Almost half a year after acquiring AI networking outfit Mist Systems for a cool $405 million, Juniper Networks has announced the next set of Mist AI integrations into the company's network and hybrid cloud monitoring platform.

Mist's cloud-based AI wireless service, WiFI Assurance, will be added to Juniper's platform as a subscription offering. The service uses network data to make wireless networks more reliable, and centres around an AI-powered virtual network assistant called Marvis that uses dynamic packet capture and machine learning technology to automatically identify, adapt and fix network issues.

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AT&T has urged organisations to do more to address the cyber security threats posed by 5G and place more focus on security automation and virtualisation.

The American telecommunications giant made the warnings in its latest cyber security report, based on a survey conducted by 451 research that surveyed 704 cyber security professionals working in firms with more than 500 employees.

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Nvidia has unveiled an AI supercomputer the size of a credit card for edge computing devices.

Dubbed Xavier NX, the diminutive device delivers performance of up to 21 TOPs and can consume as little as 10 watts of power when running modern AI workloads. 

Nvidia claimed the micro module is the "world’s smallest, most powerful AI supercomputer" for devices at the edge.

The supercomputer will serve high-performance applications constrained by size and weight, such as small commercial robots drones, or high-resolution industrial IoT sensors.

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The UK Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) has selected Cray’s Shasta supercomputer to power the organisation’s nuclear simulations and other science projects supporting UK nuclear deterrence.

The seven petaflop supercomputer is named Vulcan and fitted with AMD’s Epyc 7542 processors, Cray Slingshot interconnect and ClusterStor Lustre storage. 

AWE said Cray’s HPC beast was selected because of its ability to run mixed workloads and applications at a low total cost of ownership (TCO).

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TechUK has called on the UK data centre sector to ramp up efforts to tackle climate change and help the UK Government meet its target of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

According to the trade body's latest data centre report, operators from all sectors need to do more to improve energy efficiency and use of renewables.

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Microsoft and Warner Bros have teamed up to store the 1978 movie Superman on a piece of quartz glass the size of a drinks coaster.

The achievement is part of a Microsoft Azure initiative called Project Silica, aimed at developing long-lasting storage technologies for the cloud that reduce the provider's long-term storage costs and environmental footprint.

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It's the end of October, which means it's time to round up the performance of the top three cloud providers: AWS, Azure and Google Cloud.

Over the last quarter, the global cloud market enjoyed a typically healthy 37 percent growth, Canalys reports.

But yet again there were subtle shifts in the tectonic plates of the cloud hierarchy. For the second quarter running, AWS, cloud leader supreme, reported slowing growth.

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Digital Realty has announced the acquisition of Amsterdam-based colocation and interconnection provider Interxion in an all-stock deal worth $8.4bn.

The acquisition surpasses Digital Realty's $7.6 billion purchase of DuPont Fabros Technology as the largest acquisition in the history of the data centre industry and puts an end to recent speculation over the future of Interxion, rumoured to be mulling takeover bids from several investment firms.

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Google recently sent the internet in a frenzy after the company claimed in a leaked research paper to have achieved "quantum supremacy". At the time the quantum community fiercely debated Google's claim.

While the draft paper was swiftly pulled offline, Google has doubled down by officially releasing a peer-reviewed version in Nature which reiterates its achievement. Crucially, the article repeats the controversial claim that the problem its Sycamore processor solved would take Summit, the world's most powerful supercomputer, 10,000 years to complete.

If true, this would effectively mean Google had satisfied John Preskill's original definition of quantum supremacy, described as the milestone where quantum computers can perform tasks that classical computers cannot.

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As innovative applications such as big data and IoT increasingly become the bedrock of global business operations, the need for data centre power protection has never been more critical. Although the effects of downtime vary from industry to industry, in extreme cases, a single outage can translate to millions of dollars of lost revenue.

There are a number of devices that today’s data centres rely on for power protection, but chief among them are uninterruptable power supplies (UPS). UPS’ serve two essential functions. First, to help protect ICT equipment from power abnormalities on the main supply, and if the mains supply fails, to step in and support the critical load until the mains is restored or replaced by an alternative supply such as a generator. By ensuring continuous power supply, UPS’ help eliminate the danger of costly power outages.

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Over the past few decades, technological advances have enabled telecom service providers to consolidate their network infrastructure. The reduction in equipment size, coupled with an improved ability to bridge larger distances, has also allowed service providers to reduce their data centre footprint.

But with the reduction in data centre sites, the modern facility has also become comparatively supersized and energy hungry, mainly due to the never-ending increase of network traffic. To mitigate this challenge, companies such as Verizon are turning to machine learning and data analytics to improve the energy efficiency of facilities.

