Insights success august 2016 the 50 fastest growing consultant companies

IoT, Wearable Computing - Where Everything is Addressable J. Mark MacDonald Canada151 Data Centers Inc.

Connecting Dark Data with IoT Adrian Hinrichsen Marketing & Business Development Director Datumize

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IoT Business Will Boost The Economy In The Next Decades José Antônio Scodiero FAST COMPANY BRAZIL

The 10 Fastest Growing Data Centre Solution Provider Companies

July 2016

The way of business solutions

Editorʼs Pick

Exigency of Energy Efficiency of Data Centers Industry Outlook GRANT VAN ROOYEN President, CEO & Director

Mega Data Centers: Hindrances To Face

COLOGIX: Data Centers That Provide Neutral and Plentiful Choice of Network and Cloud Providers at the Edge of the Internet

Editorial

E

xpeditious growth in the demand for data storage has metamorphosed the traditional Data Centers into the Mega Data Centers. In accordance with this storage demand the enormous amount of data is being handled by the companies with the help of a number of Data Centers, which is becoming immensely difficult to handle.

The giants of the field like, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, and eBay has another way to deal with this situation and that is to capacitate Mega Data Center instead of handling many small ones. It gives the benefit of low energy prices for large-scale consumption, tax and climatic benefits.

This ‘quid pro quo’ of traditional Data Center to the Mega Data Center has changed the scenario of Data Center Industry thoroughly.

New giant Data Centers are soon to be built. According to the reports, the Information Technology market is expected to be ahead in the competition of building Mega Data Centers, while it will be followed by the Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) vertical.

Desideratum of Energy Efficient Mega Data Centers

The Cloud which once thought to be the most unsafe place has become the most banal one to save data. The demand for being faster every single year, is what transforming the Data Centers into the Mega Data Centers. Transforming itself with a mettlesome growth, the Data Center Industry is experiencing a host of new drivers, from cloud adoption to data preeminence. Enterprises are becoming more vigilant while choosing the best data and compute strategy for themselves.

Amidst the humongous problem of climate change, the big brands of the industry are looking forward to improve the factor of people, planet, and profit, the triple bottom line too. When it comes to power saving, it has been observed that, the U.S. data center industry has significantly improved its electricity savings in the last few years.

And it is expected that in the future too, it will continue to reduce energy use despite extreme growth, with improved cooling and powering strategies, power proportionality methods and data center microgrids.

According to the study, the Global Data Center Power market is expected to grow $26.33 billion by the end of 2020 at a CAGR of 9.67%. The need for a green environment has transformed the scenario with the businesses adoption of greener or eco-friendly alternatives. This growing concern over excessive power consumption is one of the dominant contributors to the growing Data Centers Market.

Editor-in-Chief Pooja M. Bansal Senior Editor Ariana Lawrence Managing Editor Archana Ghule Co-Editors David Smith Sugandha Sharma Stephanie Andrews Sonal Burghate Mary D’Souza Vikram Suryawanshi Visualiser David King Art & Design Director Victoria Co-designer Alex Noel Picture Editor Mayur Art Editor Kalpesh Business Development Manager Mike Thomas, Nick Adams Marketing Manager Chris Business Development Executive David, Peter, John, Brian Research Analyst Jennifer Circulation Manager Robert Database Management Steve Technology Consultant Vishal More sales@insightssuccess.com

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CONTENT COVER STORY

COLOGIX, INC. Grant Van Rooyen

8 32

Mega Data Centers: Hindrances To Face

26

Exigency of Energy Efciency of Data Centers

CXO Standpoint CANADA151 DATA CENTERS INC.

FAST COMPANY BRAZIL

J. Mark MacDonald

José Antônio Scodiero

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42

DATUMIZE Adrian Hinrichsen

34

TEO TECHNOLOGIES Thomas Beck

24

The 10 Fastest Growing Data Centre Solution Provider Companies

ARTMOTION LTD. Mateo Meier

18 DUPONT FABROS TECHNOLOGY, INC. Christopher P. Eldredge,

N

RACK

Rob Hirschfeld

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28

RIGHTITNOW

TRANSITIONAL DATA SERVICES Michael Bullock

Marc Ferrie

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XERAFY LTD. Dennis Khoo

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GRANT VAN ROOYEN President, CEO & Director

Cover Story

Data Centers that Provide Neutral and Plentiful Choice of Network and Cloud Providers at the Edge of the Internet Enabling Businesses to stay ahead of rapid change, technology and growth

he data center industry continues to see explosive growth, driven by an increase in overall Internet traffic and businesses that are increasingly migrating their internal IT systems to third party data center providers. One key reason for this shift toward outsourcing is that businesses are adapting their IT strategies to take advantage of new technologies (the Cloud) while protecting maximum flexibility to adjust vendors or technologies over time. This concept of IT future-proofing has become a hot topic amongst CIOs, many of whom agree that flexibility, scalability, choice of network providers, choice of cloud providers and geographic reach are keys to success in today’s environment.

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Cologix, Inc. is one of the world’s preeminent network neutral interconnection and data center companies that onramps enterprises, financial services providers and media companies to an expansive neutral choice of more than 450 network carriers and more than 200 cloud service providers to ultimately enable future-proofed IT deployments.

Their data centers enable providers to bring content closer to the consumers who have a seemingly insatiable appetite for content and applications. Providing infrastructure and connectivity choice in key strategic markets enables optimized network performance resulting in greater quality, reliability and speed; often at a significant cost savings.

Cover Story

Cologix provides massively scalable interconnection services and secure, reliable colocation services to over 1,600 Customers from 24 densely connected, strategically located data centers in Columbus, Dallas, Jacksonville, Lakeland, Minneapolis, Montreal, Northern New Jersey, Toronto and Vancouver. The company’s experienced team of communications infrastructure professionals supports a Customer ecosystem consisting of carriers, managed services, cloud, media, content, financial services and enterprises ensuring the highest standard of local customer support.

Strategic Locations & Unparalleled, Neutral Choice of Service Providers Since inception, Cologix has focused on operating data centers at the interconnection hubs in strategic edge markets where Internet and Cloud traffic intersect and connect.

These data centers are not only ideally located but they also provide access to more choice of networks and cloud providers than any other provider across its markets. Why does that matter? Robust choice and low switching costs

are the core elements for Enterprises to find the right vendors, reduce costs and find the flexibility to adapt to their ever-changing requirements.

Customers have far more leverage to negotiate rates when in a competitive, neutral environment. Many businesses moving to neutral data centers have gained over 30% savings on their overall network costs by forcing providers to compete for their business. Neutral data centers result in fair pricing and innovation for customers of all sizes. In fact, smaller businesses often leverage the same buying power traditionally reserved for the biggest customers.

Choice also enables businesses to use the best providers for their specific applications within the same facility negating the need for a multiple data center solution. Leveraging multiple networks within the same data center also increases redundancy and ensures 100% uptime as it prevents having a single point of failure.

With all of this talk about cost savings for businesses

Cover Story connecting to network and cloud providers you might wonder why they want to have a presence in densely connected (competitive) data centers.

By extending networks to Cologix data centers, service providers can reach a large and growing embedded base of potential customers in target segments.

Cologix enables access to hundreds of relevant customers who buy network and cloud services by accessing their Meet Me Rooms and Cloud Connect platform.

Excerpt from Stratecast Colo Brief: Whereas some co-lo providers are focused on the largest US markets, Cologix is building a dominant presence within the next tier of strategic US and Canadian cities, such as Vancouver, Jacksonville, Minneapolis, and Dallas. As a leading data center and interconnect provider in those cities, Cologix has attracted nearly every major carrier and cloud

service provider to its data centers including 450 carriers and more than 200 cloud service providers.

For customers, the result is choice choice of network provider, choice of the cloud provider, and choice of other service and technology providers in the cloud ecosystem. The message of choice and flexibility is one way Cologix attracts customers and differentiates itself from other data center providers and deployment options. Because it is so difficult to migrate applications and re-architect infrastructure - whether in a hosted cloud or a customer-managed facility businesses can mitigate risk by utilizing a center that provides the greatest number of options for deploying IT environments. Cologix expanded its support for hybrid IT environments when it launched the Cologix Cloud Connect platform offering direct access to private, public

& hybrid providers.

