Thursday, January 26, 2017

Data Center Links: January 26, 2017

Here are some (mostly) recent things I found interesting:


  • Cisco to acquire AppDynamics.  Cisco announced its intent to acquire Application Intelligence software provider AppDynamics for $3.7 billion. AppDynamics was on the cusp of filing an IPO when Cisco scooped them up for almost twice their value. Cisco saysIAAS  that AppDynamics CEO David Wadhwani will continue lead the new software business unit within the company. 
  • Faction nets $11 million funding round. IaaS cloud provider Faction announced it has closed an $11 million funding round from investors to fuel company growth and meet ever-expanding customer demand. The Denver based formerly known as PeakColo had a successful year of growth in 2016, and launched its Internetwork eXchange (FIX) solution, which enables enterprises to connect private cloud and colocation resources into public clouds privately and securely.
  • Hyper.sh aims to be the new IaaS.  Forbes has an excellent article on Hyper - a New York startup company looking to disrupt IaaS with its HyperContainer, a convergence of containers and VMs. 
  • D-Wave announces 2000Q Quantum Computer. D-Wave Systems announced the commercial availability of its 2000Q quantum computer, and first customer of the new system, Temporal Defense Systems. After launching 10 years ago D-Wave says the new 2000Q is 1,000 times faster than the previous generation system it released in 2015.  The company says it is the only company with a product designed to run quantum computing problems - with its 'quantum processing units (QPUs)'.  D-Wave benchmark tests revealed that its QPUs outperformed classical algorithms by 1,000 to 10,00 times in pure computation time, and that the 2000Q system outperformed the GPU-based implementations by 100 times in equivalent problem solving performance per watt.