Data centre

Deciding where and how to build and operate a datacentre is one of the most important decisions your organisation will make. This section covers how to build a solid datacentre infrastructure, including selecting the right location to build your new facility, best practices for designing a new datacentre, and cooling and air flow techniques. Learn about green IT, data management systems, servers and operating systems.

Feature 09 Feb 2024
The rising prominence of hybrid cloud in the Nordics

Many Nordic organisations have opted for hybrid cloud environments, subscribing to the newest services without giving up what they already have. Best practices are beginning to emerge for managing the heterogenous environment Continue Reading
News 08 Feb 2024
Swedish CIO contributes best practices for ethical use of artificial intelligence

IT leaders are scrambling to keep up with AI technology, but many are losing sight of its ethical impact – and what CIOs need to do to ensure responsible use Continue Reading

News 03 Nov 2022

Microsoft pledges $100m in new IT support for Ukraine

Microsoft will continue to offer free-of-charge technology support to Ukraine for the foreseeable future Continue Reading
News 03 Nov 2022

Why technology change is slow at larger firms

Firms that commit to a single cloud provider and a lack of investment in improving developer productivity can drive up costs and slow down the pace of change, technology leaders say Continue Reading
News 02 Nov 2022

Microsoft claims summer heatwave led to no excess water use by its datacentres

Software giant stokes scandal with befuddling statements about water use, despite eco-transparency pledge Continue Reading
News 02 Nov 2022

OpenSSL vulnerabilities ‘not as bad as feared’

As previously trailed, OpenSSL patched two buffer overflow vulnerabilities, neither of them as impactful as had been feared Continue Reading
News 02 Nov 2022

Alibaba Cloud debuts cloud-powered laptop

Alibaba Cloud launches a cloud-powered laptop that will enable mobile workers to crunch compute-intensive workloads without the need for more powerful machines Continue Reading
Tip 01 Nov 2022

Where do business continuity plans fit in a ransomware attack?

Recovery isn't the only priority when ransomware hits. Careful planning, training and coordination among IT teams are critical to maintain business continuity during an attack. Continue Reading
News 01 Nov 2022

How Elastic is going beyond enterprise search

Elastic has been doubling down on the security and observability capabilities of its open-source platform, going beyond its roots in enterprise search Continue Reading
01 Nov 2022

Google Cloud Platform in 2022: What’s in it for the enterprise?

Google Cloud has seen its market share and revenue soar in recent quarters as enterprises flock to its platform, but profitability continues to elude the company. Continue Reading
Blog Post 01 Nov 2022

Tackling the world’s silent polluter – the internet

In this guest post, Donovan Justice, a partner within the digital engineering and emerging tech group at EY, sets out why it is time people started paying attention to the carbon emissions ... Continue Reading
E-Zine 01 Nov 2022

How the pandemic accelerated tech adoption in hospitality

In this week’s Computer Weekly, we look at how the hospitality sector is turning to technology to rebuild after it was devastated by the pandemic. Google’s cloud business is growing but remains well behind the market leaders – what does its future look like? And we look at the benefits of AIOps for storage. Read the issue now. Continue Reading
News 31 Oct 2022

Prepare today for potentially high-impact OpenSSL bug

OpenSSL trailed a critical vulnerability patch last week, which will be only the second such flaw ever found in the open source encryption project. Unfortunately, the first was Heartbleed Continue Reading
News 31 Oct 2022

Gartner warns of 'inflationary pressure' risk to global public cloud spending

Market watcher Gartner is predicting strong overall growth for the worldwide public cloud market, but warns that any tightening of overall IT budgets could hit its forecast Continue Reading
Opinion 31 Oct 2022

Security Think Tank: Container security: why so different?

Done well, container security can be a model for securing the enterprise, and businesses that focus their teams on solving it can help accelerate positive change in other areas Continue Reading
News 31 Oct 2022

SoftIron’s HyperCloud to ease private cloud deployments

SoftIron claims its technology stack fully automates the provisioning of storage, compute, networking and infrastructure services, providing a fully functioning, multi-tenant cloud Continue Reading
News 28 Oct 2022

AWS revenue growth rate falls as enterprise customers seek to cut costs

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has reported its slowest year-on-year rate of revenue growth since 2014 as enterprises seek to cut costs as economic uncertainty hits Continue Reading
Opinion 28 Oct 2022

How has container security changed since 2020, and have we taken it too far?

