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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Feature
28 Dec 2022
Why the devil’s still in the detail in the race for energy efficiency
Energy-efficiency credentials are surely a step in the right direction, but cloud and datacentre providers must look at the sustainability equation from all angles Continue Reading
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Tip
20 Dec 2022
Use magnetic tape backup to ease storage capacity concerns
Does your organization struggle to store and protect all its data? Magnetic tape storage might be a smart, cost-efficient route, as data volumes continue to increase. Continue Reading
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News
20 Dec 2022
Top 10 emerging storage trends stories of 2022
There’s a seismic shift to the cloud. In its wake, object storage, unstructured data, analytics, unified file and object, and consumption models of procurement have all been boosted Continue Reading
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Feature
19 Dec 2022
Storage hardware shortage causes and how to mitigate them
We look at the IT supply chain shortages that have hit data storage equipment, their causes and what organisations can do to work more smartly to mitigate them Continue Reading
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News
19 Dec 2022
Top 10 datacentre stories of 2022
The energy crisis has wreaked havoc on the UK datacentre market in various ways this year, with supply and pricing issues blighting operators and their business interests Continue Reading
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News
16 Dec 2022
CIO interview: Steve Capper, CIO, SNC-Lavalin
Engineering and construction giant SNC-Lavalin has consolidated its global datacentre estate and implemented private cloud to support the unique demands of its business Continue Reading
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News
14 Dec 2022
How India is moving towards net zero
Home-grown companies and multinational firms are doubling down on sustainability efforts, but more needs to be done to improve datacentre efficiency and avoid greenwashing Continue Reading
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Feature
07 Dec 2022
Reverse cloud migrations: Why some enterprises are shifting their IT back on-premise
With a steady trickle of customer organisations returning on-premise, a need to plan better may not be the whole story Continue Reading
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News
07 Dec 2022
Survey: Most want green IT but many won’t get it soon
IT – and storage in particular – consume huge amounts of energy but sustainability targets are proving to be elusive, according to a survey commissioned by Pure Storage Continue Reading
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News
01 Dec 2022
Italy’s biggest datacentre campus to enjoy €500m growth spurt
Aruba SpA raises funding to help realise ambitions to further grow mega-datacentre campus in Italy Continue Reading
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News
01 Dec 2022
Google Cloud lands five-year deal with DIY specialist retailer Kingfisher
The owner of the B&Q and Screwfix brands has enlisted the help of Google Cloud to overhaul its digital proposition for customers Continue Reading
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News
30 Nov 2022
HPE’s earnings reveal a shift back to less pricey servers
HPE has been focused on higher-end servers due to supply chain issues, but as these ease and memory costs fall, it is set to readjust pricing Continue Reading
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News
24 Nov 2022
Equinix makes added £179m investment in UK digital infrastructure
Global digital infrastructure company announces cash injection in support of increasing customer demand in the UK Continue Reading
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Feature
21 Nov 2022
Datacentres in the dark: How the sector is preparing for the prospect of planned winter power cuts
Against a backdrop of ongoing uncertainty in the energy market, the UK datacentre market is readying itself for ‘worst case’ planned power cuts this winter Continue Reading
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News
21 Nov 2022
Genome lab puts Vast Data’s rapid I/O to work on patient data
French government-backed SeqOIA ditched its Lustre-based storage after it reached performance limits and files got corrupted. That got fixed by a Vast Data QLC flash-based array Continue Reading
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Feature
18 Nov 2022
Expensive datacentre outages: Untangling messy collaborations, contributing costs and complexity
Even if outages in the datacentre are trending down, Uptime data this year traces rising costs per outage. So what can be done? Continue Reading
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News
17 Nov 2022
Scality Ring 9 brings Storage Accelerator enhanced flash tiers
Scality upgrade to Ring 9 of its object (and file) storage software sees enhancements to tiering, the introduction of Prometheus-based monitoring and hooks into VMware vCloud Director Continue Reading
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News
17 Nov 2022
Microsoft CEO outlines ‘digital imperatives’
Organisations that want to do more with less will have to think deeply about digital imperatives such as the shift to cloud and artificial intelligence, says Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Continue Reading
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News
08 Nov 2022
VMware CEO tells enterprises to become 'cloud-smart' to speed up pace of digital transformation
During the opening keynote of the VMware Explore Europe conference, the firm’s CEO shared his observations on how enterprise attitudes to cloud migrations are changing as IT leaders look to pick up the pace of their digital transformation projects Continue Reading
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News
08 Nov 2022
Renault confirms Google as preferred cloud partner
French motor manufacturer is extending the reach of its long-standing technology collaboration with Google by naming the firm as its preferred cloud partner Continue Reading
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News
04 Nov 2022
Crown Hosting Data Centres secures £250m government colocation deal
Cabinet Office joint venture with Ark Data Centres secures a second term providing colocation services to the government Continue Reading
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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News
07 Sep 2022
US remains favoured datacentre location for world’s hyperscale cloud and internet giants
Data released by Synergy Research Group confirms thatr the US remains the favoured location for hyperscale datacentres, but the analyst house predicts this could change in the years to come Continue Reading
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News
07 Sep 2022
VMware’s vSAN 8 gets a rebuild for the solid-state storage era
At VMware Explore 2022, we interview VMware’s John Gilmartin about the new, faster vSAN, plans to use DPUs, the vSAN+ cloud offering, and VMware Ransomware Recovery Continue Reading
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Feature
02 Sep 2022
Cloud bursting: What it is and what it’s good for
We look at cloud bursting, which allows organisations to meet demand by bursting compute and storage to the cloud Continue Reading
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Podcast
01 Sep 2022
Podcast: Storage the key bottleneck for AI processing
We talk to Panasas about the need for storage that can cope with delivering high volumes of small files for artificial intelligence with the throughput and latency needed to service costly GPUs Continue Reading
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Feature
31 Aug 2022
Burning up: Mitigation should sustain datacentre operations during extreme heat
July’s temperature spike put headline heat on regional operations at Google and Oracle. Datacentre operators must side-step similar mistakes to avoid climate change-related collapse in future Continue Reading
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News
30 Aug 2022
NetApp storage goes GA for VMware Cloud on AWS
Move will bring up to 50% decrease in TCO for customers running VMware apps in the Amazon cloud, says NetApp. No date yet for extension of the service across other public clouds Continue Reading
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Feature
24 Aug 2022
Cloud storage TCO: Key pitfalls and how to avoid them
Cloud’s flexibility is part of the attraction, but it can also lead to costs that spiral. We look at key elements in cloud TCO and how to intelligently make use of the cloud Continue Reading
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Feature
23 Aug 2022
Bfloat16: What it is and how it impacts storage
Bfloat16 is an emerging way to handle very large numbers, developed by Google for its machine and neural learning and prediction. We look at what it means for IT and storage Continue Reading
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News
23 Aug 2022
IT leaders set to step up cloud investments over next two years, Colt research suggests
Colt’s third annual cloud adoption research report shows how the off-premise investment priorities of IT leaders are shaping up for the years ahead Continue Reading
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Feature
22 Aug 2022
Data classification: What it is and why you need it
To be compliant, to ensure data is optimally protected, that it is available, that it can be analysed and that it is stored most cost-effectively – these are reasons why data classification is vital to organisations Continue Reading
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News
16 Aug 2022
Rising energy costs erode competitive edge of colocation datacentre operators
Research from temporary power generation equipment maker Aggreko highlights toll that rising energy costs are having on colocation datacentre operators Continue Reading
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News
15 Aug 2022
Lightbits offers NVMe-over-TCP at 5x less than NVMe-over-FC et al
Lightbits builds NVMe-overTCP SAN clusters for Linux servers with Intel cards that accelerate network processing to give millions of IOPS with storage for public and private clouds Continue Reading
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News
10 Aug 2022
Google Cloud to open three new cloud regions in APAC