Cologix stands firm in its strategic focus on “next tier” cities. The company believes that such markets are underserved, as larger data center companies - including Equinix and Telx - exclusively focus on the top markets. Yet many mid-tier cities have high growth rates, and enterprise customers, carriers, and services are looking for a gateway into those markets. In developing its data center buildout plans, Cologix anticipates which cities will experience the next burst of traffic growth.

Supporting the Cloud The massive growth and acceleration in cloud adoption and advancement has required businesses to redefine their cloud strategies. Data centers play a critical role in supporting cloud environments as the physical servers that host the cloud sit within the data center. Businesses must assess critical

Cover Story

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Cologix has a reputation for best in class colocation and interconnection services exceeding the infrastructure demands of companies seeking network and cloud solutions

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infrastructure (power and cooling), redundancy, security, uptime service level agreements (SLAs), flexibility, scalability, and choice of network & cloud providers.

Cologix has a reputation for best in class colocation and interconnection solutions exceeding the infrastructure demands of companies seeking a cloud solution. They also address cloud requirements through their Cloud Connect Solution which facilitates a direct gateway for private, secure, physical connections to the top public cloud providers (AWS, Softlayer, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud) as well as more than 200 additional “bestin-breed” cloud service providers across the platform. By enabling access to public, private and hybrid cloud providers businesses can customize a solution for their specific needs all within a data center environment that will scale with their growing needs.

What’s Ahead?

Cologix has always been committed to

heavily investing in their markets in order to successfully grow and scale with customer demand. Management expects to continue their aggressive construction schedule to bring new capacity online. Meanwhile the organization will focus on bringing in more networks and more cloud providers into their Meet-Me-Rooms.

Operationally, they will continue to invest in infrastructure, preventative maintenance programs, systems, monitoring and live Customer Support.

Their unique Customer Support model provides 24/7 local support in each of their data centers by trained experts who have intimate knowledge of the facilities. Cologix also has several enterprise grade data centers under construction that will introduce new capacity to meet growing demand in multiple markets. Cologix is also committed to staying ahead of industry trends that impact customer’s network and IT decisions and to enhance its platform accordingly.

Grant van Rooyen, Founder of Cologix Grant van Rooyen, President, CEO & Director of Cologix, has over 15 years of experience in the communications industry. Prior to forming Cologix, Grant was CEO of IX Investments which was acquired by Cologix in late 2010. He was with Level 3 Communications for 10 years from 1999 until 2009 where he held a number of leadership positions, including President of the Content Markets Group, with responsibility for over $1.5 billion of customer and product revenue.

In addition to his Cologix responsibilities, Grant is a Partner in vR Equity - a private investment firm.

Grant has lived and worked around the world and holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics and Finance.

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The 10 Fastest Growing Data Centre Solution Provider Companies

Data Centers Becoming “Must Haves”

F

or the last 40 years, every new business requirement has been fulfilled with the technological advancement.

With the money and deployment of the new hardware and software has resulted in an Information Technology (IT) infrastructure that gave an enterprise a competitive advantage in the race. Enterprises today can only be successful if they are able to juice out the advantages of new innovations at one and the same time, reducing cost, complexity, and overcapacity.

The space and time efficiency of Data Centers is getting distinguished amplifying its importance. Usually run by large companies or government agencies to accommodate computer systems and associated components, like storage systems and telecommunications, Data Centers are providing fast-growing cloud solution services to private and business applications.

The race to cut down the prices of the services, scale, and the rapid releases of new features by the cloud giants has increased the expenses to operate a global data center fleet. For our readers, we have shortlisted such courageous Data Center service providers to make the job easy.

To help in the hunt for the best of all Data Center services, we are introducing this new issue of our Magazine, “The 10 Fastest Growing Data Center Solution Provider Companies”. This listing of companies will be a great help for the enterprises who needs highly connected Colocation Data Centers to access cloud services privately, over direct network links.

Here in this issue, our cover story Cologix, Inc. is one of the best Data Center Solutions available out there. A network neutral interconnection and data center company headquartered in Denver, Colorado, Cologix provides massively scalable interconnection services and secure, reliable colocation services in densely connected, strategically located facilities in Columbus, Dallas, Jacksonville, Lakeland, Minneapolis, Montreal, Northern New Jersey, Toronto and Vancouver.

With more than 450 unique network choices and 24 prime interconnection locations, Cologix currently serves over 1,600 carriers, managed services, cloud, media, content, financial services and enterprise customers. The company’s experienced team of communications infrastructure professionals is committed to provide its customers the highest standard of local customer support.

This issue, “The 10 Fastest Growing Data Center Solution Provider Companies” gives the best insights of Data Center industry with the Articles and the shortlisted companies highlighted in the magazine.

The 10 Fastest Growing Data Centre Solution Provider Companies

Company Name

Management

Brief

Artmotion Ltd artmotion.eu

Mateo Meier Founder

Security and data privacy are at the heart of Artmotion’s business, offering state of the art, highly secure server solutions for businesses of all sizes.

Cologix cologix.com

Grant van Rooyen President, CEO & Director

Cologix provides colocation, connectivity, recovery and managed infrastructure services to create a neutral marketplace for buyers and sellers of IT services.

Digital Realty digitalrealty.com

A. William Stein Chief Executive Officer

Digital Realty focuses on delivering client-driven data center and colocation solutions by providing secure, reliable and cost effective facilities that meet each client’s unique data center needs.

DuPont Fabros Technology www.dft.com

Christopher P. Eldredge President, CEO & Director

DFT is a leading owner, developer, operator and manager of enterprise-class, carrier-neutral, large multi-tenant wholesale data centers.

Global Switch globalswitch.com

John Corcoran Executive Chairman & CEO

Global Switch data centres are operated provide resilient and secure solutions to customers who include global system integrators, telecommunication providers, enterprises, financial institutions, government organizations, managed service providers and other hosting businesses.

Interxion interxion.com

David Ruberg Chief Executive Officer

Interxion is a leading provider of carrier - and cloud-neutral colocation data centre services in Europe.

RackN rackn.com

Rob Hirschfeld Founder & CEO

RackN is an Automated, Composable, Software-as-a-Service Platform for Hybrid Cloud and Data Center Infrastructure.

RightITnow rightitnow.com

Marc Ferrie Founder & CEO

RightITnow ECM software aggregates, filters and correlates infrastructure and application events into actionable alerts.

Transitional Data Services transitionaldata.com

Michael E. Bullock President & Co-Founder

TDS provides consulting, implementation and operational services for IT and Data Center Transformations. TDS also created the TransitionManager software used by TDS consultants, end customers and global strategic partners.

Xerafy xerafy.com

Dennis Khoo CEO & founder

Xerafy provides high performance, reliable RFID solutions for on-metal applications in challenging environments.

The 10 Fastest Growing

Data Centre Solution Provider Companies

Artmotion: Data Security Is On High Priority

D

atacenters are on top of the chart when it comes to IT infrastructure requirements.

Being a key business parameter, Datacenters are no more counted as only an external facility for storage of information and business operation models. They are becoming a key component of all large enterprises.

Artmotion’s high security datacenters enable businesses to regain control

Our Datacenters offer businesses the ultimate in data privacy

over their data security. Rather than relying on traditional datacentres, shared hosting plans or the whim of government privacy laws Artmotion enables organizations to specifically choose to host their data in a location where individual privacy is taken seriously.

Artmotion is a leading solution for all Datacenter related services. With private clouds hosted entirely in Switzerland, companies can rest assured that their data is secure and accessible only by them. Artmotion’s 18

Serving businesses in around 30 countries, Artmotion serves medium to large international clients, including several Fortune 500 companies.

Artmotion’s commitment to privacy is

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solutions are underpinned by the latest technology, secure, high performance dedicated servers and military-grade encryption to safeguard data and reduce the risk of third parties infiltrating private data.

a key part of their relationship with those customers, which means that while it is not possible to publicize who they work with, it also ensures a high level of trust with customers most customers have worked with Artmotion for over five years.

