Datacentre capacity planning
Effective capacity planning evaluates how well the datacentre helps achieve its business objectives in the present and anticipates the organisation's future needs. As a capacity planner, you must examine hardware, infrastructure and personnel, and determine whether these IT components can handle growth and new requirements that may arise. This section covers how to develop an effective datacentre capacity planning strategy to ensure your datacentre is scalable and prepared for the future.
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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
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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
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News
10 Oct 2014
Starbucks uses cloud to manage innovation and disruptive technologies
Starbucks coffee chain innovates IT strategies to hone its competitive edge using cloud services, says IT director Robert Teagle Continue Reading
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News
29 Sep 2014
ARM enters mainstream datacentre with HP’s ProLiant Moonshot servers
ARM chips have entered mainstream enterprise datacentre with HP's production-ready ARM-powered Moonshot servers Continue Reading
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News
29 Sep 2014
Case study: Deutsche Post DHL develops software contract templates to reduce costs
Deutsche Post DHL has created contract templates to manage software costs. Computer Weekly speaks to the people leading the initiative Continue Reading
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News
25 Sep 2014
Oracle releases OpenStack Support for Oracle Linux and Oracle VM
Oracle has made its Oracle OpenStack for Oracle Linux distribution generally available to support customers Continue Reading
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News
24 Sep 2014
Accommodation booking site picks Dell cloud to fix downtime issues
Eviivo, a UK-based online accommodation booking website, has placed its business-critical systems on a Dell cloud platform Continue Reading
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News
23 Sep 2014
Google to build giant '40-football pitch' datacentre in the Netherlands
Google will invest €600m to build a giant, 120-megawatt datacentre in the Netherlands Continue Reading
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Feature
23 Sep 2014
Demystifying Kubernetes: the tool to manage Google-scale workloads in the cloud
We are witnessing a new technology wave in the form of immutable infrastructure and micro-services Continue Reading
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News
05 Sep 2014
King's College, UCL and LSE back £900,000 national datacentre project
A consortium of universities, including LSE, UCL and King's College, is backing a national datacentre for academics Continue Reading
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News
02 Sep 2014
Why bare metal cloud is in vogue
Bare metal services have been around since 2009 but cloud is witnessing renewed interest in it thanks to new offerings Continue Reading
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News
29 Aug 2014
Windows Server 2003 EOL: HP seeks to cash in as IBM-Lenovo deal yet to close
As enterprises look to refresh their infrastructure, HP is playing the stability card to win deals as IBM and Dell are mired by uncertainties Continue Reading
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News
26 Aug 2014
Datacentre operator Telecity’s CEO Michael Tobin resigns
Telecity’s CEO Michael Tobin will step down from the helm at the FTSE 250 datacentre provider on 31 October, after 10 years in the role Continue Reading
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News
15 Aug 2014
Nike builds datacentre cloud and network infrastructure
Nike is creating a scalable next-generation datacentre cloud and retail network infrastructure using Juniper's MetaFabric architecture Continue Reading
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News
12 Aug 2014
Intel unveils first 14nm processor aimed at mobile computing devices
Chipmaker's first processor based on 14nm micro-architecture will be thinner, cooler and aimed at tablet PCs Continue Reading
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News
11 Aug 2014
Intel watches ARM as low-powered computing thrives
As the PC market continues to decline, ARM is proving that non-x86 chips have a long and prosperous future Continue Reading
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News
31 Jul 2014
Bitcoin mining firm CoinTerra signs multi-megawatt datacentre deal
CoinTerra, the firm that provides the hardware and software that power the bitcoin blockchain ecosystem, signs a multi-megawatt datacentre deal Continue Reading
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News
31 Jul 2014
£700m government hosting deal limits bidders to North-East England datacentre
Want to win the £700m Crown Hosting Service contract? You'll need a major datacentre near Newcastle to stand any chance Continue Reading
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News
24 Jul 2014
Crew Clothing fashions cloud-based marketing to engage buyers
British luxury casualwear brand Crew Clothing chose cloud marketing to move from batch email marketing to a more timely and personal approach Continue Reading
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News
21 Jul 2014
EU funds project to boost European cloud computing market
Cloudcatalyst project will assess cloud market in Europe, identify barriers to cloud adoption and provide tools to boost its growth Continue Reading
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News
18 Jul 2014
