Watts to Bits: Your Daily Data Center News Briefing

Here are the enterprise technology and data center news stories you need to know about today.

Reuben Brothers Sell 49 Percent of Global Switch to Chinese Investors

British billionaires David and Simon Reuben have agreed to sell a 49 percent stake in the international data center provider Global Switch to a consortium of Chinese investors. When rumors of a potential deal with Chinese firms first emerged in September, they generated controversy as some officials were concerned about its security implications. In a statement, Global Switch representatives said the company would continue complying with applicable UK national security laws. Details here.

Facebook Taps Into Top Universities for Hardware Design Ideas

Facebook has struck an agreement with top US universities meant to fast-track the company’s collaboration with academia on hardware innovation. There’s usually a long bureaucratic process involved in setting up relationships between academic institutions and private companies, and the agreement is meant to eliminate that process. The products of Facebook’s hardware design efforts so far include everything from servers and network switches to virtual-reality headsets and solar-powered drones. Details here.

Dell’s Pivotal Gets into Serverless Computing

Pivotal Software, majority owned by Dell Technologies, has launched a serverless computing feature, which enables users to execute pieces of code in the cloud for a brief duration, paying the cloud provider only for the amount of time the code runs. Serverless computing is an emerging area where providers like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform have introduced offerings. Details here.

Container Pioneer ClusterHQ Shuts Down

ClusterHQ, one of the earliest companies built around application container technology, is shutting down. The ecosystem of companies competing to enable customers to build and deploy applications as collections of containerized micro-services, rather than monolithic blocks of code, has grown rapidly over the last several years, following the emergence of Docker. The demise of ClusterHQ may be an early sign of an inevitable shakeout. Details here.

Oracle Says It’s Not Ramping Up Software User Audits

Oracle has responded to reports that it was expanding its efforts to find customers using paid Java features without paying, saying it was doing no such thing. It’s common for big enterprise software vendors to make it easy for customers to deploy paid features along with free ones and charging them later, but reports emerged earlier that Oracle had been hiring more people to audit Java users. Details here.