New Google Cloud regions in Malaysia, Thailand and New Zealand will enable local organisations to maintain low latency and meet data residency requirements Continue Reading
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Feature
08 Aug 2022
Icelandic datacentres may lead the way to green IT
Iceland may soon become even more attractive to companies wanting to minimise their carbon footprint while using high-performance computing services Continue Reading
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News
08 Aug 2022
Internet giants in favour as Ireland tightens rules on datacentres
Irish premier Michael Martin has insisted its temporary squeeze on datacentre construction is not a moratorium on the industry Continue Reading
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News
05 Aug 2022
Datacentre sector hits back at claims that West London electricity grid capacity crunch is its fault
Reports citing the rapid rise of West London as a major datacentre hub as the cause of a potential ban on new housing developments in the area have not gone down well with industry watchers Continue Reading
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Podcast
03 Aug 2022
Podcast: Storage at the edge – impact and opportunities
We talk to Tobias Flitsch of Nebulon about the rise of edge computing and how that will drive demand for more storage that needs to be secure and resilient and centrally manageable Continue Reading
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News
02 Aug 2022
How worsening economic climate impacts IT spending
As inflation rises, purse strings are tightening at the tech giants, which will have a material impact on chipmakers and providers of IT equipment Continue Reading
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02 Aug 2022
How to create a multi-year datacentre capacity plan
Datacentres and cloud providers must make educated guesses on future requirements. Continue Reading
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E-Zine
02 Aug 2022
How to create a datacentre capacity plan
In this week’s Computer Weekly, planning datacentre capacity is a growing challenge – we ask the experts for the latest best practice. Victims of the Post Office IT scandal explain why they think they were targeted for speaking out. And we look at the digital skills gap in retail and find out how employers can source talent. Read the issue now. Continue Reading
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News
29 Jul 2022
IPA revises review of HMRC’s £300m datacentre migration
Infrastructure and Project Authority’s annual report ranks HMRC’s £300m datacentre migration as “unachievable”, but – ahead of publication – it appears the organisation has had a change of heart Continue Reading
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Feature
29 Jul 2022
Unstructured data storage – on-prem vs cloud vs hybrid
We look at storage for unstructured data on-premise, in the cloud and across multiple locations. There are advantages to a hybrid approach, but there can be hidden costs, too Continue Reading
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News
29 Jul 2022
AWS remains high point in Amazon results as company posts another quarter loss
Amazon Web Services continues to go from strength to strength while parent company posts second successive loss Continue Reading
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News
28 Jul 2022
Virgin Media O2 Business to provide dark fibre for all Proximity edge datacentres
Fixed wholesale connectivity arm of Virgin Media O2 Business announces initiative with network of regional carrier-neutral edge datacentres to bolster customer choice for low-latency services across UK edge colocation portfolio Continue Reading
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News
21 Jul 2022
Singapore to restart datacentre builds with sustainability focus
The Singapore government is running a pilot exercise to drive the sustainable development of new datacentres following a moratorium on datacentre builds Continue Reading
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News
21 Jul 2022
Four key need-to-knows about CXL
Compute Express Link will pool multiple types of memory and so allow much higher memory capacities and the possibility of rapidly composable infrastructure to meet the needs of varied workloads Continue Reading
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News
14 Jul 2022
Netflix selects Microsoft as tech partner to build out its ad-supported subscription tier
After announcing plans back in April to roll out a lower-cost, ad-supported subscription plan to its service, Netflix has confirmed that it will be tapping up Microsoft for support in building its new offering Continue Reading
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News
13 Jul 2022
NHS trust cuts costs and refresh cycle with Wasabi cloud storage
Imperial College NHS Trust expects to saves 30% in storage costs and cut back on five-year refresh headaches in a move that has seen backup and archive data move to the Wasabi cloud Continue Reading
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News
12 Jul 2022
Schneider Electric reinforces commitment to addressing datacentre skills gap with new courses
Datacentre energy management company is adding more courses to its free online training portal to help close industry skills gap Continue Reading
