Data centre
Deciding where and how to build and operate a datacentre is one of the most important decisions your organisation will make. This section covers how to build a solid datacentre infrastructure, including selecting the right location to build your new facility, best practices for designing a new datacentre, and cooling and air flow techniques. Learn about green IT, data management systems, servers and operating systems.
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Opinion
10 Oct 2025
IT Sustainability Think Tank: Don’t believe Big Tech’s green IT hype
In an era where nearly every tech supplier touts green credentials, IT directors face the challenging task of separating genuine sustainability commitments from marketing spin. But how? Continue Reading
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News
09 Oct 2025
Meta to boost APAC connectivity with subsea cable
The 8,000km Candle subsea cable is expected to bolster internet capacity for more than a billion people as tech giants continue to invest in digital infrastructure across the region Continue Reading
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News
08 Aug 2018
Infinity SDC sells Here East Olympic Park datacentre to fund development of Romford facility
The colocation provider continues to scale-back its datacentre footprint in London, with the news it has exited its much-hyped facility in the former Olympic Park in Stratford Continue Reading
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News
08 Aug 2018
Liam Maxwell to swap government for AWS
Government tech adviser Liam Maxwell is understood to be leaving government for a role at Amazon Web Services Continue Reading
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News
07 Aug 2018
Frequency and severity of datacentre outages on the rise, Uptime Institute research suggests
The Uptime Institute’s eighth annual datacentre survey reveals operators across the world are suffering more outages, as the complexity of the environments they manage continues to grow Continue Reading
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News
07 Aug 2018
Arista settles patent dispute with Cisco
Cisco gets $400m from rival, but experts say it still has some way to go to build a cloud networking strategy as complete as Arista’s Continue Reading
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News
07 Aug 2018
How Indonesia’s Go-Jek scales the heights with cloud
The unicorn’s microservices-based application architecture on the cloud has been key in supporting its growth in Indonesia – and now Southeast Asia Continue Reading
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News
06 Aug 2018
Alibaba Cloud makes deeper inroads into Malaysia
The Chinese cloud supplier’s second availability zone and upcoming DDoS scrubbing centre in Malaysia comes on the heels of growing investments in the Southeast Asian nation Continue Reading
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News
03 Aug 2018
BEIS courts datacentre operators to join energy efficiency technology accelerator programme
Government-backed programme is being run by the Carbon Trust and offering grants of up to £1m to help participants commercialise new energy-saving technology developments Continue Reading
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News
02 Aug 2018
EU-backed datacentre consortium seeks industry help for Europe-wide sustainability push
Catalyst Consortium is creating a green energy special interest group to work out how best to encourage Europe’s datacentre operators to reuse their waste heat and reduce the impact of their activities on local energy grids Continue Reading
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Opinion
02 Aug 2018
Software development is not the only place where DevOps-style optimisation might be useful
Too much of IT focuses on the importance what is measured, rather than measuring what's important Continue Reading
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News
01 Aug 2018
Google to build third datacentre in Singapore
The facility will increase Google’s datacentre investments in the city-state to $850m, and follows the launch of Southeast Asia’s first Google Cloud Platform region in 2017 Continue Reading
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News
01 Aug 2018
AWS revenue growth slows as competition in the global IaaS market heats up
Gartner's latest look at the global infrastructure as a service (IaaS) market shines a light on how the great and good of the public cloud supplier community are fairing Continue Reading
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News
01 Aug 2018
How Google is using open source, containers and hybrid cloud to win over the enterprise
At this year’s Google Cloud Next conference in San Francisco, the search giant gave an update on how its effort to win over enterprise IT decision-makers is progressing Continue Reading
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News
31 Jul 2018
Inner-city colocation space in demand as firms want better latency, says Interxion managing director
Previous predictions that rural datacentres would be more common are being changed as enterprises aim to bring better latency to customers, says Interxion managing director Andrew Fray Continue Reading
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News
31 Jul 2018
Court RPA or get sidelined
Robotic process automation (RPA) is helping businesses go through digital transformation. Time for IT to play catch-up Continue Reading
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News
27 Jul 2018
AWS’s sales up almost 50% year-on-year in second quarter
Cloud giant’s quarterly sales hit $6.1bn in third consecutive year-on-year rise as Ryanair, Major League Baseball and 21st Century Fox join its list of customers Continue Reading
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News
26 Jul 2018
Fix culture to make digital a success
Businesses with well-honed processes will often find it hard to adapt to new, digital transformation initiatives, according to Gartner report Continue Reading
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News
26 Jul 2018
Google brings machine learning data processing to IoT edge environments
Google is expanding its internet of things data processing offering by extending the ability for enterprises to carry out machine learning tasks in edge environments Continue Reading