Artmotion, Offering Bespoke Secure Data Outsourcing Solutions Security and data privacy are at the heart of Artmotion’s business, offering state of the art, highly secure server solutions for businesses of all sizes.

Artmotion has a commitment to

individual privacy and has worked hard to ensure that all of its customers’ data is secure. Its location in independent Switzerland means that, unlike many European datacenters, Artmotion does not compromise the security of its data by including any backdoors or “master keys”.

By refusing to compromise on data security, Artmotion has developed a hosting service that can provide businesses with genuine peace of mind - keeping their data away from the prying eyes of competitors, hackers and even governments.

According to research published by the Ponemon Institute, 83% of businesses don’t know where their sensitive data is being stored, with many not even knowing which continent their private information is currently hosted in. As cloud computing grows increasingly ubiquitous this confusion is only going to get worse, with many cloud providers distributing backups across multiple sites in various locations. As a result, while a business may be under the impression that their data is secured under one country’s jurisdiction, there is nothing to say that it won’t be backed-up in an entirely separate - and less privacy-conscious - location.

To help organisations understand these risks, Artmotion has recently published Data Danger Zones, a comprehensive | JULY 2016 |

The 10 Fastest Growing

Data Centre Solution Provider Companies

gone on to open a full service marketing agency.

Mateo was only 18 years old when he founded Artmotion and fifteen years later the business has grown under his leadership to become one of the largest privately owned datacenters in Switzerland.

While speaking about his Datacenter, Mateo says, “The past year has shocked many large enterprises into rethinking their approaches to both cyber security and data privacy.

Following numerous hacking scandals, corporate spying, and the complicity of several large tech firms in government snooping, businesses are finally beginning to realize that defending privacy is not only good for their customers, but also good for business.”

Mateo Meier Founder

benchmark of the world’s safest - and riskiest - data locations. This analysis found that over a third of the world's IP addresses are registered in unsafe countries, while the fifty safest nations account for less than 3% of public computing - emphasizing the advantages that Artmotion’s enhanced security can provide.

Mateo Meier, the man behind Artmotion Mateo Meier, the founder of Artmotion is a Bachelor of Miami International University, Miami, and CAS | JULY 2016 |

Marketing & Corporate Communications from School of Management & Law - Zürich University of Applied Science.

Mateo spent the early stages of his career over in the US where he became an astute marketing director before returning home to Switzerland to setup Artmotion. Artmotion was started in early 2000 and provides highly bespoke server solutions to an international set of clients. Mateo continues to provide his insights to a range of leading publications and has

He adds, “Despite increasing complexity, data security is now firmly on the corporate agenda as businesses lose faith in the ability of many providers to protect their data. Having focused on security since the inception of Artmotion, it is extremely encouraging to see that the market is increasingly coming round to our view on the importance of data security and privacy.”

Further Mateo desists, “Many businesses are now being far more proactive in their approach to data security - and as far as I am concerned that can only be a positive trend.”

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The 10 Fastest Growing

Data Centre Solution Provider Companies

DuPont Fabros Technology: “Enabler of the Cloud”

A

data center is a facility that centralizes an organization’s IT operations and equipment, also where it stores, manages and disseminates its data. Data centers house their network’s most critical systems and are vital to the continuity of daily operations.

Organizations are demanding more effective and efficient data centers for their real-time compute and storage of

We keep your computing environment running at optimal performance so you can stay focused on running your business and less time worrying about data center uptime, network migrations, reliability, etc.

data. This has pressurized the traditional data center vendors to upgrade facilities and also provides an opportunity for new organizations to develop and build productive data centers. DuPont Fabros Technology Inc. (DFT), founded in 1997, delivers the highest of expectations to clients as a wholesale data center provider.

Using the Most Advanced Technologies DuPont Fabros Technology is an American public company owning, developing, operating and managing

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“

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enterprise-class, carrier-neutral, large multi-tenant wholesale data centers.

The facilities are designed to offer highly specialized, efficient and safe computing environments in a low-cost operating model. DFT has 11 data centers located in three major U.S. markets: Santa Clara, CA; Chicago, IL; and Northern Virginia. The portfolio currently includes 3.2 million gross square feet and 278 megawatts of available critical load capacity. DFT is actively expanding in each of its

current markets and is also entering new markets, including Toronto and Portland.

DFT’s premium, wholesale data centers are designed to Tier 3 standards. Built for performance, the data centers are engineered to be concurrently maintainable while offering customers the ultimate in reliability, availability, scalability, efficiency and flexibility.

Salient Features of DFT’s Latest Data Center Design:

• Flexible to support unique customer equipment layouts • A new water side economization plant with chiller assist allowing outside air to cool water using a plate and frame heat exchanger • An industry-leading design Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of 1.15 at full capacity annualized by use of a containment strategy • The use of medium voltage (MV) 4160V technology for power distribution within the data center • The utilization of reclaimed water • Slab floor for increased weight capacity • Power Distribution Units (PDUs) housed off the computer room floor for added usable square footage Center of the Data Centers Christopher P. Eldredge, President, Chief Executive Officer and Director of DFT, is responsible for developing and defining the company’s vision and expansion strategy.

Eldredge has worked in the IT infrastructure and telecommunications industry for nearly two decades and has a strong background in executive management, strategic business development, mergers and acquisitions, | JULY 2016 |

The 10 Fastest Growing

Data Centre Solution Provider Companies

Worthy Partner to Work With DFT’s customers claim that the partnership approach is one of the most highly regarded aspects of the DFT experience. Nothing makes DFT happier than to hear customers provide feedback about the quick response times to answer questions and solve problems. They also continually hear from customers about the proactive communication, flexibility and openness to changes, as well as their expertise in data center design.

Most importantly, customer feedback is what drives DFT’s strategic initiatives. Customers explained to DFT what they want from their data center partners, and DFT built it. Their customers told them what markets they want to be in, and the company is entering those geographies.

DFT knows that clients need reliable, available, cost-efficient and safe homes for critical IT assets. Enterprises of all sizes bring their unique data center challenges to the company, and DFT tailors a proven solution on a foundation of stability.

Christopher P. Eldredge President, Chief Executive Ofcer and Director

operations and sales.

Eldredge received a Master of Business Administration from Dowling College; a Master of Communication Arts from New York Institute of Technology; and a Bachelor of Business Administration in marketing from Hofstra University. Eldredge also serves as a board member of the Northern Virginia Technology Council.

Data Centers Powered By Trust DFT offers a multitude of services to help its customers achieve their infrastructure objectives, including | JULY 2016 |

consulting, construction, project management and managed services.

Upon engagement, DFT can provide customers with room design and installation. Once a customer is operational, DFT can assist with additional services, adding supplimentary layers of security and compliance audit support.

With all of the support and services provided, a relationship built on trust is an important parameter for the customer who chooses DFT among all the data center providers.

Referring to the future goals, Eldredge stated, “The use of technology is not slowing down. From the Internet of Things to mobile applications and big data, we are all consuming more and more technology and bandwidth. Much of this growth is being fueled by “the cloud.” At DFT, one of our stated goals is to be the largest enabler of the cloud.

The industry is only at the beginning stages of this massive migration, and I’m most excited about the role DFT will play in this ever-changing landscape.”

21

CXO Standpoint

IoT, Wearable Computing Where Everything is Addressable

A

t Canada151 Data Centers we try to keep a finger on the pulse of all changes in the IT landscape and we are keen observers and participants in the ongoing debate between cloud, private cloud (and all other variations), and dedicated infrastructure.

That debate is further clouded by data residency issues (no pun intended), which may dictate against public cloud for sensitive data.

And as we all should know, not all clouds are the same. AWS and Azure is one shape and size; the private and public cloud providers in our data From a financial perspective I liken center is another shape and size, with that debate to a comparison of renting multiple variations in between. IT a car, from any of the national rental applications can be generic but many companies, versus buying a car - which are specialized / customized and don’t comes down to how frequently you work on a generic AWS / Azure need it and whether the daily rental platform. meets your particular needs.

