Roundup: Level 3, Nirvanix, Riverbed

Here’s a roundup of some of this week’s headlines from the data center and hosting industry:

Level 3 to support MLB media archive.  Level 3 Communications (LVLT) announced that it has been selected by MLB.com to deliver high-speed IP and colocation to support its network, media archive, as well as live and on-demand streaming capabilities. A previous agreement existed between Level 3 and MLB.com for Vyvx video backhaul services for live-game streaming and the new services will be an expansion of that contract.  New services will include High-speed IP - two 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports at Level 3's edge servers and a colocation suite. “This was an extraordinarily complex undertaking, and we were truly impressed with Level 3’s flexible, consultative approach,” said Joe Choti, chief technology officer of MLB.com. “Level 3 rose to the challenges surrounding this project to quickly and efficiently deliver solutions for a mission-critical application that will help MLB.com provide the expansive Web and interactive content our fans want.” On Monday Level 3 announced it is providing Internet Broadcast services to a number of European broadcasters to stream the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa games in high-definition to online audiences.

Nirvanix releases Hybrid Cloud Storage.  Nirvanix launched hNode, a hybrid cloud storage solution that combines the scalability, ease of management and compelling economics of public cloud storage with the security and control of private cloud storage.  Jeff Boles, Senior Analyst and Director of Validation Services at The Taneja Group comments that "with hNode, Nirvanix is bringing not just a gateway appliance, but rather the full Nirvanix cloud to the customers’ premises – with all the benefits of elastic scale, API accessibility, sophisticated geographic dispersal, and more."  hNode includes all the networking hardware, software and storage needed to provide an on-premise cloud storage solution contained in a minimum 200 TB configuration, expandable to petabytes of storage per location.

Riverbed announces new Microsoft solution. Riverbed Technology (RVBD) announced an extension of its relationship with Microsoft through the delivery of a comprehensive best-of-breed secure web gateway and WAN optimization solution for organizations with remote offices. Combining Microsoft's Forefront Threat Management Gateway 2010 solution with Riverbed WAN optimization technology the single appliance will enable enable branch office virtualization and LAN-like application performance while protecting corporate networks.  “This joint solution enables organizations to realize what we call Business Ready Security through Riverbed best-of-breed WAN optimization solutions fully integrated with our comprehensive Web security solution in a way that is simple to manage and deploy," said Zakie Mashiah, Principal Group Manager in the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft.