Hyper-Converged Infrastructure, Storage Management
businesswire | July 10, 2023
Start Campus, the company responsible for the development of 100% green energy ecosystems, announces EXA Infrastructure (EXA), the largest dedicated digital infrastructure platform connecting Europe and North America, has committed to invest in two new diverse and redundant terrestrial routes in Sines, Portugal.
EXA’s strategic network expansion in Sines links Start Campus’s SINES Project, a 495 MW hyperscale data center development, to its backbone in Madrid, Spain. The new connectivity hub will be the gateway to European, African, and American digital platforms.
“We are excited to partner with EXA and bring these new network routes to Sines, Portugal,” says Afonso Salema, Chief Executive Officer at Start Campus. “While we are connecting our SINES project, EXA’s newly constructed network lays the foundation for a new era of connectivity for Europe and the rest of the world. We are building a brand new continental crossroad to enable diverse and redundant access to key markets throughout Europe and beyond. EXA’s commitment to bridging our SINES Project with Madrid, Spain, with new routes, is one step of many to enable and fortify high-speed multi-continental connectivity to and from Portugal.”
The key location of the SINES Project further strengthens Portugal as a connectivity hub for Europe, providing access via transatlantic cable landings and EXA’s expansive terrestrial network routes.
EXA Infrastructure, VP of Network Investments, Steve Roberts said: “EXA continues to invest and expand our network to ensure we are enabling the growth and success of our customers. We are witnessing an increasing demand for enhanced connectivity routes in and out of southern Europe and we are pleased to partner with Start Campus to power this demand by connecting Sines to our pan-European backbone.”
Set to be ready for service in late 2023, SINES Project will be one of the largest Hyperscaler data center ecosystems in a strategic European location, acting as a gateway between Europe, Africa, the Americas and beyond. The project benefits from ocean water cooling systems, high-voltage power grids, and high-capacity international fiber optic cables with connections to Africa and the Americas. Being fully powered by renewable and affordable energy, Start Campus offers a 100% sustainable campus powered by 24 x 7 renewable energy facilities resulting in a low Total Cost of Operations (TCO) for its customers.
Last year, Start Campus signed an agreement with EllaLink, the company that recently inaugurated the first direct high-speed connection by submarine cable between Europe and South America. The partnership provides a framework of cooperation between Start Campus and EllaLink guaranteeing that the infrastructures interact, knowledge is shared and synergies are established to promote Sines as a new digital hub in global data network systems.
Today, Sines is directly connected to Lisbon and Madrid in Europe, Fortaleza, São Paulo & Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. In the future, the connectivity will be extended to Marseille, Barcelona and Casablanca and furthermore to the United States, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.
About Start Campus
Start Campus is responsible for the development of the project SINES, a Hyperscaler Data Center campus with a capacity of up to 495 MW in Sines, an investment of up to €3.5 billion. It will be one of Europe's largest data center campuses and responds to growing demand from large international technology companies. It will create up to 1,200 highly skilled direct jobs and 8,000 indirect jobs by 2028. Due to the location of Sines, there will be an added benefit from all strategic advantages such as seawater cooling systems, access to the high voltage power grid, and connectivity through the connection to high-capacity international fiber optic cables with North America, Africa, and South America. The SINES project will be one of the largest data center ecosystems with 100% green energy at competitive prices in a premium European location, which is the perfect gateway to Europe and the world.
About EXA Infrastructure
Headquartered in London, UK, EXA Infrastructure is the largest dedicated digital infrastructure platform connecting Europe and North America, and owns 114,000 kilometers of fiber network across 34 countries. EXA’s network connects 300 cities and offers 13 Tier 3-equivalent data centers, with sub-sea routes that include three transatlantic cables, one the lowest latency link between Europe and North America. EXA is wholly-owned by I Squared Capital.
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Hyper-Converged Infrastructure, Windows Systems and Network, IT Systems Management
PRWeb | August 14, 2023
NetActuate, a leading provider of global infrastructure and network services, has announced today the release of the eighth generation of its global platform. Existing customers can now experience powerful new features for streamlined self-service management of their global deployments.
The new release builds on NetActuate's years of experience operating self-service cloud and networking platforms. The eighth version incorporates an intuitive, robust UI that enables greater insight and visibility across a range of infrastructure and network services. From virtual servers to bare metal and colocation, the new platform allows for easier monitoring and optimization, as well as greater self-service options than ever before.
"We couldn't be prouder of the work done by our development and engineering teams to deliver the eighth generation of our platform," said Mark Mahle, CEO of NetActuate. "From the data center up, we have always had full control over our entire stack. This allows us to innovate at all levels to deliver numerous improvements for our customers."
Inside the new platform, users can intuitively and easily manage their entire global deployment. From spinning up new virtual servers, to monitoring bandwidth in the data center, NetActuate customers now have more control than ever before, right at their fingertips.