22

Next up in the evolution is the IoT internet of things - wearable computing - where everything is addressable - and including very time sensitive apps. In a nutshell, cloud is / can be relatively slow; and for any applications employing vast amounts of data (Netflix, Film and TV Production Industry etc) and speed, latency matters; therefore location matters (as well as direct connectivity). This demand is / will be huge. As one pundit exclaimed: what happens when all of our refrigerators order milk at the same time!

| JULY 2016 |

CXO Standpoint

numerous companies, public and private, small and large; I can count on one hand the number of board room discussions concerning back-up and DR, or risk mitigation of any type regarding critical data loss.

The happy news is that from my perspective, the options available to most companies of all sizes has never been better. Connectivity, processing and storage costs will continue to drop. There is no one set solution for companies but current and future technology is such that demands of all types can be met. Big public cloud, small public cloud, private cloud, dedicated, on premise, off premise, etc., high speed, big connectivity can all be accessed and utilized to minimize IT costs. But all solutions must be business based, working from the business need to the IT solution. And all IT solutions should be benchmarked to minimize cost.

J. Mark MacDonald Founder / CEO, Canada 151 Data Centers Inc.

As a relative newcomer to the industry with a background in finance, I would also perceive a huge knowledge and understanding gap between IT and the rest of most companies. IT can appear to the un-initiated to be the world's largest, most complicated and expensive black box.

I would perceive that this may be a significant contributor to calls for complete IT outsourcing or at least cost reduction.

Lastly, all solutions must be based on rock solid and highly secure and redundant power, connectivity and cooling infrastructure. Grids will go down, not if but when.

Mechanical devices, generators, UPS, HVAC will cease to function, not if but when (if maintained properly and replaced appropriately, very rarely). Loss of data is another when, not if. The problem is that it happens infrequently, so consequences are difficult to understand and inertia sets in.

People didn’t stop smoking when presented with proof that it would kill them in 50 years – the consequence was too far off and hence of low practical probability.

Data loss and outages have low frequency but are hugely impactful; Again, not if but when. Regret is huge – ever lost your laptop, without having a backup?

These events, while infrequent but catastrophic, can be mitigated by best businesses practices which means frequent backup to a highly redundant infrastructure. But risk mitigation culture starts at the top.

As a solution provider to end clients, this overall confusion can create significant impediments to adoption of best practices – including what should be simple but is not: back-up and disaster recovery. Over the past 25 years (most of the history of the internet), I have served on the Board of

| JULY 2016 |

23

CXO Standpoint

The Power of Converged Solutions

F

or years experts and analysts have predicted, pushed, and prodded businesses to a future of unified communications. Their claim was that in a world where all of our technologies and tools to communicate were truly integrated, there would be a transformative improvement in efficiency and work life balance.

However, our world today feels less unified than ever before. It seems as if every day (or even every hour) brings a new stand-alone business application designed to supercharge productivity.

The problem is that very few of these apps truly work together, and very few business users derive the same benefit from each. Thus, we have actually created a new world of “disunification.”

Where there is pain, there is promise.

Within our current situation there does lie the potential that inter application APIs can be leveraged so that different apps can work together, each user can choose the app of their choice, and in the end everything will be unified again. This IS a technical possibility.

However, in reality the competing business interests of different application developers stands in the way of seamless and reliable integrations. Often times even apps that could be integrated have their interface capabilities turned off or removed for business reasons. Further adding to this complexity, many company acquisitions can lead to capabilities being disabled in the best business interests of the new owners.

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Where to Turn?

There are many paths businesses can take in light of these realities. Some choose to grin and bear the current situation. Some choose to build solutions of their own. Some attempt to select a handful of key suppliers to partner with, and build a tightly coupled ecosystem they hope will stand the test of time. And still others keep looking for the perfect solution that might not exist yet, that could be just around the corner, not realizing that by choosing inaction they run the very real risk of falling behind.

The Application Monopoly Game via M&A Through aggressive merger and acquisition (M&A) activities, many organizations are looking to rope together impressive collections of complementary applications. These apps are intended to attract businesses looking to garner a wide assortment of functionality from a single vender, or at least from a smaller collection of vendors. A troubling component of this approach though, is that many of the vendors with the largest application collections also have the least business interest in allowing competing applications to integrate well.

What about Telco?

Most business application developers are lacking the capabilities (and the understanding) to integrate complex PSTN services into more advanced applications. Even traditional phone service companies struggle here, and appear to have little or no path to the future for deploying more advanced

Thomas Beck Director of Marketing & Business Development Teo Technologies

capabilities via their dated and bloated infrastructures. They rely on two primary vendors, Metaswitch and Broadsoft, who both have critical billing system integration capabilities with the legacy carriers, but lack more advanced applications. So, where are businesses to turn for truly integrated unified communications solutions?

Never Give Up While the needs are complex, and the more well-known vendors to choose from are lacking in key ways, all hope is not lost. There is a new breed of solution provider, one that possesses the pedigree of PSTN service integration, and also the next gen application integration capabilities that traditional providers lack. These new solution providers are able to deliver truly integrated unified communications, call center, contact center, and analytics solutions in a single platform, providing not only a huge array of capabilities, readily customizable for each customer, but also built to integrate with other vendors’ solutions.These solution providers have engineered and designed for the demands of the modern business, and they are the ones to watch. While they may not be household names today, they are the forward-thinking partners that innovative organizations turn to when taking their next strategic leap in their business success. | JULY 2016 |

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Editor’s Pick

Exigency of Energy Efciency of Data Centers

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ata Centers are the powerhouses, whose engines are pumping blood through the arteries of global economy, while in the interim consuming a huge amount of energy. As much as we are depending on the data centers they are becoming convalescent towards energy efficiency as its scale is extraordinary.

The demand for data center capacity in the US grew enormously over the last five years, on the other hand, total data center energy consumption grew only inappreciably.

As per the study, these energy efficiency improvements will have saved 620 billion kWh between 2010 and 2020.

But the question is will efficiency be the final answer?

When at one end, data centers have cut out their energy consumption, on the other end, there are still software

running in the highly inefficient data centers, small and mid-size enterprise IT facilities built a decade ago or even prior to the support applications for hospitals, banks, insurance companies, etc. There are energy problems the data center industry will have to face in the near future.

Well, the situation explains the need of improvement in the data center energy efficiency. Rather, it is the utmost need of the time. The function and objectives of a data center revolves around providing a secure physical space, ensuring the availability of power and environmental operating conditions best fit for the reliable operation of the IT equipment. Furthermore, there is a range of complex business and technical issues which interact that can affect the design, on the same time, the present and future operating conditions over the operating life of the data center. Ergo, to fulfill the IT equipment environmental requirements as they continue to broaden in the future will remain an important factor for data centers to be efficient.

Ways to Lessen the Use of Energy What organizations can do is they can follow the ASHRAE thermal guidelines best fit for their business requirements. The hyperscale Internet and cloud service providers have different requirements and so they can use custom hardware made specifications. Obviously, the environmental specifications of

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| JULY 2016 |

Editor’s Pick

that equipment may even be greater than the current A4 and so how to cool them will be a big decision. This is the reason that no particular recommended way can be helpful, as it will vary according to the data center’s cooling system’s energy efficiency.

‘Regulation’…Real Answer?

Some of us will say that the governmental regulation is the best fit when it comes to improve energy efficiency, let it affect the cost of building or operating cost of any type of building, counting data centers.

Some of the others will say and agree that the inherent supporters of energy efficiency yet recognize that overpassionate and prescriptive mandatory measures are not the best one among all the methods, just because it can hamper this process.

Going totally other way, the traditional enterprise data centers colocation and cloud service providers are highly competitive businesses. Just because the TCO model they are following, congenitally drives them to improve their energy efficiency wherever possible. The cost of energy or local tax incentives and customer’s market demands, and their own strategic technical and business objectives, are some of the other factors organizations can look after while making the decision. Forasmuch as, organizations should have the liberty and ability to build their facilities as per the customers need, and use whatever

| JULY 2016 |

designs that will enable them to adapt to the best and most cost effective use of local conditions and resources.

