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VeriSign to Power Star Trek New Voyages

Posted by Rich Miller on October 31, 2007

A story that combines "Star Trek" and CDN technology? For a Trekkie on the data center beat like me, resistance is futile.

VeriSign (VRSN) said its hybrid Intelligent CDN, which combines peer-to-peer and traditional content caching, is supporting the launch of the latest episode of "Star Trek New Voyages" on the DragonFly online video network. As more companies examine the economics of P2P for content delivery, VeriSign is showcasing the possibilities of a hybrid service, a concept reportedly being weighed by CDN market leader Akamai and others. The Intelligent CDN integrates the Kontiki P2P delivery network purchased by VeriSign in 2006.

Another hybrid CDN incorporating P2P making news this week is Seattle's Grid Networks, which raised $9.5 million in series A funding from Panorama Capital, according to Om Malik.

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October 31, 2007

New CEO at Layered Technologies

There's been a leadership transition at Layered Technologies, where former Savvis President John (Jack) Finlayson will become chief executive officer on Nov. 26. Finlayson succeeds co-founder Michael Platner, who becomes vice chairman of the board of directors.

Finlayson, 52, recently served as a director for Layered Technologies. He served six years as president and COO of Savvis Communications, Inc. where he was an integral part of the Savvis IPO and acquisition of Cable and Wireless America (Exodus). Prior to SAVVIS, Finlayson held executive positions at Global Crossing, Motorola and AT&T.

"Layered Technologies has grown from an idea to a company with thousands of customers in multiple data centers and is now poised to move to the next level. I look forward to working with Jack to ensure a smooth transition,” said Platner.

Posted by Rich Miller October 31, 2007 | Permalink | Newsletter

Streaming Media West Show Next Week

If you're tracking the online video or content distribution sectors, you may be interested in the Streaming Media West conference on Nov. 6-8 (next Tuesday through Thursday) in San Jose, Calif. at the McEnery Convention Center. Dan Rayburn at the Business of Online Video has put together some interesting sessions, including a panel on P2P content distribution that will include speakers from Akamai, Level 3, Internap, VeriSign and CacheLogic.

There will also be a "CDN bakeoff" (with demos from BitGravity, Itiva, Grid Networks, Solid State Networks and Move Networks) as well as a session on CDN pricing and the cost of outsourced video delivery. If you're interested in attending, contact Dan for a discount code.

Posted by Rich Miller October 31, 2007 | Permalink | Newsletter

Equinix Building in Europe, Australia

As it begins to fill its newly-built data centers in the U.S., Equinix (EQIX) is boosting its new construction in its European and Asia-Pacific operations, the company said yesterday. Equinix will double the size of its Paris data center, which is at 90 percent of capacity, by adding 26,910 square feet of space. Equinix expects to spend $17 million on the additional space, which will open in the second quarter of 2008.

"The demand for premium data center and network exchange services in the Paris market continues to outpace supply," said Michel Brignano, Equinix General Manager, France. "A significant driver of today’s expansion is the strong traction Equinix has seen in the Paris market from financial services customers, which rely on Equinix for financial grade security and high-performance services."

Posted by Rich Miller October 31, 2007 | Permalink | Newsletter

Broadvox Expands in 9 Switch & Data Sites

Colocation and interconnection specialist Switch and Data (SDXC) said this week that VoIP services provider Broadvox has expanded its presence in Switch and Data facilities in nine markets. The additional space in data centers in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Seattle, and Tampa will help Broadvox keep pace with VoIP growth.

"Switch and Data gives us extensive geographic reach and will allow us to immediately expand our new Broadvox GO! SIP Trunking product line into new markets nationwide," said Sergey Galchenko, Chief Technology Officer for Broadvox. "We can drive down costs and enable the rollout of new enhanced IP voice services to our customers by being closer to call origination and termination points and eliminating unnecessary VoIP/TDM conversions."

The deal demonstrates how VoIP growth is continuing to generate demand for data center services. The telecom research firm TeleGeography reports that U.S. VoIP subscription rates grew 117%, from 4.2 million subscribers at the end of 2005 to 9.0 million by the end of 2006. By mid-year 2007, 11.8 million VoIP lines were in service. Annual VoIP services revenue topped $2.6 billion in 2006, and TeleGeography estimates revenue will exceed $4.9 billion in 2007.

Posted by Rich Miller October 31, 2007 | Permalink | Newsletter

More on Intel's Data Center Consolidation

Intel (INTC) is lifting the lid on some of the details of the data center consolidation it announced in April in Beijing. Intel is a year into the process, which will eventually consolidate 133 data centers worldwide into just eight high-density facilities of about 300,000 square feet apiece. About 60 percent of Intel's existing facilities are at least 10 years old.

