Aruba acquires two hydroelectric power plants in Bergamo, Italy

Bergamo, Italy.

Aruba, Italy's largest cloud provider and specialist in data centre, web hosting, e-mail, PEC and domain registration services, has acquired two hydroelectric power plants in the province of Bergamo, near the Global Cloud Data Centre in Ponte San Pietro, with a total capacity of 2MW.

The new hydropower plants - 'Paladina' and 'Ponte Briolo' - share the same water intake on the Brembo river and are joined by a private adduction canal. They join the plant that was already present...

Snowflake becomes available in UK on Microsoft Azure

Snowflake, a data cloud company, has announced Snowflake’s general availability on Microsoft Azure in the UK, driven by high customer demand for local data residency from both the private and public sector in the UK.

Snowflake enables institutions across multiple industries to deploy data and analytical workloads to suit their business-critical needs. With true multi-cloud availability across three major public clouds, organisations can deploy Snowflake’s unique data...

ThousandEyes launches new EU Cloud Region to serve European customer growth

A close up of an eye.

Cisco ThousandEyes has expanded its global presence with the launch of a new EU Cloud Region.

Ready for operation immediately, the new EU Cloud Region, hosted on an AWS-based data centre in Frankfurt, Germany, will serve the company's growing base of customers using ThousandEyes’ cloud and Internet intelligence technology in the European Union (EU) and the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) region. 

The past two years have led companies to accelerate their...

Modernising and managing multi-cloud systems

Dell

In the past decade, IT professionals have divided between advocates of control and customisation in private clouds versus developers looking for the standardisation and flexibility of public clouds.

A common perception was that the hyperscalers would host all the applications, and the local data centres and private clouds were going to have a residual role. Developers took the lead in public cloud adoption in their effort to improve the customer experience.

Meanwhile,...

Imperial College and UAE institute partner for cloud security research

Data Centre

Imperial College London is partnering with the Technology Innovation Institute (TII) in Abu Dhabi to develop a new operating system (OS) designed with cloud security in mind.

According to Professor Peter Pietzuch of the Imperial College Department of Computing, the devices and OS typically used to host cloud services in data centres today have outdated security features.

“Security has not changed much from traditional operating systems that pre-date the internet and...

Oracle joins race to digitise Africa with first data centre in Johannesburg

South African Parade

Oracle has opened a data centre in South Africa, joining the likes of Amazon and Microsoft in trying to tap into Africa’s growing demand for cloud services.

The cloud infrastructure company will use the new facility to provide services across much of Africa, with the continent becoming Oracle’s 37th “cloud region”.

According to Cherian Varghese, Oracle’s regional managing director for Middle East and Africa, the company has no plans for more data centres in...

Equinix makes first move into Africa with £237m MainOne acquisition

West Africa

Data centre firm Equinix is set to acquire Nigerian connectivity provider MainOne for £237 million in the first quarter of 2022.

Announced in December, the deal remains subject to regulatory approval before Equinix can fully incorporate MainOne’s 500 employees into its own network.

The transaction marks the California-based firm’s first move into Africa as it plans to tap the region’s growing internet access. It also comes as one of 2021’s biggest tech deals for...

Pulsant adds Manchester to its roster of UK edge data centres

Manchester, UK

Pulsant, an edge data centre and hybrid cloud specialist, has acquired a Manchester data centre and its clients from M247 Limited.

As a city with one of the fastest growing tech hubs in Europe, the acquisition facilitates Pulsant’s geographic expansion of its edge platform into England’s North West.

It also marks Pulsant’s first acquisition as part of its growth strategy since receiving investment from Antin Infrastructure Partners in July 2021.

The deal...

J. J. Kardwell, CEO, Constant: On building Vultr, the independent cloud

Independent

Vultr is an independent cloud that offers cloud compute and cloud storage through its twenty global data centre locations across five continents.

Independent clouds like Vultr, created by parent company Constant, are competing for the 30% of the cloud market not owned by Big Tech firms such as AWS, Microsoft, and Google.

Vultr offers a simple, straightforward experience and pricing model that makes high-performance cloud computing accessible to even the smallest of...

AWS outage takes down Coinbase, Netflix, Disney+

Amazon Offices

Amazon Web Services (AWS) suffered an outage on December 7 that knocked out a number of websites and services, including Coinbase, Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon’s own e-commerce site.

AWS’ website notified users that it was experiencing issues with a number of APIs and the AWS Management Console. Problems were confined to AWS’ main US-East-1 region, which is hosted in North Virginia, so many customers may not have experienced issues.

Amazon first commented on the...