http://www.comms-express.com/news/networking/ en-gb Sun, 14 Mar 2010 20:00:09 GMT Copyright: (C) Comms Express 2007 http://www.comms-express.com/images/logo.jpg http://www.comms-express.com/
It is the first time the company is bringing fibre cables above ground, and will be used to bring fast broadband to rural areas that can't currently access it.

The move comes after BT announced that it would allow other companies to have access to its infrastructure to lay down cables.

Neil Berkett, chief executive of Virgin Media, said: "This unique trial will allow us to understand the possibilities of aerial deployment and may provide an exciting new way to extend next-generation broadband services."

The government has recently confirmed its commitment to bringing 2Mbps broadband around the country by 2012, although the Conservatives have come out with even more ambitious plans of 100Mbps services by 2017.

Concerns had been raised, however, by farming associations, who are worried that rural areas may get left behind as towns and cities get faster speeds.

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The facility, located in Newport, is a 750,000 sq ft tier 3 data centre and has cost £200 million to complete, according to ITWales.

Owned and operated by Next Generation Data, it has triple-skipped walls, bomb-proof glass and is surrounded by prison grade perimeter fencing quipped with state of the art security.

Welsh Assembly government minister for science, innovation and skills Lesley Griffiths said: "For a highly respected company such as Next Generation Data to locate and develop this site here in Newport sends out a strong, clear message.

"Next Generation Data will provide opportunities for higher level skills, including the technician base required to ensure the company, and economy, remains competitive far into the future."

In related networking industry news, Facebook recently announced that it is to build a giant data centre in Oregon.

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Located in North Lanarkshire, the facility, proposed by the Gillespie Investments Group, will be built on a 66-hectare site, according to the Airdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser.

Planning officials had initially recommended that the application be turned down. However, local council members decided to go against this advice by a vote of 35 to 10.

Gillespie representative Dr David Telford said that it was especially important that the data centre is built at this location, right next to an energy from waste plant.

He said: "Some data centres use as much power as a large town and the market is looking for renewable energy - companies like Microsoft, Google and Facebook want to be seen to be green.

"The energy from waste plant is an absolutely key location and is intrinsic to being able to attract key players to the site."

In related networking industry news, another development that may help data centres go green is fuel cell technology, which is currently being tested by companies such as Google.

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A great contributory factor to this is that many organisations still rely on manual management of servers rather than using tools.

However, the majority of organisations did recognise that data centre automation could help to reduce costs.

Chris Ingle, associate vice president of consulting at IDC, said: "European organisations have moved on in their approach to managing their data centre, compared to when we last surveyed on this subject in 2006.

"In particular, virtualisation and automation have brought ways to reduce cost and free up resources. However, there is still considerable potential to reduce cost by improving management."

Other important networking industry news surrounding data centres has included the issue of making them greener and reducing the amount of energy needed to keep them cool.

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A recent report by Badenoch & Clark said there was an increasing demand for IT specialists, especially for in-house training.

Alex Farrell, managing director at the IT Job Board, said the number of jobs advertised on his website grew from 13,000 in December 2009 to 23,000 in February.

He added: "As we climb out of recession confidence has begun to grow, companies are starting to re-build for growth as opposed to just 'surviving'.

"The economic climate has resulted in a strategy shift for many businesses. IT is a pivotal structure within any organisation, it is the bedrock for business globally."

An increase in IT recruitment could also signal an increase in investment into IT, meaning there may be demand for more nework supplies.

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In a post on the Google App Engine Group, a representative explains what went wrong on February 24th, when services were affected for around two hours, a major story within networking industry news.

A power failure was the initial cause of the outage, although the company has admitted that "internal procedural issues" also had an impact on the recovery.

As a result, some Google App Engine services were "degraded", affecting some of the firm's cloud computing services.

The company said: "Although we had procedures ready for this sort of outage, the on call staff was unfamiliar with them and had not trained sufficiently with the specific recovery procedure for this type of failure."

The incident shows how important the integrity of data centres has become. With many businesses and individuals relying on cloud computing for their activities, any outages can potentially be extremely disruptive.

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Speaking at the Datacenter Dynamics conference in New York, Kevin Timmons, a data centre general manager for the company, outlined his vision for how the networking industry will look, according to Computerworld.

The company calls these self-contained units, featuring data racks and equipment, 'IT preassembled components' and has already started field-testing them.

Timmons said: "We want to view our data centres as more of a traditional manufacturing supply chain, instead of monolithic builds.

"It won't all be built on-site in one shot."

