Royal Pingdom, 1/17/12
So what happened with the Internet in 2011? How many email accounts were there in the world in 2011? How many websites? How much did the most expensive domain name cost? How many photos were hosted on Facebook? How many videos were viewed to YouTube?
We’ve got answers to these questions and many more. A veritable smorgasbord of numbers, statistics and data lies in front of you. Using a variety of sources we’ve compiled what we think are some of the more interesting numbers that describe the Internet in 2011.
Email
•3.146 billion – Number of email accounts worldwide.
•27.6% – Microsoft Outlook was the most popular email client.
•19% – Percentage of spam emails delivered to corporate email inboxes despite spam filters.
•112 – Number of emails sent and received per day by the average corporate user.
•71% – Percentage of worldwide email traffic that was spam (November 2011).
•360 million – Total number of Hotmail users (largest email service in the world).
•$44.25 – The estimated return on $1 invested in email marketing in 2011.
•40 – Years since the first email was sent, in 1971.
•0.39% – Percentage of email that was malicious (November 2011).
Websites
•555 million – Number of websites (December 2011).
•300 million – Added websites in 2011.
Videos
•1 trillion – The number of video playbacks on YouTube.
•140 – The number of YouTube video playbacks per person on Earth.
•48 hours – The amount of video uploaded to YouTube every minute.
•1 – The most viewed video on YouTube during 2011 was Rebecka Black’s “Friday.”
•82.5% – Percentage of the U.S. Internet audience that viewed video online.
•76.4% – YouTube’s share of the U.S. video website market (December 2011).
•4,189,214 – Number of new users on Vimeo.
•201.4 billion – Number of videos viewed online per month (October 2011).
•88.3 billion – Videos viewed per month on Google sites, incl. YouTube (October 2011).
•43% – Share of all worldwide video views delivered by Google sites, incl. YouTube.
Read the article.
TechFlash, 8/16/11
Amazon’s major power outage in Ireland on August 7 was made worse by the failure of backup generators and a software error.
Amazon says the problem, which affected a data center that hosts both the Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Services (BPOS), started when a 110kV 10 megawatt transformer failed. Normally, “when utility power fails, electrical load is seamlessly picked up by backup generators.” But in this case, one of the Programmable Logic Controllers did not “complete the connection of a portion of the generators to bring them online,” according to Amazon.
And to make matters worse Amazon said it discovered a software error that affected the Amazon EBS, or Elastic Book Store, which provides block level storage for Amazon Cloud customers. The error, which has since been corrected, made it more difficult to recover data. Read the article.
Puget Sound Business Journal, 8/11/11
Here's how the Seattle area's major companies were performing in early Thursday trading:
— Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), up $1.76, up 3.36 percent
— Costco Wholesale Corp. (NASDAQ: COST), up $1.73, up 2.46 percent.
— Nordstrom Inc. (NYSE: JWN), up $1.44, up 3.59 percent.
— Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT), up 67 cents, up 2.77 percent.
— Paccar Inc. (NASDAQ: PCAR), down 1 cent, or down 0.03 percent.
Read the article.
Three years ago, IT services provider Avanade conducted a global survey to quantify the real and perceived business value, as well as the potential pitfalls, of cloud computing as an emerging technology. The company recently commissioned research firm Kelton Research to revisit the topic with a new online survey to determine where cloud computing is in the adoption cycle. Kelton surveyed 573 business and technology executives in 18 countries in March and April 2011 to learn how technology—and particularly cloud computing—is being used in the enterprise.
Among the key findings: Cloud computing is maturing as a technology, although there are still widespread concerns about security. The proliferation of cloud services is also creating new pain points for IT executives, including unmanaged “cloud sprawl.” More generally, the survey indicates that technology investment is on an upswing, and companies are facing greater pressure than ever to innovate and grow, rather than save money. As a result, the rate of new technology adoption is also increasing. View the Slideshow.