BT’s secure link to Microsoft Azure goes live in Europe
BT’s new, secure, high-performance connectivity to Azure public cloud has gone live in Europe three months after BT teamed up with Microsoft Continue Reading
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News
10 Jul 2014
Microsoft adds StorSimple hybrid storage arrays to Azure cloud service
Azure users get more storage, archiving and disaster recovery from 1 August 2014 with Microsoft's StorSimple 8000 series hybrid storage arrays Continue Reading
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News
08 Jul 2014
Huddle eases collaborative critical path for engineering firm WSP
Engineering consultancy WSP chooses Huddle to allow its engineers and architects to share project data securely and collaborate, regardless of location Continue Reading
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News
08 Jul 2014
Airbus deploys modular datacentre strategy to boost HPC capacity
The aircraft manufacturer has deployed HP's performance optimised datacentres (PODs) to increase its high performance compute capabilities for its engineers Continue Reading
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News
03 Jul 2014
Microsoft and Google propose 25Gbps and 50Gbps Ethernet networks for cloud datacentres
Technology giants including Microsoft and Google form a consortium to fire up datacentre networks’ performance for cloud-scale infrastructure. Continue Reading
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News
18 Jun 2014
Case study: How eBay uses its own OpenStack private cloud
eBay runs one of its most crucial workloads – its website – on an OpenStack private cloud platform developed by itself Continue Reading
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Feature
13 Jun 2014
Micro-datacentre: What IT problems it solves and what workload systems suit it
A micro-datacentre is a smaller containerised datacentre system designed to solve different problems or to handle different workloads Continue Reading
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News
10 Jun 2014
Facebook shares lessons learnt from deploying Raid in HDFS clusters
Facebook deployed Raid in large HDFS clusters to increase capacity and reduce data replication, but it faced many challenges Continue Reading
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News
09 Jun 2014
Home Secretary Theresa May unveils datacentre in Maidenhead
Home Secretary Theresa May has opened a multi-million-pound extended datacentre, owned by UK cloud firm iomart Continue Reading
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Feature
09 Jun 2014
Will silicon photonics replace copper cabling in mainstream datacentres?
Silicon photonics can increase bandwidth in servers, improve data transfer speeds and reduce complexity. But are datacentres ready for it? Continue Reading
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News
06 Jun 2014
Cloud impact can be as big as the advent of computing itself: EIU report
Cloud is not just a replacement for older computing platforms, but a change as revolutionary as the advent of computing itself, says EIU report Continue Reading
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News
05 Jun 2014
UK airports lead move to cloud services
UK airports are at the vanguard of using cloud to develop innovative services, says Gatwick CIO. Continue Reading
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News
03 Jun 2014
High availability strategy key to saving costs, says Sungard AS
The cost of IT downtime is extremely high for businesses – but must all systems and applications be highly available all the time? Continue Reading
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News
29 May 2014
BSkyB retunes IT to ready-for-anything datacentre quad
British broadcaster BSkyB has based its IT on four core datacentres that are resilient, interconnected, energy-efficient and cloud-ready Continue Reading
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Feature
29 May 2014
Future of in-house datacentres in the cloud era
It is predicted that companies will spend three times more on the cloud by 2017. But as cloud goes mainstream, are in-house datacentres really dying? Continue Reading
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News
19 May 2014
SAP certifies core business apps to run on Microsoft Azure
From June, users of SAP Business Suite software, Business All-In-One solution, SAP Mobile Platform, SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise and Hana platform will be able to run them on Azure Continue Reading
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News
09 May 2014
Facebook debuts ‘Rapid Deployment Data Centre’ design in Swedish facility
Facebook is expanding its Luleå datacentre in Sweden by deploying Rapid Deployment Data Centre (RDDC) design developed in collaboration with Emerson Power Network Continue Reading
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News
01 May 2014
Case study: How the BBC uses cloud to process media for iPlayer
The BBC has taken its iPlayer video-on-demand service to the cloud and cut media processing time from 9-10 hours to 20-30 minutes Continue Reading
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News
01 May 2014
British Gas brings central heating control to smartphones with AWS
British Gas used public cloud IT to enable people remotely control their homes’ central heating with smartphone apps and save on utility bills Continue Reading
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News
23 Apr 2014
Six Degrees datacentre suffers outage for more than 12 hours
Customers using Six Degrees’s datacentre and hosting services faced downtime as the hosting and managed services provider suffered an outage for over 12 hours Continue Reading
