Best of the Data Center Blogs for Dec.19

Here’s a roundup of some interesting items we came across this week in our reading of data center industry blogs.

Data Center Commissioning 101 - At the Compass Points blog, industry veteran Kfir Godrich provides an overview of data center commissioning. "Data center commissioning is about enabling the business through performance validation and functional testing of integrated platforms," Kfir writes. "This should typically be performed by an independent agent as part of the customers trusted advisory team and as a core part of the overall project schedule."

Catbird gets $2M from new VC fund - What's Terremark founder Manny Medina been up to since exiting after the Verizon deal? Stacey Higginbotham at GigaOm has the details: "Catbird, a 12-year-old business that offers a security software product for virtualized environments, has raised its first round of funding — a $2 million initial tranche from a new venture firm called Medina Capital Partners." Medina has also reportedly invested in DDoS protection specialist Prolexic.

A New Metric for Data Center Industry: Momentum - At the RagingWire blog, Jim Leach looks at market dynamics: "The mass of a data center region refers to the number of providers. If there are only a few providers in the region, most likely you will not see the innovation and efficiencies that come from competition. You could end up with a monopoly effect where a single provider has all the power and the buyers pay too much for a product that may not be competitive in the broader industry. You want the data center region to have a critical mass of providers, say 3-5, but also note there are diminishing returns for both providers and buyers as the number increases. For example, a market with 10 data center providers is not necessarily two times better than a market with five suppliers."

Views from the fiscal cloud – FS trends in 2013 - At the InterConnections blog, David Wilkinson of Equinix discusses trends in financial services. "The move towards colocation for the financial services sector will escalate in the New Year as institutions realize that a centralized financial ecosystem leverages economies of scope and scale for all parties. By colocating within a network-rich data center, exchanges, data vendors, clearing firms, financial extranets, broker-dealers and others can dramatically reduce the number of circuits required to support multiple counterparties. Colocation does not just mean proximity to the exchange, but to other counter parties as well, all inhabiting the same network rich environment."