INSIDE
ISSUE 4 | JANUARY 2019
AMAZON SCRAPS ‘SEXIST AI’ RECRUITMENT TOOL AI GONE AWRY, PAGE 22
CABLING THE EFFECTS OF IOT ON CABLING
MEET ME ROOM THE FLIP SIDE OF THE DATA COIN
CENTRE OF ATTENTION RITTAL TALKS ABOUT TURNING THE CLOUD ON ITS HEAD
Energy and power monitoring solutions for data centres
ET272 Self-addressing energy transducer
WM50 + TCD12 Modular main and sub metering for PDUs
DEA71 / DEB71 Earth leakage monitoring relays
Carlo Gavazzi UK Ltd. - 4.4 Frimley Business Park, Frimley, Camberley, Surrey GU16 7SG Tel: 01276 854 110 - www.carlogavazzi.co.uk
JANUARY 2019
CONTENTS
IN THIS ISSUE… 4 REGULARS
FEATURES
4 EDITORIAL
22 AI GONE AWRY
A data dilemma and a utopian dream
6 INDUSTRY NEWS
From data-over-sound technology to CES, 2019 is off to a busy start
14 CENTRE OF ATTENTION
Jeff Veis of Actian discusses how, by adopting an operational warehouse, businesses can gain a new level of insight while harnessing their existing data lake
18 MEET ME ROOM
DCNN talks to Chris Cook of Delphix about everything from ‘true market disruption’ on the horizon to escaping reality with Coelho’s The Alchemist
48 PROJECTS & AGREEMENTS A new AI research project led by Queen Mary University of London sets to revolutionise the way historical sources are analysed
The latest news of where AI has gone amiss; exploring ideas, and, if this is what AI is capable of now, what does the future hold
28 OPINION
Thomas Harrer of IBM Systems Europe explains how innovation and processing power must come hand-in-hand
18
34 OPINION
Rittal clarifies the merits of edge computing and explains how changing requirements in IT infrastructure will impact the cloud
40 OPINION
Duncan Ellis of Wave2Wave Solutions explains why network automation of the physical layer is a top priority for 2019
28 34
54 COMPANY SHOWCASE
Zadara announces a virtual private storage array for VMware cloud on AWS
SPECIAL FEATURE
44
CABLING
44 ARE YOU READY?
Dr. Thomas Wellinger of R&M discusses the rise of the IoT and what ongoing effects this is having on cabling
January 2019 | 3
EDITOR’S NOTE
EDITOR Jessica Foreman JESSICA@ALLTHINGSMEDIALTD.COM
SALES DIRECTOR Ian Kitchener – 01634 673163 IAN@ALLTHINGSMEDIALTD.COM
STUDIO MANAGER Ben Bristow – 01634 673163 BEN@ALLTHINGSMEDIALTD.COM
EDITORIAL COORDINATOR Jordan O’Brien – 01634 673163 JORDAN@ALLTHINGSMEDIALTD.COM
DESIGNER Jon Appleton JON@ALLTHINGSMEDIALTD.COM
BUSINESS SUPPORT ADMINISTRATOR Carol Gylby – 01634 673163 CAROL@ALLTHINGSMEDIALTD.COM
MANAGING DIRECTOR David Kitchener – 01634 673163 DAVID@ALLTHINGSMEDIALTD.COM
ACCOUNTS 01634 673163 SUSAN@ALLTHINGSMEDIALTD.COM
A UTO
A
nd this is how it starts… With Christmas now feeling like a distant memory and as the real test of keeping any New Year’s resolutions sets in, we enter into 2019 just as we have any other year; hoping that it will bring prosperity, success, and hopefully the long-anticipated arrival of 5G. Between the threat of a data dilemma that a no-deal Brexit poses and a wealth of innovations from CES, 2019 is already off to a busy start.
THE DATA DILEMMA
Suite 14, 6-8 Revenge Road, Lordswood, Kent ME5 8UD T: +44 (0)1634 673163 F: +44 (0)1634 673173 The editor and publishers do not necessarily agree with the views expressed by contributors, nor do they accept responsibility for any errors in the transmission of the subject matter in this publication. In all matters the editor’s decision is final. Editorial contributions to Data Centre & Network News are welcomed, and the editor reserves the right to alter or abridge text prior to publication. 4 | October 2018
October 2018 | 4
© Copyright 2019. All rights reserved.
The prospect of a no-deal Brexit is understandably unnerving many UK businesses, especially those that use EU-based data centres or rely on the free flow of data – which, let’s be honest, is most. Speaking about the severity of a no-deal Brexit, should it happen, Chris Combermale, CEO of the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) affirms, “A no-deal Brexit would create severe uncertainty for the data and
EDITOR’S NOTE
A DATA DILEMMA &
OPIAN DREAM marketing sector and could potentially bring EU-to-UK data flows to a halt. This would have further knock-on effects on the UK public, with jobs moving to the EU and investment also decreasing.” In the coming days the major priority of the UK Government will be to ensure that the UK has enough time to secure adequacy status – preventing any potential disruptions to the free flow of data.
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE SEMANTIC WEB? On a slightly cheerier and thought-provoking note, let’s take a moment to talk about Tim Berners-Lee, for without him where would we be now? Would the worry of what a no-deal Brexit means for data still exist? Since its introduction, the web very quickly became the world’s best means for sharing information. In 2001, Berners-Lee published an article in Scientific American promising that the web would evolve to encompass not just documents but every type of data imaginable – he called this new web the semantic web.
The promise was that pages on the web would become ‘meaningful’ to software programs – they would have semantics; allowing programs to interact with the web in the same way humans do – machines talking to one another without having to be engineered to. It’s now 2019, and the semantic web has largely fallen out of favour. That’s because the new hot technology that is receiving all the attention is AI, and it promises many of the functions that were heralded by the semantic web. Now, instead of rewriting the web to help computers understand, we’re building computers that are smart enough to read the web as it’s already written. That’s not to say that the semantic web no longer has a place in the world, but it will need to work in harmony with AI in order to retain relevance. If you have any suggestions whether that be submitting an expert comment for the new column, or would like to write on key topics, please email: jessica@allthingsmedialtd.com
january 2010 | 5
INDUSTRY NEWS
CES 2019: AUTOTALKS C-V2X CAPABILITIES Autotalks, a vehicle-to-everything (V2X) chipset market pioneer solutions has been selected by HARMAN International, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., focused on connected technologies for automotive, consumer and enterprise markets, to provide the V2X chipset for its telematics platform which was showcased at CES 2019. Autotalks’ second generation chipsets, which were selected, are mass-market ready and support both DSRC and C-V2X direct communications (PC5 protocol). At CES HARMAN showcased its telematics platform with C-V2X capabilities. The live demonstration showed a vehicle communicating with a motorcycle using C-V2X direct communications, where the Autotalks chipset is used in both. Harman’s solution consists of a modular TCU (Telematics Control Unit) accommodating a cellular NAD (Network Access Device) side by side Autotalks’ second generation chipset providing C-V2X capabilities. Autotalks C-V2X capabilities consist of a 3GPP compliant PC5 modem, with dual antenna and diversity for both transmission and reception, as well as an optimised closed-loop remote antenna solution for the highest radio performance. “Autotalks is proud to work with HARMAN on their TCU with our secure and deployment ready C-V2X solution,” said Hagai Zyss, CEO of Autotalks. “We are excited to have our chipset inside HARMAN’s telematics platform and to demonstrate the flexibility and maturity of our global V2X solution which has been chosen for series production by leading automakers.” “Together with HARMAN, we will achieve deployment readiness before the mass-commercialisation of C-V2X in China and elsewhere.” added Zyss. AUTOTALKS, AUTO-TALKS.COM
6 | January 2019
BEYOND THE Digital Barriers, a provider of edge-intelligent video solutions to security and defence organisations worldwide, and Cloudview, a visual data specialist whose cloud service provides a secure platform for the storage and management of video from unlimited numbers of cameras, have announced the world’s first fully integrated visual IoT (VIoT) platform. The platform is said to combine ultra-low bandwidth secure live streaming with a fully scalable, resilient, easy to deploy cloud platform, in the form of EdgeVis from Digital Barriers and Cloudview’s Visual Data Platform. When connected to one or many CCTV, body worn or mobile cameras, the new VIoT platform promises to massively reduce the size of the data transmitted, while analytics will generate new insights into what is happening at a particular location; why it is happening, and what might happen next. The results are encrypted and sent to a secure cloud infrastructure, which consolidates, stores and manages visual data from multiple sources. This data can then be securely accessed by any authorised user from any device and any location. The platform targets a video analytics market that will see a compound annual growth rate of more than 50% over the next five years, according to McKinsey, and a seven-fold increase in video surveillance internet traffic, according to Cisco.
