I’ve written a lot about the IT industry in India – I wrote a blog on IT outsourcing for two years at our sister publication, CIO.com – and clearly that country is focused on building out its tech infrastructure. So when I saw the news about the development of a 900,000 square foot data center in a four tower building that is designed to support up to 100 megawatts of power, it caught my eye. And according to the developers – Tulip Telecom Ltd., and IBM – this mega data center is the third largest in the world. \

You can check out this behemoth – the so-called Tulip Data City – by taking a virtual tour here.

The facility, in Bangalore, is designed to serve as a foundation for cloud services. It is a striking symbol of Tulip’s evolution from its beginnings as a wireless connectivity provider, to a telecom services provider with a fiber-optic data network that reaches more than 2,000 locations in India, and now to a more comprehensive provider of managed services and data centers.

There are plenty of wow factors – rainwater harvesting, numerous generators with 4 megawatts of capacity each, an anti-fire system, three large diesel tanks, a maze of underground cables, and more than 30 chillers on the roof for providing cooling. On the ground floor are 16 generators (four more are outside), a state-of-the-art network operations center (NOC) with an integrated management system, and office space with meeting rooms. One half of the ground floor is empty and ready to meet future needs.

The four tours are five floors each (starting at the second floor) and currently house 20 Enterprise Modular Data Centers. It is capable of supporting 14,000 racks, and each cold aisle area is self-contained to keep cooling most effective. There are numerous sensors and monitors for tracking air flow, temperature, humidity, pressure differentials and more.

Physical security is tight. There’s a 10-feet stone fence surrounding the facility, and on top of that fence there’s another 4-feet of electrical fence. There’s a gated entry for vehicles. Anybody coming into the facility must pass through metal detectors; there are also handheld scanners and explosives sniffers. RFID-enabled access systems are used, as are biometric scanners. There are 1500 cameras for round-the-clock, real-time surveillance.

Redundancy is impressive too. There are two UPS systems that get power from two different substations, including one in the front of the building, within the grounds.

The Tulip Data City is estimated to have cost more than $180 million (or Rs.900 crore), according to this article in Forbes India. The article reports that analysts expect the third-party data center market in India to grow at a compounded rate of between 25-30 percent over the next five years, and that reports also suggest Tulip is expecting a steady state revenue of about $190 million (Rs.950 crore) from the data center, which could happen in four years.

Source:http://www.itworld.com/data-centerservers/248752/bangalore-gets-data-center-screaming-capacity-and-tight-security

IBM, the No. 2 computer services provider, took the wraps off a 900,000 square-foot data center in India for Tulip Telecom, one of that nation’s fast-growing telecommunications carriers.

The Bangalore center, a year in the making, cost “in the hundreds of millions of dollars,” IBM VP for global sites and facilities services Steve Sams said in an interview. He declined to be more specific.

The center is India’s biggest and Tulip Telcom has already invited in the chief information officers of India’s top 150 companies to show them its capabilities, Sams said. Morever, another leading U.S. technology company, which he refused to identify, is also conducting operations in the IBM center, he added.

Armonk, N.Y. based IBM is far from the only U.S. information technology company with many personnel and officers in India. Others including Hewlett-Packard, Accenture, Intel, Microsoft, Cisco Systems and Oracle have Indian operations, some for outsourcing for multinational clients but now increasingly to serve Indian customers.

Tulip Telecom, which provides business-to-business services rather than focus on the consumer, approached IBM for a long-term partnership more than a year ago, Sams said. Tulip CEO and founder Hardeep S. Bedi said he had chosen the 101-year-old U.S. company for its “global expertise in designing and building innovative energy efficient cloud data centers that should support our needs now and in the future.”

Besides Bangalore, the heart of the Indian IT sector, New Delhi-basedTulip may ask IBM to build another data center in Mumbai, the country’s financial center, the IBM VP said.

Only about half of the ultra-modern center’s space will be used for computing services, Sams explained. The other half will be for support services, including an extremely efficient power system designed with redundant services.

Sams, who said he has a staff of 1,000, including mechanical engineers as well as IT professionals and electrical engineers, said more such centers are in the works. One that has been announced is an IBM complex in China for Range Technology, intended to be the largest cloud computing complex in Asia.

