WebProNews

Tag: Datacenter

  • AMD Buying Xilinx For $35 Billion

    AMD Buying Xilinx For $35 Billion

    AMD has reached an agreement to buy Xilinx for $35 billion, as AMD continues to gain ground against Intel.

    In early October, news broke that AMD was in talks to buy Xilinx. Xilinx specializes in making chips for the telecommunications industry, although it has also expanded to the datacenter market, a lucrative field where Intel has long been dominant.

    In recent years, especially with its Ryzen line of chips, AMD has been chipping away at Intel’s lead in the semiconductor business. The acquisition of Xilinx should help it do so even more.

    “Our acquisition of Xilinx marks the next leg in our journey to establish AMD as the industry’s high performance computing leader and partner of choice for the largest and most important technology companies in the world,” AMD President and CEO Dr. Lisa Su said. “This is truly a compelling combination that will create significant value for all stakeholders, including AMD and Xilinx shareholders who will benefit from the future growth and upside potential of the combined company. The Xilinx team is one of the strongest in the industry and we are thrilled to welcome them to the AMD family. By combining our world-class engineering teams and deep domain expertise, we will create an industry leader with the vision, talent and scale to define the future of high performance computing.”

    “We are excited to join the AMD family. Our shared cultures of innovation, excellence and collaboration make this an ideal combination. Together, we will lead the new era of high performance and adaptive computing,” said Victor Peng, Xilinx president and CEO. “Our leading FPGAs, Adaptive SoCs, accelerator and SmartNIC solutions enable innovation from the cloud, to the edge and end devices. We empower our customers to deploy differentiated platforms to market faster, and with optimal efficiency and performance. Joining together with AMD will help accelerate growth in our data center business and enable us to pursue a broader customer base across more markets.”

    The deal was unanimously approved by the boards of both companies and is expected to close by the end of 2021.

  • AMD In Talks to Buy Chipmaker Xilinx

    AMD In Talks to Buy Chipmaker Xilinx

    AMD is in talks to buy chipmaker Xilinx, with a deal possible as early as next week.

    Xilinx is a chipmaker based in San Jose, California, specializing in the programmable chips used in wireless networks. The acquisition, will help AMD better compete with Intel in the datacenter market.

    As Bloomberg points out, Xilinx has historically made chips for the telecommunications industry. In recent years, however, it has been branching out to the datacenter market. This market is a high-profit market that has caught the attention of AMD and Nvidia, a factor in the latter’s acquisition of Mellanox Technologies and potentially Arm.

    Given Intel’s recent supply chain issues, not to mention bugs that have delayed the move to 7nm chips and Zombieland flaws that some experts have deemed “unfixable,” more options would likely be welcomed within the industry.

  • Microsoft Establishing First Data Center in New Zealand

    Microsoft Establishing First Data Center in New Zealand

    Microsoft has announced it is establishing its first data center in New Zealand, as it works to expand its enterprise cloud services in the country.

    Microsoft has been working to grow its Azure cloud business and has been making significant headway against market leader AWS. One area where Microsoft is aggressively making headway is in its datacenter regions. The company already has more datacenters globally than any other provider, with 60 regions announced, and more than 140 countries.

    “This significant investment in New Zealand’s digital infrastructure is a testament to the remarkable spirit of New Zealand’s innovation and reflects how we’re pushing the boundaries of what is possible as a nation,” said Vanessa Sorenson, general manager, Microsoft New Zealand. “The Fletcher School’s Digital Evolution Index characterizes New Zealand as a ‘standout nation’ demonstrating to the world what the future might look like. I’m confident this investment will help accelerate our digital evolution.”

    Microsoft’s announcement should help the company continue its expansion, delivering scalable solutions to New Zealand businesses and organizations.

  • Business Prioritizing Digital Transformation For Competitive Advantage, Says Equinix CEO

    Business Prioritizing Digital Transformation For Competitive Advantage, Says Equinix CEO

    “We’re seeing right now continued strength across our business because people are prioritizing digital transformation as a way to gain competitive advantage,” says Equinix CEO Charles Meyers. “The reality is people who are responding well to that are thriving and people that are not are being left behind. What companies (like Walmart) are doing essentially is using a hybrid and multi-cloud strategy. They have private infrastructure that they may house in a significant caged environment at Equinix but they interface it then with the public clouds.”

    Charles Meyers, CEO of Equinix, discusses their huge under the radar role in facilitating the massive digital transformation in progress with companies worldwide. Meyers was interviewed by Jim Cramer on CNBC:

    There’s A Very Deep Demand Pool For Data Centers

    We continue to see a really strong set of underlying secular demand drivers for the business. We’re seeing real strength in the business globally right now. Broadly, we’ve seen the sector respond very well. We think there’s a very deep demand pool for data centers. I do think that Equinix plays a very unique role in the market and our differentiated position is allowing us to even outperform relative to our peers. Public cloud adoption is a major catalyst for our business. As enterprises are adopting public cloud and looking at hybrid and multi-cloud as their architecture of choice we’re seeing really strong demand.

    We may not be a household name but I think it’s pretty safe to say we’re probably impacting the lives of millions of consumers on a day to day basis working with (many big-name companies such as Salesforce and Netflix). We play a very important role in terms of interconnecting our customers sometimes to public cloud providers, sometimes to SAAS providers like Salesforce, sometimes to other members of their supply chain, and sometimes to networks. A really big part of our legacy and history has been interconnecting people to networks. The interconnection story is a really central piece of the Equinix story.