While containers are now one of the most popular ways to deploy applications, it is fair to say that the adoption and implementation of security best practice to govern their use has not kept up Continue Reading
News 28 Oct 2022

Singapore’s met service to get new supercomputer

The Meteorological Service Singapore is getting a new Cray supercomputer to improve weather forecasting and tropical climate research Continue Reading
Blog Post 27 Oct 2022

Open source and green tech: A perfect match

In this guest post, Justin Griffith, CTO of supply chain software company StayLinked explores how companies can implement open source technologies as a stand-alone business model Solar technology ... Continue Reading
News 26 Oct 2022

Google commits to cloud and AI

Alphabet, the parent company of Google, has been negatively impacted by the currency market, but its CEO remains focused on artificial intelligence Continue Reading
News 26 Oct 2022

Microsoft Cloud grows, but less than expected

CEO Satya Nadella claims the public cloud is the best way to optimise business IT and address rising energy bills Continue Reading
News 26 Oct 2022

UKCloud in liquidation: Troubled public sector cloud provider hit with winding up order

Public sector sovereign cloud provider served with winding-up order nine months after an acquisition that was intended to address a £30m funding shortfall at the firm Continue Reading
News 25 Oct 2022

Google Cloud in 2022: What’s in it for the enterprise?

Google Cloud has seen its market share and revenue soar in recent quarters as enterprises flock to its platform, but profitability continues to elude the firm Continue Reading
Blog Post 25 Oct 2022

The role of regulation in delivering a greener, fairer energy system

In this guest post, Ben Scott, principal at IT service provider Netcompany, sets out his view about how Ofgem needs to react to the UK's on-going energy crisis Regulator and regulation are ... Continue Reading
News 25 Oct 2022

Apple puts pressure on manufacturing partners to decarbonise their operations through yearly audits

Consumer electronics giant wants its global supply chain partners to follow its lead on becoming a carbon-neutral company Continue Reading
News 25 Oct 2022

AWS to open cloud region in Thailand

Amazon Web Services is planning to launch a Bangkok region, following the debut of CloudFront Edge locations and Outposts in the past two years Continue Reading
News 21 Oct 2022

HSBC chooses Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer service to underpin digital

Bank selects Oracle’s Cloud@Customer service to upgrade and migrate some of its database systems as part of its digital transformation Continue Reading
Feature 21 Oct 2022

Cloud bursting: Six key steps in planning and decision-making

We explore the key stages in a cloud bursting project: assessing the data and workflows, variants in the mechanism, application suitability, having the right resources, and planning and testing Continue Reading
News 21 Oct 2022

Microsoft slams external researchers over its own data leak

Microsoft inadvertently leaked customer data after misconfiguring an Azure Blob, but has hit out at the organisation that discovered its error, claiming it is exaggerating the scope of the issue Continue Reading
E-Zine 20 Oct 2022

CW APAC: Trend Watch: Database technology

Innovative data management offerings are improving the efficiency of enterprise operations. In this handbook, focused on database technology in the Asia-Pacific region, Computer Weekly looks at the impact of graph databases, Neo4j’s partnership with Deloitte, TigerGraph’s added security features and the different types of database management systems currently on the market. Continue Reading
News 19 Oct 2022

Oracle: We’re punching above our category

Oracle claims to have debunked the misnomer that Oracle Cloud is only good for Oracle workloads and that its efforts to support and interoperate with other platforms has been driving growth Continue Reading
News 19 Oct 2022

Gartner: Hero CIOs are needed again to save businesses

During the pandemic, IT enabled businesses to remain operational. As the economic crisis worsens, business executives are once again reaching out to CIOs Continue Reading
News 19 Oct 2022

Oracle CloudWorld 2022: Ellison vaunts centrality of healthcare to mission

Oracle CTO Larry Ellison put the company’s healthcare initiatives front and centre of its vision during his keynote at Oracle CloudWorld 2022 in Las Vegas Continue Reading
Opinion 19 Oct 2022

