Box Raises $100 Million for Expansion

In big data news for this week, Box gets $100 million to aid global expansion, the University of Florida selects DDN for converged infrastructure, HP helps Norfolk County harness big data, and SAP NetWeaver, a new rapid-deployment for near-line storage.

Box continues expansion with $100 million investment.  Box announced new strategic partnerships, including a $100 million investment, for international expansion. The new relationships include commercial agreements and strategic investments from Japanese partners Itochu Technology Ventures, Macnica, and Mitsui USA and MKI. The enterprise file sync and share platform enjoyed many success stories throughout 2013, such as Schneider Electric, Toyota Motor Sales, USA, Rosetta Stone, and eBay. Since first opening a London office in June 2012, Box has also opened offices in Munich and Paris, while adding employees throughout Europe to address growing demand for partnerships and sales in the Nordics, Benelux, Spain and Italy. "The combination of cloud and mobile technologies creates an entirely new way of working that will fundamentally reshape the IT industry," said Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO, Box. "Our new partners will help us connect and work with businesses in key global markets as they manage this transition."

University of Florida selects DDN. Data Direct Networks (DDN) announced that it has been selected by the University of Florida’s Interdisciplinary Center for Biotechnology Research (ICBR) as the foundation for a converged infrastructure designed to accommodate ever-increasing life sciences and bioinformatics workloads. To tame its Big Data growth within the constraints of limited data center space and funding and a lean administrative team, ICBR turned to DDN’s unique, appliance-based approach to converged infrastructure which allowed them to reduce their storage and application server footprint by 350 percent. “We now have the opportunity to build an authoritative, immutable data warehouse that provides a safe harbor in the middle of the ‘Wild Wild West’ of scientific research," said Aaron Gardner, Cyberinfrastructure Section Director at ICBR. "Based on that, as well as the ability to increase performance with smaller footprint, fewer hardware costs, lower management overhead and latency makes me confident we are headed in the right direction.”

HP selected by Norfolk County Council to harness big data.  HP (HPQ) Enterprise Services  announced it is working with Norfolk County Council (NCC) in a groundbreaking new initiative to boost the local economy, solve social problems and safeguard vulnerable people while saving costs. The two organizations will create a cloud-based information hub to transform the delivery of integrated public services in Norfolk, driving efficiencies through smart use of technology and multi-agency collaboration. Based on HP Autonomy IDOL, HP RM, HP Vertica Analytics Platform, Visionware and Microsoft Windows 8.1 and Office365 software, NCC’s new information hub will be integrated through HP Enterprise Services Information Management and Analytics Advisory services. “Our vision is to deliver world-class integrated public services that stimulate and support a sustainable knowledge economy in Norfolk,” said Tom Baker, chief information officer, Norfolk County Council. “HP will contribute to the economic, social and environmental sustainability of the County by enabling multiple agencies to effectively participate in joint service delivery. The creation of a platform for more joined-up collaboration between NCC and other partners will make it possible to get a single view. In addition, HP will enable us to make cost savings of about 20 percent.”

SAP NetWeaver helps reduce strain of big data.  SAP announced a new rapid-deployment solution that enables transparent access to historical data for reporting and query capabilities. The SAP NetWeaver BW Near-Line Storage rapid-deployment solution enables seamless data transfer between the business warehouse (BW) and the near-line storage that holds important historical data. Powered by the SAP HANA platform, the solution can  be up and running in as little as 12 weeks. “With the unprecedented growth and sheer volume of data companies receive today, executives must decide where to house it all in order to keep costs down while keeping it close for reporting purposes,” said Dr. Bernd Welz, executive vice president and global head, Solution & Knowledge Packaging, SAP. “By implementing the SAP NetWeaver BW Near-Line Storage rapid-deployment-solution, customers can experience faster online querying through a reduced amount of data in the business warehouse and its proximity to SAP Sybase IQ. Businesses can now work with archived data on an as-needed basis with the same agility they have come to expect with live data.”