Fortune Magazine, 4/22/11
The exact feature that was supposed to be Amazon EC2's strength -- reliability -- is what failed and brought the cloud low yesterday. Still, cloud computing isn't going anywhere.
The snafu at Amazon's EC2 hosting service on Thursday, which knocked several big Web sites out of service, is being called a "black eye" for the cloud-computing business -- a "we told you so" moment, according to cloud critics. But it could simply be a black eye for EC2.
It seems unlikely that this incident will cause startups to turn away from cloud computing, which for smaller companies is much cheaper than self-hosting. More likely, some of them will think twice about hosting with EC2, one of the industry leaders. That's because this was a particularly nasty, widespread, and long-lasting outage. A whole bunch of sites were thrown totally or partially out of commission for most of the day Thursday, including Quora, Foursquare, Reddit, and HootSuite. Read the article.
Data Center Knowledge, 4/19/11
Yesterday we got a look inside the server rooms at Facebook’s new data center in Oregon in part one of our video tour. Today we present part two, in which Facebook Director of Datacenter Engineering Jay Park provides a detailed overview of the facility’s “penthouse” cooling system, which uses the upper floor of the building as a large cooling plenum with multiple chambers for cooling, filtering and directing the fresh air used to cool the data center. Read the article and watch the video.
The Datacenter Journal, 3/24/11
In an information-based economy like that of the United States, IT resources are critical to business success. But not every company is able to afford a full-fledged data center to provide all those resources, and this is particularly applicable to small and medium-size businesses that have little capital to invest in extensive IT infrastructure. Even for large businesses, the capital costs of IT can be daunting. ...is the cloud sailing to a bright future, and what kinds of services are likely to emerge as big winners? Read the article.
The Wall Street Journal, 3/14/11
BEIJING—Asia's major telecom operators scrambled Monday to eliminate the impact on their operations from damage to several submarine cables following the massive earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
Japan's disrupted supply networks are causing concerns about component costs and product shortages that global technology companies may face; while Internet users in Hong Kong may experience slow Internet speeds for several weeks due to damaged underseas cables.
Many operators were reporting some disruptions in Internet access, though the partial restoration of service was accomplished by rerouting traffic over undamaged cables and via satellites.
About half of the existing cables running across the Pacific are damaged and "a lot of people are feeling a little bit of slowing down of Internet traffic going to the United States," said Bill Barney, chief executive of Hong Kong-based cable-network operator Pacnet. He declined to name the damaged cables operated by other companies, but said Pacnet's cable system connecting Japan to the U.S. isn't damaged so far. Read the article.
What’s a CRAC? It’s shorthand for Computer Room Air Conditioner, a key component in data center cooling. In this video, SoftLayer “Social Media Ninja” Kevin Hazard gives a basic explanation of how data center CRAC units work, along with a walk-around demonstration of airflow within a hot aisle/cold aisle raised-floor environment. Due to the ambient noise in the data center, Kevin’s explanation had to be “yelled.” This video runs about 2 minutes. Watch the video.
Here’s a roundup of some of this week’s headlines from the cloud computing sector:
Akamai unveils cloud defense. Akamai Technologies (AKAM) unveiled a new suite of cloud defense solutions aimed at protecting companies from increasingly sophisticated and costly Web attacks. Read the article.
Data Center Knowledge, 12/8/10
Green House Data in Cheyenne, Wyoming operates a 10,000 square foot data center that is powered entirely through renewable wind energy from its local utility. The company use electricity provided by Cheyenne, Light, Fuel and Power, which has partnered on a 30-megawatt wind generation site in Cheyenne. Green House Data says its facility is the largest wind-powered public data center in the nation, and offers cloud hosting and colocation services. In this video, company president Shawn Mills provides an overview of the data center. This video runs about 2 minutes, 30 seconds. Read the article.
Forbes, 11/15/10
Cloud computing can greatly reduce the net energy use of business computing.