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News
25 Jul 2018
Google Cloud gaining ground in APAC
The cloud supplier claims substantial growth in Asia-Pacific, and is upping the ante on partnerships and infrastructure investments across the region Continue Reading
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News
25 Jul 2018
Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene on how its enterprise-readiness push is paying off
The Google Cloud Next conference in San Francisco has seen the search giant reinforce its commitment to addressing misconceptions about the enterprise-readiness of its cloud infrastructure and software propositions Continue Reading
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News
24 Jul 2018
Google wants to ease hybrid cloud woes
Cloud supplier Google claims its Cloud Service Platform will alleviate complexities in managing microservices in a hybrid IT environment Continue Reading
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Blog Post
24 Jul 2018
Google Cloud Next '18: What datacentre operators can learn from how Google SRE teams operate
To coincide with the first day of the Google Cloud Next 2018 conference (taking place from 24-26 July) in San Francisco, John Jainschigg, content strategy lead at enterprise systems monitoring ... Continue Reading
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News
24 Jul 2018
Organisations are ready to adopt DevOps to power digital transformation
Companies across Europe are increasingly turning to DevOps to help them adapt their software processes to support new customer-centric business uses Continue Reading
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News
23 Jul 2018
European infrastructure cloud deals grow, as contract sizes shrink
Emea is taking on infrastructure as a service in a big way, as traditional sourcing is being pinched, according to ISG Continue Reading
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Feature
19 Jul 2018
Container storage: Docker in flash, HCI and software-defined
We look at what flash array, hyper-converged infrastructure and software-defined storage makers are doing to provide persistent storage for container-based deployments Continue Reading
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News
17 Jul 2018
UKFast creates subsidiary to support AWS and Azure
Hosting company UKFast offers its own private and public cloud services alongside Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure support Continue Reading
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E-Zine
17 Jul 2018
How container technology is evolving
In this week’s Computer Weekly, as adoption of containers grows rapidly, we look at the choices and potential benefits of the technology. We examine the efforts being made to secure internet of things devices and ask if legislation is needed. And we assess how the government’s latest Brexit plans will affect the UK tech sector. Read the issue now. Continue Reading
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Feature
16 Jul 2018
Data protection for containers: Why and how to do Docker backup
Containers such as those from Docker are agile, lightweight and can be short-lived, but they and their data often need to be protected. We look at the key options available Continue Reading
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16 Jul 2018
Beyond Docker and Kubernetes: The container ecosystem continues to evolve
Enterprise interest in container technologies is on the rise, and organisations need to get clued up on who does what and how it can benefit them. Continue Reading
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News
16 Jul 2018
ITPS expands datacentre to support Azure Stack and HPC
Datacentre company ITPS expands its County Durham facility to meet client needs for high performance computing and security Continue Reading
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Feature
16 Jul 2018
Streamline infrastructure management through robotic automation
Robotic automation is changing the infrastructure management game, helping IT departments make fewer mistakes and boost their productivity Continue Reading
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Blog Post
13 Jul 2018
Disaster recovery and business continuity: A best practice guide
In this guest post Paul Timms, managing director of IT support provider MCSA, shares his thoughts on why enterprises can ill-afford to overlook the importance of business continuity and disaster ... Continue Reading
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News
13 Jul 2018
Virtus Data Centres plots further expansion of Slough colocation site
Virtus Data Centres is adding three more data halls to its colocation facility in Slough, as well as carrying out a power upgrade at the site Continue Reading
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News
13 Jul 2018
How Singapore’s MyRepublic hones its IT chops
MyRepublic’s CIO shares how the company’s IT strategy has enabled the internet service provider to spread its wings into new markets Continue Reading
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Feature
13 Jul 2018
Guinness World Records bets on Office 365 and AWS to boost business expansion
Rob Howe, director of IT at Guinness World Records, opens up about how cloud is supporting the organisation’s ongoing push to diversify its business Continue Reading
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News
12 Jul 2018
Executive interview: Bill Ruh, CDO of GE
With a new CEO in the driving seat, we speak to GE’s head of digital, Bill Ruh, about how the company has refined its digital strategy Continue Reading
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News
12 Jul 2018
Broadcom acquires enterprise business with CA Technologies deal
Broadcom buys into the enterprise software infrastructure arena, announcing $19bn acquisition of CA Technologies Continue Reading
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News
12 Jul 2018
Investments in on-premise enterprise datacentres on the up as demand for multi-cloud rises
IHS Markit's research into the investment priorities of enterprise datacentre operators suggests cloud is fuelling infrastructure upgrade projects Continue Reading
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E-Zine
12 Jul 2018
CW Middle East: Can Saudi Arabia build the Silicon Valley of the Middle East?