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News
15 Apr 2014
Greenpeace singles out datacentre firms for lack of energy efficiency
Greenpeace's new report on datacentre energy efficiency lauds efforts of some tech giants while singles out others for their lack of commitment to green energy Continue Reading
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News
15 Apr 2014
EU data privacy authorities approve Microsoft Azure, Office 365 cloud services
The European Union's data privacy authorities have given approval to Microsoft's cloud services including Windows Azure and Office 365 Continue Reading
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News
10 Apr 2014
BT and Microsoft to offer secure fast lane to Azure cloud
Microsoft’s UK cloud chief hails service as critical step in supporting CEO Satya Nadella’s ambitious plans for global cloud dominance Continue Reading
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Feature
25 Mar 2014
Understanding the real value of IT and proving it to the business
At a time when costs are being continually squeezed, there is more pressure than ever to demonstrate the business value of technology Continue Reading
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Feature
19 Mar 2014
Case study: How John Lewis conquered the web
An in-depth look at the inside story of John Lewis' £40m e-commerce strategy. Continue Reading
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News
18 Mar 2014
Global taskforce agrees on green datacentre metric
DCeP hopes to win widespread support as a useful and meaningful standard for measuring datacentre efficiency Continue Reading
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News
14 Mar 2014
Amazon Web Services reaches its 8th birthday
On March 14 2006 Amazon expanded from its retail heritage and launched its IT services business with the birth of Amazon Web Services (AWS) Continue Reading
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News
07 Mar 2014
CIOs hold fire over datacentre decisions
When it comes to devising datacentre strategies, are CIOs paralysed like rabbits in the headlights, or playing a calculated game of wait and see? Continue Reading
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News
24 Feb 2014
Case study: Virtualised storage adds value to Denmark's tunnel vision
State construction firm Femern selects DataCore system to help speed up Fehmarnbelt undersea odyssey and keep the sharks at bay Continue Reading
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Feature
20 Feb 2014
A guide to APM for the network manager
Has application performance management become a much needed discipline for the network manager? We examine the issues for IT departments Continue Reading
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Feature
18 Feb 2014
The UK’s problem with power
Datacentre power buyers say Britain’s deregulated energy market is as complex as trading in derivatives Continue Reading
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News
11 Feb 2014
Schneider accreditation aims to boost green datacentre skills
Datacentre supplier offers free vendor-neutral courses and certification through its online Energy University Continue Reading
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Feature
11 Feb 2014
Troubleshooting datacentre management issues
Gaining better control of the datacentre has to be a high priority to ensure high levels of performance and availability Continue Reading
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News
07 Feb 2014
Amazon nets lion’s share of $10bn public cloud market
AWS continues its unassailable domination of the sector, despite recent moves by Google, IBM and Microsoft Continue Reading
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News
31 Jan 2014
WIll open source save the datacentre industry?
IT rivals stand cheek-by-jowl to praise Facebook’s Open Compute Project, but is the love-in a Damascene conversion or just damage limitation? Continue Reading
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News
29 Jan 2014
Microsoft joins Open Compute Project
Redmond giant makes server specs public in bid to influence future datacentre design Continue Reading
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News
20 Jan 2014
IBM to open London datacentre as part of $1.2bn global cloud push
New facility first in UK to be based on IBM SoftLayer cloud architecture Continue Reading
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News
03 Dec 2013
Virtualisation continues to drive European server purchases
TechTarget survey finds 97.3% of large organisations plan to expand their deployments in 2014, with consolidation the main driver Continue Reading
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News
26 Nov 2013
How web giants are making datacentres lean and green
Facebook and eBay infrastructure chiefs outline their efficiency strategies at DatacenterDynamics Converged conference in London Continue Reading
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News
13 Nov 2013
AWS re: Invent 2013 kicks off in Las Vegas
Amazon Web Services' annual conference opens with product announcements to the 8,000 strong crowd during the keynote Continue Reading
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News
05 Nov 2013
Business-defined storage will help reconnect businesses with IT, says Forrester
Business-defined storage and datacentres will make IT more business-centric, according to Forrester Continue Reading
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E-Zine
04 Nov 2013
Barcelona toasts the cream of VMworld
