Here’s a roundup of this week’s headlines from the data center and hosting industry:
Intel invests billions in next-generation manufacturing. Intel (INTC) announced that the company will invest between $6 billion and $8 billion on future generations of manufacturing technology in its American facilities. The investment will focus on manufacturing to support future technology advancements in Arizona and Oregon and bring 6,000 to 8,000 construction jobs and 800-1,000 permanent high-tech jobs. “Intel makes approximately 10 billion transistors per second. Our factories produce the most advanced computer technology in the world and these investments will create capacity for innovation we haven’t yet imagined,” said Brian Krzanich, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s Manufacturing and Supply Chain. “Intel and the world of technology lie at the heart of this future. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we can retain a vibrant manufacturing economy here in the United States by focusing on the industries of the future.” The funding will drive the deployment of Intel's next-generation 22-nanometer manufacturing process across several existing U.S. factories, along with construction of a new developmental fabrication plant in Oregon.
The Bunker extends ISO27001. The Bunker Secure Hosting announced that its ISO/IEC 27001:2005 accreditation has been extended to cover its Newbury based data center. “The Bunker has always maintained a reputation for security," said Simon Neal, COO at The Bunker. "When we achieved the ISO27001 accreditation at our Kent site, we also applied all the processes to our Newbury site right away. Extending the accreditation was the next logical step. We wanted to offer clients who require an ISO accredited data centre the choice of location and the possibility of dual site solutions.”
SGI selected by University of Queensland. SGI announced that The University of Queensland has commissioned a high performance computing (HPC) solution consisting of SGI Rackable half-depth servers to support a broad range of research applications. With 3,144 Intel Xeon 5500 and 7500 processor cores and 11.52TB of memory it is one of the largest HPC systems in Australia. The system will be used for research applications such as bioinformatics, computational chemistry, finite element analysis, computational fluid dynamics and earth sciences. "These computers will strengthen an important part of the University's research capacity. Tasks such as processing enormous amounts of biological data generated through techniques such as genome-sequencing, micro-arrays and imaging cannot be done on standard desktop computers," said Professor Max Lu, deputy vice-chancellor (Research) at The University of Queensland.
Yahoo reports third quarter results. Yahoo (YHOO) reported results for the third quarter, period ending September 30, 2010. Revenue was up 2 percent to $1.6 million with net earnings per diluted share up 126 percent to $0.29 compared to the third quarter of 2009. “We delivered a solid quarter with good display advertising revenue growth, big gains in operating income, and margins that were double what they were last year,” said Carol Bartz, president and CEO of Yahoo!. “Because we recognize the tremendous value of our assets, we also dramatically stepped up our stock repurchases. We’ve now bought back more than 7% of the company’s stock this year alone.” During the third quarter Yahoo began the migration to the Microsoft adCenter platform and opened their energy-efficient data center in New York.