INDUSTRY NEWS
AI IMPROVES QUALITY OF ELDERLY CARE
CLOUD Beyond surveillance, the new VIoT platform will be developed to access a broader range of Visual IoT solutions, including smart city, healthcare, automotive and industrial applications. “Sight is our most powerful sense and by adding it to the IoT, we open a huge range of possibilities,” explained Cloudview CEO and co-founder James Wickes. “With Cloudview, there’s no need for the expense and disruption caused by the wholesale replacement of legacy infrastructure. Our partnership with Digital Barriers means we can now deliver our service using much less bandwidth, as well as providing edge analytics that will speed up the provision of critical information by reducing the need for constant human intervention to manually find and analyse it.” “We have proven that our video streaming is more efficient and cost-effective than any other on the market,” added Zak Doffman, Digital Barriers CEO. “We have combined edge analytics and live streaming as a real-time game changer. Until now it has not been available with a fully integrated backend. Now this joint offering resolves that. This is completely unique on the market: AI-based capture and analysis of video at the edge, lowbandwidth streaming of video to the cloud, plugging into the exponential growth in cloud, AI and IoT.”
During his inauguration address professor Cees Snoek of intelligent sensory information systems at the University of Amsterdam’s Faculty of Science, gave a preview of the world’s first body language recognition software. The software is being developed at Kepler Vision Technologies, a university spin-off company. The software is said to ‘look’ into videos and recognise a human’s body language, body poses and actions. Examples are if a patient drinks enough, gets dressed, gets upset, or is lying on the couch versus lying on the floor. The software has been developed in response to our ageing population, our desire to live independent as long as possible, all under the constraints of a shrinking care givers workforce. “Video intelligence is a rapidly evolving field that operates at the cross-roads of computer vision, deep learning and artificial intelligence. In the not so far away future, video intelligence will automatically interpret any video stream that is recorded, much better and much faster than humans do,” said Cees Snoek. “There are numerous applications where this completely new technology will have impact, ranging from security to retail,” added Dr. Harro Stokman, Kepler’s CEO. However, we focus on the people who need attention and support the most: our grandparents living at elderly care centres or living all alone.” KEPLER VISION TECHNOLOGIES, KEPLERVISION.EU
DIGITAL BARRIERS, DIGITALBARRIERS.COM; CLOUDVIEW, CLOUDVIEW.CO
January 2019 | 7
INDUSTRY NEWS
AI REVEALS THE CURRENT CROP OF MEGA TRENDS AMPLYFI, global business intelligence and research firm, has applied its leading AI-based technology, DataVoyant, to identify and statistically quantify mega technology trends out to 2050 across a range of industries and sectors. In finding, harvesting, and reading over 1,000,000 open-source documents, such as academic papers, patents, journals, news items and government white papers – located on both the surface and the deep web – the machine-driven analysis projects likely future trends and timescales to next expected peaks in technologies’ maturities. Of the 2,639 broad themes identified, the top mega tech trends and where they are likely to really start
impacting our everyday lives are readily identified. The company identified the top technologies to watch out for in 2019 to be; artificial intelligence, the IoT, and distributed ledger technologies. Looking beyond this, the realms of energy, mobility, medicine, and our domestic lives appear strong candidates for technology-led disruption on multiple fronts. The process of generating the projections required DataVoyant’s proprietary AI algorithms to first identify key technologies and quantify their relevance based on a number of factors, including frequency, inter-connectivity to related topics, and importance within each document that they feature
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INDUSTRY NEWS
2019
Next 5 Years
5 to 10 Years
Beyond 10 Years
AI data collection and analysis
Graphene-based TVs
Solid State Batteries
Implantable Biofuel Cells
3D Printers in Manufacturing
Energy Harvesting Wearable
High Temperature Super
Fully Autonomous Cars
Technologies
Conductors
Growth in Connected Devices
Robotic Process Automation
AI-driven Medical Diagnosis
Smart Cities
Distributed Ledger Technologies
Universal Personalised Digital
Bio-printed Organ Transplants
Cybernetic Technologies
to Improve Digital Security
Assistants
Voice-first Machine Interaction
Remote Patient Monitoring
Personalised Medicine
Quantum Computing
PROJECTED MEGA TECH TRENDS
convergence between innovative technologies and business models, as well as track the development of enabling technologies that will ultimately underpin future phenomena such as smart cities. Crucially, the machine is able to simultaneously monitor all of this globally, continuously tracking whether context changes sufficiently to materially alter its projections.” “In a world where there are more questions than answers, we believe it is better to base business decisions from a position of informed knowledge than from mere opinion. AMPLYFI’s business intelligence platforms, driven by AI and machine learning technology, enable our clients to unlock the entire internet for themselves, both the surface and deep web, in order to generate insights that their competitors are not seeing and to provide quantifiable windows into the future.” AMPLYFI, AMPLYFIGROUP.COM
Stand: D610
in. Extracting date stamps from websites and from within documents, the machine then automatically generated historic trends for each technology. From here, deep learning algorithms enabled the machine to learn the ‘historic context’ i.e. the changing interconnectedness and dependencies across hundreds of thousands of variables to create a basis to project forward into the future. Chris Ganje, CEO and co-founder of AMPLYFI commented, “The power of AI to capture, analyse, and make sense of huge datasets is enabling levels of insight that were previously impossible under traditional business intelligence and research techniques. Our analysis of mega tech trends is just one example of where AI can either affirm or challenge the opinions and perceived wisdom of a minority of often highly influential commentators. The richness and detail lying behind the results allow us to spot early-stage
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INDUSTRY NEWS
AI AND CLOUD SERVICES AMONG THE MOST DESIRED TECHNOLOGY BY BRITISH EMPLOYEES Technology has reshaped the way in which organisations run their business. Different technology has enabled organisations to streamline and improve various aspects of their operations and functions. Employees have also benefited massively, as they have been able to use technology to make processes within their job role easier and less time-consuming. Interested in modern work practices, training and qualification provider The Knowledge Academy analysed the latest findings from business software and services firm Advanced, who surveyed over 1,000 UK employees in professional occupations to discover the technology they would most like to see in their daily working life. The Knowledge Academy found that cloud services (35%), whereby users can remotely access software and applications stored on secure servers and networks managed by an external cloud computing host, as one of the two technology resources British employees would most like to use in their everyday working routine. The other technology highly desired by UK professionals is artificial intelligence (AI) at 35%. Perhaps unsurprising, as AI driven programmes have the capabilities
10 | January 2019
to sift through huge amounts of information and data to harvest valuable insights in a much quicker and accurate manner compared to human efforts. Interestingly, 31% are keen to utilise predictive analytics techniques such as data mining and machine learning, to analyse historical information/data to predict what might happen in the future. For instance, individuals could apply the relevant principles and methods from predictive analytics to assess the varying impact each potential final Brexit deal could have on their organisations long-term success and sustainability. Contrastingly, augmented reality (AR) ranked as the least appealing technology – with only 17% of employees wanting to harness it in their job each day. Slightly above, 18% are happy for robots (i.e. configured software) to automate the tasks and responsibilities they believe are mundane (known as robotic process automation). From the report by Advanced, the Knowledge Academy also illustrated some of the most notable opinions UK businesses and employees have on technology in the working environment. It revealed that 65% of workers are willing to work alongside robotic technology, if it led to the reduction of manual processes. Additionally, 34% of British employees would consider a robot with the right business intelligence, to be better at decision making than their respective boss/ bosses or senior management.
Looking forward, 52% of UK businesses have commendably made technology a spending priority in 2019. Joseph Scott, a spokesperson from the The Knowledge Academy commented, “Technology has become an integral part of the working world. It has allowed individuals to become more efficient in the way they conduct their professional tasks and responsibilities. As various technology develops, it will undoubtedly capture the attention of employees seeking to utilise the tools that will allow them to become more proficient at their job. This research certainly highlights the current technology which is creating the biggest impression on British employees to regularly assist them in their working life”. THE KNOWLEDGE ACADEMY, THEKNOWLEDGEACADEMY.COM; ADVANCED, ONEADVANCED.COM
INDUSTRY NEWS
CHIRP DELIVERS SEAMLESS TICKET AUTHENTICATION USING SOUND Chirp, the developers in data-oversound technology has announced that it has partnered with OurBus, a New York-based tech company specialising in intercity and crowdsourced bus routes, to improve its ticket authentication process and deliver a seamless customer experience. Chirp sends and receives data via sound, using nothing but a device’s existing speaker and microphone. Information is converted to an audio signal, received by any device within hearing range, and then converted back to the original data. The partnership promises to see Chirp integrate its data-oversound technology into OurBus’ iOS and Android apps and e-tickets emailed to the users, to fully automate the ticket authentication process and allow passengers to board more quickly. To successfully authenticate tickets, a basic mobile device located close to the driver will listen when a bus arrives at a stop.