IBM shares rose 53 cents to close at $193.35 Tuesday. They have gained 5 percent so far this year. Shares of Tulip closed down 6 percent at 108.2 rupees in Indian trading Tuesday.

Source:http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/294333/20120207/ibm-data-tulip-center-outsourcing-services-india.htm

The European Commission (EC), the executive body of the European Union, has awarded 27 IBM Data Centers for energy efficiency, based on the European Union (EU) Code of Conduct for Data Centers. The honor represents the largest portfolio of data centers from a single company to receive the recognition.

The EU Code of Conduct was created in response to increasing energy consumption in data centers. The EU aims to inform and encourage data center operators and owners to reduce energy consumption in a cost-effective manner without decreasing mission-critical data center functions. The assessment is made against a set of best practices to reduce energy losses, which include using energy-efficient hardware, installing free cooling, and cold aisle containment.

Power usage effectiveness (PUE) is an indicator for how efficiently a computer data center uses its power. In May, the Uptime Institute gave IBM data centers a rating of 1.65 for average power usage compared to the industry average of 1.8.

The awarded 27 IBM Green Data Centers represent more than 70 percent of IBM’s strategic outsourcing data centers in 15 European countries. Many of the data centers also have been designed to support cloud computing. The energy improvements implemented in these data centers helped IBM meet a goal set in 2007 to double the IT capacity of its data centers within three years without increasing the power consumption.

“Data centers have always been a critical part of IBM’s heritage and are a significant part of our energy use and costs,” said Harry van Dorenmalen, IBM chairman, Europe. “The recognition of our commitment and leadership by the EU Code of Conduct is important to us since energy and climate related issues are part of IBM’s long standing corporate commitment to environmental leadership. Based on our Smarter Planet vision we can substantially reduce energy consumption in many ways in our society.”

IBM uses analytics to operate its data centers, implementing the company’s Mobile Measurement Technology (MMT), which was developed by IBM Research. This technology instruments the data centers with thousands of sensors to record and analyze temperatures and air flow to detect hot and cold spots. By providing energy flow insight, MMT provides the intelligence to efficiently cool data centers with a high measure of security and reliability, and significant reduction in cost.

IBM also maintains energy efficiency leadership in its data centers by deploying uniform practices around the world including replacing older hardware with more energy-efficient servers, industry-leading server consolidation and virtualization rates, and efficient use of electric power and air cooling in data center facility operations. IBM services has leveraged its operational excellence from running energy-efficient data centers to help hundreds of clients in Europe and around the world achieve similar results.

Source:http://www.sustainableplant.com/2012/01/european-commission-honors-ibm-data-centers-for-energy-efficiency/

Dell has completed a modular data center build in Slough, UK (outside of London), that will support a wide variety of IT services, including a plethora of upcoming services the company expects to roll out in 2012.

On the slate for next year are “Virtual Desktop-as-a-Service” and Dell Cloud offerings. The Cloud service will be built on VMware, using VMware vCloud.

Another upcoming service is Unified Clinical Archiving, a Cloud-based medical imaging storage, management and sharing service for healthcare providers. Dell already offers this service in the US, currently managing more than 4bn diagnostic imaging objects for US-based customers.

In addition to new offerings, the Slough data center will support Dell’s traditional IT outsourcing services.

Don Mann, VP of infrastructure and Cloud computing at Dell, said the data center will provide “regionally delivered” outsourcing and Cloud services.

“This is the first data center to open as part of the company’s $1bn solutions announcement this past April and reinforces our commitment to deliver industry-leading services and solutions that help our customers innovate and drive business results,” he said.

In April, Dell announced a plan to build 10 data centers around the world to support a range of Cloud-based services, including Azure, VMware and OpenStack clouds. The services will include Infrastructure-as-a-Service, Platform-as-a-Service, Virtual Desktop-as-a-Service and IT outsourcing, Steve Schuckenbrock, president of Dell Services, said then.

The company started with public cloud. In August, at VMware’s VMworld conference in San Francisco, Dell launched its public IaaS offering, which includes virtual CPUs, memory, storage networks, IP addresses, firewalls and catalog capabilities.