"Unlike other companies in this space, NetActuate is truly engineering-led," said Mark Price, Vice President of Infrastructure. "Our development and engineering teams worked hand-in-hand to rework the entire platform experience for end users, and add in powerful new capabilities wherever we could."
Anycast customers now have powerful new tools for node management. From adding and removing locations instantly, to enabling them to see their entire anycast network at-a-glance, network optimization is now easier than ever.
About NetActuate
NetActuate is a leading provider of highly available, low latency custom network and infrastructure services that reach every major global market. From the datacenter to the last mile, we help providers take their products and services to the global edge faster. Our customers can rapidly scale without fear of high costs or devastating performance issues. We built one of the world's largest global networks by number of peers, and it serves as the foundation for our performance BGP anycast platform that powers over 25 billion transactions a day.
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Application Infrastructure, Data Storage
businesswire | August 01, 2023
Elisa Oyj, a leading telecommunications company, has achieved a significant milestone in the field of edge computing with the successful deployment of its first fully automated edge data center site, which is the second edge site to go into commercial production this year. This groundbreaking project combines Wind River Studio Cloud Platform as the production-grade distributed Kubernetes solution for managing cloud infrastructure, User Plane Function (UPF) application from Elisa’s current 5G core vendor, and the advanced capabilities of Wind River Studio Conductor, an industry leading platform that delivers a single pane of glass to manage and automate applications deployment in large-scale distributed environments.
The deployment of this state-of-the-art edge data center site represents a significant achievement to strengthen Elisa’s position as the leading digital service provider in automating operations. It showcases the company's commitment to embracing next-generation technologies to unlock the potential of edge computing for a wide range of industries, including telecommunications, transportation, healthcare, and manufacturing.
”We are delighted to continue our efficient collaboration with Wind River and take the first Fully Automated Edge Data Center into commercial service. Constant automation development is our key to future success. Combined with Wind River´s distributed cloud capabilities, we are able to further improve our customer satisfaction by reducing the time to deploy and adding the quality of the process. This strengthens Elisa’s position as the leading digital service provider in automating operations and edge deployments," says Markus Kinnunen, Vice President, Cloud Services, Elisa.
“As a leader in the 5G landscape that powers the majority of 5G vRAN/O-RAN deployments with global operators, our Wind River Studio capabilities address service providers’ complex challenge of deploying and managing a physically distributed, ultra-low latency cloud-native infrastructure,” said Avijit Sinha, Chief Product Officer, Wind River. “Elisa is an innovator, and with their recent milestone, they are helping to advance the industry.”
Key to this achievement is the collaboration between the industry leaders. Wind River Studio provides a fully cloud-native, Kubernetes- and container-based architecture, based on open source, for the development, deployment, operations, and servicing of distributed edge networks at scale. Elisa's 5G core UPF application enhances network performance, ensuring efficient and reliable data transmission and processing at the edge. Leveraging the advanced capabilities of Wind River Studio Conductor, the deployment process becomes fully automated, enabling rapid and efficient provisioning of edge data center resources.
The major outcomes can be grouped in three areas: time to prepare, time to deploy and quality of the process:
Time to prepare: The biggest savings came from parameter settings followed by environment preparation work. The team was able to execute hundreds of tests and scripts before going into live network in the same amount of time that it would typically take to manually run much fewer tests in the traditional model.
Time to deploy: The overall Operator time, measured in terms of staff hours, for commissioning the edge DC site from preparation, parameter settings to complete installation and testing is reduced by 90% as compared to doing the very same tasks manually. Furthermore, the overall deployment time is reduced by around 50% thanks to the automation of the processes.
Quality of the process: Finally, automation brings in additional benefits where multiple tasks can now be run in parallel with minimal probability of human errors, reducing time to service and enhancing network quality.
The successful implementation of this milestone project paves the way for future advancements in edge computing by Elisa. It sets a precedent for the seamless integration of Studio Cloud Platform, critical applications, and automation technologies, empowering industries to accelerate digital transformation and unlock new possibilities.
The collaborative effort involved in this achievement underscores the commitment of Elisa and its technology partner Wind River to drive innovation and push the boundaries of what is possible in the world of edge computing. Elisa continues to position itself as a leader in cutting-edge technologies, driving economic growth and benefits to the society.
AboutWind River
Wind River is a global leader in delivering software for mission-critical intelligent systems. For 40 years, the company has been an innovator and pioneer, powering billions of devices and systems that require the highest levels of security, safety, and reliability. Wind River software and expertise are accelerating digital transformation across industries, including automotive, aerospace, defense, industrial, medical, and telecommunications. The company offers a comprehensive portfolio supported by world-class professional services and support and a broad partner ecosystem.
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