IT Sustainability Think Tank: Helping IT leaders avoid falling victim to greenwashing

How can IT leaders separate fact from fiction when weighing up a tech supplier’s sustainability claims? And, crucially, what are the dangers or risks enterprises face if they do not do their due diligence on the green claims of their providers? Continue Reading
News 18 Oct 2022

Oracle expands cloud infrastructure portfolio, eyes partner cloud market

Oracle Alloy will enable partners such as systems integrators, telcos and other service providers to offer a full set of cloud services that can be tailored to the needs of specific markets and industries Continue Reading
News 18 Oct 2022

Virtually all vulnerable open source downloads are avoidable

Some 96% of known vulnerable open source downloads could have been avoided altogether, according to a report Continue Reading
News 18 Oct 2022

Castrol to open datacentre immersion cooling test facility at Berkshire HQ

BP-owned lubricant brand has unveiled the next phase in its work to accelerate adoption of immersion cooling technologies in datacentres Continue Reading
Blog Post 18 Oct 2022

EV owners driven crazy by UK's vehicle charging infrastructure

In this guest post, Aidan McClean, CEO and co-founder of online electric vehicle hire firm UFODRIVE, highlights the shortcomings in the UK’s car charging infrastructure The UK’s 2030 ban on the ... Continue Reading
News 17 Oct 2022

GRAID puts RAID on a GPU for cut-price disk protection and rebuilds

US startup puts its software on Nvidia graphics cards to offload RAID processing and throughput of 110GBps throughput across up to 32 NVMe solid-state drives Continue Reading
News 17 Oct 2022

Vodafone starts sizeable three-year SAP systems migration to Google Cloud

Telco giant claims project will be one of the largest and most complex SAP migrations ever embarked upon in Europe Continue Reading
Opinion 17 Oct 2022

IT Sustainability Think Tank: Assessing a supplier’s sustainability credentials

How can IT leaders separate fact from fiction when weighing up a tech supplier’s sustainability claims? And, crucially, what are the dangers or risks enterprises face if they do not do their due diligence on the green claims of their providers? Continue Reading
News 14 Oct 2022

Alibaba Cloud readying dedicated cloud regions for private datacentres

The hybrid cloud offering will provide enterprises with a dedicated Alibaba Cloud region in their datacentres with multiple availability zones Continue Reading
Opinion 13 Oct 2022

IT Sustainability Think Tank: How IT buyers can verify the green claims of their supply chain

How can IT leaders separate fact from fiction when weighing up a tech supplier’s sustainability claims? And, crucially, what are the dangers or risks enterprises face if they do not do their due diligence on the green claims of their providers? Continue Reading
News 13 Oct 2022

Indonesia’s NeutraDC outlines global ambitions

Formed from the consolidation of Telkom’s infrastructure assets, NeutraDC has set its sights on being a global player in datacentre and connectivity services Continue Reading
Definition 13 Oct 2022

function as a service (FaaS)

Function as a service (FaaS) is a cloud computing model that enables cloud customers to develop applications and deploy functionalities and only be charged when the functionality executes. Continue Reading
News 12 Oct 2022

Union claims Google datacentre contractors in US face repercussions for demanding 'basic benefits'

The Alphabet Workers Union-Communications Workers of America claims contractors working in several of Google's US datacentres have been punished for demanding ‘basic’ workplace benefits Continue Reading
Feature 12 Oct 2022

Cloud bursting: What is it, what workloads, what technologies?

