Tag: Data Center

Iranian Attacks on GCC Data Centers Put Tech Infrastructure Investment Risks into Sharp Focus

by Ismail Patel, posted in Big Data
A person with a beard speaking into a microphone at a conference, with an audience in the background.
I. Patel

Summary Bullets:

• Military strikes by Iran damaged AWS data centers in the UAE and Bahrain, highlighting vulnerability of the region’s data centers.

• Foreign investors, local tech decision makers, and insurance firms are now revisiting the calculus of risk in the data center boom.

Earlier this week, AWS data centers – two Availability Zones (AZ) in the UAE and another in Bahrain, all part of the AWS ME-Central-1 Region – suffered physical damage in escalatory strikes by Iran. The attacks disrupted 73 core services in the Bahrain AZ; at the time of writing, as per information shared by the AWS Health Dashboard, AWS stated that only 33 services were resolved. In the UAE, of the 112 impacted AWS services, only three have been resolved while others still face severe disruption or degradation. AWS strongly advised customers to enact disaster recovery plans and migrate workloads to unaffected AWS Regions in Europe, APAC, and the US.

Continue reading “Iranian Attacks on GCC Data Centers Put Tech Infrastructure Investment Risks into Sharp Focus” →

Tata Communications and Amazon Web Services to Build AI Network in India, as More Telcos Look to Deploy AI-ready Infrastructure

by Brendan Swan, posted in Network
B. Swan

Summary Bullets:

• Tata Communications will collaborate with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to build a high-capacity network connecting three major AWS infrastructure locations in Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Chennai.

• In a growing trend, more telecom providers are building high-capacity terrestrial networks to meet the growing demand in bandwidth contributed by the rise in artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud.

Tata Communications has announced a new partnership with AWS to build and deploy a high-capacity national terrestrial network backbone, making a significant move in transforming the country’s digital infrastructure evolution. This strategic collaboration between the two supports the continued rise in demand for data-intensive workloads driven by AI and cloud adoption. In what is becoming an increasing trend among global telecom operators, with more carriers investing substantial funds to expand, or upgrade their terrestrial networks to meet future data traffic demands, contributed by data-hungry workloads such as AI/ML, while future-proofing their networks to meet the requirements of their hyperscalers and enterprise customers.

Continue reading “Tata Communications and Amazon Web Services to Build AI Network in India, as More Telcos Look to Deploy AI-ready Infrastructure” →

AWS H1 Launches: Shifting Focus to Agentic AI

by Alfie Amir, posted in Big Data
A. Amir

Summary Bullets:

• Various new capabilities in cloud migration, AI, and agentic AI that are aligned with business needs in APAC.

• This shows strong momentum, but there are a few considerations for AWS to strengthen its position in the region.

In a recent briefing with analysts in APAC, AWS shared its key launches in H1 2025. In line with the market direction, most new services and features are around AI. Cloud adoption is growing while AI is evolving rapidly in the region. The focus has shifted from LLMs and use case creations to efficient deployments and advanced automation. For example, using the right model (third-party, custom model, model distillation, fine-tuning, and SLM) and agentic AI (multi-agent applications and agent development, including support for third-party agents and open-source agent SDK). The new capabilities are crucial for AWS to address the growing customer needs. Businesses have higher awareness of AI and are beginning to feel the push to adopt the technology to keep up with user demands and gain a competitive edge. The new capabilities are also crucial for AWS to retain its market position and to respond to competitors.

Continue reading “AWS H1 Launches: Shifting Focus to Agentic AI” →

Alibaba Cloud AI Tech Day Malaysia – Closing the Competitive Gap with Global Hyperscalers

by Alfie Amir, posted in IT Leader
A. Amir

Summary Bullets:

• Alibaba Cloud is expanding its presence in Malaysia with a new data center and wider ecosystem.

• It is closing the competitive gap in cloud and AI, but still lacks local references.

Local Expansion

At the recent Alibaba Cloud AI Tech Day 2025 in Malaysia, Alibaba Cloud shared its latest initiatives in the country including the development of its third facility there (the first opened in 2017). This is part of its $53 billion investment in global AI and cloud within the next three years. The Chinese hyperscaler is also expanding its ecosystem in the country to strengthen its presence and further penetrate the market. For example, it has groomed over 50 ISVs with AI and expanded its partner network with key players such as YTL, Agmo, PIKOM, and National AI Consortium (KAIN). At the event, the hyperscaler announced two MoUs: with Permodalan Nasional Berhad (PNB), a local investment firm, and with HiSEVEN, a regional digital marketing provider headquartered in Malaysia. Alibaba Cloud is also actively driving programs to build skillsets especially in new technologies such as AI and cloud. It has trained over 21,000 talents in the country and announced Alibaba Cloud AI Hackathon this year – the first in Malaysia.

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In 2018, Data Center Technology Will Become Smarter, Hybrid, More Distributed, and Easier to Consume

by Chris Drake, posted in Cloud Enable

C. Drake

Summary Bullets:

  • In 2018, rising enterprise demand for hybrid cloud solutions will fuel new and expanded partnerships between traditional infrastructure vendors and hyperscale public cloud providers.
  • Vendor initiatives will target the challenge of managing workloads across hybrid and increasingly distributed IT environments, along with ways of simplifying the procurement, deployment and consumption of IT.

