Remember Microsoft’s underwater datacenter concept from a couple of years ago? Where the company stuffed servers and other IT equipment into a big metal tube and dropped it off the coast of California? Microsoft has done it again, this time off the coast of Scotland as part of the second phase of Project Natick, an effort […]
Clouds may be key to greener grids
The AEE’s Advanced Energy Now 2017 Market Report is out now, and it contains one example of the role cloud data centers can play in cleaner, more resilient electrical grids. Of course, there has been some consternation about cloud’s rapid rise and the environmental effects of building and powering the massive data centers that are […]
Amazon looks to the solar to power its cloud
Some neat news from my colleague Jeffrey Burt over at eWEEK today… Amazon is working with Community Energy to build an 80-megawatt solar farm in Virginia to help power its Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers in Virginia. Jeffrey writes: The solar farm—which will be built in Accomack County, Va., and will power up as early as October […]
Calxeda’s ARM-based EnergyCore SoC coming soon to a data center near you
When will servers powered by Calxeda’s ARM-based EnergyCore SoC finally start to appear in data center racks? Soon, according to Karl Freund, the vice president of marketing for the technology startup. But you may not even realize it, and that suits the company just fine, at least in the near term. In a few short years, Calxeda […]
OpenStack to float ARM-powered clouds
ARM processor-based cloud servers are big on potential, but for now, they fall a bit short on actually powering cloud services. That’s about to change, and quickly too, judging by the meteoric rise of the open source cloud platform that’s just now making the jump from x86 processors to ARM chips. First, a little background. […]
Power management on OpenStack clouds?
HP’s public cloud… IBM and Red Hat on board… Rackspace finally making the jump… OpenStack is so hot right now. To discover why, check out ServerWatch, which has some great OpenStack coverage. The bottom line is that here’s a platform that has the potential to do for cloud infrastructures — public, private and hybrid clouds — what […]
Apple and Greenpeace at odds over cloud data center
Is Apple operating a dirty, coal-powered cloud? Greenpeace seems to think it is (PDF), along with industry heavyweights Microsoft and Amazon. By its estimates, Apple’s data center in Maiden, North Carolina not only consumes a lot of energy, but it relies on power derived from coal-fired plants that service the region. If it sounds familiar, that’s because […]
Outlook for Microsoft Dynamics ERP gets cloudy
It’s happening. Microsoft Dynamics ERP is heading to Azure, the company’s cloud platform. In the forth quarter, the software maker is making Dynamics NAV 2013 and Dynamics GP 2013 available as an online service. You’ll recall that in late 2010 and amid Steve Ballmer’s exuberance over the cloud, concerns about how Dynamics ERP fits into the company plans […]
AMD snaps up SeaMicro
Can news be both surprising and unsurprising? Let’s start with the unsurprising part of the announcement that AMD is acquiring SeaMicro, which is that the startup has been taken off the market for a cool $334 million. Since it unstealthed in June 2010, the company has attracted customers like Google and Mozilla with a dense, […]
State of the SMB cloud market
Yesterday, Parallels released its SMB Cloud Insights report. And according to the company’s forecast, the global SMB cloud services market is growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26 percent and is on track to reach $68 billion by 2014. So, small- and medium-sized businesses are taking to the cloud in increasing numbers, which makes […]