Source:http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/focus/archive/2011/10/dells-new-uk-data-center-to-support-slew-of-upcoming-services

Having recently been served a series of sharp reminders about the growing threat posed by cyber attackers, many CIOs have now turned a critical eye towards understanding their exposure to data loss.

What they are finding is that much of their data actually resides, or at least flows, through a number of third party service providers that are outside of the organisation’s direct control.

As a result, many CIOs are now asking if their data security can be successfully and reliably outsourced and to whom?

Bringing in the armed guards
Before we can answer that, we need to look at the two different types of outsourced security.

The first is the use of third party suppliers to provide security services within the enterprise. Some of the most common types are malware managers, email monitoring, firewalls and virus protection software.

For this type of security, outsourcing to third party specialists is often a recommended option for organisations. Specialist third party suppliers tend to service multiple large clients and are therefore able to spot threats and deploy responses far faster than isolated in-house teams.

Many of the larger outfits also invest significantly in R&D to deliver ever-increasing levels of security to their clients.

However, the security services market is also highly fragmented, leaving CIOs to work with an increasing number of different services providers in order to properly defend against a growing onslaught of new and emerging threats.

This may not remain the case for long. HP’s purchase of Fortify Software and ArcSight last year seems to indicate a move towards more consolidated security offerings in the future.

Locking down the cloud
The second type of security outsourcing relates to that day-to-day data flow that underscores the operations of almost every organization.

This bit is often much more difficult to manage.

A large percentage of organisational data now flows through third party suppliers who provide a range of services from data warehousing to customer analytics.

The emergence of cloud computing (or Outsourcing 3.0) only exacerbates the complexity by shuttling data from centre to centre, creating backups and artefacts across multiple systems.

In fact, in a report by KPMG and the e-Crime Congress, more than two thirds of the senior security professionals surveyed said that cloud computing would increase their risk of e-crime. nearly nine out of 10 said that internet-hosted software such as webmail and enterprise social networks would pose an equal risk.

The answer is not to ignore the business opportunities — sometimes imperatives — surrounding outsourcing and cloud; nor is it simply to bury your head in the sand.

Out of sight, but not out of mind
Through greater use of outsourcing, CIOs have effectively been delegating their security management to a hodgepodge of disparate vendors that may include everyone from their CRM service provider to their website hosting service.

IT leaders would be well advised to remember that a supplier’s ability to manage and store data does not necessarily reflect their ability to also protect that data.

That is not to say that data service providers are not secure; many successfully differentiate themselves based on their reputation for security.

However, it does mean that CIOs will need to go above and beyond simply including security clauses into outsourcing contracts in order to get peace of mind.

Often, the details agreed upon by those signing the contracts either don’t represent the reality on the ground, or are not properly communicated to the individuals or teams that actually provide the service. This may ultimately result in a mismatch between client expectations and what service providers are able to deliver.

Protecting the Crown Jewels
The other challenge facing CIOs is one of classification. Not all data requires the same level of protection and not all information holds equal value to the organisation.

But to properly classify and protect the organisation’s Crown Jewels, CIOs will need to develop a better understanding of the sensitivity, value and risk profile of the enterprise’s various data streams.

They must work across the business to develop appropriate protocols and controls to properly secure that data.

Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet in the offing.

Just as quickly as companies develop ways to plug the chinks in their armour, cyber attackers seem to move to develop new and more powerful assaults.

There is a degree of automation that is eventually developed to respond to most security threats in the same way that spam filters automated elements of email security. But, usually these are brought to market months or even years after the threat is first detected.

So, for the time being, the answer is that CIOs have to recognise that data security is an executive-level risk and responsibility for that risk cannot be outsourced.

Security therefore needs to be part of the organisation’s overall sourcing strategy, with clear policies and oversight and assurance processes in place for service providers.

Because ultimately, it will be the CIO that will be called to the mat should the company’s crown jewels go missing.

Source:http://www.cio.co.uk/article/3306639/outsourcing-data-security/?intcmp=HPF2

Google has acquired land in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore to build data centers in these three locations, it said Wednesday.

The data centers will be the “first Google proprietary data centers in Asia,” and will be fully owned and operated by the company, said Taj Meadows, the company’s policy communications manager for Asia Pacific.

More people are coming online every day in Asia than in any other part of the world, so locating data centers there is an important next stage of Google’s investment in the region, the company said Local data centers will help the company provide faster and more reliable access to Google’s services, it added.

