Archive for January, 2008

http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2008/prod_012808.html

SAN JOSE, Calif., January 28, 2008 -Cisco® today introduced innovative new solutions that continue to help customers realize the Cisco Data Center 3.0 vision for next-generation data centers. The culmination of this is the introduction of the network platform for Data Center 3.0, the Cisco Nexus® Family of data-center-class switches, and the expansion of the Cisco Catalyst® Family. This new infrastructure is the next step in helping customers to design and build data center architectures that meet the stringent operational continuity, transport flexibility and scalability requirements of the next-generation data center.

“With its Data Center 3.0 vision, Cisco is transforming the data center into a virtualized environment that revolutionizes how organizations adopt new IT strategies and respond quickly to changing business needs,” said Jayshree Ullal, senior vice president of Cisco’s Data Center, Switching and Services Group. “The Cisco Nexus 7000 Series is the result of significant and pioneering internal innovation. Combined with the 10-Gigabit Ethernet portfolio that the flagship Catalyst 6500 Series offers, Cisco provides customers with a smooth migration into a new era of data center networking.”

Today’s new offerings build on Cisco’s data center switch market share leadership, more than 15 years of Catalyst switch innovation and an architectural approach specifically designed to unify all components of the data center. Over the next 18 months, Cisco will continue to invest in its data center efforts by adding significant new products and capabilities to help customers architect next-generation data centers.

The new products from Cisco are very interesting. They have released their next generation switches the “Nexus series” which are more scalable supporting 40gb and 100gb Ehternet as well as unified fabric I/O modules. Do check them out.

http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2008/prod_012808b.html?
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SAN JOSE, Calif., Jan. 28, 2008 - Cisco® announced today an innovative family of data center-class switching platforms, the Cisco Nexus Series, to meet customer demands for next-generation mission-critical data centers. As the data center transitions to a more services-centric model, the network plays a pivotal role in orchestrating virtual IT resources and scaling workloads. The Cisco Nexus 7000 Series was designed with this environment in mind, delivering the infrastructure chapter of Cisco’s Data Center 3.0 vision.

Today’s announcement features a new data center platform with both hardware and software innovations, including:

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  • The Cisco Nexus 7000 Series, the flagship data center-class switching platform combining Ethernet, IP, and storage capabilities across one unified network fabric
  • The Cisco Trusted Security (TrustSec) architecture
  • An advanced operating system, the Cisco Nexus Operating System (NX-OS), and the Cisco Data Center Network Manager

Very cool, the new products from Cisco sound very interesting, particularly the unified fabric solution and their new OS which is meant to improve availability and support XML for configurations.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jan/29/corporatesocialresponsibility.ethicalliving

Last summer I had a vision of life in a world post-climate change catastrophe. It was around midday on July 20. I was sitting on the 5th floor of an office building in London when the sky suddenly and dramatically turned black, as though night had descended.

“I’m just waiting for the four horsemen of the apocalypse to come riding over the rooftops,” quipped one colleague, as the brooding clouds seemed to darken still further.

And then the heavens opened, dumping two month’s rain in just a few hours, leading to the worst flooding in years.

Whether last summer’s floods had anything to do with global warming is far from certain, but as the torrents rained down on that day last July, what did we all do? We went back to our desks and carried on working. The lights were already on, the air conditioning was on, and after a few moments’ distraction, we simply ignored it.

Check out this interesting article about green living. It’s got some interesting comments about the IT in your business and making that more efficient. Tools like virtualization or application/infrastructure consolidation can be a great way of providing more with the systems you have. At the same time, establishing what systems need to be on 24/7, (the SAN, the batch server, the company website) and which components we can switch off (the pc, the printer) can make not only a difference to your energy and cooling bill, but your carbon footprint. Something to think about particularly as more companies declare their status as a carbon neutral business.

http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20080128corp.htm?iid=pr1_releasepri_20080128r

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Jan. 28, 2008 – Intel Corporation said today it will purchase more than 1.3 billion kilowatt hours a year of renewable energy certificates as part of a multi-faceted approach to reduce its impact on the environment, making Intel the single-largest corporate purchaser of green power in the United States, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The company said it hoped the record-setting purchase would help stimulate the market for green power, which should lead to additional generating capacity and ultimately, lower costs.

The purchase placed Intel at the top of EPA’s latest Green Power Partners Top 25 list, and also at the No. 1 spot on EPA’s Fortune 500 Green Power Partners list. The EPA’s Green Power Partnership program encourages and recognizes voluntary green power purchases as a way to reduce the impact of conventional electricity use.

Very cool, this article highlights how Intel is switching to renewable energy which should highlight the availability and the need to switch to renewable energy where possible.

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2208167/china-server-sales-expected

Sales of x86 servers in China will increase substantially this year after a slowdown in 2007, local analysts report.

The market value will rise 11.8 per cent to $1.68bn, while unit sales will increase 16.1 per cent to 690,000, according to forecasts from Beijing-based CCID Consulting.

“The driving forces for market growth came from the fast-growing telecom and value-added telecom services, accelerating IT applications in the transportation sector [and] the warm-up of the SMB market,” said CCID analysts.

A number of new markets for servers opened up and began to account for significant sales in China last year.

These included online banking and securities trading, new “socialist countryside building” and city emergency system building, according to CCID.

China’s market for x86 servers was worth $1.5bn in 2007, with 595,000 servers sold, according to estimates based on initial sales data.

These figures indicate that the market suffered a significant slowdown in the rate of increase in sales revenue to below 13 per cent last year, after growing almost 20 per cent in 2006.

I’ve been speaking with several people that said China was a great potential market for servers (including blade servers), this article talks about it and was a very interesting read, check it out.

http://www.vnunet.com/crn/news/2208312/vmware-loses-lustre

Virtualisation market ruler VMware has announced lukewarm fourth quarter results and a drizzly forecast of just 50 per cent revenue growth for 2008 – compared to its run of nearly 100 per cent year-on-year growth over the last nine years.

The storage vendor finally fell off its pedestal with the announcement that it is failing to reach market expectations and both VMware and its investors came back down to earth with a share price tumble of more than 25 per cent.

Total revenues for the fourth quarter were $412m, an increase of 80 per cent compared to the year-ago quarter, and total revenues for the full fiscal year 2007 were $1.33bn, an increase of 88 per cent compared to 2006.

Diane Greene, chief executive of VMware, said: “VMware executed at a remarkable pace in 2007 as customer interest and partner attention increased several fold. We begin 2008 with more than 100,000 customers, 500 technology and consulting partners, nearly 10,000 go-to-market partners, and more than 5,000 employees.”

Check out this great article from vnunet which is talking about VMWare’s fourth quarter results. There’s been a lot in the press that VMWare is facing competition whether direct from companies like Xen or Sun’s XVM in terms of cost or licensing. Regardless, virtualization as a movement, a way of doing business, VMWare has a large following in terms of customer base and importantly community, these two things will help drive revenues in future, providing VMWare continues with its product innovation and ongoing dialog with the community and customer bases.