I had posted on the slides James presented, but his video was not live at the time.
Below is James's presentation with 7,055 views.
US Tech vs. European Traditions, Will Data Centers be regulated in the future?
The Data Center industry is young compared to many other industries that make money. WSJ has an article on the challenges that exist between US Technology companies and European Sovereign States.
To give you an idea of the money involved consider this nugget. 5 US Tech firms have a larger market cap than 30 blue-chip companies in the DAX index in Germany.
“The U.S. firms loom large. The market valuation of five U.S. tech firms— Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Facebook Inc., Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. —is $1.8 trillion. That compares to $1.3 trillion for all 30 blue-chip companies in the DAX index in Germany, Europe’s largest economy.”
The article mentions the interest in requiring data to be housed in countries.
This data is the fuel that drives the online advertising and commerce machines that Google, Facebook and Amazon have spent years honing and monetizing. Rising calls for these companies to house such information in local data centers in Europe could make these machines more expensive to run.
There are hints of potential regulation
Europe’s policymakers, accustomed to controlling key sectors of their economies, are struggling to get a handle on the fast-moving newcomers from across the ocean. Growth is weak and government revenues soft, and they see profits that once accrued to European industries from retail to media to taxicabs, being diverted—often lightly taxed—to Silicon Valley. They worry that critical industries such as autos may fall next.
Why worry, because these US tech companies are disrupting existing business models.
“Europeans have got everything to lose” from the rise of U.S. technology firms, said Paul Stoneman, emeritus professor at Warwick Business School and a former U.K. antitrust official.
Don't think this is just the governments. In a classic move, competitors are supporting actions against others.
And some U.S. firms themselves are exploiting the European tensions to attack rivals. Microsoft has been a driving force behind the antitrust campaign against Google in Brussels, while Oracle Corp. is another member of the Fairsearch alliance that has actively agitated against Google.
Including some of the Telecoms.
For big European companies with clout in Europe’s corridors of power, their traditional business-expansion model is threatened. Europe’s telecom giants, for instance, lobbied regulators for years to ease price caps and competition rules to allow them to grow. But they are now being challenged by so-called over-the-top players such as messaging service WhatsApp, which use the incumbents’ infrastructure to provide lower-cost, high-value alternatives.
State of the China Cloud
DatacenterDynamics has a post with lots of data on the China Cloud.
“China’s cloud market is already crowded. Both Microsoft and IBM have partnered with 21Vianet to roll out Azure and CMS cloud respectively. Amazon has introduced AWS cloud to China by cooperating with Sinnet and ChinaNetCenter. In addition, the market also has very influential internet players including Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent and Grand Cloud.”
The article is written about GDS, but there is lots of other cloud players detailed in comparison.
“GDS, a Chinese IT service provider with 17 high-availability data centers across the country also felt the profound impact exerted by this cloud revolution and has been transforming its role to help enterprise customers to transfer their IT infrastructure to cloud computing platforms.
Dr Les Zhang, vice president, cloud business development of GDS, and Yilin Chen, SVP, product & operation of GDS told DatacenterDynamics that the colocation service provider is now treating cloud as its strategic business for development and is committed to becoming a leading integrated cloud infrastructure provider in China.”
IO announces splitting into 2 companies, is 2nd largest private DC company and will be #? after split
IO announced that it is going to split into two companies and it says it is the 2nd largest private data center company as they were not able to make the transition to a public company with an IPO.
“IO TO SEPARATE INTO TWO MARKET-LEADING COMPANIES
December 2, 2014 By Jason Ferrara
Phoenix, Ariz. – Dec. 2, 2014 – IO, a leading data center services company, today announced plans to separate into two independent companies. IO will continue to deliver its market-leading colocation and cloud services. The new company, BASELAYER, will comprise IO’s visionary modular data center hardware and data center infrastructure management software. The company expects to complete the separation in early 2015.
...
Today, IO is the second-largest private data center company in the world. The company first revolutionized colocation services in 2007, layering optimized thermal efficiency onto traditional offerings. Shortly after, in 2011, the company invented a patented modular data center with intelligent management and control mechanisms to drive further efficiency and density.”
Viawest and Sabey both say they are one of the largest private data center companies. I couldn't find who claims to be #1.
What occurred is how big or rather how much smaller will the new IO split companies be?
Finland announces Submarine Cable to Germany and hopes of Asia
Thanks to Google and others putting data centers in Finland, there is a higher demand for connectivity.
“Finland is starting construction of a submarine information cable to Germany to attract more data centers and improve security by diversifying connections.
The system, worth about 60 million euros ($74 million), will be supplied by Alcatel-Lucent SA, according to Jukka-Pekka Joensuu of state-owned Cinia Group Oy. The work is set to be completed in early 2016.”
With the right financing there is hopes for a connection from Finland to China.
“Once Finland’s link to Germany is completed, the government hopes to speed up Asia’s cyber connection with Europe via a planned cable through Arctic waters and Russia. The project is the subject of preliminary talks by several governments and companies, and may cost about 800 million euros, according to Eero Heliovaara, head of the department that oversees Finland’s government-owned companies.
“First we want to attract data centers,” Heliovaara said in an interview in Helsinki. “They will see the link to Asia as important. Large Chinese companies are very interested — it all depends on how the financing can be arranged.””