In his piece, "Cloud Computing Meets Energy Management," William Clifford makes important points about the need to optimize the efficiency of both cloud data centers and on-premise computing. However, a new study released this week challenges his assertion that cloud computing "just transfers the consumption problem to another location." The findings suggest instead that cloud computing can significantly reduce the overall net energy use of business computing needs.
Microsoft ( MSFT - news - people ), where I serve as the company's chief environmental strategist, commissioned Accenture ( ACN - news - people ) and WSP Environment & Energy to analyze the energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for on-premise vs. cloud-hosted deployments of three widely used Microsoft applications for e-mail, content sharing and customer relationship management. The study assessed the carbon footprint of server, networking and storage infrastructure for three different deployment sizes (100, 1,000 and 10,000 users), finding that the smaller the organization, the larger the benefit of switching to the cloud.
Read this article.
The Data Center Journal, 11/3/10
Perhaps no potential energy source is more attractive than that great thermonuclear engine in the sky: the Sun. The Sun’s rays provide a virtual river of energy hitting the Earth, and tapping into that energy in an efficient and cost-effective manner is something of a holy grail of science and engineering. For data centers, which are energy hogs that are coming under increasing scrutiny as public and governmental concern about the environment grow, solar power offers an attractive alternative to conventional coal power.
In one sense, solar energy is free—hence its appeal. No one has to pay fees or taxes (yet) to receive sunlight. But converting sunlight into energy that can do more than warm things and help plants grow is not a simple matter. In addition, the availability and usability of solar energy is limited by various factors. Read the article.
Data Center Journal, 10/14/10
When the U.S. Federal Government began its latest effort at data consolidation under the oversight of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) CIO Vivek Kundra, the task already had a number of obstacles to overcome, as the Data Center Journal reported in March. As if the failed OMB attempt to consolidate the Federal data center number in 1995 wasn’t enough, a recent memo from Kundra and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) CIO Richard Spires has revealed that the number of data centers that must be consolidated is not around 1,100 as previously thought, but it is much closer to 2,100!
The Data Center Journal has followed the proposed consolidation plan (called the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative), most recently reviewing its status in mid-September (“Federal Data Center Consolidation: How’s It Going?”). Although many of the same concerns regarding the potential success of this project remain, the October 1 memo from the OMB raises even more questions. In addition, the relatively smaller-scale attempt to consolidate data centers in the state of Texas may also foreshadow such attempts at the Federal level. Read the article.
Data Center Journal, 9/24/10
Earlier this year, the Data Center Journal considered whether the tier system established for data centers by the Uptime Institute was still relevant (“Does Data Center Tier Level Still Matter?”). This article focused on two main points: first, that the tier system lacked the kind of granularity needed to truly differentiate data centers, and second, that some companies have (in some sense) co-opted the “tier” terminology, labeling their data centers as Tier 4, for example, when they have not met the requirements thereof (or, at least, have not participated in the Uptime Institute’s process for tier certification). As the final quarter of 2010 closes in, little has changed with regard to the tier system, but companies and customers can still rely in part on the tier system when representing a data center or selecting a data center (e.g., for colocation purposes).
The data center tier classification system has four levels (Tier 1 to Tier 4). Each tier level has minimal standards for availability, tolerable annual downtime, and equipment redundancy. Graybar.com (“Data Center Tiers”) offers a good illustration of the tier levels, along with an overview of the basic requirements. For example, a Tier 4 data center must offer 99.995% availability and must have fully redundant (2N + 1) infrastructure; yearly downtime cannot exceed a couple of minutes. On the other end of the scale, a Tier 1 data center need not implement equipment redundancy, but it cannot exceed about 28 hours of annual downtime, and it must guarantee 99.671% availability. Read the article.