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News
11 Jul 2022
Oracle to open first sovereign cloud regions for EU-based users in 2023
Database software giant Oracle has set out plans to provide private enterprises and public sector organisations with access to sovereign cloud regions, with the first set to open in Spain and Germany next year Continue Reading
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News
08 Jul 2022
How Bank BPD Bali modernised its datacentre infrastructure
The Indonesian bank has deployed the Nutanix Cloud Platform in a move to modernise its datacentre infrastructure and pave the way towards hybrid and multi-cloud Continue Reading
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News
07 Jul 2022
UK-based datacentre cooling firm FEL Group ceases trading
Although its most recent financial report suggested the firm was seeing green shoots of recovery after a business restructure and financing plan, a disagreement on a key contract has resulted in FEL Group going out of business Continue Reading
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E-Zine
07 Jul 2022
CW Middle East: UAE citizens embrace new digital technologies
A survey shows that people in the United Arab Emirates believe next-generation technologies such as 3D printing and artificial intelligence will become widespread in the country. Also read how the UAE has improved its security posture amid mounting cyber threats. Continue Reading
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News
05 Jul 2022
High Court quashes planning permission extension for Apple’s abandoned Irish datacentre build
After securing additional planning permission for the site of its now-abandoned datacentre build last year, Apple has seen the offer withdrawn by the High Court – which may complicate how it sells the land on Continue Reading
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News
04 Jul 2022
How Lenovo is making the transition into services
Although Lenovo is late to the as-a-service game, it is making headway through its One Lenovo and services-led transformation strategies, says a top company executive Continue Reading
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News
28 Jun 2022
Research highlights private equity’s growing hold on datacentre sector
Latest market tracker data from Synergy Research Group shows how private equity players are increasing their hold on the datacentre market Continue Reading
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News
27 Jun 2022
Sustainable Norwegian colocation firm Green Mountain expands to the UK with Infinity SDC buyout
Infinity SDC has sold off its Romford facility to Norwegian colocation player, Green Mountain, whose backers claim the move will change the way other UK-based operators approach sustainability Continue Reading
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News
22 Jun 2022
Public cloud ecosystem revenue soars in line with enterprise demand for services during Q1
Demand for public cloud and related ecosystem services continues to grow, fuelling revenue growth for the market’s various players Continue Reading
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Podcast
21 Jun 2022
Podcast: The legacy and modern apps that drive object storage
We talk to object (and file) storage vendor Scality about the ways the application and development environment is changing and how that is driving object storage Continue Reading
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News
21 Jun 2022
Vodafone and Oracle Cloud strike multi-year deal to modernise telco’s European infrastructure
Vodafone is expanding the range of cloud providers it works with, as it embarks on a multi-year revamp of the infrastructure underpinning its European operations Continue Reading
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Feature
17 Jun 2022
Data gravity: What is it and how to manage it
Data gravity can attract increasing amounts of data, and brings with it onerous management overheads. We look at how to mitigate data gravity in datacentre and cloud Continue Reading
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Feature
15 Jun 2022
Looking ahead: How to create a multi-year datacentre capacity plan
Datacentres and cloud providers without a crystal ball can make educated guesses on future requirements to right-size resources and infrastructure Continue Reading
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Feature
14 Jun 2022
Unified file and object storage: Three suppliers and their approaches
We look at unified file and object storage products from NetApp, Pure Storage and Scality, the differences, the workloads aimed at, and how unified they actually are Continue Reading
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News
13 Jun 2022
The inauguration of LUMI: Europe's most powerful supercomputer launches
A former paper mill in Finland is now home to the world's third most powerful supercomputer, which will help researchers across Europe accelerate their scientific breakthroughs in the fields of climate change and medicine Continue Reading
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News
10 Jun 2022
Datavita to open Scotland’s first metro datacentre in Glasgow during Q3 2022
