Data Center Links: Western Digital Invests in SSD Specialist Skyera

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

Western Digital invests in Skyera.  Skyera, which makes enterprise solid state storage systems,  announced that it has received strategic funding from Western Digital Capital as part of its recently announced Series B round of financing.  The $51 million round is an extension of the strategic relationship between the two companies that also includes joint technology development. Western Digital had previously funded Skyera as its initial outside investor. “One of our primary goals in developing strategic relationships with technology  innovators in the broader storage ecosystem is to enable customers to develop highly optimized storage solutions that meet their changing data management needs,” said Steve Milligan, president and chief executive officer, Western Digital. “We see companies like Skyera as offering a dramatic improvement over traditional approaches to emerging storage challenges. We will continue to support innovation by collaborating with customers and partners, and investing in companies who are addressing today’s most exciting storage opportunities.”

HP selected by European Commission.  HP (HPQ) announced that it has been selected by the European Commission to supply HP Integrity servers and related offerings to support critical workloads, including database-intensive applications and other critical environments, across multiple EC countries. HP will also provide associated equipment, including software,  services and support, including maintenance and professional services. “Fuelled by trends in cloud computing, big data and mobility, mission-critical demands are evolving and increasing,” said Ric Lewis, vice president and interim general manager, Business Critical Systems, HP “HP Integrity servers with the HP-UX operating environment will allow the contracting authorities to continue to confidently deploy mission-critical solutions with high levels of reliability, performance and efficiency."

Teradata Launches Warehouse Appliance 2700.  Teradata (TDC) announced the immediate worldwide shipment of the Teradata Data Warehouse Appliance 2700. Configurable from 7 terabytes to 82 terabytes of uncompressed user data per cabinet, the new appliance is a part of the Teradata Unified Data Architecture (UDA).  It features InfiniBand interconnects, 8-core Intel processors, parallel compression engines, and data-at-rest encryption for increased data security and compliance. “There is a perception that appliances are not enterprise-ready. However the Teradata Data Warehouse Appliance product line drives strategic intelligence and advanced analytics for some of the world’s largest enterprises,” said Ed White, general manager, Teradata Appliances. “The scalable Teradata Data Warehouse Appliance 2700 extends the enterprise capabilities by enhancing workload management so organizations can easily manage multiple applications. On one Teradata appliance, organizations can meet the demanding service level agreements for many different groups.”