Frontier Spotlight: The Top Data Center Stories for March 2018

April 4, 2018
The top data center stories for March 2018 featured news from, Facebook, the Open Compute Project and the cloud computing sector. Here’s a look at the hot news for Data Center Frontier readers.

Facebook and cloud computing were the hot stories in the data center industry in March. Three of the month’s 10 most-read stories on Data Center Frontier last month focused on Facebook, including its new hardware designed to manage data center traffic, accelerated data center expansion, and news of a new $270 million data center facility to be built near Atlanta.

Read on to see what your peers were keeping tabs on last month:

Facebook Unveils New Hardware to Manage Data Center Traffic: Facebook has designed a distributed networking system to support the massive flows of data moving between its data centers. The debut of Fabric Aggregator lays the groundwork for even larger cloud campuses to come.

The MAREA subsea cable emerges from the Atlantic at Virginia Beach, Virginia. (Photo: Microsoft)

Facebook Accelerates its Data Center Expansion: Facebook is kicking its infrastructure growth into a whole new gear. The company has accelerated its data center construction program, announcing five new cloud campuses in 15 months.

As Hybrid Clouds Flourish, Data Centers Will Benefit: The decentralization of IT is creating more options than ever for end users. As latency becomes more important in application deployment, users have an array of choices of cloud and colocation options. The winner will be the hybrid IT model, and service providers that host it.

Cable to Cloud: New Data Flows Raise Hopes in Virginia Beach: As hyperscale companies invest in subsea cables, cities like Virginia Beach see the opportunity to create a data center ecosystem around cable landing stations. It’s also boosting growth in a cloud cluster near Richmond.

Northstar Enters Virginia Data Center Market, with Fortune 20 Tenant: Northstar Commercial Partners has entered the Northern Virginia data center market, buying a prime land parcel in Loudoun County to build a data center campus for one of the world’s largest companies.

QTS Signs 24 Megawatt Hyperscale Deal in Northern Virginia: QTS Realty Trust has signed a 24 megawatt data center lease with a global cloud company, which will occupy a new data center building on land QTS has acquired in Manassas, Virginia.

IPI Partners Acquires Three Data Centers from Infomart: Infomart Data Centers has sold three wholesale data center properties to investment firm IPI Data Center Partners.

Roundtable: Rack Power Densities Rising, But Slowly: Our Executive Roundtable looks at the latest trends in rack power densities,and what they mean for data center cooling and facility design.

Rows of servers inside a Facebook data center. The social network will invest $750 million in a new data center campus in Stanton Springs, Georgia, about 40 miles east of downtown Atlanta. (Photo: Rich Miller)

Facebook Will Build $750 Million Data Center Campus Near Atlanta: Facebook’s data center infrastructure just keeps growing. The social network will invest $750 million in a new data center campus in Stanton Springs, Georgia, about 40 miles east of downtown Atlanta.

Silicon Valley Data Center Market: New Projects Address Simple Constraints: Silicon Valley is one of the largest and most important data center markets. A new report from Data Center Frontier explores the market dynamics and supply and demand in Santa Clara and Silicon Valley.

Most Popular March Voices of the Industry Columns:

Data Center Frontier readers also enjoy insights from expert columnists from companies like like Iron Mountain, Sunbird Software, Server Technology and more. Here are the most popular Voices of the Industry columns from March 2018.

Cloud-First Does Not Mean Cloud Only — Add Colocation for the Ideal Balance: Hybrid IT architectures with colo as the foundation increase efficiency, lower costs, and mitigate risks when compared to environments with only in-house data centers. Rick Crutchley, Chief Operating Officer at IO, now Iron Mountain, shares how organizations can benefit from a hybrid IT strategy that features colocation.

How to Operate Your Data Center Like a Cloud Provider: Herman Chan, President of Sunbird Software, discusses the challenges of managing data centers in a world where cloud is king, what enterprise and colocation data centers can learn from the cloud, and how to modernize data center operations to remain competitive — and operate you data center like a cloud provider.

The Future of AI is Bright: In the near term, a lot of new infrastructure in the data center is being devoted to enabling AI software applications to run. Marc Cram, Director of Sales for Server Technology, explores applications for the evolving world of AI, including the variety of software tools designed to find hidden patterns and correlations between elements of large data sets.

Keep pace with the fact-moving world of data centers and cloud computing by following us on Twitter and Facebook, connecting with Data Center Frontier editor Rich Miller on LinkedIn, and signing up for our weekly newspaper using the form below. 

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