Containers with pre-fabricated data centres are already available on the market with companies including IBM and HP providing the service.

One of the advantages is that they are portable and easy to put into place, meaning a business can have expanded networking facilities very quickly and easily.

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The eX5 servers will become available later this month, although they were shown on Monday (March 1st) at the CeBIT trade show in Germany.

The company claims that, through integration with it middleware, the new servers are able to cut storage costs by 97 per cent and licensing fees by 50 per cent.

Interactive marketing company Acxiom Corp has already tried the new servers, which offer six times the memory scalability of current systems, and has already seen an impact.

David Guzman, chief information officer at the organisation, said: "We’ve been able to double our virtualization capacity, dropping our software licensing costs.

"Moreover, there is a positive impact on all of the other key components of IT cost - space, power, labor, maintenance."

IBM recently announced the Power7 processors, a new range of server chips that use less energy than their Power6 predecessors, helping server racks become greener.

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The CSA was founded at the end of 2008 to promote research into better security for cloud computing and to provide a communication line between providers and consumers to discuss security requirements.

Announcing the networking industry news, Google said that it would sponsor some of the CSA's events while also participating in panel discussions.

Adam Swidler, a member of the Google Enterprise Marketing team, said: "The CSA's focus on security best practices offers valuable information to organizations looking to move to the cloud, and as a member of the CSA, we look forward to providing ongoing education about cloud computing and its value to the organizations that use it."

Current corporate members of the CSA include Microsoft, Cisco, Dell and Hewlett Packard while affiliate members include the Open Grid Forum and Distributed Management Task Force.

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Bloom Industries has recently unveiled a new product which it claims will be in houses within the next seven years.

A number of companies, including Google, have tested the fuel cell boxes in their data centres and they have already reported savings.

According to CNet, Larry Page, co-founder of Google, said: "I'd love to see us having a whole data centre running on this at some point - when they're ready."

Of course, it is well known that data centres are a large consumers of energy, mainly because of the cooling systems in place to prevent the server racks from overheating.

Google recently proposed building offshore data centres that would take advantage of the waves to produce energy, with seawater used to keep it cool.

An offshore data centre would also have the added benefit of not being subject to any property taxes, a great cost to companies that operate large facilities on land.

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However, unlike the services given to these other companies, including the Post Office, the server racks hosting federal services will be housed in separate facilities.

This is mainly because of the security issues that still surround cloud computing, although Ron Markezich, corporate vice president of Microsoft, was keen to tell CNET that there will be no risk.

"No one else provides this [high level of security] for the public sector," he told the website. "We've raised the bar with regard with security and privacy."

Google's Analytics service was recently added to the list of recommended services for federal agencies and departments in the US as it tries to drive forward cloud computing to cut costs and increase scalability.

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In a talk entitled 'Is Data Centre Security Obscured by the Cloud?' Trevor Dearing, head of enterprise marketing for Juniper Networks in Europe Middle-East and Africa, outlined his concerns about protecting data.

He said: "There is a danger we could end up with a really good server infrastructure, but without the necessary network security to support that.

"It's a lot like dropping a great engine into an old car. If you don't fix the tyres and the suspension you're going to run into a ditch."

Security is already an issue for many businesses with Symantec estimating that 75 per cent of organisations have experienced cyber attacks in the past 12 months.

In related networking news, Cisco recently announced that it would be partnering with VMware and NetApp to establish the Secure Multitenancy Design Architecture, aimed at keeping data from different clients separated within a data centre.

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With 82 per cent of enterprises considering using virtual machines in 2010 - according to a survey by Symantec - there will be pressure to meet an increased demand.

Alec Selvon-Bruce, an eco-solutions champion for Hitachi Data Systems, believes solutions need to be found to supply the capacity for cloud computing.

He said: "Even before the credit crunch it was looking a bit suspect as to whether we could service the supply. We're actually in flux about how we supply data centres to meet the needs of the UK."

Mr Selvon added that the outlook was similar around the world with demand growing by 40 per cent while supply only grew by six per cent

The increasing popularity of cloud computing was shown by the recent networking industry news concerning the government's intention to consolidate hundreds of data centres around this country into a dozen that will host services on the cloud.

It is expected to save £300 million a year, partly from a 75 per cent reduction in power and cooling requirements.

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After a power outage, one of the large air conditioning units failed to start up when the backup power kicked in, meaning the data racks quickly overheated.

In a statement on the company's blog, Andres Sehr said: "Heat is a major issue in large data centres and without this cooling unit the temperature rose very quickly and our servers shut down to protect themselves from over heating."