The Future of the Industry When it comes to the future aspect, the data center industry has to look forward to the looming 4th edition of the TC9.9 Thermal Guidelines and the culmination of the 90.4 and 90.1 standards. Nevertheless, it is changing when it comes to historic industry practices that have inhibited many enterprise data centers from increasing their operating temperatures, due to perceived risk.

interaction of facilities and IT operational management domains will prove to be beneficial to everyone. In this way, they can permit more power to be used for IT hardware, at the same time less for cooling the facility. In this way, the data centers can achieve the ultimate energy efficiency target by allowing the data center to install more IT equipment and computing capacity, without augmenting the total power used by the site.

Thus and so, data centers can improve the energy efficiency by incorporating the best fit guidelines for them.

The greater understanding and

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The 10 Fastest Growing

Data Centre Solution Provider Companies

RackN: Bringing the Cloud to the Data Center and the Data Center to the Cloud

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eing the center of modern software technology, Data Centers are playing a critical role in expanding capabilities for enterprises. No more do enterprises have to dwell upon the error-prone paper-and-pencil documentation methods, as data centers have vastly improved the usability of data as a whole. When it comes to the physical place or time required, data centers have reduced both. Data centers are playing a very important role when it comes to the advancement of

Our purpose of the RackN software is to be adaptive and complementary to ANY existing infrastructure, provisioning tooling and platforms and provide a continuous, automated, mistake-proof deployment experience

technology with new concepts entering the landscape that represent a dramatic shift in the way data centers are conceived, configured and utilized.

One such Software-as-a-Service platform for Hybrid Cloud and Data Center Infrastructure is RackN. Based on the Digital Rebar open source project, RackN provides a UI & APIbased, template-driven platform which automates and composes an easy way to orchestrate the provisioning, upgrade and scale of independent technologies and services so hybrid cloud and data center infrastructure can be operated in the same fashion. For 28

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example, if your usage model called for the deployment of containers, SDN, microservices conducting 1000s of configuration steps across multiple clouds and data centers in the process, RackN does this automatically within hours. RackN completes what traditional DevOps tools, converged infrastructure and cloud managers did not, which is to provide a flexible, easy-to-use, vendor-neutral technology that composes and orchestrates how independent technologies, multiple platforms and micro services are

installed, function and upgrade together as a complete system within any operational framework.

RackN Bringing Solutions to Production The RackN Unified Hybrid Cloud & Infrastructure software platform solves the problem of how traditional IT, cloud and DevOps technologies and teams work together to bring solutions to production. RackN ensures CIOs, CTOs, data center and cloud managers reduce cost and risk while accelerating innovation and automating operationally efficient deployments of complex technologies across the hybrid

infrastructure.

RackN has incorporated DevOps principals and concepts such as continuous integration/deployment, testing, and feedback loops into the software architecture. By adding a layer of intelligent composability which analyzes the configuration steps and dependencies of the provisioning workflow, RackN breaks up the build runbook into independent units. Once these configuration steps and units are inventoried, they are then composed into a single-click template and can be copied, modified and used repeatedly across multiple platforms and technology stacks. RackN makes it super-simple to build, test, deploy and upgrade complete functional systems on new and existing multi-cloud and hybrid infrastructures repeatedly.

Composable Hybrid Operations By assigning roles to these independent units, RackN can determine how they operate independently and behave as part of a single or multiple systems. This architecture is required for environments that are dynamic and require iterative re-provisioning, constant upgrades and are prone to miss-configuration due to constant change. RackN integrates with leading cloud management and CMDB tools such as Chef and Puppet so current operations and development can be optimized.

RackN believes CIOs, developers, cloud and IT operators should focus on | JULY 2016 |

The 10 Fastest Growing

Data Centre Solution Provider Companies

infrastructure to build, test and deploy an application. Because RackN has the ability to intelligently provision, compose and orchestrate workflows for any platform or technology, they automate and remove the guesswork and risk from how hybrid infrastructure needs to function as a singular system to deliver value to the provider and consumer.

Rob Hirschfeld, Founder & CEO, Visionary behind RackN Graduate of Duke University and Louisiana State University, Rob has been building and leading innovative software companies and organizations for over 20 years, that have changed the way developers and companies build and deploy software in production. Prior to founding RackN, Rob was Director and Distinguished Engineer at Dell where he drove the company’s strategy and development of OpenStack and Crowbar. Prior to Dell, Rob founded software automation company, Surgient which was later acquired by Quest Software in 2010.

Rob Hirschfeld Founder & CEO

developing and operating and not focus on deployment and provisioning issues around networking, server, storage, platform misconfigurations or API compatibility issues. RackN is architected to abstract away the proprietary and technical differences of the multi-cloud hybrid infrastructure environment.

Customer Satisfaction on Top Priority The customers of RackN demands solutions that are cost-effective, vendor-neutral, technically flexible and do not add operational complexity.

RackN provides “easy button” | JULY 2016 |

automation around lifecycle management for any technology intended to be part of an innovative, evolving production-scale system. It is important to RackN not to increase the operational burden and complexity for cloud and data center managers but rather empower them to deliver solutions more repeatedly in a shorter amount of time.

Taking example of one customer in particular, their mission is to provide a self-service model to which allows for the customers to have the choice of using any DevOps tool, softwaredefined-networking, cloud or physical

While talking about the future of RackN Rob says, “We are truly in the golden age of technology. The innovation and choices around cloud, software delivery platforms and data center technologies to solve business problems have never been higher. With these advances comes the challenge of production-scale adoption, ongoing management, maintaining expertise, risk reduction and launching new products and services to market in a cost-effective manner.”

As a software technology company in this space, RackN makes the end-to-end lifecycle management of hybrid technology simple. RackN is well positioned to be incredibly influential and bring a tremendous amount of value in this area.

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The 10 Fastest Growing

Data Centre Solution Provider Companies

RightITnow: Blue-Ribbon IT Operations Management Solution

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foretime, SME organizations had mostly bypassed legacy event and fault management tools because of the cost and configuration complexities. Now, with the new technologies like virtualization and a dynamic infrastructure, a consolidated, automated IT operations management platform becomes a necessity. The right platform equipped with powerful Event Correlation and Management (ECM) built for today’s

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sets a new industry benchmark - in terms of efficiency, simplicity, agility and total cost of ownership - a dramatic breakaway from current market offerings.

RightITnow’s ECM solution includes out-of-the-box integration with popular management systems; a flexible Web 2.0 operations console that enables drag and drop configuration; intuitive and accessible dashboards; and

We dramatically simplify the management of IT operations

When it comes to event management, change is long overdue. Existing solutions are tired, inflexible and simply not compatible with today’s complex, dynamic and virtualized environments. RightITnow delivers a new class of groundbreaking event management solutions that addresses IT operations’ unmet need to support and enable their service delivery infrastructure. RightITnow solutions 30

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dynamic infrastructures at price levels affordable for small and medium enterprises is RightITnow.

dynamic charting with no programming requirements.

Top-notch Products of RightITnow IT environment of an organization consists of complex, multi-tiered infrastructure and application assets that need to work together perfectly to support the delivery of business services. All of these IT assets generate event notifications that track their status and ongoing changes. It’s likely that your organization has deployed multiple active monitoring and management systems to track the

performance and availability of individual infrastructure components and end-to-end services. These monitoring systems also generate their own events sending notifications for everything from unreachable instances, to performance anomalies to service interruptions.

Taken together, your IT infrastructure components and monitoring systems can generate tens of thousands to millions of events each day. Many of these events are informational, while some hold meaningful and critical information on potential or ongoing failures.

However, given the high volume of raw events, IT operations teams cannot put the knowledge of real-time events to direct use. They necessarily need some level of intelligent event correlation and reduction into relevant alerts to feasibly and economically manage the IT operations process.