Using OurBus on their device to show their ticket, the rider will then send their ticket data via a Chirp, which the driver’s device will then hear, authenticate the ticket and subsequently allow the passenger to board. This process hopes this will result in a quicker onboarding time for OurBus’ passengers and allow them to have a more consistent and efficient service, with less time spent at each pick-up location. In additional to improved boarding speed, Chirp says it will also add another layer of security to the OurBus ticketing process. Because individual Chirps are dynamically generated, tickets will be impossible to counterfeit and will enable true authentication for each ticket. The interaction time is also considerably quicker than QR codes, as it doesn’t require the screen to be aligned with the driver’s camera. Commenting on the partnership, James Nesfield, CEO of Chirp said, “The global transport industry faces ever-growing demands
amongst consumers to reduce journey times and make their travels as easy as possible. Our dataover-sound solutions will provide OurBus with the level of technology required to remove friction from the ticket checking process, with authentication from even the most basic mobile devices. We are excited to extend data-over-sound’s footprint across the transport sector and help OurBus to deliver a quality service for their customers.” “At OurBus, constantly improving our service to deliver an excellent customer journey is at the heart of what we do. Partnering with Chirp will allow us to offer a seamless onboarding process for customers and reduce the time spent on ticketing and boarding for the drivers. We look forward to working with Chirp to take the next steps towards an even faster and reliable service for our customers”, commented Mohit Mohan, CTO at OurBus. CHIRP, CHIRP.IO
January 2019 | 11
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CENTRE OF ATTENTION: OPERATIONAL DATA WAREHOUSES
TO FULLY APPRECIATE THE EXTENT OF THE DATA DELUGE, JEFF VEIS, CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER OF ACTIAN DISCUSSES HOW, BY ADOPTING AN OPERATIONAL WAREHOUSE, BUSINESSES CAN GAIN A NEW LEVEL OF INSIGHT WHILE HARNESSING THEIR EXISTING DATA LAKE INVESTEMENT.
THE EMERGENCE OF
OPERATION DATA WARE 12 | January 2019
I
CENTRE OF ATTENTION: OPERATIONAL DATA WAREHOUSES
T’s history is anchored in how data is created and stored. In the early days, data was seen as a virtual ‘exhaust’ that enterprise applications spit out after a business transaction occurred. Occasionally organisations would create standardised reporting from this application data, such as supply chain levels or new customer wins.
As more business processes became digital, the amount of data available increased exponentially and things got a bit more complicated. Instead of coming from one or two sources, data started emerging from multiple sources – and often across different formats, from different locations and at different times. Also, the user communities tapping into
ONAL REHOUSES
January 2019 | 13
CENTRE OF ATTENTION: OPERATIONAL DATA WAREHOUSES
data grew more diverse in their makeup and needs. A recent IDC study forecasts that by 2025 global data will grow to 163 zettabytes – that’s 163 trillion gigabytes. As the amount of data grows, businesses are seeing the need to find ways to extract value from different combinations and patterns. We increasingly see organisational departments, often without IT involvement, facilitating their own analysis and reporting by acquiring self-service analytic or visualisation SaaS tools. However, when it comes to leveraging data, success doesn’t solely rest on the quantity you have, but the quality of actionable insights you can pull from it – a much more complex and complicated process than simply collecting reams of data. The enterprise data warehouse (EDW) was born as a solution to this complexity. At first, the promise was compelling – a reliable, single source of truth that would deliver consistent, up-to-date data businesses could analyse and leverage for insight into how to optimally run their business. Traditional EDWs quickly showed their shortcomings, however, in terms of cost, scale and flexibility, spurring new forms of solutions to appear on the market including data marts, specialised appliances and, lately, pure cloud data warehouses. While each solution has its advantages, they often are not up to the task of handling the combination of demands and data volumes for today’s digital business – often falling short in deployment flexibility, real-time data, high query performance, predictable levels of concurrency, cost effective development and deployment cycles. The arrival of Big Data brought the ability to utilise a new generation of software – the infamous open source Hadoop stack. Companies could now supposedly do for themselves in their own data centres what Yahoo and others had
14 | January 2019
done. It brought the promise of unbounded scale and insight at little cost, but today, most who have built out a data lake, have met some variation of disappointment and disillusionment. Many Hadoop data lakes are complex and unpredictable resulting in unexpected support demands and unreliable query performance. This has led organisations to turn more focus onto ODWs and their benefits. ODWs are fast, scalable and flexible solutions that enable companies to address the need for operational analytics – namely, delivering data insights in the business moment while eliminating many pitfalls traditional EDWs and/or pure cloud data warehouses often suffer. ODWs combine the economies of Hadoop powered data lakes running on commodity hardware or the cloud with the predictable, linear scale performance and security of enterprise grade data warehouses. Five key capabilities of an ODW are:
CENTRE OF ATTENTION: OPERATIONAL DATA WAREHOUSES
“WHEN IT COMES TO LEVERAGING DATA, SUCCESS DOESN’T SOLELY REST ON THE QUANTITY YOU HAVE, BUT THE QUALITY OF ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS YOU CAN PULL FROM IT – A MUCH MORE COMPLEX AND COMPLICATED PROCESS THAN SIMPLY COLLECTING REAMS OF DATA.”
1 WHAT’S AN OPERATIONAL DATA WAREHOUSE AND WHY DOES IT MATTER?
FRESH DATA
The demand for organisations to operate in real-time or in the business moment continues increasing, and data ages fast. Sometimes data that’s an hour old may already be irrelevant depending on the velocity and dynamic nature of a business – like online retail or financial services. Unfortunately, SQL Hadoop databases commonly fail to handle continuous streams of updates, as the Hadoop file system was originally optimised only for infrequent batch updates. This drastically slows overall performance and access to current data, causing businesses to fail in responding to emerging threats and opportunities in a timely manner, losing them the competitive edge. ODWs collect and deliver transactional data, in real-time, from various 24/7 sources that track activities like sensors, devices and mobile applications.
2
FAST, PURE AND SIMPLE
Built on an underlying architecture that is optimised for analytic query performance, ODWs require little or no tuning in anticipation of certain workloads – eliminating the need to pre-index or aggregate data in advance. Additionally, it can manage data in realtime and gather information to influence when and how a business engages with customers, stakeholders, users, and more.
3
SCALABLE AND SECURE
The ODW architecture delivers scale without sacrificing performance, while intrinsically supporting security features such as column level encryption. It scales to large data capacities, through an economical and flexible storage layer, while connecting to a variety of existing legacy and new sources of data. To meet enterprise security requirements and comply with industry standards and regulatory requirements, ODWs also offer multiple data protection mechanisms.
4 5
RUNS WHAT YOU HAVE AND WHAT YOU KNOW
A well designed ODW can run your existing SQL queries, unchanged, in a scalable, predictable manner regardless of data store size, location or format.
HYBRID BY DESIGN
With flexible deployment options from on-premises to multi-cloud, ODWs also guarantee enterpriselevel resiliency and manageability. Using the most current operational data, ODWs provide a database system that delivers near real-time insights for ad-hoc self-service data discovery and analytics. Businesses can get the scale and economics of a data lake, leverage their existing Hadoop data store, and consume data how, when and wherever they want it – all with the data integrity, security and concurrency support of a traditional data warehouse. An ODW lets businesses activate their data in new ways, propelling the future of how they operate and grow. » ACTIAN, ACTIAN.COM
January 2019 | 15
MEET ME ROOM: CHRIS COOK
BUILT ON
FROM ‘TRUE MARKET DISRUPTION’ ON THE HORIZON IN THE FORM OF DATA TO ESCAPING REALITY W
W involved in the industry?
16 | January 2019
hat were you doing before you joined Delphix and how did you first get
Having worked in the technology industry for more than 30 years, I’ve always believed in its power to make a positive impact on society. I love building and scaling companies around technologies that make a profound impact on the way we live and the people I’m working with.
MEET ME ROOM: CHRIS COOK
ON DATA
WITH COEHLO’S THE ALCHEMIST, CHRIS COOK, CEO OF DELPHIX, TAKES ON DCNN’S MEET ME ROOM.
Prior to joining Delphix, I served as president and chief operating officer of New Relic, a hypergrowth software analytics company credited with building the ‘Data Nerd’ culture. During my tenure, I worked closely with our founder, Lew Cirne, to scale operations, product development and
sales, ultimately leading New Relic to a successful IPO in 2014. Before New Relic, I spent four years as corporate senior vice president and general manager of CA Technologies’ application performance management division and held sales leadership positions at IBM, Quest Software and BMC Software.
January 2019 | 17
MEET ME ROOM: CHRIS COOK
‘WHEN YOU REALLY WANT SOMETHING, THE UNIVERSE ALWAYS CONSPIRES IN YOUR FAVOUR.’ – THE ALCHEMIST.
18 | January 2019
What are the biggest changes you have seen in the data/comms industry? Today, it’s no secret that every company is a data company. Whether you are a car manufacturer or a restaurant owner, data has become the foundation upon which every business is built, no matter the industry. Used properly, data has the power to transform us and everything around us. The rise of companies like Google, Apple, Facebook, and other internet tech giants have changed the game. They use data to deliver hundreds of new features to users each day. And, as market-leading enterprises learn to harness the power of data and move at this accelerated pace, we’ll start to see what true ‘market disruption’ looks like.
What is the main motivation in the work that you do? I look forward to my Mondays! I get to work with 400 of the brightest minds in tech, each of whom enjoy the challenge of building and growing the burgeoning DataOps category. Building a category like DataOps requires a lot of creativity and curiosity, and I relish seeing those qualities in play, every day. This team supports over 300 of the largest and most valuable brands in the world, helping them to use data to move fast and delight customers in new ways. It’s very exciting to see what they can do when the friction around data is eliminated.
