Roundup: Interxion, Ciena, SGI, Yahoo

Here’s our review of today’s noteworthy links for the data center industry:

Interxion selected by Infront.  Interxion (INXN) announced that Infront, a real-time market data and electronic trading solution company, has selected Interxion's Stockholm data center and City of London data center to house its solutions.  This will give Infront customers faster connectivity to exchanges and key liquidity venues. Infront has has over 9,000 customers in Europe spanning from large financial institutions to private investors. "The fact that we are based in all of Europe’s key financial hubs, offer access to over 400 carriers and have a truly diverse financial community makes Interxion an ideal environment for financial firms such as Infront to house their business critical applications," said Peder Bank, Managing Director at Interxion in the Nordics. "This deal further reinforces Interxion’s commitment to the financial services market and continues to position us as a key liquidity centre within Europe."

Ciena upgrades NASA network.  Ciena Corporation (CIEN) announced a new partnership with Abacus Technology Corporation to upgrade the expansive campus IT network at NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC). Leveraging Optical Transport Network technology from Ciena KSC will support a variety of activities on the 144,000 acre complex to consolidate the Center's Ethernet video and legacy ATM and TDM traffic. The new intelligent network is connecting major campus facilities via a fiber optic infrastructure using Ciena’s 4200 Advanced Services Platform. "The use of OTN technology provides an elegant solution for complex networks like the one at Kennedy Space Center that support many types of legacy, Ethernet and real-time applications," said David Peed, vice president and general manager, Ciena Government Solutions. "Ciena’s solution can more efficiently carry this multiservice traffic over a single infrastructure, and easily add new types of applications to the network as NASA’s Kennedy Space Center continues to push the boundaries of exploration."

SGI selected by Sikorsky Innovations.  SGI announced that Sikorsky Innovations, the technology development organization within Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation, has selected an SGI UV 1000 high performance computing (HPC) system with 576 cores and 1.5 TB of RAM. The three rack system will consist of six blade enclosures, each with 96 cores and 256GB of memory and be powered by Intel Xeon processor X7500 series.  "The SGI UV 1000 meets our stringent requirements for computing power, scalability, program security and configurability, all within our control" said Joseph Pantalone, technical fellow and chief engineer of Special Programs at Sikorsky Innovations. "With this computing platform we conduct iterative design and analyses of highly detailed aircraft subsystems as well as full helicopter models and simulations, greatly reducing our iterations in hardware."

Jerry Yang resigns from Yahoo.  Yahoo (YHOO) announced that Jerry Yang has resigned from its Board of Directors and all other positions with the company. Yang co-founded Yahoo! Inc. in 1995 with David Filo and served as a member of the Board of Directors since March 1995 and as Chief Executive Officer from June 2007 to January 2009. "Jerry Yang is a visionary and a pioneer, who has contributed enormously to Yahoo! during his many years of service," said Roy Bostock, Chairman of the Yahoo! Board. "It has been a pleasure to work with Jerry. His unique strategic insights have been invaluable."