In April this year, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman visited Silicon Valley in the US to meet tech giants such as Apple and Amazon in its efforts to fast-forward the kingdom’s technology capabilities. Read about its lofty ambitions. Also in this issue, read how demand for skilled IT professionals is increasing rapidly in the Middle East, which is facing a talent crunch. Meanwhile, Gulf Cooperation Council smart city initiatives are gathering momentum. Continue Reading
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News
12 Jul 2018
Hedvig teams up with Veeam to support scale-out backup appliances
Scale-out software-defined storage supplier reaches agreement with Veeam for backup software to build clusters of nodes with flash, cloud and block, file and object storage access Continue Reading
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Blog Post
11 Jul 2018
How people, processes and technology determine DevOps success
In this guest post, Eran Kinsbruner, lead technical evangelist at DevOps software supplier Perfecto, talks about why success in agile software development hinges on getting the people, processes ... Continue Reading
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News
11 Jul 2018
DevOps gathers pace in APAC
Large enterprises such as DBS Bank have been shaking up their software development practices to fend off disruption from more nimble rivals Continue Reading
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News
10 Jul 2018
Carrenza expands public sector footprint with move into Ark Data Centres
Carrenza parent Six Degrees hails potential for tighter public sector collaboration with Crown Hosting Services through Ark Data Centres deal Continue Reading
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News
10 Jul 2018
Goonhilly Earth Station sets out plans to open green colocation datacentre in 2018
Owners of the space satellite communications hub in Cornwall are drawing on the site’s network links to court colocation clients Continue Reading
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10 Jul 2018
Barclays banks on DevOps to support 'all-in' move to AWS public cloud
Barclays Bank reveals details of its plans to go all-in on the AWS public cloud through adopting the principles of DevOps. Continue Reading
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E-Zine
10 Jul 2018
Tackling the digital identity problem
In this week’s Computer Weekly, as UK government attempts to create a digital identity standard flounder, we examine progress on establishing the online ID system the digital economy needs. Barclays Bank talks about its move to DevOps and public cloud with Amazon Web Services. And we find out how using AI and chatbots could help improve IT service management. Read the issue now. Continue Reading
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News
09 Jul 2018
Casino group bets on Pivot3 hyper-converged infrastructure for surveillance
Caesars’ ageing digital video recording equipment risked running foul of court and police requirements, and cost tens of thousands annually, so it switched to Pivot3 hyper-converged infrastructure Continue Reading
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Feature
09 Jul 2018
Enhance efficiency by automating IT services
We look at the role of artificial intelligence and chatbots in IT service management Continue Reading
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News
06 Jul 2018
CNet Training calls on datacentre sector for input on skill shortage research
Technology skills and education provider CNet Training is calling on the datacentre community to help inform its research into what is behind the sector's skill shortages Continue Reading
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Feature
05 Jul 2018
DevOps done right: Securing grassroots support for a top-down DevOps enterprise push
As more and more enterprises rush to join the DevOps movement, practitioners share details of how they secured grassroots support for their senior leadership team's top-down agile adoption mandates Continue Reading
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News
04 Jul 2018
Dell/VMware and Nutanix dominate a growing hyper-converged market
As hyper-converged system revenues get set to overtake those of converged systems, Dell/VMware and Nutanix are dominating the market for combined server and storage nodes Continue Reading
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News
04 Jul 2018
Alibaba Cloud looks to drive its technology ecosystem with startup innovation contest
Alibaba Cloud is hosting its next Create@Alibaba contest as it looks for innovative products from startups Continue Reading
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Feature
04 Jul 2018
Cloud HCI survey: Cloud functionality in hyper-converged infrastructure