MEET ME ROOM: CHRIS COOK
Are there any changes in laws or regulations that you would like to see that you think would make your job easier? Data is very powerful, and like all powerful things, there can be great benefit; but there’s always a flip side of the coin. It seems like a company is hacked, exposing sensitive and personal data almost every week. As data continues to grow in size and complexity, this situation is only going to get worse. Recent governmental regulations – such as GDPR and new bills in California and Australia – that force companies to take data privacy more seriously are a welcome move. Hopefully, through more widespread education by lawmakers and society at large, will we start to see less of our personal information stolen and fewer headlines detailing data breaches. Which major issues do you see dominating the data/comms industry over the next 12 months? As a result of today’s ‘threat landscape’, we’re starting to see an increasing lack of trust from consumers who will be increasingly hesitant to freely provide personal data to companies. In hopes of gaining greater control over user data, established brands will implement policies that restrict access to data, inhibiting its flow across the organisation. As a result, these companies will be unable to innovate at the pace required to win in today’s digital economy. This unintended consequence is truly unfortunate, and also unnecessary. Rapid innovation, open access to data and security of that data can all coexist.
“DATA IS VERY POWERFUL, AND LIKE ALL POWERFUL THINGS, THERE CAN BE GREAT BENEFIT; BUT THERE’S ALWAYS A FLIP SIDE OF THE COIN.”
Can you tell us about any projects you are currently working on? We are always looking to extend the capabilities of our platform in new ways, building in more robust data security features that will help companies move fast at much less risk. We recently announced an exciting new integration with Splunk and the launch of DataOps.io with some of our partners in the DataOps ecosystem. This ecosystem is rapidly maturing, and we continue to extend our platform to embrace other members of that ecosystem. What are your company’s aims for the next 12 months? We support hybrid cloud environments for our customers and will be working more closely with AWS, Microsoft and other key players in this space to help companies move and migrate data to the cloud and innovate faster, cheaper and at a higher quality. As companies gain agility through the cloud, the need for fast, secure and agile data intensifies, highlighting the need for Delphix. We’ll be making a splash at this year’s AWS re:Invent, where we’ll showcase our long-standing relationship with AWS with exciting new solutions. If you could possess one super-human power, what would it be and why? The ability to fly. I love looking out the window of an airplane, and would love to have that ability. Favourite: Book? Film? TV show? Singer/band? The Alchemist and Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. If you could invite three guests, dead or alive, from history to dinner, who would they be and why? Galileo, Edison and Elon Musk – the greatest innovative minds in history. What is the best piece of advice you have ever been given? Never stop learning…
January 2019 | 19
AI GONE AWRY: ‘SEXIST’ AI RECRUITMENT TOOL
‘SEXIST’ AI RECRUITMEN TOOL WELCOME TO THE NEW ‘REGULAR’ COLUMN AI GONE AWRY, YOUR GO-TO FOR THE LATEST NEWS OF WHERE AI HAS GONE AMISS; EXPLORING IDEAS OF ETHICS, AND, IF THIS IS WHAT AI IS CAPABLE OF NOW, WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD.
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hile we may not have reached the point where we need to be fretting about the prospect of intelligent machines taking over the world or developing a consciousness – despite what popular television series such as Westworld and Black Mirror lead us to believe – that
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doesn’t mean that there is not a darker, dumber side to AI. In 2018, we learned that even the smartest AI algorithms can act up and that carelessly applying them can have dire consequences, from self-crashing cars to algorithmic discrimination. Back in December, DCNN covered the new wave of mental health chatbots recommended by the NHS that failed to handle reports of child sexual abuse; examining Woebot and Wysa’s inability to urge the user to seek emergency help.
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AI GONE AWRY: ‘SEXIST’ AI RECRUITMENT TOOL
AI PREDICTIONS B y 2023, there will be an 80% reduction in missing people in mature markets compared to 2018, due to AI face recognition A I-enhanced virtual care is one of Gartner’s top 10 predictions for 2019 T here have been over 154,000 AI patents filed worldwide since 2010 with 29.5% being in health fields and 15.7% AI-based digital security.
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KICKING OFF 2019, AMAZON’S ‘SEXIST’ AI RECRUITMENT TOOL Automation has always been an essential role in Amazon’s e-commerce clout – from inside warehouses to influencing pricing decisions, so it comes as no surprise that AI would also play a role in recruitment. Created back in 2014 as a way to automatically sort through CVs and select the most talented applicants, Amazon’s AI software rapidly taught itself to favour male candidates over female ones. The system, trained on data submitted by applicants over a 10-year period, penalised CVs that included the word ‘women’s’ and reportedly downgraded graduates of two all-women colleges. Charlotte Morrison of Landor commented on Amazon’s tool to The Independent saying,
AI GONE AWRY: ‘SEXIST’ AI RECRUITMENT TOOL
AI EXPERT OPINION
“The fact that Amazon’s system taught itself that male candidates were preferable, penalising resumes that included the word ‘women’s’ is hardly surprising when you consider 89% of the engineering workforce is male… Brands need to be careful that when creating and using technology it does not backfire by highlighting society’s own imperfections and prejudices.” This is not the first time AI has learnt to discriminate; in May last year a report claimed that an AI-generated computer program used by an American court for risk assessment was biased against black prisoners. The program was said to have flagged black people to be twice as likely as white people to re-offend. Though Amazon has since scrapped the tool, it does pose an interesting thought… As the adoption of artificial intelligence rises to alleviate some of
“As AI increasingly takes on roles in the workplace, it will be judged not only on its IQ, but EQ—emotional intelligence — and ability to perceive and understand all things human. The ability to understand human emotions and cognitive states will become part of the criteria for evaluating AI, as companies make decisions on which AI solution to select for their workplace, and even as consumers decide between systems like virtual assistants or smart speakers to have in their homes” Rana el Kaliouby, PhD, CEO and co-founder, Affectiva
the more mundane business pressures, how do we ensure that deeply rooted prejudices such as sexism and racism will not be embedded into code? » TO SUBMIT AN EXPERT COMMENT OR OPINION PLEASE CONTACT JESSICA@ALLTHINGSMEDIALTD.COM
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OPINION: PROCESSING POWER
WHY AI FIRST NEED
‘POWER’
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OPINION: PROCESSING POWER
THOMAS HARRER, CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER AT IBM SYSTEMS EUROPE, EXPLAINS
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HOW INNOVATION AND PROCESSING POWER MUST COME HAND-IN-HAND.
he lifeblood of today’s global economy is information. Millions of different companies with billions of employees and customers create an ecosystem that relies on a quick and easy flow of data between different sources. This isn’t a phenomenon that’s expected to slow down, with IDC predicting the amount of data to grow ten-fold by 2025, to an unprecedented 163 trillion zettabytes (ZB) – with 20% ‘critical’ to our daily lives.
GUARANTEEING THE ‘INFORMATION SUPPLY CHAIN’ HAS BECOME MISSION CRITICAL With data becoming ‘the new oil’, IT systems are now the solid backbone of how companies operate. For these systems, because of the high value of such information, ensuring the reliability, security and consistency of the transactional data becomes extremely important. Organisations however, don’t just want to survive – but thrive. This means that the focus is no longer just about keeping the lights on – but turning infrastructure into a competitive advantage.
DS A
’ PLAY
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OPINION: PROCESSING POWER
DIALING UP THE POWER
To move forward on the digital business trajectory, and to fully realise the advantages of data, organisations must first address unstructured data. By definition this is the data that does not have a pre-defined model or manner. Each year, there is 40% more unstructured data in businesses than the one before, which if left unattended can become a massive housekeeping problem. With businesses leveraging more and more unstructured data from devices, sensors, video, audio and many more sources, not only is this data a risk from a security perspective, but is a missed commercial opportunity. The more data an organisation is able to process or structure means more opportunities to innovate, create new business models and ultimately, gain a greater understanding of its customers to give them better experiences. Data scientists are tasked with gaining insights from the structured, but also fully understanding unstructured data. One method companies can also use to get a grasp of unstructured data is by using deep machine learning, but this requires a robust infrastructure with the computing power needed to extract these valuable insights.
FOUNDATIONS FOR ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SUCCESSES
Artificial intelligence (AI) and deep machine learning open up a world of opportunities for organisations across all industries, helping them make the most of already available or new kinds of data. Just as smartphones changed our lives by bringing new ways to connect and interact, the insight driven era is affecting business operations, customer service and new product development in a similarly lucrative manner. IDC has estimated that by 2019, 40% of digital transformation initiatives
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TO FULLY REALISE THE ADVANTAGES OF DATA, ORGANISATIONS MUST FIRST ADDRESS UNSTRUCTURED DATA.
will use AI services and by 2021, 75% of enterprise applications will use AI. AI consists of accelerated systems, fast storage and a software stack that makes it easy to preprocess available data and prepare it for deep learning training and inference. Without the right compute power via services, it becomes near impossible to build the architecture for a
OPINION: PROCESSING POWER
THE POWER OF SPEECH Take for example the laborious and expensive process of recording voices. Studio space and talented actors are in short supply, so producing a typical audiobook can be expensive and timeconsuming. This has created an enormous unmet demand for spoken content among the large audience of people who are visually impaired, dyslexic or simply enjoy listening to recorded speech. DeepZen was established to fill this gap in the market. The company set out to combine AI with text-to-speech and natural language processing techniques to provide an effective alternative to studio recording. The added edge for DeepZen however, was found through implementing systems from the offset that are designed to handle the massive amounts of data that AI and big data applications demand. Such a system featured IBM Power9 – a processor which can handle very large data models that allowed the DeepZen team the freedom to experiment, and develop technology that gives them first-mover advantage. By implementing the right infrastructure to be able to handle the vast amount of data produced, DeepZen accelerated its model training times significantly and was able to take its product to market four months ahead of target.
future proofed digital business. From the largest enterprises and governments to small businesses and startups, building an infrastructure that can handle everything from AI to mission-critical transaction processing in the deployment model of their choice – on-prem, private cloud or hybrid cloud becomes a competitive advantage.