    Equinix Is The Best Representation Of The Digital Edge

    Equinix is in fact the best representation of the digital edge today. That is the point at which people are interconnecting their private infrastructure with public cloud infrastructure, with networks, and with other members of their supply chain. When you hear about edge, oftentimes that edge is in fact within an Equinix facility and being interconnected over private interconnection facilities that are facilitated by Equinix.

    Typically, when inside one of our facilities, we’re unlike some wholesalers which might have one or a very small number of customers, we tend to have a larger number of customers in any individual facility. They are distributed across the site typically in private cages or sometimes in shared caged environments or shared rack environments and they have their equipment. They’re all obviously very secured and something that’s available just for them to access. But they’re all across the facility. You typically wouldn’t be able to see who the customer is because they are very sensitive about that from a security standpoint.

    Firms Prioritizing Digital Transformation For Competitive Advantage

    We’re seeing right now continued strength across our business because people are prioritizing digital transformation as a way to gain competitive advantage. The reality is people who are responding well to that are thriving and people that are not are being left behind. So we’re seeing strong demand. I think the trade tensions, etc. probably affects some level of sentiment but we have not seen that impact the demand profile for our business.

    What companies (like Walmart) are doing essentially is using a hybrid and multi-cloud strategy. They have private infrastructure that they may house in a significant caged environment at Equinix but they interface it then with the public clouds. They’re using a variety of public clouds to house some of their workloads. So that hybrid multi-cloud environment is really the architecture of choice for enterprise customers of all sorts. Retail is actually an incredibly strong segment for us. That architecture of choice, hybrid and multi-cloud, is a major driver for Equinix’s business.

    Business Prioritizing Digital Transformation For Competitive Advantage – Equinix CEO Charles Meyers
  • 50 Years Of Datacenter Shifting To Cloud, Says Dynatrace CEO

    50 Years Of Datacenter Shifting To Cloud, Says Dynatrace CEO

    “You have 50 years of datacenter that is shifting to the cloud in the next ten,” says Dynatrace CEO John Van Siclen. “We are early days. There’s a lot of room to go and I’m sure a lot of changes in front of us. The movement to the cloud and this whole move to software is a global phenomenon. Every enterprise around the world is moving and moving fast. It’s going to redefine how businesses work in the future. It is the new revenue streams, the new connective tissue with customers, providing a whole new environment.”

    John Van Siclen, CEO of Dynatrace, discusses the impact of 50 years of datacenter that will shift to the cloud over the next ten years, in an interview on CNBC:

    Software Is Now Eating the World

    Software is now eating the world as a lot of folks know. It’s how we bank, how we shop, how we do just about everything. These applications have gotten much more complex over the last five years as they have moved to cloud platforms. The spend in the traditional datacenter is declining quickly and the move is over to the cloud. It’s going to redefine how businesses work in the future. It is the new revenue streams, the new connective tissue with customers, providing a whole new environment. 

    For example, Carribean Cruise, one of our customers, is reinventing the travel experience for Millenials. They’re doing it all through software on their ships. They provide a little wrist band that interacts with software on ship and on shore to transform the experience. What we’re seeing is really still a continued focus on growth. New revenue streams, new opportunities, and taking in existing core application environments and rebuilding it to be cloud-native. That’s the shift that we see. Still growth, still attack market, still competitive advantage for most companies that are pushing forward aggressively. 

    50 Years Of Datacenter Shifting To Cloud

    We’ve always built the company around a direct sales approach. Our products are used by enterprises. Enterprises want to connect directly with the company that builds these products. We’ve really always gone to market that way and it has served us very well. It makes it a very predictable business and a very strategic platform for these enterprises. We run across all of the cloud platforms and then some. We target the global 15,000 enterprise companies. We expect to talk to the CIO, CTO, and sort of the executive level that are driving this shift within their organizations’ digital transformation projects. That’s our focus. 

    What’s happening now is that the cloud is moving from the early days where people would put applications in the cloud to where they really are taking their entire datacenter and shifting it to the cloud. That’s what’s driving these webscale multi-cloud environments that we do so well in. It’s still early days. There’s a lot of room to go in this marketplace. You have 50 years of datacenter that is shifting to the cloud in the next ten. We are early days. There’s a lot of room to go and I’m sure a lot of changes in front of us. The movement to the cloud and this whole move to software is a global phenomenon. Every enterprise around the world is moving and moving fast.

    Cloud Is So Much More Efficient and Economical For Companies

    This market is very large. We estimate it’s about $18 billion. Others have the estimates in the $20 billions. It’s plenty of room for a company like us to grow and actually probably multiple companies to grow in this space. We feel very secure and happy with our organic innovation. We’ve been able to reinvent the business several times now. It’s a very dynamic space, this application world. Organic innovation is our thrust going forward.

    The cloud is so much more efficient and economical for companies that as there is any kind of disruption anywhere in their markets they’re going to lean toward applications. The things that really drive connective tissue with their customers and their marketplaces that create more automation and more information that they gather when they go through digital channels.

    50 Years Of Datacenter Shifting To Cloud, Says Dynatrace CEO John Van Siclen