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When I first heard about KaoData, I was immediately intrigued. Born and raised in North London, the idea of a facility popping up in Harlow that boasted itself as one of the largest developments in the UK, with the potential to support an IT load of 35MW across 150,000sq ft of space, seemed unthinkable. Naturally, when I was invited to have a look around, I jumped at the chance.

The first thing that hit me was just how easy it was to find the data centre. Kao Park is situated just minutes off the M25 but the location itself wasn’t a fluke. Gerard Thibault, chief technical officer, explained that the site was selected based on a number of factors. Accessibility was crucial, the facility needed to be easy for staff and customers to reach by road, train or plane. Positioned in the heart of the London-Stansted-Cambridge corridor, with the M1, M11, M25 all in close proximity, Harlow train station just 10 minutes away by taxi, and Luton, Stansted and City. airports all in close vicinity, they were able to pinpoint the perfect spot.

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Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are a mix of computation, networking and physical processes, in which the embedded computational algorithms and networks have the power to monitor and control the physical components.

By using a combination of machines, sensory devices, embedded computational intelligence and various communication mechanisms, CPS monitor physical elements with computer-based algorithms tied to the internet. This means they are capable of autonomously functioning based on their physical surroundings.

In light of advancements in analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and communications, there is increased demand for intelligent machines that can interact with the environment around them, such as driverless cars which monitor and communicate with their surroundings, and smart appliances that optimise energy consumption. CPS are stimulating significant changes in quality of life and forming the basis of smart infrastructure, products, and services.

As this kind of technology continues to become more integrated into our everyday lives, here are four areas of CPS we can expect to come to the fore.

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Given their many advantages over alternative technologies, lithium-ion batteries are gaining in popularity as a power backup option for data centre Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) systems. A 2018 Bloomberg New Energy Finance report forecasted that Li-ion technology will comprise 40 percent of all data centre backup batteries by 2025, and that in the hyperscale sector, Li-ion will become the predominant battery technology, accounting for 55 percent of UPS batteries.

Compared with traditional valve-regulated lead-acid (VRLA) alternatives, Li-ion batteries offer greater power density, smaller size, less weight and longer operating life. They can also withstand many more charge/recharge cycles, typically more than 1,000 compared with 200-400, before losing their ability to provide effective backup power.

As a result, they occupy less space, incur lower maintenance costs and require less frequent replacement than VRLA batteries offering the user a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) over the lifecycle. This helps to offset their chief disadvantage, an initial cost premium, but even that is steadily diminishing thanks to ongoing technology development and increased manufacturing volumes.

Additionally, recent studies conducted by Schneider Electric’s Data Centre Science Centre, detailed in White Paper #229: ‘Battery Technology for Data Centers’, found that over a 10-year period, Li-ion delivered a TCO that is between 10 percent and 40 percent lower than equivalent UPS systems based on VRLA batteries.

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Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) has gone mainstream, yet myths still remain that lead to misconception and confusion even among those that already have various HCI solutions deployed. These are five of the most prevalent myths debunked.

First of all, the acquisition price of HCI solution varies by vendor and often by the brand of hypervisor used in the solution. Secondly, while it can often be the case that purchasing the individual components needed to create a virtualisation infrastructure may be less expensive than purchasing an HCI solution, that is only part of the cost of the solution. The true and total cost of infrastructure goes far beyond the initial purchase.

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Not a lot of 55 year-olds look as good as the mainframe.

Back in 1964, along with the release of The Beatles’ legendary A Hard Day’s Night and cinematic classic Mary Poppins, came the release of IBM’s groundbreaking IBM System/360.

Since then, mainframes have established themselves in the vast majority of business critical applications as the beating heart of technical infrastructure. So much so that the mainframe market is expected to grow by a further 4.3% by 2025, bringing it to a worth of nearly $3bn per annum.

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With the proliferation of 5G, AI, Big Data, IoT and social media, all of which reside in the cloud, there is an ever-increasing demand for energy in data centres.

Take popular consumer data storage platforms, which for the majority of society constitute the cloud. At the Data Centre Re-transformation Conference held last month in Manchester, Uptime Institute revealed it requires 666GWh/year on average to store a selfie on the cloud (assuming the photo is 2.5MB and 6.5kWh/GB is required for annual storage, and given that on average each of the UK’s 41M cloud users store 1000 photos per year).

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In an environment where consumption of all things appears to be heading skywards, data use, bandwidth and storage requirements are right on trend. With levels of data creation and use now surpassing zettabytes volumes per year, the data centre technology suites that facilitate this compute power need to be carefully controlled.

From the standpoint of an infrastructure supplier, today’s discussions with data centre operators and corporate end users, with owned data centre capability, are framed around increased bandwidth, reduced latency and energy concerns including lower power usage and effective climate control to optimise the compute environment.

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