RightITnow ECM (Event Correlation Manager) fills this gap, by making your IT Operations and Service Desk teams more effective and productive. It aggregates, filters and correlates your high-volume of infrastructure and application events into a streamlined number of actionable alerts. With RightITnow ECM, your IT operations staff can proactively detect, isolate and | JULY 2016 |

The 10 Fastest Growing

Data Centre Solution Provider Companies

Marc Ferrie, Founder and CEO, Visionary behind RightITnow Marc Ferrie, Founder and CEO of RightITnow, holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence from the University Descartes, Paris, and a Master’s degree in Sociology from the University La Sorbonne, Paris. He was a CEO and Chairman at RiverMuse. Marc brings two decades of executive experience in delivering enterprise software solutions.

Marc Ferrie Founder & CEO

respond to infrastructure issues before they impact customers.

Additionally, it facilitates IT operations process automation by enabling the creation and execution of automated workflows, including one to efficiently connect the flow of alerts from the Operations Center to the Service Desk.

It is a perfect fit for organizations, which need high-volume event collection, filtering and correlation across their different monitoring tools.

Also, for them who are ready to replace their legacy Event | JULY 2016 |

Management Systems with RightITnow ECM’s cost-effective enterprise-class capabilities, simplicity and usability.

The RightITnow Partner Program has changed the shape of the event management market place. It is ideal for any organization wanting to increase revenue within their market, deliver a real alternative solution to today’s event management challenges and work with a trustworthy vendor.

Previously, Marc was the Senior Vice President of Engineering at GuardianEdge, a leader in endpoint data protection. Prior to GuardianEdge, he was the Vice President of Engineering at Elemental Security, a leader in enterprise policy and risk management. Marc has also led engineering and technical operations (Customer Support, IT, hosted ops) at companies such as Ventaso, a provider of sales effectiveness solutions, and Evolve Software (now Oracle), a leading provider of IT operations management and professional services automation. Prior to this, Marc held numerous executive management positions at Computer Associates and Ingres in France and the U.S., in both Engineering and Customer Service.

While talking about the company, Marc says, “RightITnow ECM has changed the way IT operations are being managed across industry verticals; Once you have evaluated our solution and you are ready to bring your IT ops to the next level.”

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Industry Outlook

MEGA DATA ENTERS:HINDRANCES

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o simplify day to day operations organizations and businesses are banking on the advanced technologies. The need of high speed internet smart devices and advancement of technology has elevated the demand for anytime and anywhere data access. This ascending growth of data is creating tremendous demand for data storage, boosting the emergence of Mega Data Centers.

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scenario, Mega Data Centers help companies handle their increased business needs efficiently. Additionally, the cost of communicating and cloud services can be cut with the help of a Mega Data Center. There will be a kind of standardization it will give to the racks, servers, storage, and networking equipment by leveraging a standard layout.

The bulk purchasing of setup and equipment costs will automatically help reduce costs.

Associated cost benefits, increasing cloud and colocation services and better economies of scale are some of the important factors which affect the Mega Data Centers. The large scale infrastructure equipment and facilities needed for the Mega Data Centers facilitates the significant reduction in the operational cost. But on the other hand, low availability of resources, huge initial investments and high probability of error multiplication are some obstacles in the way of Mega Data Centers. But these obstacles cannot deny the need of it.

Mega Data Center Revolutionizing the IT Market The global IT landscape and computing business is changing with the introduction of Mega Data Centers. To be ahead in the competition and to fulfill the businesses need of increased storage, data transfers, computing, and bandwidth, enterprises are relying on Mega Data Centers.

There are some challenges before Data Centers like, Application maintenance, Application development, Server infrastructure operations, Network infrastructure operations, Storage infrastructure operations, High operational costs leading to slow transition, and Expensive and difficult to enable real-time analytics. All these challenges are fueling to the bigger challenge and that is growing need for Mega Data Centers.

Running a business smoothly and systematically has become an arduous task because of increased business evolution and acute competition in the field. In this 32

With the increasing demand, the Mega Data Centers are expected to record significant growth, but for as of now, the demand is just blossoming. The absorption of heavy loads in the capacity that is being transferred to the Mega Data Centers are the reason of their big size which can be over hundreds and thousands of square meters. Nowadays, organizations and businesses are looking forward to instrument the Cloud Model supported by Mega Data Centers.

Hyperscale Configurations Becoming Instrumental With the advancement of Mega Data Centers, Hyperscale configurations are becoming run-of-the-mill as cloud and colocation services are rising up. But, on the contrary, these large-scale configurations which are data-dense are also creating new network challenges. These Mega Data Centers | JULY 2016 |

Industry Outlook

are also being able to freely mix and match variety of cabling formats, particularly between fiber-optic and copper infrastructure.

The Dynamics of the Mega Data Center Movement When it comes to Data Center, swift movement in the cloud, using server virtualization to reduce the hardware footprint of facilities and reinforcing the infrastructure was the focal point of the organizations. It is because of this approach Big Data has got immense importance and cloud became the important tool for organizations and businesses to expand in the market.

This favor of Big Data and Cloud has changed the dynamics, nowadays, businesses and organizations are emphasizing on shrinking their internal data centers to least levels and establishing hosted private clouds or public cloud subscriptions for a | JULY 2016 |

number of their other needs. This situation has created the need of Mega Data Centers, to fulfill the clients need.

Definitely, Mega Data Center will fulfill the need of businesses and organizations like, power demands will skyrocket, data will move at large scale both between systems in the facility and to users too, system density will be extremely high as creating value from every square-foot of facility space will be huge, Virtualization across the entire configuration and not just servers will lead to higher data densities, all these things will add up to an incredibly powerful data center where data will move in diverse directions at breakneck pace.

Things to be Taken Care of There are three network considerations Mega Data Centers will have to take care of, Aggregate networks, Flattened architectures and Physical space

challenges. Businesses, many a time, has to face situation where they have high-performance network links interconnecting various parts of their facility or enabling a channel for data to move to external locations. The confusion is whether to choose the fiber-optic cabling or copper. The underlying cabling configuration provides enough bandwidth, only when flattened networks will able to create flexibility.

There are new challenges created by Hyperscale data center configurations, like the way data moves through facilities and out to users. This demands the blend fiber and copper into an adaptable architecture to fulfill the demand of flexibility by the client.

No doubt there are hindrances the Mega Data Center has to face, but it will not going to lessen the demand of the clients for it.

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CXO Standpoint

Connecting Dark Data with IoT -By Adrian Hinrichsen, Marketing & Business Development Director of Datumize

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he above infographic is astonishing when you really delve into the numbers. The last few years have been quite interesting when it comes to the IoT space.

I have personally taken a back seat and watched how the industry has sprouted, from an embryonic platform to an early catalyst for possibly becoming the next “Skynet� (no pun intended). For some time now pundits have been predicting great things for the Internet of Things (IoT),

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| JULY 2016 |

CXO Standpoint

from smart cities and smart homes to smart energy grids, driverless cars and autonomous robots. What is in no doubt are the number of “things” that now have “connected capability”, and it is rising fast; according to one leading analyst, 6.4billion connected things will be in use by the end of this year, an increase of 30% from last year, meaning 5million new things are being connected up to the internet every single day. The term internet of things (IoT) was coined round about the turn of the millennium and is widely held to mean the connection of “things”.

There are a number of factors driving IoT. First, consumers are demanding greater convenience, speed of delivery and personalisation of the goods and services they consume. There are also other drivers for the IoT explosion we are witnessing.

The costs of infrastructure are on a downward trajectory. Sensors are becoming smaller, cheaper and more energy efficient and battery life is improving. The further innovation of cloud computing platforms and the emergence of specialised IoT services on them mean that the data collection and analysis necessary for wide scale deployment are more accessible.

Here you can see one infographic from Deloitte in 2014 that shows the value they analysed for smart homes and smart cars. Interestingly enough these percentages have not differed too much till now.

Is IoT Fact or Future?

IoT is right at the top of the “hype” cycle and firmly perched to what everyone is talking about. Mckinsey & Co predict that the economic impact of the IoT could be between $3.9tn and $11.1tn per year by 2025. That is a huge industry considering it was only born 16 years ago.