“WITH DATA BECOMING ‘THE NEW OIL’, IT SYSTEMS ARE NOW THE SOLID BACKBONE OF HOW COMPANIES OPERATE.”
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OPINION: PROCESSING POWER
POWERING RESEARCH Not only is being able to harness data in all its forms a differentiator from a commercial point of view, but the innovation and research results that can be gained from such computing power means that there is no limit on what can be achieved. The University of Birmingham’s Advanced Research Computing (ARC) team earlier this year realised that it needed more computer power tailored to the everincreasing AI workloads generated by the University’s researchers, in their mission to deliver ground-breaking computational vision analysis and to solve life sciences challenges, such as improving cancer diagnosis. To do this they needed to increase server capacity – and quickly. “It’s very important to us as a researchled institution that we are at the forefront of data research which means we are always looking at ways to make AI quicker and more accessible for our researchers,” said Simon Thompson, Research Computing Infrastructure Architect at the University of Birmingham.
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“With the sheer amount of data, the common questions from researchers are how can we analyse it fast enough and how can we make the process even quicker? With our early deployment of the two IBM POWER9 servers we have seen what is possible. By scaling up, we can keep-pace with the escalating demand and offer the computational capacity and capability to attract leading researchers to the University.” It’s hoped that with the new infrastructure, the team have the right tools in place to advance their research even further. So as the discussion around AI and the ability to harness the power of it when it comes to innovation continues, remember that AI workloads are driving data intensive challenges that can only be met with accelerated infrastructure. Without this in place, organisations will fail to drive the innovation needed to stay ahead in this increasingly fast paced digital world. » IBM SYSTEMS EUROPE, IBM.COM
OPINION: EDGE COMPUTING
TURNING THE CLOUD ON ITS HEAD RITTAL EXPLAINS THE MERITS OF EDGE COMPUTING AND HOW – WITH MAJOR TRENDS AND TECHNOLOGIES SUCH AS AI, IOT AND DRIVERLESS VEHICLES – CHANGING REQUIREMENTS IN IT INFRASTRUCTURE WILL IMPACT THE CLOUD. 34 | January 2019
OPINION: EDGE COMPUTING
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here are a number of major trends and technologies which are currently reshaping the IT market and changing the requirements for IT infrastructure. These include the IoT, smart devices, driverless vehicles, cryptocurrency data mining, AI, internet shopping, content streaming and online gaming, to name but a few.
IT infrastructure requirements must now accommodate greater demands for: Low latency, local data processing and high autonomy of infrastructure System wide security High bandwidth Added to which, there are industryspecific requirements, such as the need for particularly high physical protection in harsh manufacturing environments.
GARTNER PREDICTS THAT 50% OF ALL DATA WILL BE PROCESSED IN AN EDGE ENVIRONMENT BY 2022.
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OPINION: EDGE COMPUTING
For these reasons we are seeing local IT resources (placing computing resources at the perimeter of a given network) become more widely deployed. This deployment has been dubbed edge computing, and it ensures that latency is low (packet round trips of less than 100ms, with 25ms being desirable), thus making data readily available to a growing number of applications. Edge thereby flips the computing paradigm, pushing computing and data closer to end-users and, in response, IT vendors are developing some innovative solutions which are tailored to sector needs.
SPEED ON THE EDGE This rise of edge computing is expected to be fast and immediate. Gartner, for example, predicts that 50% of all data will be processed in an edge environment by 2022, compared to just 10% today. In its research paper ‘The edge will eat the cloud’, the organisation predicts that the cloud won’t die out, but that its role will shift, and that edge computing will have a massive impact on the IT infrastructure market. The focus for edge is typically on the immediate processing capacity required at the source of data; making it as fast and secure as possible.
FOR FUTURE APPLICATIONS, COMPANIES WILL NEED MODERN IT INFRASTRUCTURES THAT CAN PROCESS LARGE AMOUNTS OF DATA, IN REAL TIME.
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For example, in ‘smart’ internet grocery distribution centres, robot sensors and actuators continuously relay information on the status of processes and infrastructure. This forms the basis for innovative services such as alerts, predictive maintenance, and machine self-optimisation, delivered by the company’s IT department in real time. For this to happen, and for rapid responses to events and anomalies, it’s critical to have low latency between production and the IT infrastructure. A cloud data centre could struggle to support these scenarios.
OPINION: EDGE COMPUTING
TURNKEY EDGE DATA CENTRE SOLUTIONS
With all this in mind, many vendors are introducing edge data centre solutions, an end-to-end product with standardised, preconfigured IT infrastructure which can be implemented rapidly and costeffectively – paving the way for Industry 4.0 applications. For clients, the main features of a universal edge solution are: lobal reach and off-the-shelf availability G Highest quality, well-engineered solutions, supporting globally accepted standards Maximum flexibility with highly scalable options Depending on the scale of the application, an edge data centre could comprise: single self-contained rack with power A and cooling A rack suite of multiple racks, typically up to 10, with power and cooling A containerised solution with power, cooling, and fire suppression Moreover, to safeguard critical components from heat, dust and dirt in industrial environment, it needs to be possible to implement in a selfcontained, high-availability room.
Some vendors are now combining typical ‘as-a-service’ offerings providing complete, one-stop solutions for those enterprises (regardless of size) that don’t want to manage their own systems.
EDGE APPLICATIONS BY SECTOR Edge is widely predicted to be transformative in a range of sectors where fast processing speeds of high volumes of data are critical.
MANUFACTURING Manufacturing is being transformed by digitalisation and its IT systems need to deliver the many benefits of the increased automation resulting from the use of intelligent robots and networked machines. Similar systems are also being deployed in the hyper-scale internet shopping enterprises which have gained such huge traction in recent years. The systems use sensors to generate continuous data streams, which are then analysed to allow companies to streamline production processes, test and improve product properties, or prepare predictive maintenance scenarios.
SMART FINANCE Issues such as cryptocurrency, blockchain or cashless transactions are triggering innovations in the financial industry. The use of the related new technologies, such as AI, call for secure and powerful IT systems. Edge data centres, strategically close to financial service providers, permit the shortest response times and a secure automation of transactions. The IT industry now offers edge and cloud data centres that support all the needs of the financial sector right up to High Performance Computing (HPC).
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OPINION: EDGE COMPUTING
TRANSPORT Developments like driverless vehicles, car sharing platforms or intelligent logistics software are changing the way people and goods move from one place to another. The aviation and rail industries are also increasingly digitising their services to achieve greater efficiency, safety and punctuality. For these and other future applications, companies will need modern IT infrastructures that can process large amounts of data, in real time, locations such as logistics hubs, smart cities, or airports. Edge data centres work well in any decentralised development of IT capacities because they offer the low latency needed for real-time communication between IT systems. Scalable modular data centre (SMDC) solutions can be applied here, typically available in two, four, and six-rack options and delivered as turnkey data centres.
HEALTHCARE Modern healthcare systems today create an intelligent network between pharmacies, hospitals, insurers, and healthcare providers. The patient data stored in this network demands a high level of data availability and maximum protection against unauthorised access. In operating theatres, surgeons must be able to rely on accurate and readily available data, while in diagnostic imaging, it is important to be able to process what could be very large amounts of data quickly at different locations. An edge data centre can handle all this confidential information, delivering high performance levels directly on-site, and ensuring high levels of security. And, as previously indicated, these micro data centres can offer top physical security, including both access and fire protection.
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“EDGE FLIPS THE COMPUTING PARADIGM, PUSHING COMPUTING AND DATA CLOSER TO END-USERS AND, IN RESPONSE, IT VENDORS ARE DEVELOPING SOME INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS WHICH ARE TAILORED TO SECTOR NEEDS.”
WEB-BASED CONFIGURATORS
To streamline edge data centre planning, many vendors now offer specialised webbased configurators which means compact and small enclosures can now be quickly and easily configured online. Clients can choose the right accessories without reference to a catalogue, then position and prepare the enclosure for mechanical processing.