2017 saw a growing recognition that private cloud technology is both a realistic and desirable way to manage enterprise workloads, and can be used more efficiently through effective integration in conjunction with public cloud services. A common theme during the year’s industry events was envisaging and enabling multi- and hybrid cloud futures. At the same time, in 2017, data center infrastructure vendors from Cisco and Dell EMC to IBM and HPE continued to transform their solutions and services businesses. These transformations were a response to enterprise digitalization initiatives and recognition that in the future, IT will be hybrid, and must be able to span the full spectrum of enterprise locales from the cloud to core data centers to the network edge. In 2017, individual vendors went through quite different transformation processes: in addition to launching new solutions, technology companies acquired and integrated new businesses, and forged alliances with one another and with hyperscale cloud providers in order to fill out their portfolios. These developments were all driven by a competitive push to help enterprises modernize their traditional data center environments, capitalize on the benefits of hybrid cloud, and expand their ability to handle growing volumes of data at the edge of their networks. Continue reading “In 2018, Data Center Technology Will Become Smarter, Hybrid, More Distributed, and Easier to Consume” →

Partnering with Competitors Will Remain Central to Dell EMC’s Converged and Hyper-converged Solutions Strategy in 2017

by Chris Drake, posted in Network

C. Drake
C. Drake

Summary Bullets:

• The market for hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) will be a major battleground for solutions jointly engineered by Dell Technologies group businesses.

• Dell EMC will maintain partnerships with competitors in relation to specific converged and hyper-converged solutions as long as customer demand for these solutions continues.

The launch in December of a new VxRack solution based on Dell EMC’s PowerEdge servers and VMware’s software-defined data center platform, gives us only a partial indication of how Dell EMC’s HCI will evolve in 2017. For a fuller understanding, it is necessary to look at the broader range of decisions and announcements the company has made both prior to and since its September merger. It can be argued that the launch of a new HCI solution based entirely on infrastructure provided by Dell Technologies group businesses – together with a move to drop the VCE brand for all of Dell EMC’s converged and hyper-converged solutions – points to a change of strategy for the vendor. They also note the way in which Dell’s PowerEdge servers have been steadily incorporated into several EMC solutions since the completion of the merger – including the company’s VxRail hyper-converged appliance. Continue reading “Partnering with Competitors Will Remain Central to Dell EMC’s Converged and Hyper-converged Solutions Strategy in 2017” →

Although HPE Announces a Milestone for Its “Machine” Project, Future Success is Far from Certain

by Chris Drake, posted in Cloud Enable

C. Drake
C. Drake

Summary Bullets:

• HPE announced a major milestone for The Machine research project, which promises to transform future computing and data center architectures.

• Despite real achievements, it remains to be seen whether HPE can make a success of The Machine in the way the vendor originally envisaged.

Of the various announcements Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) made at its recent Discovery Event in London, November 2016, one of the most interesting related to “The Machine”, a Hewlett Packard Labs research project that was inaugurated in 2014 and which aspires to revolutionize the way computers are built and data centers of the future are architected. At the London Discovery event HPE announced that it had reached a major milestone for The Machine project, having built and successfully tested a prototype of the “world’s first memory-driven computing architecture”.

Continue reading “Although HPE Announces a Milestone for Its “Machine” Project, Future Success is Far from Certain” →

Three Key Networking Trends for 2016

by , posted in Network

M. Fratto
M. Fratto

Summary Bullets:

  • Enterprise SDN momentum is still slow to pick up indicating that enterprises are struggling to find relevant use cases or use cases with sufficient benefit.
  • Integration capabilities industry wide need to improve including technical implementations and go to market tactics that prioritize accessibility.

I dislike yearly predictions. If I could make accurate predictions I’d be rich and living on a beach somewhere pondering my next fruit and umbrella drink. But, I can see what enterprises are asking for from vendors and how various vendors are responding to those demands. The big picture end game that creates a great vision and makes for an exciting keynote on stage pixelates when it comes to practical questions on how products and services can positively impact an enterprise. I think there are three critical changes in the market occurring in 2016.

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Honey, I Shrunk the Blade Server

by , posted in Cloud Enable, Network

Steven Hill
Steven Hill

Summary Bullets:

  • Does server vendors’ increasing focus on higher-density, multi-node server platforms actually reflect a growing need for them in the typical enterprise, or is it just a response to the IT industry’s fascination with high-profile, mega data centers?
  • Many of the new ‘multi-node’ servers that are appearing now come across as blade servers ‘lite,’ but it remains to be seen if they offer the same degree of flexibility, component redundancy and economy of scale as traditional blade systems.

I’ve been watching with great interest the new modular server systems being offered by big server vendors such as HP, Dell and Cisco, as well as a number of third-tier vendors, and I cannot help but be intrigued by the value proposition for these modular systems. Most are based on the extremely popular 2U server form factor and offer space for between two and eight server modules as well as aggregated networking and a fairly wide gamut of onboard storage options – all features that sound surprisingly similar to existing blade systems, but on a smaller scale. Continue reading “Honey, I Shrunk the Blade Server” →

The Old Guard: Out of the Frying Pan and into the Frying Pan

by , posted in Cloud Enable, IT Leader

Steven Hill
Steven Hill

Summary Bullets:

  • The decision for HP to split into separate consumer and enterprise companies is long overdue, and done correctly it will allow both siblings to be more responsive to their respective markets.
  • By shedding low-margin business units IBM is doing the right things to allow them to continue as innovators without bogging themselves down with manufacturing considerations.

No other industry moves as fast as IT, and every vendor faces the challenge of evolving to remain current with the changing nature of this business. But the challenges for old-school industry stalwarts like IBM and HP are a little different, in part because they’re still simply perceived as “old-school” (irony intended), plus they have a legacy of products that they must continue to sell and support. Does this mean I give them a pass on everything they do? Not on your life – but I certainly admire the commitment it takes to recognize their own weaknesses and make the tough choices. Continue reading “The Old Guard: Out of the Frying Pan and into the Frying Pan” →