One of the main question I get asked a lot is “where do you see IoT making the most advantage”? Currently the top industries are

| JULY 2016 |

Adrian Hinrichsen Marketing & Business Development Director, Datumize

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CXO Standpoint

domestic/leisure, utilities/energy and transport/automotive.

At Datumize we are seeing traction in all these sectors with each project very much different to the next. Our everyday environment is changing, sometimes without us even noticing, however our lives are being made easier for it.

Although we are moving quickly to an IoT environment, we are also facing “Barriers to connection”, where businesses and consumers do not share the same vision of IoT. One suspicion is the concern for security and how IoT technology could be hijacked and manipulated by those for ill intent. Other factors are more technical in nature, and seem to be around operating systems, pricing and current offerings. All of these factors will have to be overcome if we are to achieve the holy grail of “smart Cities” and connection of things.

In Conclusion IoT is a concept which is no longer discussed only by technical scientists, it has very much moved into the mainstream. Certain industries have embraced IoT more

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than others, for example domestic/leisure, utilities and transport are leading the way. We are all consumers and citizens, and a great deal of education needs to occur before the reality of IoT is understood and accepted by us at large.

Data is the key to IoT and organisations seems to want to get their hands on that “Dark data”, but do not know what to do with it once they have it, or how to turn it into a value for their business. It is here that obstacles occur in our everyday business environment as the resources needed have currently not been implemented into the infrastructure and this will not happen until businesses understand the value that is passing them by on a daily basis within their organisation.

IoT is potentially the most exciting technical revolution to have happened in a long time, and if we are able to help businesses and consumers connect in a smarter way, help build the resources and infrastructure to support this new environment, then the way we live and work will change forever, in a very positive way.

| JULY 2016 |

The 10 Fastest Growing

Data Centre Solution Provider Companies

Transitional Data Services: Leveraging Field Proven Success

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cknowledged as a “Cool Vendor” by Gartner in 2015 for their innovative approach to orchestrate the execution of hybrid data center migrations, Transitional Data Services (TDS) is the leading service provider for planning and executing complex data center transitions and transformations. It is TDS’ experience, approach, methodology and tools which set the company apart from others.

Since its establishment, TDS is helping clients minimize risk, improve project

Our transformation services and TransitionManager SaaS have established a unique place in the market that aligns with digital business transformation, increased business resiliency and the embracement of perpetual change as necessary, vital and valuable to ongoing success of our clients.

efficiency, and increase migration speed while facilitating more predictable, forward-thinking technical operations for years to come.

Leading Service Provider for IT and Data Center Transformation TDS established this leadership position by tackling the more challenging aspects of IT transformation. While others have more narrowly tactically on device relocations, virtual migrations and cloud enablement, TDS recognizes that successful transformation requires greater attention to the application dependencies, end-to-end infrastructure interdependencies and 38

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alignment with more strategic business issues such as digital transformation, business resiliency, agility and flexibility.

TDS has built TransitionManager Software, specifically to break through the conventional challenges inherent to silo-based approaches.

TransitionManager increases velocity of transitions and transformations by breaking down barriers between operating silos, and allowing change to be implemented efficiently across the organization. This allows the IT organization to better accept and

embrace the perpetual change which is inherent to IT. The change to infrastructure and operations should not be considered isolated to IT. Change must be managed in a way that aligns with the business needs and controls. From a business perspective, digital business transformation is undertaken to support one or more key themes, Increase revenue, Reduce cost or Risk mitigation. IT transitions are secondary to these higher level business goals.

Three Key Factors of TDS TDS is having Deep Technical Experience in all facets of IT. This includes strategy, architecture,

implementation, applications development, enterprise systems, leading-edge data center design, and operations. As an example, TDS has been managing the server operations for Kayak.com from early startup while they’ve become a top travel portal on the planet.

They Take Time to Understand Clients Business Needs, risk factors and financial ramifications of every decision so that clients can make recommendations that best align with your short and long term goals.

TDS invented the software TransitionManager, a tool for clients and partners. TransitionManager is their industry-proven, cloud-based IT migration platform that puts their decade of transformation experience into the hands of each of their consultants, and clients project team.

This turns chaotic and complicated migration events into a wellorchestrated, methodical solution.

The Process You cannot understand the full impact of changing anything in IT or the data center with a full understanding of the interdependencies among other applications and infrastructure servers, database, storage and network.

The accurate inventory and cross-silo dependency mapping go hand in hand.

TDS can leverage available sources of information to accelerate the generation of inventory and dependency views. TDS typically validates the inventory using short interviews with the various infrastructure and application owners.

According to TDS, as recognized

| JULY 2016 |

The 10 Fastest Growing

Data Centre Solution Provider Companies

directly with those responsible for each step and in the proper execution sequence. Full visibility and transparency is available to the team so everyone can see the collective progress though dashboards and detailed drill - down if necessary.

Michael Bullock, Professional behind TDS Michael Bullock is the CEO of TDS, which he founded in 2002. Mike’s vision was to create a new type of professional services company that would focus on delivering efficiency, value and results to TDS clients. Prior to creating TDS, Mike held technology leadership positions with internet startups Student Advantage and iCAST, and previously was Vice President of Technology for Renaissance Worldwide where he managed the technology convergence from 26 portfolio companies as Renaissance grew to become a $1B, public company.

Michael Bullock CEO

by Gartner and others, transition planning must be broken down into realistic waves or groupings. As you go through this process, you will need to address all interdependencies that will be broken or interrupted in order to avoid unplanned disruption to the business.

TDS can then automatically generate a detailed step by step execution plan to move from clients current to future state. They call this the Runbook. The runbook is generated automatically by applying transition recipes to the inventory migration groups result in an integrated plan to execute the complete migration | JULY 2016 |

effort. Unlike more conventional / static approaches, this plan can be incrementally refined and improved along the way until it is time for execution. This agile and adaptive approach is critical to transformation success when taking into account the complexity and constant change inherent to modern IT. All this leads up to an execution process that is refined, adaptive and orchestrated in real time. The migration team manages their discrete activities in the proper sequence.

Command and control functions can operate at a higher level while the detailed task execution is controlled

Future Panorama TDS’ annual service bookings have been growing at an annual compounded rate of 25% per year over the last 7 years. Furthermore, since TransitionManager was publicly introduced in 2014, the company sales growth has accelerated to over 50% annually - and securing its place as one of the top 10 fastest growing data center solution providers profiled by Insight Success. Michael says, “There are two key parts of TDS’ business that feed each other. First, we provide turnkey services to help companies transform their infrastructure and operations (I&O), which includes; Comprehensive Analysis and Planning Services and Physical, Virtual and Cloud Migrations.” Bullock continued, “The other is TransitionManager and the reach through our partner network which has allowed us to sustain our leadership position in the market.”

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The 10 Fastest Growing

Data Centre Solution Provider Companies

Xerafy: A Global Provider of Passive RFID Metal Tags

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irst to introduce several gamechanging technologies such as Embeddable Tags, Printable On-Metal Labels, and the world’s smallest tags that today are used for tracking assets, Xerafy Ltd. is continuously investing heavily in R&D to evolve with the changing landscape of technology and customer needs.

Xerafy is working closely with the clients and the hardware, software, and integration partners to create solutions

Our wide selection of RFID tags make it possible for organizations to automate the process and be able to track all types of assets in the data center cost effectively

tailored to the customers’ industries and unique needs.

Xerafy RFID tags have been the top choice for many organizations for IT asset tracking and they have successfully deployed RFID for data centers across Intel, CISCO, Huawei, and many others. RFID has enabled them to achieve real-time asset visibility quickly and easily, improve inventory management efficiency, increase regulatory compliance/adherence, and better management asset service agreements

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Overall, data centers have seen approximately 15-times increase in inventory productivity and have reduced the labor as well as reducing time from entire inventory process by 80% to 90% by automating with RFID. This also includes goods ordering and receiving to goods removal and destruction. Server disk hard drives

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through improved maintenance and lifecycle tracking.

when decommissioned are assigned RFID tags for identification throughout the process, providing real time visibility to ensure drives have gone through all processes of decommissioning and do not pose a threat of accidentally leaving the facility and causing a security breach.