Datacentre operator Datavita is building a server farm in the heart of Glasgow’s financial district Continue Reading
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E-Zine
09 Jun 2022
CW Europe: Russia escalates cyber war on Ukraine
Microsoft has given details of cyber attacks on Ukrainian civilian communications, nuclear safety authorities, and the exploitation of the destruction of Mariupol in a phishing campaign. Also read about a report on the European Artificial Intelligence Act that suggests a limited ban on predictive policing systems. Continue Reading
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News
08 Jun 2022
Pure FlashBlade//S and Evergreen//Flex boost as-a-service push
FlashBlade//S brings two new arrays in which customers can upgrade controllers and capacity, while //Flex allows capacity to be bought and moved across any QLC or TLC Pure array Continue Reading
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News
08 Jun 2022
Length, cost and severity of datacentre outages continue to rise, Uptime Institute research confirms
Latest datacentre outages research from resiliency think-tank Uptime Institute confirms that downtime incidents are increasing in cost, length and severity Continue Reading
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News
03 Jun 2022
How digital twins can improve datacentre operations
Singapore’s Red Dot Analytics has built an AI-powered digital twin platform that lets datacentre operators simulate their operations to manage their carbon footprint and energy consumption, among other uses Continue Reading
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News
26 May 2022
Broadcom confirms $61bn deal to acquire VMware is going ahead
Chipmaker Broadcom is continuing its buy-and-build strategy to expand into the software market by agreeing to acquire virtualisation giant VMware Continue Reading
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Feature
26 May 2022
Hydrogen’s promise: How fuel cells might power lower-carbon datacentres
Could UK datacentre operators soon adopt emerging hydrogen technologies to reach expanding energy and emissions requirements? Continue Reading
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News
25 May 2022
Google Cloud expands European presence with opening of Madrid region
Public cloud giant Google is continuing to build out its datacentre footprint across Europe with the opening of its latest region in Madrid, Spain Continue Reading
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News
24 May 2022
Durham University upgrades cosmology supercomputer to switchless architecture with Rockport Networks
Researchers working within the Institute for Computational Cosmology at Durham University are set to reap the benefits of a network upgrade in one of its core supercomputers Continue Reading
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E-Zine
20 May 2022
CW APAC: Trend Watch: Datacentres
Firms should keep their data storage setups under frequent review to ensure their goals are being met effectively. In this handbook, focused on datacentres in the Asia-Pacific region, Computer Weekly looks at the shift towards colocation facilities, the projected change in spending patterns, nuclear power’s potential to reduce carbon emissions and the importance of infrastructure as code in edge datacentres Continue Reading
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20 May 2022
Enterprises are reducing their datacentre footprint
Organisations are moving from their own datacentres into colocation facilities to reduce cost and lower their carbon footprint Continue Reading
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News
13 May 2022
Dublin datacentre operators warned of climate change-related coastal flooding risks
A 3D data visualisation map from Cervest shows large swathes of Dublin could be affected by climate change-related coastal flooding in the years to come, which could have big implications for the region's datacentres Continue Reading
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E-Zine
12 May 2022
CW Benelux: Meta shelves hyperscale datacentre plan in Netherlands
Meta’s plan for a hyperscale datacentre in the Netherlands which was to serve the metaverse world has been halted following a campaign by environmentalists and the Dutch parliament’s call for the government to do everything in its power to stop the facility being built. Also read how the Dutch arm of customer services supplier Teleperformance has led the entire organisation to adopt robotic process automation software. Continue Reading
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News
12 May 2022
Ryanair taps up AWS machine learning tech to manage in-flight refreshment stocks
Low-cost airline Ryanair opens up about how its long-standing tech partnership with Amazon Web Services is helping it cut food waste and improve its in-flight customer service Continue Reading
- 11 May 2022
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News
11 May 2022
Kao Data debuts datacentre education programme for seven-to-11-year-olds
Harlow-based colocation provider wants to help teach children about the important role datacentres play in our society, in the hope that it might inspire some of them to pursue a career in the field of server farms Continue Reading