There is a large surge in Internet use in Asia, particularly for consumer applications, said Jun Fwu Chin, research manager for virtualization and data center at IDC Malaysia.

A number of new data centers are coming up in the region as multinational Internet and hosting companies set up data centers to serve local customers, and also to meet governments regulations in some countries that require data to be handled locally, Chin said.

The costs of setting up data centers in Asia also tend to be lower than in the U.S., he added.

Google already has six data centers in the U.S., with one each in Finland and Belgium, according to its website.

It already has 15 offices and thousands of employees across the Asia-Pacific region.

The company has acquired 2.45 hectares of land in Jurong West, Singapore, and another 15 hectares of land in Changhua County, Taiwan, to build the data centers. It has also acquired 2.7 hectares of land in Kowloon, Hong Kong, for a data center there.

Google expects to invest over US$100 million in each of the facilities in Taiwan and Hong Kong, including the cost of land, construction and technical equipment. It did not specify the size of the investment in Singapore.

Google did not specify when construction would begin at these sites, as it is still working with its local partners and governments to finalize plans. Once construction begins, the facilities could be operational within one to two years, barring major delays, it said.

Google is however facing tough competition from local players in a number of local markets in Asia. In China, for example, it trails Baidu, the largest player, in Internet search.

In Taiwan, Yahoo and Facebook are ahead of Google as the top sites in the country, according to web traffic monitoring service Alexa. The rank is calculated using a combination of average daily visitors and page views over the past month. In Hong Kong, Yahoo and Facebook are again ahead of Google, while it leads in Singapore.

Source:http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/240728/google_buys_land_to_build_three_data_centers_in_asia.html

The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) has urged financial institutions to establish data classification regimes before taking up cloud or outsourcing services.

The national financial services regulator will shortly begin work on a data management guide that builds on principles of its March 2007 letter to institutions (pdf).

APRA’s head of IT risk David Pegrem said the guide would include advice on data security risk management, data management frameworks, staff training and auditing processes.

Speaking at an FST Media cloud computing conference in Sydney last week, Pegrem said APRA would urge institutions to define “critical data” and classify their various data holdings.

“The data management issue is very important if anyone is looking to put any data in the cloud,” he said.

“The number one step is to understand and to be able to classify your data in order to understand what data is going out [to third-party service providers] and what level of sensitivity has to do with that data.

“If your data is not properly classified, you’re not going to know.”

APRA planned to start working on the data management guide within the calendar year.

It would begin by considering whether to issue a single guide or separate documents for banking, superannuation and insurance industries.

Pegrem said APRA would not prescribe data classifications because it was a “principle- and risk-based regulator” that called for a “best-fit” structure from each of its constituents.

In an open letter last November, the regulator urged financial services institutions to view cloud computing as a new form of outsourcing or offshoring that required APRA’s tick of approval.

It required would-be cloud adoptors in the financial services sector to undertake a “comprehensive risk assessment” of the cloud service and the “criticality and sensitivity of the IT assets involved”.

Pegrem told the conference last week that cloud computing was an as-yet immature industry, highlighting security concerns and a lack of industry standards.

“Universally accepted standards are a measure of the maturity of an industry, and we are definitely not there yet,” he said.

“The other thing is that possibly security methodology is going to have to alter if this is the future for us. At the moment, the security that we implement these days is not keeping pace with the hybrid and varied cloud offerings that are occurring.”

To date, various consortiums have banded together to develop cloud computing standards, including the Intel-backed Open Data Center Alliance and TM Forum’s Enterprise Cloud Leadership Council.

In the absence of public cloud standards, Suncorp’s executive general manager of enterprise services Paul Cameron said in-house, private cloud deployments would have to serve as aggregators and integrators of various services.

“I call it an internet service bus, an ISB,” he said, in reference to the enterprise service bus architecture model that facilitated heterogeneous enterprise IT environments.

“[The ISB] is that service integration layer in getting an elegant, secure, easy-to-use integration with a third party. Therein lies some challenges.”

Integration challenges could be amplified by “rogue” cloud services, commissioned by various business units without the approval of the IT department.

Pegrem said cloud deployments should be approved by an institution’s board of directors or executive management and by data architecture managers.

