Data Center Links: Leighton Will be CEO of Akamai

Here’s our review of some of this week’s noteworthy links for the data center industry:

Tom Leighton to become Akamai CEO.  Akamai Technologies (AKAM) announced that its Board of Directors has elected company Co-Founder and Chief Scientist, Dr. Tom Leighton to become CEO of Akamai effective January 1, 2013. He will succeed Paul Sagan who announced earlier this year that he intended to step down as chief executive by the end of 2013.  Sagan will become a senior advisor to the company, working with Dr. Leighton on a smooth management transition and company strategy. Dr. Leighton has played a major role in charting the course for many of Akamai's key product innovations, strategic accomplishments, and he holds numerous patents involving ontent delivery, Internet protocols, network algorithms, distributed computing, cryptography, and digital rights management. "Akamai is extremely fortunate to have such an outstanding executive with Tom's business and technology experience to lead Akamai's next phase of growth," said Sagan. "He is an innovator with a deep understanding of the shifting landscape in public and private clouds, distributed computing platforms, and Internet security. Tom has earned the trust and respect of our customers, partners, employees, and shareholders through his hard work and vision over the past 14 years. He is supported by a highly experienced management team, and I join in the Board's unanimous support and confidence in Tom's ability to continue driving Akamai forward."

VMware Network Virtualization helps iland. VMware (VMW) announced another example of the adoption of network virtualization in the market.  iland, a global cloud infrastructure provider and the VMware Service Provider Partner of the Year Global 2012, has taken advantage of VMware network virtualization to reduce operational costs and increase service velocity. VMware network virtualization solutions include the VMware vCloud Suite, which incorporates VMware’s virtualization, cloud infrastructure and management portfolio. “As we explored building and delivering new, value-added cloud services, we realized the tremendous flexibility, operational efficiency and time-to-market benefits to be gained through network virtualization,” said Justin Giardina, CTO of iland Internet Solutions. “Just as server virtualization changed the way we delivered compute resources, network virtualization has transformed the way we deliver network services by removing the challenges we faced when bound to the physical network.”

HP selected by AllDigital.  HP (HPQ) announced that AllDigital, a leading digital broadcasting solutions provider, has selected HP StoreAll Storage to support future business growth, improve cloud storage performance and reduce infrastructure costs. To address rapid growth AllDigital needed a scalable storage solution that could handle unpredictable demand spikes as the business grew to ensure persistent availability of clients’ digital media files. Upgrading to HP StoreAll Storage allowed AllDigital to cost-efficiently manage high-volume, high-quality objects and billions of files for clients via a single storage platform while ensuring around-the-clock system availability. With the HP StoreAll Storage family’s scale-out capabilities, AllDigital manages 300 percent more data than with the previous storage platform while also reducing overall storage costs by approximately 30 percent. “AllDigital needed a storage system that could not only quickly store high-quality digital media files and make them accessible to our clients 24/7, but could easily adapt to changing storage requirements,” said Steve Smith, vice president, Network Services, AllDigital. “HP StoreAll Storage provides the flexibility and performance to allow us to rapidly scale to billions of files and objects without expensive hardware upgrades and maintenance.”

Violin Memory selected by Pepperl+Fuchs.  Vioin Memory announced it has been selected by Pepperl+Fuchs, a large manufacturer of electronic sensors and the world leader for intrinsic safety and explosion protection technology, to enhance the performance of mission-critical applications, and consolidate applications and databases onto one storage platform. Pepperl+Fuchs worked with partner Christie Data Products to carry out a ‘proof of concept’ with Violin Memory and found that the Violin Flash Memory Array was the best fit regarding the price versus performance ratio, even without database or application tuning. “The combination of low latency, high IOPS and high throughput made Violin Flash Memory Arrays a perfect fit for all workloads including the mixed performance requirements of our newly consolidated infrastructure,” said Helmut Eckstein, manager for global IT/SIS of Pepperl+Fuchs. “Additionally, application consolidation and improved efficiency reduced our total infrastructure costs even further.”