We look at cloud bursting, its benefits and how to deploy it, as well as the limitations in terms of suitable workloads, the technologies needed and the skills to make it happen Continue Reading
Feature 12 Oct 2022

IT sustainability strategies: Why enterprises need to start with the datacentre when going green

Enterprises are under pressure to curb their carbon emissions and become more environmentally friendly entities on multiple fronts, including in the datacentre Continue Reading
Blog Post 11 Oct 2022

Doubling down on the renewability of data to drive change in society

In this guest post, Ciaran Dynes, chief product officer at data integration platform, Matillion, explores the role of cloud data in informing decisions that reduce global impact As the world turns ... Continue Reading
News 11 Oct 2022

Google Cloud fleshes out sovereign cloud capabilities for European enterprises

Google Cloud uses the first day of its user conference to provide an update on how its efforts to meet the data sovereignty needs of European enterprises are progressing Continue Reading
News 11 Oct 2022

Wayfair shutters datacentres and ends hybrid cloud strategy with Google Cloud move

Online home furnishings retailer Wayfair has completed a 16-month datacentre shutdown project that has seen it migrate all its applications and workloads to the Google Cloud Continue Reading
News 10 Oct 2022

How Cloudflare is staying ahead of the curve

Cloudflare co-founder and CEO Matthew Prince talks up what has changed since the company’s first business plan was written in 2009 and how it keeps pace with the fast-moving network security landscape Continue Reading
Opinion 10 Oct 2022

IT Sustainability Think Tank: What IT leaders need to know about greenwashing

How can IT leaders separate fact from fiction when weighing up a tech supplier’s sustainability claims? And, crucially, what are the dangers or risks that enterprises face if they do not do their due diligence on the green claims of their providers? Continue Reading
Opinion 10 Oct 2022

Security Think Tank: Design security in to reap container benefits

Provided container security basics are built into your development and runtime environment from the start, containerised services and applications can provide rapid – and secure – achievement of business objectives Continue Reading
Opinion 07 Oct 2022

IT Sustainability Think Tank: Getting to grips with greenwashing

How can IT leaders separate fact from fiction when weighing up a tech supplier’s sustainability claims? And, crucially, what are the dangers or risks that enterprises face if they do not do their due diligence on the green claims of their providers? Continue Reading
News 06 Oct 2022

Oil giant Shell lends support to LF Energy in its open source power networks push

Open source community LF Energy is continuing to go from strength-to-strength as its push to transform the way power networks operate gathers pace Continue Reading
News 06 Oct 2022

Equinix to open new datacentre in Indonesia

Equinix’s new facility in Indonesia follows a slew of datacentre builds that have been sprouting up in Jakarta to cater to the country’s growing digital economy Continue Reading
Feature 05 Oct 2022

Air gaps for backup and how they help against ransomware

The air gap is a basic of backups and storage. We look at what’s meant by an air gap, the rise of the logical air gap, and its place in the fight against ransomware Continue Reading
Feature 05 Oct 2022

Providers unconcerned about Ofcom probe into hyperscaler influence on cloud market

Should we be more worried about the growing dominance of the three big cloud providers – AWS, Azure and Google? Continue Reading
Opinion 05 Oct 2022

Use site reliability engineering to address cloud instability

How do you prepare for a worst-case scenario, when the public cloud hosting critical components of your IT infrastructure fails? Continue Reading
News 04 Oct 2022

Red Hat CEO on OpenShift roadmap, competitive play

Red Hat’s newly minted CEO Matt Hicks talks up OpenShift’s roadmap, the competition with VMware and opportunities in the Asia-Pacific region Continue Reading
News 03 Oct 2022

Natural History Museum partners with AWS for biodiversity research push

The Natural History Museum is teaming up with public cloud giant Amazon Web Services (AWS) to bolster its biodiversity research capabilities Continue Reading
News 03 Oct 2022

StorPool takes its software-defined storage to the AWS cloud

Software-defined storage and block access specialist to offer its product on high-performance AWS bare metal and memory-intensive compute, while claiming improved latency Continue Reading
Definition 03 Oct 2022

adiabatic cooling

Adiabatic cooling is the process of reducing heat through a change in air pressure caused by volume expansion. Continue Reading
News 30 Sep 2022

How Endowus is leveraging Kafka and microservices

The Singapore-based financial technology company built a distributed microservices architecture to ensure its investment platform remains resilient at all times Continue Reading
Feature 29 Sep 2022

What cloud users need to know: Ensuring greater end point engagement for improved cloud delivery

Although early-adopter worries about cloud may have dissipated, the end-user experience can still leave much to be desired Continue Reading
Feature 29 Sep 2022

Carbon copies: How to stop data retention from killing the planet

Our society has a serious digital hoarding problem, which is coming at a cost to the environment. But what can be done to address it? Continue Reading
News 29 Sep 2022

KPMG: IT chiefs vote for innovation, but are they forgetting tech debt?