He urged institutions to “think strategically and hasten slowly” into cloud computing.

“If you think the offerings today are any good, they should be better tomorrow and probably cheaper,” he said.

“Think very carefully and think long and hard about what it is exactly you’re trying to do. And do your homework from end to end.”

Source:http://www.itnews.com.au/News/272446,apra-readies-data-management-guide.aspx

In its new report, titled, “Next Generation Data Center Strategies for Service Providers 2011,” Research and Markets focuses on the data center strategies for service providers in the year 2011.

From relatively basic services such as hosting and colocation to increasingly sophisticated services such as next-generation cloud computing offerings, the report examines strategies for data center service portfolio evolution. It also looks at strategies for winning greater IT services wallet-share among various customer types, including demand drivers and hurdles for IT outsourcing respective to each customer type, the company stated in a press release.

The report states that evolving their service portfolios from simple, low-touch services, service provides are investing heavily in data center infrastructure.

As businesses of various sizes outsource more of their IT operations to service providers, the market for data-center-based services is growing rapidly. Advances in virtualization and cloud computing make the economics of outsourcing IT infrastructure more compelling than ever, the report stated. While optimizing performance and security, the economic pressures of a long recession further encourage businesses to hand over more IT and data communication functions to experts who can distribute the cost of maintaining these functions, the report from Research and Markets stated.

The report looks at specific providers’ market positioning and service evolution strategies, including infrastructure development. According to the report, dynamics impacting build, buy and partner decisions facing service providers in this space, including analysis of recent M&A and partnerships. The report also focuses on how telecom companies fare with non-telecom companies in this market.

Recently, the company announced the addition of John Wiley and Sons Ltd’s new book “Data Mining in Grid Computing Environments” to their offering. Based around eleven international real life case studies and including contributions from leading experts in the field this groundbreaking book explores the need for the grid-enabling of data mining applications and provides a comprehensive study of the technology, techniques and management skills necessary to create them.

Source:http://dark-fiber.tmcnet.com/topics/3rd-party-colocation/articles/212789-research-markets-focuses-next-generation-data-center-strategies.htm

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Source:http://www.industrytoday.co.uk/it/outsourcing-data-processing-services-at-lowest-rate/6277

-CompuCom Systems, Inc., the leading IT outsourcing specialist, has been positioned by Gartner, Inc. in the “Challengers” quadrant of the 2011 Magic Quadrant for Data Center Outsourcing and Infrastructure Utility Services, North America.* The report examines 17 providers’ abilities to deliver data center outsourcing and infrastructure utility services and their vision for these services.

The Gartner report stated that “although the North American data center outsourcing market is mature, these trends — particularly consolidation, virtualization, green IT requirements, bundling of services, automation and industrialization of new service offerings in the areas of infrastructure utility services and cloud infrastructure-as-a-service — continue to drive rapid change. In the infrastructure managed services market, the lines between different approaches — colocation, hosting, DCO, infrastructure utility and cloud computing — are blurring as new infrastructure utility and cloud computing service offerings emerge.”

“We are proud to be positioned as a Challenger in the report,” stated Michael Keogh, vice president and general manager of CompuCom Integrated Shared Services. “We have made significant investments building out a broad range of infrastructure expertise. Building on our heritage of customer focus and process excellence, we have created a highly innovative service delivery platform that not only provides superior technical capability, but more importantly, better customer outcomes.”

The rigorous and multi-dimensional Magic Quadrant process evaluates and positions providers based on ability to execute and completeness of vision. It relies heavily on interviews with the provider’s clients.

Source:http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110801005074/en/CompuCom-Named-Industry-Challenger-Data-Center-Outsourcing

China has proposed strict new data security regulations that could hamper the country’s nascent IT outsourcing industry if made into law, even as they aim to give foreign business leaders confidence in the way the Chinese handle sensitive business and personal data.