CIOs and other IT managers are singing about the business benefits of virtualized applications. They can save on power/cooling by consolidating servers. They're known to assist greatly with disaster recovery. And they'll increase an organization's ability to remain nimble in light of rapid shifts in the business environment. So why aren't more of the most critical, "Tier 1" enterprise applications being virtualized? Barriers include performance and design concerns, as well as "people issues," according to a survey from AppDynamics, a vendor of application performance management solutions. Read the article.
For years CIOs have had to choose between best-of-breed applications that were focused on solving one problem and combined suites of many applications built to work together. Companies often identified their IT strategies in these terms, stating they were "best-of-breed shop" or "wall-to-wall SAP." The trade-off was between getting cutting edge functionality that had to be integrated with the rest of your IT infrastructure and getting a suite of many applications designed to work together.
The success of SaaS-based applications has been a victory for best-of-breed. A wide variety of applications from Salesforce.com ( CRM - news - people ) for CRM, Taleo ( TLEO - news - people ) for recruiting and performance management and WorkDay for HR have shown the power of the SaaS model for delivering targeted functionality. There are suite vendors in the SaaS model such as NetSuite ( N - news - people ), but even there they use best of breed for certain components. For example, NetSuite uses Adaptive Planning's software to support financial planning and budgeting processes in its product. Read the article.
Energy consumption is a growing concern for data centers. Advances in server equipment technologies and increased demand for computing power have increased load densities in the computer room, which in turn has caused corresponding increases in data center power consumption. Energy efficiency measures are thus of high importance for data center designers, operators, and owners. A new white paper from Schneider outlines an approach to the data gathering, trending, and analysis that are necessary to apply successful energy efficiency measures in data center environments.
According to the Uptime Institute, the typical 3-year cost (operating expenses + amortized capital expenses) of powering and cooling servers is approximately 1.5 times the cost of the server hardware itself, with projections of up to 22 times by the year 2012. The reason for increased energy consumption in the data center is, simply put, an increased demand for computing power. Since the heat generated by computer equipment must be removed in order to avoid overheating, increased computer load density results in increased heat density, which becomes a challenge for the HVAC equipment design. This power and cooling challenge is expected to continue. Read the article.
Forbes, 6/4/10
The cost of cloud computing has generated little debate because the savings appear so self evident. IBM's CTO for Cloud Computing, Kristof Kloeckner, estimates that it reduces IT labor costs by up to 50%, improves capital utilization by 75% and reduces provisioning from weeks to minutes. The City of Los Angeles anticipates savings of more than $5 million with its move to Google Apps. Because of such apparent savings, few companies have taken the time to question the cost implications of working in the cloud.
The problem with this is that cloud computing takes on many forms, and, if not planned for properly, will not deliver the expected ROI. As Andy Mulholland, global CTO at Capgemini has said, "Relatively speaking, [cloud computing] is unstoppable. The question is whether you'll crash into it or migrate into it." Read the article.
Forbes, 6/4/10
Although the proliferation of cloud computing has been rapid and has received a lot of attention, the implications of moving some or all of a computing environment to off-site, third-party environments have yet to be adequately parsed.
As its name would imply, definitions of this technology can be vaporous. "Cloud computing is on-demand access to virtualized IT resources that are housed outside of your own data center, shared by others, simple to use, paid for via subscription, and accessed over the Web," writes Information Week's John Foley. Read the article.
Data Center Knowledge, 5/1/10
The deal activity continues in the data center industry. Today Savvis said it will acquire Canadian managed IT and colocation provider Fusepoint Inc. for $124.5 million in cash. Fusepoint, a portfolio company of M/C Venture Partners, operates three data centers in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal and has more than 330 customers.
The acquisition provides additional international expansion for Savvis (SVVS), which hinted in February that it was “selectively exploring expansion opportunities” that would expand its data center footprint into new markets. Fusepoint’s data centers have a total of more than 40,000 sellable square feet of space, with Toronto the largest at 28,000 sellable square feet. Read the article.