"We’ve started the process to End of Life (EOL) or consolidate our data centers down to just eight strategic locations," Brently Davis, manager of Intel’s data center efficiency initiative, writes in a blog post. "This effort is planned to take us eight years, but we’re working to pull this in sooner. This initiative enables us to reduce costs, improve server and storage utilization, create higher density & more energy efficient data centers, and allows us to keep pace with our company’s rapid rate of innovation. The effort could deliver up to $750 million in Net Present Value." Those savings will grow to between $1.4 billion and $1.8 billion over the seven-year period needed to complete the consolidation.

Intel currently has about 93,000 servers in its data centers, many of which will be replaced with a smaller footprint of new multi-core Intel Xeon processors. Virtualization will allow Intel to create higher density data centers.

Posted by Rich Miller October 31, 2007 | Permalink | Newsletter

October 30, 2007

AT&T Opens Data Centers in NJ, Toronto

AT&T Inc. today announced the opening of new data centers in Toronto, Canada and Piscataway, New Jersey. The centers are part of an ongoing expansion of AT&T's data center network, which includes the addition of more space at six existing centers to meet the growing global demand for application services, managed hosting and colocation.

The Piscataway data center, AT&T's third facility in the greater New York market, officially opened in October. The new Toronto facility will begin taking customer orders by the end of 2007. The two new sites give AT&T a global total of 38 Internet data centers, with a global footprint of more than 2.1 million square feet of hosting space.

In the U.S., AT&T is adding more space to data centers in Mesa, Ariz. Irvine, Calif.; and Ashburn, Va. Globally, AT&T is expanding facilities in London, Amsterdam and Singapore. The additions are part of AT&T's $750 million investment in its international infrastructure. All expansions are expected to be completed by January 2008.

Posted by Rich Miller October 30, 2007 | Permalink | Newsletter

Plenty of Fish: Small Back-End, Big Valuation?

We've previously noted the success of Plenty of Fish, the free dating site operated by Markus Frind that manages huge traffic on a minimalist infrastructure. Read/Write Web has an update that examines the potential value of PlentyOfFish.com in an environment in which Facebook is valued at $15 billion. While other bloggers are warning about the emergence of a get-rich-quick bubble mentality, RWW's Richard MacManus reports that Frind now says his site is on track to earn $10 million this year from a combination of AdSense, banner ads and affiliate marketing.

The headline wonders whether Plenty Of Fish would be worth $1 billion in the current climate. "It's very hard to quantify this, but at the very least POF would be worth in the 9 figures due to its annual revenues of $10M," MacManus writes. One factor is that Plenty of Fish appears to get much better performance from its ads than social networking hubs like Facebook and MySpace, according to Frind.

Frind says his site gets 1.2 billion page views a month, and 500,000 average unique logins per day, which are handled by a handful of servers and the use of Akamai's content delivery network. High Scalability has additional details on the architecture and load balancing supporting PlentyOfFish.com.

Posted by Rich Miller October 30, 2007 | Permalink | Newsletter

DuPont Fabros Execs Buying Shares

Ten days after its IPO, shares of DuPont Fabros (DFT) are trading close to the initial offering price of $21 a share. The company's executives apparently think that's a bargain, and have been buying shares. Chief executive and president Hossein Fateh and executive chairman Lammot J. du Pont each bought 47,600 shares of stock at $21 a share, spending about $1 million each, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings last week. DuPont Fabros closed yesterday at $21.28 a share.

In other news, the underwriters of the company's Oct. 19 IPO said they had exercised their option to buy an additional 4,575,000 shares of DuPont Fabros common stock at $21, raising the total proceeds from the offering to $678 million after expenses.

Posted by Rich Miller October 30, 2007 | Permalink | Newsletter

New CEO for Virtualization Startup Evergrid

Evergrid, a venture-backed startup which makes data center management software, said today board member Fred van den Bosch will become the company's chief executive officer beginning Nov. 1. Van den Bosch was formerly CEO of PANTA Systems and executive vice president and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Veritas Software.

In June Evergrid announced $10 million in Series B venture capital funding from Menlo Ventures and Acartha Group LLC. The company's software uses virtualization to manage large clusters of servers in high-performance computing (HPC) applications, monitoring the grid for errors and restarting any processes that have stalled.

Posted by Rich Miller October 30, 2007 | Permalink | Newsletter

Wachovia Builds 3-D Map of Data Centers

Wachovia is creating a 3-D map of the firm's sprawling data center operations, according to ComputerWorld, which describes the effort as "a project of staggering scope." The Charlotte-based banking company is using geospatial data and visualization and working with two vendors and the University of North Carolina-Charlotte on the project, which has been underway for eight months.

Wachovia is rendering 3-D models down to the level of individual servers in buildings, according to Jacob Hall, who heads the data center group at Wachovia (WB). Wachovia hopes the project will provide better visualization of IT assets and their power consumption. Curiously, the project doesn't include instrumentation of the equipment for real-time monitoring, a key focus of many data center management products. Read more at ComputerWorld.

Posted by Rich Miller October 30, 2007 | Permalink | Newsletter

October 31, 2007

New CEO at Layered Technologies

October 30, 2007

AT&T Opens Data Centers in NJ, Toronto

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