China’s data privacy protection has long been considered one of the world’s weakest. But the government’s proposed data security guidelines may go too far in the opposite direction.
The People’s Republic of China took a step toward addressing its lack of comprehensive data privacy laws earlier this year: It issued a series of proposed data security guidelines intended to better protect the privacy of Chinese citizens and provide guidance for international businesses operating in the country. The document, developed in consult with China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, contains a set of broadly applicable rules and principles for storing, handling and transferring personal information.
Some business leaders worry the regulations, as they are currently written-with requirements stricter than those that exist in the U.S. or Europe-are too expansive and could cause serious damage to China’s growing IT and business process outsourcing industry and to its customers. Specifically, the proposed rules indicate that information sent to China would face restrictions in getting back out again.
To shed light on China’s proposed data privacy regulations, CIO.com interviewed Paul McKenzie, managing partner of the Beijing office of law firm Morrison & Foerster. He explains what the draft guidelines say, how likely they are to pass as written, and what offshore outsourcing customers can do to prepare for them.
CIO.com: Data security and intellectual property protection are always a concern when offshoring, but China has a particularly bad reputation in this area. Is that perception of lax information security in China warranted?
Paul McKenzie, managing partner, Morrison & Foerster: High levels of employee churn amongst outsourced service providers-particularly in the application development and maintenance field-coupled with limited cultural awareness of the importance of proprietary information tend to exacerbate the problem in China. Proper compartmentalization and practical data security controls can be worth far more than a contractual right, which may be difficult to enforce. An ounce of prevention is often worth a pound of cure.
What are the most noteworthy new personal data protection guidelines the Chinese government has proposed?
The most significant concepts in the guidelines involve:
An overarching principle that the holders of personal information keep such information confidential, and a specific requirement that express consent be obtained for all third-party disclosures of personal information;
A set of more specific principles to be observed during the collection, processing, use, transfer and maintenance of personal information;
Application of such principles specifically to personal data on computer networks (as opposed to other data storage media in hard copy form);
Restrictions on outsourcing the handling of personal information;
Prohibition on the export of personal information unless expressly permitted by law or otherwise approved by government authorities.
How do these restrictions compare to data privacy regulations in the U.S. and Europe?
The most significant way in which the guidelines are different from the U.S. and the European Union relates to the transfer of data. The U.S. has no general prohibition against transferring data across borders. Rather, U.S. companies that are regulated are expected to protect personal information wherever it is located-in the U.S. or outside of the U.S.
If these data security guidelines are enacted in China, express consent from an individual must be obtained in connection with the transfer of personal information to any other organization. Yet no exceptions are provided, unlike rules in other jurisdictions, such as the E.U., where sharing customer information is permitted without consent if it is necessary to complete a contract between the customer and the company. Without a clear definition of “other organizations,” the guidelines could even prevent transfers of data to company affiliates and could be a significant impediment to outsourcing.
Export of personal data from China would also be prohibited under the draft guidelines unless an exception was found under Chinese law. But without a clear Chinese law currently in effect, the guidelines, if made mandatory, would prohibit the export of such data even when a customer had consented.
That sounds like bad news for Western companies sending IT work to China-and for China’s outsourcing industry.
This would likely have a crippling effect on the growing Chinese outsourcing industry. Companies would be reluctant to outsource customer data processing to China-based providers for fear of a prohibition on having such data returned to them. However, there are reasons to expect that export carve-outs will eventually be forthcoming, as other sections on outsourcing in the draft guidelines are very much in line with requirements in other countries.
How likely is it that these rules will be tweaked to allow exceptions for IT outsourcing?
The guidelines are still very much in draft form, and regulators have received a heavy volume of comments from the public. While on the surface, some of the restrictions on export of data would appear draconian, we expect that more explicit exceptions will be put in place-for example, allowing transfer of data to affiliates and transfer of data back to the companies which outsourced their data processing to a firm in China.
What is the process by which such proposed regulations become law in China?
The drafts have been circulated as a potential “national standard” under China’s national standardization system. They would first be issued as a voluntary guideline lacking the force of law. Examples of other non-mandatory standards include standards for book numbering, codes for representing the names of countries, and use of punctuation marks.
We do believe that the regulators are testing the waters with these guidelines to see what form and substance national regulations on data privacy would ultimately take. Based on our conversations with relevant regulators, it is expected that these initial draft guidelines may still be changed significantly before being issued due to the extent of comments they have received from the business community.
In the absence of national guidance, have there been regional or city data privacy regulations in effect?
Several provinces and cities have introduced laws to try to regulate data privacy, particularly the online disclosure of personal information. By definition local legislation is limited in territorial scope, and it is therefore difficult to see how it might be sensibly applied to the Internet. The existing patchwork of local laws is actually one of the factors motivating the central government to accelerate progress towards the adoption of a unified national law based on the draft guidelines.
What should companies currently outsourcing IT to China or sending IT work to their own captive centers there do to prepare for increased data security scrutiny?
China recently enacted new criminal and tort laws that could be used to impose liability on companies if information is not properly protected. Companies should be thinking of how to develop internal control procedures to prevent rogue employees from misusing customer data. Incorporating some of these new guidelines may prove to be a useful defense in case of individual lawsuits.