Another year and another Best of VMworld Europe User Awards. TechTarget hosted the awards, which took place during VMworld Europe for a fourth year. This year the ceremony took place in sunny Barcelona. In this month’s issue of CW Europe, read the top case studies and find out why Computer Weekly and searchserverVirtualization.com crowned them the winners. Continue Reading
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News
04 Nov 2013
Crown Hosting Service to save £530m from government IT bill by 2018
Government Digital Service to establish new Crown Hosting Service to consolidate hosting across Whitehall, saving £530m per year by 2018 Continue Reading
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News
29 Oct 2013
Study finds cloud computing the most valued enterprise IT skill
Cloud computing overtakes virtualisation, security, BI, database and project management as the most valued enterprise IT skill Continue Reading
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News
28 Oct 2013
Six tips to help you negotiate the best deal with your datacentre provider
Your willingness to negotiate can make a big difference to the deal you get, says Anthony Day, associate at law firm DLA Piper Continue Reading
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Photo Story
22 Oct 2013
Best of VMworld Europe User Awards 2013 winners
The Best of VMworld Europe User Awards 2013 winners have been revealed. View pictures of the awards ceremony at VMworld Europe in Barcelona. Continue Reading
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News
16 Oct 2013
Case study: Richard Branson's Virgin Management moves to IaaS platform
Virgin Management, a subsidiary of Virgin Group, has migrated its IT to a cloud-based IaaS platform for BYOD capabilities and savings Continue Reading
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News
11 Oct 2013
Case study: Sky Broadband looks to scale with Cisco
Sky Broadband ISP chooses Cisco’s new Network Convergence System (NCS) to meet the demand of its growing customer base Continue Reading
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News
09 Oct 2013
Modular datacentre cheaper than ‘bricks and mortar’ datacentre
A modular datacentre may cost an enterprise 14% less than a traditional datacentre, according to a research by DCD Intelligence Continue Reading
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Feature
08 Oct 2013
Make a high-performance computing and high-availability datacentre
High performance computing and high availability systems are no longer limited to engineers and scientists. But is your datacentre ready? Continue Reading
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News
30 Sep 2013
Cloud computing drives infrastructure upgrade at service provider
IT services company Ardenta has implemented F5 network security to upgrade its infrastructure and offer cloud services Continue Reading
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Feature
24 Sep 2013
How Capgemini keeps its Merlin datacentre green and energy-efficient
Capgemini's Swindon-based Merlin datacentre is one of the most energy-efficient in the world. But what makes it green? Continue Reading
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News
18 Sep 2013
BMW gears up IT resilience with private cloud infrastructure
After testing and validating its own private cloud services, BMW's IT team is ready to use it in production Continue Reading
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News
13 Sep 2013
After virtualising IT estate, Jaguar Land Rover now eyes cloud computing
Jaguar Land Rover's IT team takes its newly virtualised infrastructure to the next stage of IT evolution by adopting cloud-based services Continue Reading
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News
10 Sep 2013
Key legal and commercial issues with data centre services
This briefing from law-firm DLA Piper looks at the main types of data centre services that are available on the market, common pitfalls and key legal and commercial issues to consider. Continue Reading
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News
28 Aug 2013
Bet365 improves latency and peering by updating network infrastructure
Online gambling site Bet365 upgraded its network and improved its latency to deliver a fast, smooth and reliable experience to its customers Continue Reading
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News
27 Aug 2013
Navigating your Future within an SOA information manufacturing system
As the IT industry reaches maturity, IT departments should think of themselves not as data centres but as manufacturing centres for information. Terry Keene argues in this short e-book. Continue Reading
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News
09 Aug 2013
Enterprises spend more on third-party datacentres than in-house ones: Uptime survey
Uptime Institute’s annual datacentre industry survey reveals shift in IT spend away from enterprise-owned datacentres to outsourced options Continue Reading
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News
08 Aug 2013
Government opens fourth iteration of cloud framework G-Cloud 4 for business
Cabinet Office has opened the fourth iteration of UK government cloud – G-Cloud 4 to accept tenders from new cloud suppliers and existing ones Continue Reading
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Feature
05 Aug 2013
How to plan and manage datacentre redundancy
Provisioning of a datacentre to survive a range of failure scenarios has become critical for many businesses. Here's a datacentre redundancy plan Continue Reading
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News
22 Jul 2013
European banking firm UniCredit to introduce cloud in its datacentres
European banking firm UniCredit has signed a multi-billion dollar deal with IBM to bring cloud into its datacentres Continue Reading
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News