SELF-MANAGED OR MANAGED SERVICES Data-centre-as-a-service (DCaaS) offerings are now a viable alternative for end-users who would prefer not to operate the edge data centre themselves. They are then free to focus on their core tasks, while harnessing the benefits of the IoT for their business. Hand-in-hand with IT-as-a-service (ITaaS) platform providers, the IT industry also offers private-cloud data centres in shipping containers, plus ITaaS. These containers are fully equipped with all key active components, such as servers, network connectivity and storage for immediate and rapid deployment/use. » RITTAL, RITTAL.COM
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OPINION: AUTOMATION
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OPINION: AUTOMATION
WAVE HELLO TO AUTOMATION IN 2019 DUNCAN ELLIS, DIRECTOR EMEA AT WAVE2WAVE SOLUTIONS EXPLAINS WHY
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NETWORK AUTOMATION OF THE PHYSICAL LAYER IS A TOP PRIORITY FOR 2019.
he skills shortage in the IT industry is nothing new, but with technological innovations continuing to create new demand for IT skills and roles every day, creative solutions to address the shortage are more important than ever. Recruiting firm Hays reports that 70% of IT employers say they face a moderate-toextreme skills shortage of IT professionals. Further exacerbating the problem is the potential for the UK’s decision to leave the EU to result in an even greater shortage of IT talent. The Adecco Group’s study of the 2019 labour market relates that
a wide majority of managers think the UK’s decision to leave the EU will make skills harder to acquire for organisations operating in Britain. Traditionally, organisations have tackled the IT skills shortage in a variety of ways, from expanding their recruiting efforts, to creating apprenticeship programmes and working to retain and upskill existing employees. More and more however, technology itself is being used to fight the skills shortage. The Adecco Group reports that 34% of UK managers say that their organisation has considered automating elements of their business in order to address skills shortages that might come about because of Brexit.
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OPINION: AUTOMATION
NETWORK AUTOMATION AND THE SKILLS SHORTAGE The automation of critical network functions has already played a big role in improving network performance. Enterprises and operators have utilised Software Defined Networking (SDN) to centralise and simplify network management. SDN has greatly increased network agility and control, which is critical in today’s highdemand bandwidth world, where services are scaled up and down and there is zero tolerance for latency. SDN has also simplified the creation and delivery of services. Despite the automation of the network, there is a serious lack of engineers with the relevant skills and practical experience to support today’s virtualised networks. When new services are created or problems arise, skills shortages can mean long delays in work getting done. Further, SDN hits a significant roadblock when it comes to the fibre optic layer. Qualified network engineers are in short supply, and though they are essential to network agility, they are still bogged down with manual reconfiguration of the optical layer. Much like the early days of the telephone – when switchboard operators connected calls by physically inserting phone plugs into the right jacks – adding or removing a network connection still takes place in a patch room, where an engineer manually plugs and unplugs to change connections or add new services. Additionally, an engineer often must travel to distant data centres to patch together fibre optical cables, taking time out of their already busy schedule, as well as creating delays in service and repairs.
Skilled engineers are in even greater demand due to the rise of edge computing. Edge computing has spawned a growing array of smaller data centres, spread across wide geographic areas. These edge data centres do not always have a team of engineers based at, or even close to, each facility. Consequently, in order to provision the optical circuits required to meet dynamic local demand, crews are often spread thin among different facilities, and the time it takes to manually configure circuits can exceed two weeks. This manual process is slow and out of step with today’s on-demand world.
HOW TO AUTOMATE THE FIBRE OPTIC LAYER With the profusion of IoT devices and the advent of cloud services, edge computing, and 5G, it is becoming increasingly difficult for human operators to manage all aspects of reconfiguration, particularly given the massive quantity of connections and services involved. Connections made and removed by human hands are also prone to error and can even impact adjacent services through the disturbance of patch cords.
“AS THE RAPID PACE OF TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT SHOWS NO SIGNS OF SLOWING, AUTOMATION CONTINUES TO BE THE KEY TO KEEPING UP WITH NEW ADVANCEMENTS AND FREEING UP SKILLED IT TALENT FROM MANUAL DRUDGERY...”
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OPINION: AUTOMATION
If automation is extended to the fibre optic layer, engineers can be freed from much of the manual network configuration currently required. This means they can dedicate more time to the skilled work that software defined networks require, allowing them to deliver the benefits of automation more fully and effectively. Engineers will also have more time to develop and expand their own skillset, both of which drive increased employee satisfaction and retention, whilst improving overall productivity. One promising solution to the automation of the optical layer is robotic optical networking. Robotic optical networking offers the ability to physically change the connectivity of a network quickly and accurately. This type of automation allows remote configuration via SDN controllers, which can configure for optimal network performance and flexibility.
AUTOMATION WILL MAKE WAVES IN 2019.
AUTOMATION IS THE KEY Operators are under ever increasing pressure to provide agile and reliable networks, but the ongoing IT skills shortage is an impediment to achieving this goal. As the rapid pace of technological development shows no signs of slowing, automation continues to be the key to keeping up with new advancements and freeing up skilled IT talent from manual drudgery, enabling them to focus on work that makes the best use of their abilities. Automation of the optical layer goes a long way towards tackling the skills shortage and ensuring that today’s cutting-edge technologies can actually be put into play. WAVE2WAVE, WAVE-2-WAVE.COM
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ARE YO READY FOR THE IOT CABLING: IoT
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CABLING: IoT
DR. THOMAS WELLINGER, MARKET MANAGER DATA CENTRES, R&M DISCUSSES THE RISE OF THE IOT AND WHAT ONGOING EFFECTS THIS IS HAVING ON CABLING.
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oday, more and more computing devices are equipped with integrated IP addresses and affordable communication capabilities. Together, these devices form the Internet of Things (IoT), which is changing the way data networks and structured cabling solutions are designed. According to research firm Gartner, the IoT will encompass 26 billion interconnected devices by 2020 – nearly 30 times the 0.9 billion devices connected in 2009. By then, enormous amounts of data are already being generated by devices integrated into smart buildings, smart cities and smart grids. Other estimates put the number of connected devices at more than 200 billion by 2020. The amount of data being collected is expected to double every two years.
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CABLING: IoT
Analyst firm IDC has stated that there will be approximately 212 billion internet-connected things by the end of 2020. According to Peter Middleton, research director at Gartner, component costs will soon be so low that that connectivity will become a standard feature, even for processors costing less than $1: “This opens up the possibility of connecting just about anything, from the very simple to the very complex, to offer remote control, monitoring and sensing.”
CHANGES IN NETWORK INFRASTRUCTURE The advent of the IoT is affecting network infrastructure. Low latency and ample bandwidth are crucial to ensuring that devices can communicate with each other as well as with end-users. Increasing and continuously growing data traffic, especially machine-to-machine data, places significant pressure on data centres and network architecture. The IoT is changing the pattern of the workload. Until relatively recently, large packets of information were sent in relatively small sequences. With IoT, packet sizes are shrinking drastically whilst the network flow is exploding. Each packet triggers an action. This means that not only bandwidth is an important consideration, but latency too. IoT may well lead to the rise of so-called edge data centres that position the ‘edge’ of the internet further away from traditional hubs. Smart computing capability close to the edge of the network enables analytics closer to the endpoints. Edge data centres are relatively small, usually just one to 30 cabinets, and are widely dispersed across the country. Ideally, they’ll never be more than 30 kilometres from the end-user – either human or machine. Of course, this also implies a whole new approach when it comes to port capacity, density and monitoring and asset management.
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DISTRIBUTED MANAGEMENT Moving huge volumes of data from sources all across the world to a single location for processing is not exactly a feasible option. However, smaller data centres could help balance the aggregated workload more intelligently and efficiently. Filtering and pre-processing data within a multitude of ‘mini data centres’ and in the aggregation devices themselves, ensuring only relevant data is passed on for further analysis, would be another step in the right direction. Future-proofing can be taken care of by implementing a high-density optical environment in the structured cabling plant. ‘Edge’ data centres, positioned away from traditional hubs and located on the ‘edge’ of the internet, are a way of accomplishing this. Large volumes of frequently referenced applications and content, such as popular streaming video series, can be cached on servers that are located closer to less densely networked or ‘tier-two’ markets. There are a few considerations to be made when taking this route. Datahungry technology solutions may expand rapidly, but the backbone will have to support several consecutive generations of hardware and bandwidth standards. Therefore, high density – in excess of 100 ports per rack unit – is essential. Fibres are brought directly from server ports to an ultra-high density platform, which could accommodate up to 50% more fibre optic connections inside a traditional housing. Although cables need to have a significantly higher fibre count, handling should be identical to that of smaller cables, and termination should be as possible.
CABLING: IoT
“THE INTERNET OF THINGS IS CHANGING THE WAY DATA NETWORKS AND STRUCTURED CABLING SOLUTIONS ARE DESIGNED.”
Avoiding bad cable management, which may result in signal distortion, damage and failure, is vital to avoiding packet loss, performance issues and downtime. As edge data centres might be widely distributed, automated asset management and tracking is a prerequisite. Today, the average edge data centre surface area is around 50m2, with hundreds of network ports. Yet all too many network managers are still carrying out inventory and management of physical infrastructure with Excel sheets – or even paper, pencils and post-its. A well-specified DCIM system can help match IT and operational requirements and protocols to capacity planning and needs.