We look at how you can use hyper-converged infrastructure to build private clouds and link up with public cloud services to develop hybrid and multi-cloud working Continue Reading
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News
04 Jul 2018
Inside Alibaba Cloud’s Southeast Asia playbook
Alibaba Cloud is working closely with local customers in joint innovation projects, and has started to launch new services for Chinese and international customers simultaneously to narrow the service gap Continue Reading
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Feature
03 Jul 2018
Containers and storage: Array suppliers’ container capabilities
We look at what the big five storage array makers – Dell EMC, Hitachi, HPE, IBM and NetApp – are doing to provide persistent storage for container-based deployments Continue Reading
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News
03 Jul 2018
Government launches G-Cloud 10
The 10th iteration of G-Cloud is now live, with more than 3,500 suppliers awarded a place on the procurement framework Continue Reading
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News
03 Jul 2018
New deals bolster IBM’s European cloud business
IBM has signed up a number of new customers for its European cloud, focusing on the platform and software services in the IBM public cloud Continue Reading
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Feature
02 Jul 2018
Let automation take away the tedium
Computer Weekly looks at how far the suppliers of systems management tools and associated products have progressed with automation Continue Reading
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News
02 Jul 2018
Bolloré Group partners with Alibaba for cloud and co-development
French transportation conglomerate will use Alibaba cloud, and Alibaba will look at using Bolloré's battery technology in its datacentres Continue Reading
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Opinion
02 Jul 2018
The desire for perfect recycling is making the e-waste problem worse
Shipping our electronic waste to poorer countries isn't going to solve the problem of recycling – there's a more economic solution Continue Reading
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News
29 Jun 2018
Formula One switches from on-premise to machine learning on AWS
Formula One plans to use advanced analytics to improve the data it can show to motor racing fans Continue Reading
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News
28 Jun 2018
Supercomputing Wales partners with Atos and Dell to bring HPC to universities
Deal will bring high-performance computing to four universities to drive research across various sectors Continue Reading
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News
28 Jun 2018
Google courts Hollywood creative community with Los Angeles cloud datacentre region
Google is making a concerted effort to win over the media and entertainment industry with its cloud offerings by pairing the opening of a new datacentre region with services tailored towards Hollywood creatives Continue Reading
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News
28 Jun 2018
UK tech startup wants businesses to share their surplus compute capacity to run its cloud
UK-based startup DADI is taking on the hyperscale giants in a bid to “democratise” the cloud and create an internet that is majority owned by the public Continue Reading
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News
28 Jun 2018
IT decision-makers increasingly opt for cloud-native architectures
The world of IT is now much more multi-platform and the underlying architecture is cloud-native, according to a new survey from Cloud Foundry Continue Reading
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News
28 Jun 2018
University of Melbourne claims quantum computing breakthrough
Australian scientists have simulated the power of quantum computing on classical computers to solve a mathematical problem, paving the way for future breakthroughs in the nascent field Continue Reading
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News
26 Jun 2018
Microsoft expands datacentre footprint in Norway
Microsoft is introducing two new datacentre regions in Norway and is targeting the oil and gas industry with its Azure services Continue Reading
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26 Jun 2018
Visa reveals 'rare' datacentre switch fault as root cause of June 2018 outage
Visa has offered a retrospective analysis of what went wrong in its datacentre during its UK-wide outage on Friday 1 June, in response to a request from the Treasury Select Committee for more detail about the downtime. Continue Reading
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E-Zine
26 Jun 2018
Visa reveals causes of payment chaos
In this week’s Computer Weekly, after a major outage that affected millions of customers, payment provider Visa reveals what caused its network to crash. We look at the innovations coming from startups in software-defined storage. And we assess the prospects for the tech sector in Canada as it targets European IT buyers. Read the issue now. Continue Reading
