infrastructure pervades the data centre, capacity planning--along with other management tasks--will rise in importance for maintaining cost-effective operations.
Panasonic Toughbook Laptops Undergo Makeover, Gain Intel Technology
Panasonic is adding new features and functionality to its line of rugged Toughbook laptops, designed for use in more strenuous environments. The Panasonic Toughbook 30 laptop and the Panasonic Toughbook 19 tablet notebook offer improved memory security and battery life.
Layoffs to Continue at IBM, Sources Say
IBM has laid off some 2,800 employees, with more to come, according to the Alliance@IBM organisation. Big Blue has had job cuts in both its Software Group and its sales and distribution group, with more to come in the company's Systems and Technology Group, sources said.
Court Rejects Intel’s Request for Delay in Antitrust Case
A European court rejects Intel's request to delay a hearing in front of the European Commission, Europe's main antitrust body. The case against Intel, still the world's largest producer of x86 processors for PCs and servers, dates back several months. The European Commission has charged Intel with paying PC retailers to not sell chips made by AMD. Intel has denied the charges and the company is considering its legal options.
Retailer Wireless Devices Largely Unprotected
A new survey shows 44 percent of the wireless devices used by retailers are vulnerable to attacks by data thieves. And that's the good news. A year ago, the same Motorola survey showed 85 percent of retailers were sitting targets for drive-by data attacks. New PCI standards phasing out Wireless Equivalent Protocol--the weakest form of encryption this side of no encryption at all--may hold the key to improved retailer wireless security.