Offering High Performance, Reliable Solutions Xerafy provides high performance, reliable RFID solutions for on-metal applications in challenging environments. Their data center

solutions are an extension of their mission to provide highly accurate automatic identification solutions for industries where manual tracking creates inefficiencies, and where traditional RFID applications struggle to manage assets using traditional identification systems such as barcode and manual processes.

The metallic-rich nature of a data center (metal server racks and cases) poses a challenge to the physics of RFID. Metal has a tendency to interfere with the RF signal. Xerafy solves the challenge by offering RFID tags that are not only rugged enough to survive the day-in-day-out shuffle of servers from one location to another, but also provide performance that is not hindered by the presence of metal.

Additionally, the small form factor of Xerafy’s RFID tags has allowed it to be able to tag all types of servers and small IT assets, which have a limited amount of tag real-estate on an already crowded, sever faceplate and chassis.

Xerafy’s popular RFID tags for data center applications and deployments include: Slim Trak - A versatile, low profile, global frequency RFID metal tag ideal for asset management for both indoor and outdoor use.

Dash XXS - The world's smallest

| JULY 2016 |

The 10 Fastest Growing

Data Centre Solution Provider Companies

and providing its global customers with affordable, high performance tags with the smallest form factor yet.

Mr. Khoo, a Singaporean, graduated from the Electrical and Electronics Engineering program at the National University of Singapore, and has lived and worked for more than 20 years in Hong Kong and China. He was responsible for the success of many new businesses’ set up and growth including Motorola, Schlumberger and Inside Contactless throughout his career. He served as Vice President of Sales and General Manager of Asia/Pacific for INSIDE Secure (also known as Inside Technologies).

Previously, he worked as Sales Director for Motorola’s Worldwide Smart Card Solutions Division for Asia Pacific, based out of Singapore, and as Sales Director, North Asia, for Schlumberger Smart Cards & Terminals, based in Hong Kong.

Dennis Khoo Founder & CEO

RFID metal tag - the size of a grain of rice - for tracking very small metal assets with superior read performances.

Data Trak II - Cost-effective RFID tag specifically designed for data center solutions that can be read both on- and off-metal.

Metal Skin smart-labels - The world’s first, thin, flexible and printable family of patented metal labels that work on metallic and non-metallic assets.

Pico-on Plus - This flagship product is | JULY 2016 |

one of the most popular RFID tags in the IT asset management market due to its outstanding size-to-performance ratio.

Dennis Khoo, Brain behind Xerafy Dennis Khoo founded Xerafy Ltd. in 2010, and serves as the company’s CEO. A veteran in the smartcard and RFID space, he brings with him more than 20 years of senior management, regional sales and business operation experience to help steer the company toward its mission of being the industry leader in read-on-metal tags

Future in the Offing At Xerafy, they believe in technological innovation which allows them to challenge the boundaries of what is available and viable for providing greater safety, traceability and efficiencies to the industries.

Mr. Khoo says, “We are excited about the unlimited potential of RFID to expand the ways to capture data and to strengthen its role in the world of Internet of Things (IoT) initiatives, as our technology provides the foundation for connecting all type of assets to the network, regardless of the environment in which those assets reside.”

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CXO Standpoint

IoT Business Will Boost The Economy In The Next Decades -By José Antônio Scodiero, Director & Founding Partner of FAST COMPANY BRAZIL

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he world of the Internet of Things promises to be the main engine of the global economy in the next years. In developing countries, such as Brazil, the opportunities will be even bigger. Considering the size of the local market and the pressing need that Brazil has in increasing the innovation rhythm, technology usage and development, the country can already be seen as a big global player by companies from this sector. In this moment, the more accurate motto for companies that want to act or are acting in Brazil is “Innovate or Die.” After a cycle of more than 10 years of continuous growth, that put the country in evidence on the global landscape as part of the select group of so-called BRICs (Brasil, Russia, India and China) and that stressed even more its leadership in Latin America, Brazil is now entering, in the past two years, a moment of political tension that has reflected directly in the economy. The moment now is of reviewing and restructuring. But in spite of the perception of some foreign executives and entrepreneurs that this is not a good time to invest in the country, it is clear that Brazil had a

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virtuous cycle of many years and reached a higher level. All this indicates that, for sure, not all is lost. Far from it. The time is for opportunities.

With the stabilization of the smartphone market, there’s a great potential for the technology industry - especially in the semiconductors area - in business involving connected cars, agriculture, livestock, smart cities, among others. To fully use this opportunities, it is necessary to understand in which ways it is possible to develop the best technological solutions to different regions. And the solutions to problems from different countries can only be found locally.

Investing in the right time and in the right moment Despite the low participation of Brazil in the semiconductors industry, the country has a great potential to use the Internet of Things and to develop in this sector. It is a field in which no one has the advantage yet: we are, theoretically, in the same level as United States and China.

Besides that, a chip to a sensor for IoT is cheaper and easier to develop than one made for smartphones. Therefore, it is

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CXO Standpoint

José Antônio Scodiero Director - Founding Partner of FAST COMPANY BRAZIL With over 30 years of experience in areas like information technology, personal computing, semiconductors, entrepreneurship and startups, José Antônio Scodiero has already acted as a high level executive in several big and successful international corporations like: IBM; Apple Computer; OkiData, where he was president of the Brazilian subsidiary, and more recently; AMD, leader in the semiconductors segment, where he held the position of Vice-President for the Latin America region. José Antônio Scodiero is graduated in Electronics Engineering with specialization in hardware and microelectronics and has an MBA in Corporate Administrations by Fundação Armando Álvares Penteado (FAAP).

As an entrepreneur, he founded lots of startup companies since the 90’s, having created his first company when he was only 24 years old. In 2009 he founded Fast Company Brazil, with the objective of catapulting multinational organizations, from sectors like digital technology, semiconductors and software that are seeking to install subsidiaries in the Brazilian and Latin American markets. In 2010 he obtained the certification of Corporate Governance from the Brazilian Institute of Corporate Governance (IBGC) and started acting as a consulting advisor in companies in 2011. In 2012, he became president of the task force of semiconductors of AMCHAM - American Chamber for Brazil and USA. Still in 2012, Scodiero was also elected Director of SBMICRO - Brazilian Society of Microelectronics, where he remains until the end of 2016.

less costly to invest in IoT. In the technology world, the innovation chain has inverted itself recently, with the large domain of big multinational companies giving space to startups and new entrepreneurs. This movement creates a pulverization of opportunities. It is no longer something concentrated, in the domain of few big players like it used to be. There is space for companies from outside the

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country and also for the appearance of new local players that can learn and develop their own systems and foment the industry.

The technology giants, that lost a wave of opportunities that emerged with the mobile business (smartphones, tablets and M2M), now are moving rapidly so they don’t miss out on the opportunities that the IoT segment will

bring. There are several examples in this direction and IBM is one of them, since its announcement, in December of 2015, to return to the consumer electronics market, ten years after selling its computer division to the Chinese Lenovo. The problem is that there are a lot of companies, big and small, repeating the same strategies in the search of its own space in the technology market. This needs to

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CXO Standpoint

change. The motto “Innovate or Die” also needs to be applied in the planning.

IoT as a transforming agent of an economy As well as in great transformations of the past, the revolution caused by IoT will change the entire landscape of the career scenario. It is estimated that in time, it will be possible to see 20 to 30 million jobs migrate, and some functions might disappear, thanks to robotics, intelligent machines and artificial intelligence (AI), that will infiltrate in new corporate areas and automate the positions that are repetitive and transitional.

But what it seems like bad news is in fact a readaptation,

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from work stations focused on operational to opportunities in areas that demands data analysis, ability to solve problems, think creatively, innovate and work within a team. Nothing too distant from the profile that today is comprehended as a good professional. It is an evolutionary movement, driven by technology.

If the job openings in operational work stations tend to drop, the opportunities to professionals that seek qualification and even reinvention will grow a lot. It is a market that, according to IDC, will grow about US$1, 7 trillion until 2020. This amount needs, and will be, shared among the professionals that manage to keep up with the demands of the market.

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