SUPPORTING FUTURE REQUIREMENTS WAN links in today’s data centres can accommodate the bandwidth that people require to interact with applications, but the enormous increase in data from billions of interlinked sensors means data centres will soon need far more bandwidth than current infrastructure can provide. Furthermore, a significantly larger amount of storage will have to be provisioned in data centres. According to Joe Skorupa, VP and distinguished analyst at Gartner, the recent trend towards centralising applications to reduce costs and increase security is incompatible with the IoT. Data-hungry and bandwidth-intensive technology solutions will presumably continue to expand at amazing speeds. However, the backbone can’t simply be replaced every few years. By designing data centres with the right kind of flexibility and reliability in mind – and making smart technology choices today – such bottlenecks can be solved and the changing role of data centres, supporting the requirements of the IoT, can be accommodated now and in the future.
WHAT DOES THE GROWING EXPOSURE TO CONNECTIVITY MEAN FOR COMPLEXITY?
R&M, RM-ELECTRICAL.COM
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PROJECTS & AGREEMENTS
INVESTMENTS IN HIGH-DENSITY FIBRE Colocation provider Kao Data has revealed it is working with euNetworks, a Western European bandwidth infrastructure provider, with a view of enabling the delivery of high-density fibre and duct to the Kao Data, Harlow based data centre campus north of London. The new infrastructure is said to provide unique routing opportunities, taking advantage of Harlow’s strategic location between core hyperscale campuses in Dublin and Amsterdam. Kao Data promises that the new infrastructure will also offer fast connection to Slough, to the West of London, and Docklands in the East of London. As the UK continues its strong position in the international data centre market, a series of significant investments in high-
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density fibre routes are underway to support hyperscale data traffic requirements. With the strategic location of this facility and evolving demand opportunities spanning from Enfield, Waltham Forest, Welwyn Garden City across to Harlow, this partnership and roll out of fibre comes at an important time. Jan Daan Luycks, CEO, Kao Data noted, “Massive data traffic increase is driving data centre market growth. It is essential that Kao Data is investing in guaranteed access to the most advanced and dense data capability. This attracts customers from the widest base, from hyperscalers, financial, retail, media and enterprise. Kao Data’s recent OCP ready status demonstrates our forward thinking in the market. Combine that with access to euNetworks’ fibre
network and it is a compelling customer opportunity.” Kevin Dean, chief marketing officer at euNetworks, added, “We are focused on the delivery of fibre-based infrastructure to data centres across our Pan European footprint. We continue to invest in our network footprint with high fibre count cable and duct. This enables the growing bandwidth needs of data centres and data campuses, and the customers needing access into these sites. The region is growing in importance for many of our customers, as they seek alternate routes between key hyperscale hubs. We’re delighted we will be able to offer our multiterabit bandwidth services at Kao Data and beyond.” KAO DATA, KAODATA.COM
PROJECTS & AGREEMENTS
LIVING WITH MACHINES Queen Mary University of London is leading a new research project, ‘Living with Machines,’ which is said to be one of the biggest and most ambitious humanities and science research initiatives ever to launch in the UK. ‘Living with Machines’ is a five-year inter-disciplinary research project with The Alan Turing Institute and the British Library and has been awarded £9.2 million from the UK Research and Innovation’s Strategic Priorities Fund. It will use artificial intelligence (AI) to analyse historical sources. The initiative will devise new methods of research that hope to revolutionise the way historical sources are analysed and provide vital insight into the debates and discussions taking place in response to today’s digital industrial revolution. The project will use the century following the first Industrial Revolution, and the changes brought about by the advance of technology across all aspects of society during c.1780-1918, as its focus point. ‘Living with Machines’ will see data scientists working with curators, historians, geographers and computational linguists with the goal of devising new methods in data science and AI that can be applied to the analysis of historical resources and digitised collections. Project lead Dr Ruth Ahnert, senior lecturer in renaissance studies at Queen Mary noted, “For me this is more than just a research project. It is also a
bold proposal for a new research paradigm. That paradigm is defined by radical collaboration that seeks to close the gap between computational sciences, the arts and humanities by creating a space of shared understanding, practices, norms of publication and communication. We want to create both a data-driven approach to our cultural past, and a human-focused approach to data science.” Professor Matthew Hilton, professor of social history and vice-principal for humanities and social sciences at Queen Mary University of London added, “I am delighted that the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Queen Mary is breaking new ground with one of the biggest and most ambitious research initiatives ever to launch in the UK. ‘Living with Machines’ is an exciting project which will produce new tools and software to analyse digitised collections at scale for the first time.” ‘Living with Machines’ promises to take a radical approach to collaboration, breaking down barriers between academic traditions, bringing together data scientists and software engineers from The Alan Turing Institute and curators from the British Library. In addition to Queen Mary University of London, other academic partner institutions include the University of Cambridge, University of East Anglia and the University of Exeter. QUEEN MARY UNIVERSITY, QMUL.AC.UK
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PROJECTS & AGREEMENTS
5G SMART TOURISM TRIAL The first trial of the West of England Combined Authority’s 5G Smart Tourism project has taken place at the Roman Baths – with visitors trying out futuristic technology which immersed them in the site’s rich history. The trial involved invited guests using a smartphone app to download and view virtual reality (VR)/ augmented reality (AR) content at three locations around the Roman Baths. The trial app told the story of three periods in the World Heritage Site’s history: the mythical discovery of the hot springs by King Bladud; the Baths falling into disrepair when the Romans left; and the renovation in Victorian times. Each period was recreated by Aardman Animations as an animated 3D scene that plays for several minutes, with ‘hotspots’ that the user could discover to display interesting information about various parts. The 5G Smart Tourism project is led by the West of England Combined Authority (WECA) and funded by The Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport. It brings together 25 organisations and hopes it will see the development of a testbed to demonstrate 5G capability; establishing the West of England as a world-leader in the development of advanced fixed and mobile communication systems.
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Digital minister Margot James, said, “We all want to have fast, reliable and uninterrupted connectivity on-the-go, which is why we’re rolling out 5G test bed projects like this in the Roman Baths. “The use of the new technology will give legions of visitors in the South West the best interactive experience possible, and will help to make the UK a world leader in 5G.” WECA, Bath and North East Somerset Council are working with a number of partners – including the BBC – to help test the 5G capabilities in Bath by hosting the pilot events at the Roman Baths. The trial being led by WECA, involves additional 5G infrastructure being rolled out at the Roman Baths in Bath, M Shed and in and around ‘We The Curious’ and ‘Millennium Square’ in Bristol, with further trials planned through to March 2019. Although 5G technology is not yet available to the public, and there are currently no plans for the Roman Baths to offer VR experiences to the public, the trials will demonstrate how 5G can enable new visitor experiences. WEST OF ENGLAND COMBINED AUTHORITY, WESTOFENGLAND-CA.GOV.UK
PROJECTS & AGREEMENTS
SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC INTRODUCES NEW TECHNOLOGY PARTNERS INITIATIVE Schneider Electric has announced the launch of its APC technology partners initiative, expanding its portfolio of solutions by partnering with innovative technology providers to deliver to resellers comprehensive and proven approaches to achieving high availability and increased resiliency at the edge. Available today are solutions for unified threat management, back-up and disaster recovery, and 4G/LTE routing, all of which are available directly through APC to any IT reseller. The initiative is said to bring together multiple technology companies to help customers address the challenges of minimising downtime, protecting data, and ensuring connectivity in today’s hybrid IT environments. The initiative is currently available in the United
States, United Kingdom, Germany, and France, and will be expanded to other countries in the future. Targeted to small- and mediumsized enterprise (SME) clients, each of these business continuity solutions are said to combine reliable hardware and software with advanced cloud interfaces for simplified deployment and remote monitoring and management. These solutions have been validated by APC and represent a fast-growing market segment for IT resellers. IT resellers who take advantage of the APC Technology Partner offers are promised to have peace of mind in knowing they can confidently extend their portfolio beyond physical hardware to more complex, value-added software and services. Access to these solutions is said to enable the
creation of new revenue streams while reducing the number of strategic suppliers with which an IT reseller must work. “Many of our resellers are looking to add value to their offerings with technology that has already been vetted and can deliver new revenue opportunities,” said Pankaj Sharma, senior vice president of home and business networks, Schneider Electric. “By taking advantage of the offerings in the APC Technology Partners Initiative, IT resellers will be able to offer innovative solutions that address the most pressing challenges their customers are facing, supported by the strong brand and leadership of APC in the market.” SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC, SCHNEIDER-ELECTRIC.CO.UK
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PROJECTS & AGREEMENTS
NIB FINANCING NOKIA’S 5G RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM The Nordic Investment Bank (NIB) and the Finnish multinational telecom company, Nokia, have signed a loan agreement totalling €250 million to finance research and development activities related to 5G mobile technology. The loan, which has an average maturity of approximately five years after disbursement, is set to finance Nokia’s extensive research and development programme focused on 5G activities in Europe in 2018–2020. The investment will be concentrating on developing new 5G-related end-to-end product offerings for different business areas. 5G is the next generation of wireless systems beyond the current 4G standards, providing a substantial increase in network capacity, reducing latency delays and enabling network slicing. Network slicing gives network operators greater ability to differentiate their services to match clients’ needs. Nokia says its 5G research and development program also focuses on the implementation of the
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IoT machine-type communication between the thing’s humans have invented. In practice, this means a network of different devices, such as home appliances, vehicles and other electronics, being able to exchange data wirelessly. “The business opportunities of 5G are numerous, as it will be the first mobile generation designed from the beginning for machine-type communication. Nokia’s research and development is likely to benefit not just the telecom sector, but also several high-technology operators in our member countries,” said Henrik Normann, NIB president & CEO. “We are pleased to receive this financing commitment from the NIB, which shares our view of the revolutionary nature of 5G. This financing will further support 5G research and development in Europe and it bolsters the momentum we have already seen this year as the era of 5G begins,” added Kristian Pullola, CFO, Nokia. NOKIA, NOKIA.COM
PROJECTS & AGREEMENTS
5G NETWORK TO IMPROVE ROAD SAFETY VTT, a European research company, has announced its 5G-Safe project which explores the possibilities of using the 5G mobile network to improve road safety in collaboration with partners such as the Finnish Meteorological Institute, Destia and Unikie. The project is part of the ‘Challenge Finland’ competition and financed by Business Finland. Thanks to the fast 5G network and new data transmission solutions, vast amounts of sensor, video and radar data can be collected from vehicles. The information can also be transmitted in almost real time. “The data can be collected automatically without the drivers needing to do anything themselves. The required technology can be installed at the factory”, explained senior scientist Tiia Ojanperä from VTT. “The data can also be processed, and warnings sent to other road users by means of automated systems.”