New study from KPMG shows businesses are keen to adopt new technologies to drive improvements to customer experience Continue Reading
Feature 28 Sep 2022

AIOps for storage: Potential huge benefits, but lots of lock-in

Applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to storage can help to predict bottlenecks, diagnose I/O issues and recommend upgrades, but suppliers’ products are largely limited to their own hardware Continue Reading
Podcast 28 Sep 2022

Koch’s networking: Computer Weekly Downtime Upload podcast

Matt Hoag, CTO of Koch Business Solutions, discusses networking as a service Continue Reading
Guide 28 Sep 2022

Essential Guide: Data Analytics in Healthcare

In the healthcare industry, a large amount of data is already being collected to generate insights on emerging conditions and to improve patient care. Yet, like other industries, the healthcare sector continues to grapple with issues such as data silos and security challenges that stand in the way of harnessing insights. Continue Reading
Podcast 28 Sep 2022

Datacentres and energy, top women in tech – Computer Weekly Downtime Upload podcast

We discuss the run-in to the announcement of the Most Influential Women in UK Technology 2022 list, the datacentre market and the energy crisis, and the Alliance for Data Science Professionals Continue Reading
Opinion 28 Sep 2022

Security Think Tank: Three steps to a solid DevSecOps strategy

Read about how buyers can manage third-party risk when procuring applications, how to secure the software development process, and even how to affect cultural change among developers not used to thinking cyber first Continue Reading
News 26 Sep 2022

PoINT to offer on-site S3 object storage archive on disk and tape

Archival Gateway can cluster up to 256 tape readers to provide S3 object storage clusters capable of storing 50 billion objects per bucket, and giving throughput of 230GBps Continue Reading
News 26 Sep 2022

How AWS is tapping the groundswell in cloud adoption

Phil Davis, managing director of Amazon Web Services in Asia-Pacific and Japan, talks up the company’s growth strategy and how it is retaining customers amid rivals nipping at its heels Continue Reading
News 26 Sep 2022

Microsoft Azure UK region to host data of five million healthcare research scheme volunteers

The Microsoft public cloud platform, Azure, has been selected to host the data belonging to a healthcare research project that is being billed as the largest ever undertaken in the UK Continue Reading
Opinion 23 Sep 2022

It’s time for engineering teams to own DevSecOps

It may seem counterintuitive, but maybe organisations should consider delegating responsibility for DevSecOps to engineering teams, not security teams, argues Elastic’s Mandy Andress Continue Reading
News 23 Sep 2022

How Great Eastern is transforming its IT organisation

Singapore-based insurer Great Eastern made painstaking efforts to rid itself of legacy systems and transformed its IT organisation to become nimbler by building up its cloud and DevOps capabilities Continue Reading
Definition 22 Sep 2022

watt-hour (Wh)

The watt-hour, which is symbolized Wh, is a unit of energy equivalent to one watt of power expended for one hour of time. Continue Reading
News 22 Sep 2022

Ofcom turns its attention to the hyperscalers

The regulator sees its role expanding into emerging areas of communications technologies and public cloud services Continue Reading
News 22 Sep 2022

Dr Martens goes feetfirst into cloud-to-cloud backup

Iconic bootmaker laces up for a strategy to move all applications to the cloud, beginning with cloud-to-cloud backup for Microsoft 365 apps plus on-site VMware operations Continue Reading
Blog Post 21 Sep 2022

Energy crisis in schools: Is the edtech sector doing enough to become energy efficient?