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News
25 Jun 2018
Barclays banks on DevOps to support 'all-in' move to AWS public cloud
Barclays Bank reveals details of its plans to go all-in on the AWS public cloud through adopting the principles of DevOps Continue Reading
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News
25 Jun 2018
Electricity problems in Amsterdam could hamper datacentre growth
A shortage of power availability in Amsterdam might make businesses look elsewhere in the Netherlands to site datacentres Continue Reading
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Feature
25 Jun 2018
Adapting to the rise of the holistic application
A containerised, componentised and compartmentalised approach to software presents CIOs with the challenge of managing a more complex environment Continue Reading
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Blog Post
22 Jun 2018
Why next-generation IaaS is likely to be open source
In this guest post, Chip Childers, CTO of open source platform-as-a-service Cloud Foundry, makes the case for why the future of public cloud and IaaS won't be proprietary. Once upon a time, ... Continue Reading
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Feature
22 Jun 2018
Assessing the hyperscale squeeze on G-Cloud's SMEs
The latest government spend data suggests public sector IT buyers are increasingly using G-Cloud to procure services from the hyperscale cloud community, prompting concerns about the impact this might have on the SME-friendly framework Continue Reading
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News
22 Jun 2018
UKCloud invests £25m in building secure cloud platform for top secret government data
Public sector-focused cloud provider has launched a standalone division, dubbed UKCloudX, to oversee its efforts to aid in the fight against cybe rcrime through the roll-out of its cloud platform Continue Reading
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Opinion
21 Jun 2018
Emerging PaaS model puts cloud app dev into the fast lane
As they grapple with application backlogs and a shortage of seasoned, business-savvy developers, enterprises will increasingly look to drag-and-drop programming options. Continue Reading
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News
21 Jun 2018
Intel CEO Brian Krzanich resigns over past relationship with fellow employee
Intel confirms interim successor for Krzanich, who played a pivotal role in the company’s multi-year efforts to offset the declining demand for PC chips by courting the datacentre community Continue Reading
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News
21 Jun 2018
CDO interview: Andrei Belevtsev, Gazprom Neft
Russian oil giant will harness the latest technologies right across its business, says chief digital officer Continue Reading
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Feature
20 Jun 2018
Need for speed: designing a modern campus LAN
Just like datacentres before them, campus LANs are increasingly being defined by virtualisation and software-based controls. Next to this shift, the hardware also continues to improve as network owners look to keep pace with user demand Continue Reading
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News
19 Jun 2018
Visa reveals 'rare' datacentre switch fault as root cause of June 2018 outage
Visa has offered a retrospective analysis of what went wrong in its datacentre during its UK-wide outage on Friday 1 June, in response to a request from the Treasury Select Committee for more detail about the downtime Continue Reading
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News
19 Jun 2018
NHS trust dumps creaking EMC SAN for Nutanix hyper-converged
Derbyshire-based NHS trust had reached end-of-life with Dell servers and EMC SAN, so it took the plunge with Nutanix hyper-converged to reap space, power and reliability gains Continue Reading
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News
19 Jun 2018
Public cloud giants' use of ODM datacentre kit continues to soar, Synergy Research shows
Latest quarterly tracker by Synergy Research highlights just how the ODM community now dominates the public cloud giant's datacentre investments Continue Reading
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Feature
18 Jun 2018
DevOps done right: How to break down the IT department silos without alienating developers
Enterprise DevOps adoption rests on securing buy-in at all levels of the company, but developer support is not a given, particularly when it means taking on responsibilities outside their traditional roles Continue Reading
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Blog Post
18 Jun 2018
SaaS vs IaaS vs on-premise: What if moving to the cloud is not the answer?