Phone+ Blog, 4/20/10
It’s funny to think I have been in this business since 1991. I first started out selling New England Telephone 800 service and Centrex and WATS lines for SNET. Now, I can represent any carrier out there through my own agency, US Telecom Group.
When I worked for the direct sales force side, I was highly trained on the products and services of that particular company and its products. I was given a desk, computer (sometimes) and a phone (always). I was then sold on the value of our products and services over the competitors. I was given the juice. And like all good direct sales people, I drank the juice. Our company’s products and services were superior to the competitors.
Fast forward 13 years to 2005 when my partner and I started US Telecom Group. We now have the ability to sell any carrier we choose. This ability to sell multiple carriers feels so refreshing and gives us the ability to do what is right for the customer. This newfound feeling gives me the hindsight to understand how it really worked as a direct sales rep. Read the article.
Designing a new data center involves numerous considerations, ranging from how much space to construct to what kind of support infrastructure to include. These more technical considerations, however, are in many ways predicated on another critical choice: where to build the data center. Selecting an optimal location for a new data center is a matter that is far from trivial—location can affect everything from operating expense to availability of employee talent to risks posed by disasters and even political conditions. Thus, the choice of a location can be as important a decision as those revolving around the more technically oriented matters.
Traditionally, company’s simply built data centers in facilities located at their corporate headquarters. As demand for information technology services has risen, data center construction (especially for large, technology-oriented companies) has become less about clearing a particular room or floor in an existing office building—indeed, even onsite construction of a dedicated data center facility is inadequate in some cases. In addition, as companies have become increasingly reliant on the data stored in and services provided by their data centers, they have increasingly considered the prospect of financial loss owing to disasters (whether natural or man-made). These and other factors have been a strong driver toward off site location of new data center facilities. Read the article.
Phone+, 5/18/10
The telecom and energy industries have a long shared history. Many of the nation’s utilities also are its telecom service providers; they leveraged their private networks to not only serve residences and businesses but also to sell to telcos seeking deeper, diverse or off-net coverage. A case in point: WilTel, which was acquired by Level 3 communications Inc. in 2005, was part of the Tulsa-based energy outfit Williams Companies Inc. But there are many others still operating — PPL Telecom LLC, Edison Carrier Solutions, etc. There are so many – and they’ve been part of the telecom fabric for so long – that their origins hardly register.
Turnabout – telcos getting into the energy business – is fair play, but is it a logical, or better yet profitable, one? There is at least one carrier, some former telecom execs and scores of agents who say, “absolutely.” Read the article.
Tech Eye, 5/12/10
NASA has one of the fastest supercomputers in the world, but the expensive bit of kit is at risk because the outfit could not afford an electrical back up unit.
A review panel of scientists and engineers has warned that the decline of basic research at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration jeopardizes the agency’s ability to study and explore the cosmos. The problem is that the cash is not being spent on maintenance.
The panel pointed out, as an example, how the Ames Research Center in California in the earthquake-prone Bay Area, has been unable to afford a $15 million uninterrupted power supply for the supercomputer. Read the article.
xchange, 5/6/10
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has decided to regulate Net neutrality, after all, but in a way perhaps many people did not expect. The news comes after several days of back-and-forth during which, at times, it seemed Genachowski would choose not to pursue open Internet rules at all.
That all changed on Thursday, when the FCC said it will institute a balanced approach to Net neutrality, one that won’t require Congressional action.
The Master would've liked it. In a Confucian attempt at a middle way, Genachowski has decided against a complete “Title II” approach. (Title II is the classification for telecommunications services, which are more regulated than Title I, or information, services such as Internet access.) Instead, the FCC proposes to view just the transmission component of broadband access as a telecommunications service and “apply only a handful of provisions of Title II ... that, prior to the Comcast decision, were widely believed to be within the commission’s purview for broadband,” said Genachowski. At the same, the FCC intends to install “meaningful boundaries” to guard against “regulatory overreach,” he added. Read the article.