Roundup: Riverbed, Oracle, Interxion, Beacon

Here’s our review of noteworthy news in the data center industry:

Riverbed joins OpenStack. Riverbed Technologies (RVBD) announced that it has joined the OpenStack Community, the global community of developers collaborating on cloud architecture and an open source cloud operating system. This is an expansion of the company's prior collaboration with the OpenStack community relating to its virtual application delivery controller (vADC). "Today's applications in the cloud are expected to consistently deliver an excellent user experience, regardless of connectivity and location," said Venugopal Pai, Riverbed vice president of global alliances. "Riverbed works closely with its customer base to develop solutions that address performance challenges as more organizations move to cloud environments. As a member of OpenStack, Riverbed will help with the design, specification and development of this open source cloud stack to deliver integrations of cloud optimization technologies for the needs of tomorrow's applications. Joining OpenStack strengthens Riverbed's commitment to global organizations that strive to deliver applications in public, private and hybrid cloud environments without compromising performance."

Oracle selected by Cerner.  Oracle (ORCL) announced that it has been selected by Cerner, a large strategic global health care company, to implement Oracle Enterprise Manager. With over 9,000 facilities worldwide Cerner decided to leverage its operational knowledge and build on existing managed service offerings with new cloud based services supported by Oracle Enterprise Manager. By doing so they have reduced capital investments by $9.5 million while also enabling a suite of on-demand infrastructure and software.  “With Skybox DB Central utilizing Oracle Enterprise Manager, we have been able to eliminate the management and maintenance challenges that would traditionally be associated with introducing a new suite of on-demand infrastructure and software services,"  said Kent Scheuler, Senior Vice President of Managed Services with Cerner. "This has created a sizable new business opportunity for us, while also allowing our clients to benefit from reduced IT costs and increased performance."

Interxion launches London Cloud Testlab.  Interxion (INXN) announced the deployment of its second Cloud Testlab, a turnkey cloud hosting test environment enabling service providers and system integrators to test and develop cloud services at high speed and with best-in-class performance guarantees. As a collaboration with Flexiant, Boston Unlimited and GTT the Testlab deployment offers an online proof-of-concept environment for cloud service providers. The new test environment is located in Interxion’s City of London data center and will deploy Flexiant’s Extility platform solution, have network connectivity via GTT and be housed on Supermicro hardware provisioned by Boston Limited. "The rapid adoption of cloud computing has seen cloud-based services become a central part of business strategy," said Greg McCulloch, UK Managing Director, Interxion. "The launch of this UK Cloud Testlab deployment further reflects our commitment to the cloud and offers both customers and prospects the opportunity to test and develop cloud services at high speed and with best-in-class performance guarantees."

Beacon Power files bankruptcy.  Beacon Power Corp., an energy- storage company that received $43 million in backing from the U.S. program that supported failed solar-panel maker Solyndra LLC, filed for bankruptcy after struggling to raise private financing. The $535 million guaranteed in loans to Solyndra is being investigated  by Congress to determine if political influence played a role. The loans were to be used for a 20 megawatt flywheel energy storage plant in Stephentown, New York.  In the bankruptcy filing the company said it had $72 million in assets and $47 million in debts. The bankruptcy filing follows a failure of its flywheel systems at the Stephentown facility, just weeks after the site opened.