ICY CORNER AHEAD – PLEASE SLOW DOWN Local road weather services are one of the key applications for the collected data. In the future, real-time weather information and warnings can be sent directly to drivers’ satellite navigation devices, for example. “The new solutions give drivers access to highly localised data, such as warnings about icy conditions
around the corner. Drivers can use the information to choose a different route or change the way they drive.” 5G technology also opens up new possibilities from the perspective of road maintenance. The new technology provides an extremely efficient way to collect information on the condition of roads. The data can be used to alert road maintenance providers to a range of issues requiring their attention, such as snow build-up, potholes or fallen trees.
SELF-DRIVING CARS EXPAND THEIR TERRITORY 5G technology helps human drivers behind the wheel, but its impact on self-driving cars could be even more revolutionary. Real-time data can be used to better control self-driving cars and change their behaviour on the basis of observations. VTT’s self-driving car Martti has already trialled these possibilities in respect of, for example, detecting icy conditions and obstacles on the road in advance. Precise information can be vital in challenging conditions and even expand the potential uses of selfdriving cars. Self-driving cars are currently mostly used in areas where weather conditions are not a problem. This does not need to be the case in the future. VTT, VTTRESEARCH.COM
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COMPANY SHOWCASE
SPONSORED STORIES FROM THE INDUSTRY
PULSE SECURE LAUNCHES NEW VADC COMMUNITY EDITION Pulse Secure, a provider of secure access solutions to both enterprises and service providers, has announced the launch of a new Community Edition of its powerful software-based virtual Application Delivery Controller (vADC) to help application developers create innovative application solutions with dramatically lower costs and time to market. Pulse says its vADC Community Edition integrates easily with common DevOps tools for automated provisioning and orchestration, such as Kubernetes, Terraform, Puppet and Chef, making it easy to start building secure and scalable applications from day one. “Pulse Secure vADC Community Edition is a free, full-featured application delivery controller that can be used in production scenarios which allows developers and enterprises to accelerate cloud application deployment by removing the hurdle of procurement and tooling. Pulse Secure is setting the benchmark for ‘try before you buy’ that competitors will have to follow,” said Mike Fratto, senior analyst at 451 Research. Developers can use the Community Edition for commercial applications up to a limit of 10 Mbps, and up to four nodes can be clustered together for high availability, for a maximum aggregate bandwidth of 40 Mbps. The company says the Community Edition is ideal for building and launching new applications and offers easy in-line upgrades for 24x7 support options and higher throughput to support global-scale applications. In addition, customers can upgrade seamlessly to Pulse Services Director for flexible capacity-based licensing, and centralised enterprise management features, including powerful graphical analytics with actionable insights, to help understand application behaviour and to diagnose application problems on the network. PULSE SECURE, PULSESECURE.NET
MAINTEL LA TO TAKE UC Maintel, the cloud and managed service specialist, has announced the launch of ICON Now, a Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) offering, aimed at companies with 100 to 1,000 employees. The company says clients can select from a range of user types – from basic telephone users up to full team-collaboration – and can flex the service up and down as their usage patterns change. ICON Now also
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SPONSORED STORIES FROM THE INDUSTRY
COMPANY SHOWCASE
AUNCHES ICON NOW CAAS TO THE MID-MARKET supports a number of connectors to integrate with many commonly used business applications, providing even more benefit. ICON Now is available as an ‘op-ex only’ service, with minimal set-up costs, and removes from organisations the requirement to ‘manage’ their communications systems, being always up-to-date, compliant with the latest regulations, and operating at high availability. End-users can communicate and
collaborate using any device – from mobile, PC, tablet or desk-phone, and day-to-day administration tasks can be simply managed using the ICON Portal. Commenting on the launch of ICON Now, Maintel’s CTO Rufus Grig said, “Business is changing – organisations need their people to be productive and available wherever they are, whatever device they are on, whatever network they are using. They also want to get value from the
IT spend quickly and see immediate return on investment. With ICON Now, we put the tools previously the preserve of large enterprise in the hands of small and mid-sized businesses and they can start to get value from day one.” ICON Now is the latest service in Maintel’s suite of cloud and managed services delivered under the ICON brand. MAINTEL, MAINTEL.CO.UK
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COMPANY SHOWCASE
SPONSORED STORIES FROM THE INDUSTRY
MICROCHIP TECHNOLOGY ANNOUNCES MCP6V51 ZERO-DRIFT OPERATIONAL AMPLIFIE Microchip Technology has announced the MCP6V51 zerodrift operational amplifier. The new device promises to provide ultrahigh precision measurement while minimising the increasing influence of high-frequency interference. The MCP6V51 offers a wide operating range and on-chip Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) filters. The growth of industrial control and factory automation has led to an increase in the number of sensors that need to be monitored. The company says its MCP6V51 amplifier
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has been designed to provide accurate, stable data from a variety of sensors. The self-correcting zerodrift architecture of the MCP6V51 enables ultra-high Direct Current (DC) precision, providing a maximum offset of ±15 microvolts (µV) and only ±36 nanovolts per degree Celsius (nV/°C) of maximum offset drift. Ideal for applications such as factory automation, process control and building automation, the MCP6V51 also supports an extremely wide operating voltage range, from 4.5V to 45V.
With the proliferation of wireless sensors and capabilities, high frequency interference within sensitive analogue measurement is becoming a critical consideration. The additional on-chip EMI filtering within the MCP6V51 is said to provide protection from these unwanted and unpredictable interference sources; allowing designers to provide improved performance while more easily managing an increasingly difficult environment. Programmable logic controllers and distributed control systems utilised
SPONSORED STORIES FROM THE INDUSTRY
COMPANY SHOWCASE
ZADARA ANNOUNCES VIRTUAL PRIVATE STORAGE ARRAY FOR VMWARE CLOUD ON AWS
ER within industrial automation run on a variety of voltage rails, such as 12V, 24V or 36V. The company says its MCP6V51 offers the flexibility to support a wide range of supply voltages and includes overhead to account for supply transients by supporting an operating range up to 45V. The MCP6V51 is available today for sampling and volume production in both 5-lead SOT-23 and 8-lead MSOP packages.
Zadara, provider of the Zero-Risk Enterprise Data Cloud, has announced its enterprise-class storage solutions are available to customers of VMware Cloud on AWS. VMware Cloud on AWS promises to bring together VMware’s enterprise-class Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) software and elastic, bare-metal infrastructure from Amazon Web Services (AWS) to give organisations a consistent operating model and application mobility for private and public cloud. Zadara Virtual Private Storage Arrays is said to deliver the advanced data storage and management features that customers of VMware Cloud on AWS need. Zadara is a cloud-based Enterprise NAS and SAN service with NFS, CIFS/AD and iSCSI interfaces, dual HA controllers, dedicated high performance drives and enterprise-class storage features (snapshots, replication, thin provisioning, encryption, etc.). Data is stored on dedicated hardware for the ultimate privacy and quality of service, and protected with in-flight and at-rest encryption, with user-managed keys. With Zadara, users should expect to receive more than enterpriseclass storage. Zadara comes with 24/7/365 live support, proactive system management, and periodic non-disruptive hardware upgrades included. Which is why the company can offer a 100%-uptime guarantee. “Zadara is an ideal complement to VMware Cloud on AWS. That’s because we deliver a full-featured, on-demand, single-tenant experience – including predictable performance, complete data privacy, and universal protocol support,” said Noam Shendar, vice president and general manager of the hyperscale cloud business for Zadara. ZADARA, ZADARA.COM
MICROCHIP TECHNOLOGY, MICROCHIP.COM
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