In this guest post, Angela Townsend, director of channel sales at edtech provider SMART Technologies, talks about the impact rising energy prices are having on school IT systems. The rising cost ... Continue Reading
News 20 Sep 2022

Datacentre operators urged to tighten up their carbon emissions and water usage reporting

The 12th annual Global Data Center Survey from resiliency think tank Uptime Institute suggests the industry has work to do to improve its reporting on sustainability, as regulation looms large Continue Reading
Definition 19 Sep 2022

cluster

Clusters are typically defined as collections or groups of items with similar or different characteristics. Continue Reading
Definition 19 Sep 2022

macrotrend

A macrotrend is a pervasive and persistent shift in the direction of some phenomenon on a global level. Continue Reading
Feature 19 Sep 2022

Putting artificial intelligence and machine learning workloads in the cloud

We look at the pros and cons of putting artificial intelligence and machine learning applications in the cloud Continue Reading
News 16 Sep 2022

How an architecture graduate became a coder

Back-end engineer Yang Lyu couldn’t find a job as an architect after graduation and ended up as a software developer after discovering her flair for coding Continue Reading
Podcast 16 Sep 2022

Energy crisis IT impact: Computer Weekly Downtime Upload podcast

In this special edition of the Computer Weekly Downtime Upload podcast, Gartner analyst Tiny Haynes discusses datacentre energy management. Continue Reading
Definition 14 Sep 2022

International System of Units (SI)

The International System of Units is a global standard for expressing the magnitudes or quantities of important natural phenomena. Continue Reading
Blog Post 14 Sep 2022

How fuel cells could power the transition to a greener datacentre industry

In this guest post, Russel Bulley, senior application engineer at datacentre equipment manufacturer Vertiv, shares his thoughts on how fuel cell technology could help the server farm industry go ... Continue Reading
News 14 Sep 2022

VMware Cloud on AWS debuts in Hong Kong

VMware has expanded its VMware Cloud on AWS to Hong Kong, following the launch of the Alibaba Cloud VMware service in Greater China Continue Reading
News 13 Sep 2022

Cloud compromise a doddle for threat actors as victims attest

Two separate studies into the state of public cloud security reveal insight into the ease with which threat actors can compromise vast numbers of targets, and some of the challenges security teams are facing in the cloud Continue Reading
News 13 Sep 2022

Users warned over Azure Active Directory authentication flaw

Secureworks researchers found what they say is a serious vulnerability in an Azure Active Directory authentication method, but Microsoft says it should not pose a serious risk to users Continue Reading
News 13 Sep 2022

OVHcloud opens new datacentre in Strasbourg at site of March 2021 fire

A year and a half after a fire at its datacentre campus in Strasbourg destroyed one of its facilities and damaged another, OVHcloud has opened a new server farm at the site Continue Reading
News 12 Sep 2022

CISOs should spend on critical apps, cloud, zero-trust, in 2023

Faced with a global recession next year, security buyers should try to direct investment towards technology that protects customer-facing and revenue-generating workloads, say analysts Continue Reading
News 12 Sep 2022

SAP users ramp up ESG efforts

The UK & Ireland SAP User Group is developing a special interest group to help their members hit their ESG goals more effectively Continue Reading
E-Zine 09 Sep 2022

CW Europe: Why Russia could become the world’s biggest market for illegal IT

Faced with international sanctions and the departure of many global IT suppliers from Russia, companies there are seeking alternative, and sometimes illegal, routes to access IT products. Also read how new requirements are driving scientists and engineers in Europe back to the lab to start developing 6G technology. Continue Reading
Opinion 09 Sep 2022

Security Think Tank: Adding trust to AppSec and DevSecOps

When building in trust and assurance into app development through standards, it is critically important not to stifle innovation Continue Reading
News 09 Sep 2022

Panasas’s double NAS offer aims at multiple analytics workloads

ActiveStor Flash and ActiveStor Ultra XL target I/O profiles from rapid AI/ML to processing-heavy modelling but remain firmly on-prem, with object and cloud declared ‘interesting’ Continue Reading
Blog Post 08 Sep 2022

Taking the lead: How leaders can help address global sustainability and human rights challenges

In this guest post, professor Matthew Gitsham, who leads on sustainability at Hult International Business School, sets out the role that leaders should take when helping their organisations hone ... Continue Reading
Opinion 08 Sep 2022

Security Think Tank: Creating a DevSecOps-friendly cyber strategy

When slowing down is not an option, you need to find a security strategy that is DevSecOps friendly, says Airbus Protect’s Olivier Allaire Continue Reading