In this guest post, Richard Blanford, managing director of G-cloud-listed IT services provider Fordway, advises companies to weigh up the pros and cons of using SaaS and IaaS before going all-in on ... Continue Reading
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Feature
18 Jun 2018
Making sense of Microsoft’s cloud developer platform
We assess how Microsoft is aligning its development tools to support Linux and open source, in light of its acquisition of GitHub Continue Reading
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News
18 Jun 2018
Equinix, Digital Realty and NTT lead datacentre colocation market
NTT had the biggest market share in Asia-Pacific, while Equinix ranked third in the region during the first quarter of 2018, according to market research data Continue Reading
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News
15 Jun 2018
Datacentre industry must stop doing itself down on sustainability, says EUDCA board member
In a panel debate at the Datacloud Europe Congress in Monaco, the datacentre industry was urged to start celebrating and stop chastising itself over its sustainability practices Continue Reading
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News
15 Jun 2018
How Ocado built an online grocery delivery platform business
Ocado has used open source tools and a cloud-native approach to develop its fully automated warehouse management platform Continue Reading
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News
14 Jun 2018
Schneider Electric CTO tips liquid cooling for take-off as machine learning takes over datacentre
Witn machine learning fuelling demand for graphics processing units in the datacentre, Schneider Electric CTO claims this will require a drastic rethink of how operators manage their sites, paving the way for liquid cooling to hit mainstream adoption Continue Reading
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E-Zine
14 Jun 2018
CW Europe: Lufthansa’s HR IT project takes off
Lufthansa says it is confident of landing a company-wide HR IT project after having to go back to the drawing board. Also in this issue, read about the ComputerWeekly/TechTarget IT Priorities survey’s findings that many European technology leaders are expecting to increase IT spending through 2018, and how a major report has reassured Swedish society that artificial intelligence will be a positive force for change despite fears of job losses. Continue Reading
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News
13 Jun 2018
Datacentre DIY: Can the hyperscale cloud giants afford to ditch their colocation partners?
With the hyperscale cloud giants showing a growing willingness to build and own their own datacentres, where does this leave the colocation community? Panellists at Datacloud Europe 2018 give their verdict Continue Reading
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News
13 Jun 2018
Australian university reaches for the stars after HPC boost
The University of Sydney has upgraded its supercomputing infrastructure to answer big questions on cosmology and keep pace with growing research needs Continue Reading
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News
12 Jun 2018
Dutch region Zeeland to get datacentre without diesel backup
One of the world’s most sustainable datacentres is to be built in the southwest region of the Netherlands, and is said to be the first datacentre to use battery backup rather than a diesel generator Continue Reading
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Feature
11 Jun 2018
Is DevOps the best approach to software development?
A DevOps model builds on an agile approach to software development, but a different approach to tooling is needed Continue Reading
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News
11 Jun 2018
Supply shortages continue to blight EMEA-wide server market, Gartner data shows
Server shipments across EMEA have returned to growth, but supply shortages of key components are continuing to inflate revenue Continue Reading
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News
11 Jun 2018
Irish government vows to ease planning procedures for datacentre investors
After Apple and Amazon saw their datacentre plans tripped up by the Irish planning system, the government has outlined its commitment to easing the path to construction for other operators Continue Reading
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Blog Post
08 Jun 2018
With big data comes big responsibility
In this guest post, Darren Watkins, managing director at colocation provider VIRTUS Data Centres, on how to help organisations take back control over their big data. When the story broke in March ... Continue Reading
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Feature
06 Jun 2018
Beyond Docker and Kubernetes: The container ecosystem continues to evolve
Enterprise interest in container technologies is on the rise, and organisations need to get clued up on who does what and how it can benefit them Continue Reading
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News
06 Jun 2018
Microsoft deploys underwater datacentre off the coast of Orkney
Microsoft is stepping up its research into the feasibility of using underwater datacentres to deliver low-latency cloud services to homes and businesses across the world Continue Reading
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News
06 Jun 2018
Digital Catapult partners with Cray to give AI startups supercomputing power
Innovation centre says partnership will bring down some of the barriers to entry that startups often face in the field of artificial intelligence and machine learning Continue Reading
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News
06 Jun 2018
After GitHub acquisition, Microsoft will need to up its game in the enterprise
Microsoft’s $7.6bn acquisition of GitHub propels the company that is loved and hated for Windows to the very heart of open source. Can it be trusted? Continue Reading