JPIX extends peering fabric to Equinix

Japan Internet Exchange Co. Ltd. (JPIX), the largest Internet exchange in Japan, has extended its peering fabric to the Equinix Tokyo-2 (TY2) Internet Business Exchange (IBX(R)) data centre located in Shinagawa. As a part of the agreement, Equinix customers will be able to directly exchange traffic, or "peer," with JPIX's Internet service providers, cable TV service providers and content providers, with the objective of reducing the costs of network traffic exchange. Under this agreement, JPIX will set up an Internet Exchange (IX) switch at the Equinix TY2 centre, and it will use Equinix's IBXLink service to directly connect to the Equinix TY1 centre located in Heiwajima.

New Data Centre to launch in India

State owned Indian Telephone Industry is launching a new data centre which will become operational within the next six months. Located a the ITI Bangalore premises, the new facility is being constucted by a consortium of companies from Hyderabad. ITI Bangalore is providing the infrastructure, including land and building space for the centres, partner companies are to provide the required technology and equipment support to the centre. The centre will be 40,000 sq ft, but is planned to expand substantially over the next 2-3 years. ITI has been approached by a number of institutions including RailTel and some banking organisations to utilise the data centre.

New Data Centre in Queensland to open in 3 months

Queensland's new A$220 million high-tech data centre will host it's first tenants within three months.
The tier 3 data centre, code named Polaris 1, is a joint venture between insurer Suncorp and the Springfield Land Corporation. The 14,000m², three-story building will colocate enterprises including Suncorp, NEC and Fujitsu with Queensland government departments and councils, including its service provider CITEC. Polaris 1 uses non-potable water for cooling, saving a potential 650,000 litres a day,trigeneration power feeds, and rotary UPS avoiding the use of lead-acid batteries. Two further Polaris data centres (one in north Brisbane) are planned targetting South East Asia as an overseas disaster recovery centre, once Pipe's Guam fibre link is completed.The data centre will be connected to the Springfield to Brisbane dark fibre networ owned by the Springfield Land Corporation and managed by Pipe Networks. Security is enhanced by Biometric devices installed throughout the complex, including deep-palm and fingerprint readers, while large vehicle and man traps measure the weight of people and machinery and can isolate unauthorised access attempts to the complex. NEC's Smartcatch video monitors use behavioral analysis and facial recognition to identify malicious activity. Power for Polaris 1 can be upgraded from 800 to 1500 watts per square metre, and support 60 kilowatt racks.

Tata enters content delivery space with BitGravity

Tata Communications, and broadcaster BitGravity have launched a worldwide Content Delivery Network (CDN) service. Tata has more than 300 points of presence worldwide throughout Europe, Asia, North America and India. Tata has also invested USD 11.5 million in convertible debt in BitGravity who in turn has named Tata Communications’ Chief Technology Officer, John Hayduk to its Board of Directors. Customers can access content, including High-Definition Video, without delay or jitter. Fast forwarding, cache clearing, resolution switching and rate throttling are just a few of the features. With the rise of Video as the main application, combined with data centre storage facilities, a CDN was the missing piece of the puzzle. Watch for other players to finalise their global plans.

Haryana State to build new Data Centre

Haryana State, in northwestern India, will build a new Data Centre as part of its plans to implement the National e-governance Plan. The project is awaiting a go ahead from the central government with a proposal prepared by consultants PWC, to the Government of India and the approval is expected to come by the end of this month. The state data centre will be developed and maintained by a private company in collaboration with Haryana State Electronics Development Corporation (Hartron). It will act as the main data centre where all the state government departments for data storage. The facility will have a 35 rack storage capacity which will be sufficient to store data for the next 10 years and the capacity may be scaled up in future.

Rackspace opens new data centre in Hong Kong

Rackspace has opened its Asian headquarters and data centre in Hong Kong. The data centre, located in the Fo Tan district of Hong Kong, will represent an investment of at least US$20 million when complete, inclusive of lease obligations and infrastructure, equipment and personnel expenses. The new data center will initially have approximately 9,500 gross square feet and will be expandable to about 18,000 gross square feet. The operation in Hong Kong will offer the full range of Rackspace service offerings including managed hosting, cloud hosting, virtualization, security and email services, storage and backup and professional services. Rackspace already has more than 500 customers based in Asia Pacific

The data centre in Hong Kong joins Rackspace's existing data center operations, including facilities in San Antonio, Dallas, northern Virginia and London.

Inter-Asia Internet traffic increases as demand for Video apps surge

An article in the New York Times about how internet traffic is increasingly flowing around the US is very poignant for those who forecast many ions ago that in Asia, network superiority combined with data centre assets would enable powerful platforms for content distribution. Citing Andrew M. Odlyzko, a professor at the University of Minnesota, that the United States carried 70 percent of the world’s Internet traffic a decade ago, he now estimates that portion has fallen to about 25 percent. The article quotes World Stats, a market research organisation: Asia now has 578.5 million, or 39.5 percent, of the world's Internet users, although only 15.3 percent of the Asian population is connected to the Internet. Content and traffic are closely related and it is interesting to note that Friendster reports that 90% of their current traffic now comes from Asian countries. The Philippines has the third largest user base for YouTube in the Asia Pacific region, next to Japan and Australia. Facebook grew in Asia (June 07-08) by 23 per cent to about 200 million unique visits. It is not surprising therefore that many operators in the region are focusing on bandwidth provision technologies to help cope with upsurge in demand arising mainly from video apps.