The issue of cooling data centres has become an important one over the last few years both because of the huge costs involved and also because of the environmental impact.

With the growth of media services and cloud computing, both requiring high amounts of data storage, large companies are having to find solutions to alleviate the problems.

Among the proposed ideas from Google is to have an offshore data centre that would be cooled by water and which would also generate its own power from waves. It would also cut down on real estate costs.

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Due to the size of the Indian market, the upcoming auction has emerged as one of the hottest networking industry news topics of recent months.

Now, on the back of a number of delays caused by issues flagged up by the country's Defence Ministry, which owns a significant proportion of the 3G telecoms spectrum, the government has announced that notices inviting prospective bidders to express their interest in the auction process will be sent out in the next few days.

However, telecoms minister Adimuthu Roy was quoted by Reuters as playing down hopes that the auction will definitely be conducted over the course of the next financial year, which begins in April, despite the government having reportedly set aside money from its budget to oversee the auction process.

Earlier this month, the latest figures from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) in the United States revealed that as many as three in ten American households do not have access to the internet.

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Under the terms of the planned deal, Orange, which is owned by France Telecom, and T-Mobile, which has Deutsche Telekom as its parent company, are to come together to create the UK's largest mobile telecoms operator.

And, while some opponents of the proposals have argued that such a merger could stifle competition within the UK telecoms industry, it is believed that both the Office of Fair Trading and the sector watchdog Ofgem have recommended that the European Commission give the plans its official approval.

However, it is not yet been confirmed what, if any, concessions the EC will call for, with both Orange and T-Mobile having previously offered to give up some of their networking industry presence, including 25 per cent of their UK bandwidth holdings in order to be allowed to merge, though it is expected that the two brands will both be retained.

Just last week, Google was given the green light by the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to begin trading power from its data centres.

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Some $250 million has been set aside to support the federal government's National Broadband Network.

Under its Regional Backbone Blackspot Program, five separate routes in Australia will benefit from the development, supporting thousands of people living Queensland and the Northern Territory.

Communications minister Stephen Conroy said: "Backbone infrastructure provides the communication links that connect our towns, cities and rural areas to each other and the world.

"One of the biggest obstacles for fast broadband in Mount Isa has been the lack of competitive fibre optic backbone services."

Mount Isa is the midway point along the longest of the stretches between Darwin and Toowoomba, while construction of the whole project is estimated to take 18 months.

Meanwhile, it was recently announced that a fibre networking cable running under the sea could potentially link Iraq to rest of the Gulf region and then the rest of the world.

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Having applied before Christmas for permission from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, it has now received the go-ahead, meaning that it could potentially supply energy to homes in the future.

Although it is not yet clear exactly why the networking giant chose to apply for the right, it has been speculated that it is a way of cutting costs, and Google says it will help it stay green.

Recent networking industry news around data centres has revolved largely around efforts to cut down on power usage and improve cooling efficiency.

HP recently announced that its new data centre in the north-east of England would use wind to keep it cool, while Bristol Council has opened a new data centre that is cooled by water from a nearby moat.

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The 180,000 sq ft facility was opened in a ceremony attended by Yahoo founder Jerry Yang and local politicians.

The opening is just the first phase of development, with two further phases to come, meaning the centre is at less than half capacity at the moment.

Server racks in the facility will eventually house 100,000 servers, to be looked over by 50 staff. As part of the deal to build it, Yahoo has also constructed an additional data and call centre, creating another 200 jobs.

A number of the internet's biggest names have recently announced or completed construction of important data centres.

Facebook revealed that it will be building its own facility in Oregon while HP will be opening a data centre in the north-east of England.

More giant data centres can be expected to be built over the coming years as the popularity of cloud computing, where masses of information and services are stored centrally, becomes more popular.

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Known as the Three Ring Binder project, the newly-formed Maine Fiber Company will have the responsibility of ensuring that all the construction and maintenance work runs smoothly.

It is expected that 38 government facilities, 600 community establishments and 110,000 households will benefit from the developments in rural Maine, with $25.4 million in funding coming from the US Department of Commerce.

Investor Robert Monks said: "Maine Fiber Company's Three Ring Binder will deliver high speed broadband access and economic opportunity to the areas in Maine that have been waiting and deserve it most."

Work is expected to begin on the project in the spring, with the project aimed at making broadband available to those currently unable to go online.

Fibre optic broadband is the fastest of its kind available and has been designed to send large quantities of data to various locations at the speed of light.

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