18 Jul 2013
Hidden cost of cloud computing is CIOs’ biggest concern
A study into attitudes and concerns relating to cloud computing has revealed that 80% of CIOs are concerned about its hidden costs Continue Reading
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News
15 Jul 2013
Lower uptake of cloud, ICT limiting medium-sized enterprises' productivity: CEBR
Medium-sized enterprises in the UK lagging behind large businesses in terms of productivity, because of lower adoption of ICT and cloud Continue Reading
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Feature
08 Jul 2013
How to monitor and improve the health of your datacentre
Any datacentre manager looking to support the business should take an end-to-end systems management approach to keep the datacentre in shape Continue Reading
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Feature
03 Jul 2013
Best practices in software asset management for a flexible, resilient IT
Managing software assets is vital in order to maintain a highly flexible and up-to-date IT platform and more importantly remain compliant Continue Reading
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News
28 Jun 2013
Datacentres must be tuned to the application in the mobile-cloud era: Cisco
Cloud, big data and mobile applications are challenging the traditional datacentre infrastructure, says Cisco Continue Reading
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News
27 Jun 2013
How BP made its IT future-ready with a hybrid cloud infrastructure
BP bridged its cloud gap with a cautious and calculated approach using a mix of private cloud, public cloud and in-house IT infrastructure Continue Reading
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News
13 Jun 2013
Inadequate datacentre infrastructure is a barrier to big data analytics
Inadequate datacentre infrastructure and siloed work practices are preventing UK enterprises from benefiting from big data analytics, shows study Continue Reading
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News
13 Jun 2013
Serco outsources IT infrastructure and transformation
Business service provider Serco contracts SunGard for its UK IT infrastructure that will help Serco increase its cloud services Continue Reading
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News
10 Jun 2013
Can Dell survive in the cloud era despite killing its public cloud offering?
Dell has ditched its public cloud IaaS in favour of partner cloud programme. But will the strategy help secure its future in the cloud era? Continue Reading
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Feature
31 May 2013
Sweating your datacentre’s IT assets - is it a good idea?
Amid economic uncertainties, businesses want to get more from existing IT assets. But does it make sense from an IT point of view? Continue Reading
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News
29 May 2013
AMD launches low-power server processors to rival Intel's Atom
AMD has launched Opteron X-Series low-power server processors that it claims “beat the top-performing Intel Atom processor” Continue Reading
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News
29 May 2013
UK cloud firm Iomart sees annual profits soar by 56%
Cloud computing company Iomart has reported a pre-tax profit up 56% to £10.7m for the year ending March 2013 Continue Reading
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News
24 May 2013
Eurovision Song Contest app built and delivered via Google's cloud platform
Service providers Scalr and Grandcentrix used Google Compute Engine to build the app for the second largest television event Continue Reading
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News
23 May 2013
UCL turns to private cloud to solve its data storage woes
University College London is building a storage infrastructure in the cloud that will scale up to 100PB Continue Reading
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News
08 May 2013
Domino’s Pizza plans to move web services to the cloud
After using cloud for testing and development apps, Domino’s Pizza is now looking to move its web services to the cloud Continue Reading
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News
07 May 2013
SME Arcus brings AWS IaaS and PaaS to public sector with G-Cloud
UK SME Arcus Global has become the first certified Amazon Web Services reseller on the government’s third G-Cloud framework Continue Reading
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News
18 Apr 2013
IT rationalisation must be combined with layoffs for long-term savings
Long-term IT cost reduction requires more than just server consolidation and cuts to software licences, says Gartner Continue Reading
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Feature
04 Apr 2013
100Gbps Ethernet – is it time to move?
Do you need 100Gbps Ethernet in your datacentre, or is the technology just going through a hype cycle? Computer Weekly investigates. Continue Reading
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News
18 Mar 2013
FM, IT and Data Centres
Are Facilities and IT data centre managers implacable enemies, or is it a case of different work priorities, asks analyst Clive Longbottom. Continue Reading
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News
18 Mar 2013
CW Buyer's Guide: Green Computing
Computer Weekly looks at technologies that can help your datacentre become cost and energy efficient in this 11 page Buyer's Guide. Continue Reading
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News
17 Mar 2013
Human error most likely cause of datacentre downtime, finds study
Human error such as inadvertently adjusting the temperature or pulling power cords from an asset are biggest causes of datacentre downtime Continue Reading