Source:http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=5C82C446-1A64-6A71-CEC7F816F3E47ABB

The trend for outsourcing IT services is expected to continue into the New Year, experts predict.

According to ITContractor.com, IT outsourcing will continue to grow in 2011, with an increasing number of medium-sized businesses employing external workers.

Gerry McLaughlin, of ITContractor.com, said many companies will pursue outsourcing solutions next year although it will only be larger firms that will turn to contractors.

He added, however, that many companies who outsourced in the past are now considering “insourcing” because they did not fully get the benefits they expected and lost control of the vital IT side of their businesses.

Mr McLaughlin went on to predict that IT skills will continue to be in demand going forward.

“The skills that will be most in demand will be skills like C#, C++, Java and .Net. Banking and financial experience will be important as those organisations shake off the cobwebs,” he commented.

HP Enterprise Services UK Limited announced this week that it has signed a five-year outsourcing services agreement with BP International Limited valued in excess of $400 million (£258.4 million).

Source:http://www.comms-express.com/news/server-racks/data-cabinets/it-outsourcing-to-continue-in-2011-800307452/

The Philippines is expected to solidify its position as global leader in business process outsourcing (BPO) activities once Congress passes a special law securing personal data privacy, House Deputy Majority Leader and Pasig City Representative Roman Romulo said in a news release over the weekend.

“We are absolutely confident that more companies around the world will subcontract their business support jobs to Philippine providers once the proposed Act Protecting Individual Personal Data in Information and Communications Systems is decreed,” said Romulo, the bill’s author.

Romulo was referring to House Bill 1554, which seeks to regulate and establish fair practices in the gathering and use of an individual’s personal details in information-technology (IT) systems.

“We are very hopeful the bill will be passed soon, at least by the House initially,” Romulo said.

He said the measure would provide adequate safeguards against the potential misuse or mishandling of personal facts in IT-enabled services such as customer care and electronic data processing.

“This will sharpen the country’s competitive edge in BPO activities, besides reinforcing consumer trust and user confidence in electronic commerce,” Romulo said.

He pointed out that BPO providers handle a great deal of customer and account master files.

“Naturally, their principals wish to be assured that we have definite, predictable, and enforceable personal data privacy rules,” he said.

The principals of Philippine BPO subcontractors include some of the world’s largest banks, insurers, stockbrokers, hotel chains, airlines, travel operators, and newspaper publishers, as well as providers of health, telecommunication, Internet, and satellite or cable TV services.

According to IBM’s latest Global Locations Trend Annual Report, the Philippines emerged as the world’s largest recipient of new outsourcing business in 2009, edging out India.

“We are determined to support our BPO sector, which is remarkably labor-intensive. This is exactly what we need—relatively gainful and stable new jobs for our fresh college graduates and young professionals,” Romulo said.

Citing projections by industry groups, he said the country’s BPO activities have the potential to produce up to 700,000 additional full-time jobs over the next five years.

At present, the industry already employs some 600,000 workers in customer care; back offices; medical, legal and other data transcription; software development; animation; engineering design; and digital content services.

The industry is projected to generate up to $25 billion in annual revenues by 2015, nearly three times the estimated $9 billion this year, according to the Business Processing Association of the Philippines.

Source:http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/infotech/view/20101212-308536/Data-privacy-measure-to-bolster-PHs-top-rank-in-BPO–Romulo

As businesses began to increase their focus on having reliable and available data centers, centers began to grow in size and complexity. There is a single room housing a comparatively simple computer system, businesses now required very large Internet data centers. These large data centers are expensive to run, expensive to maintain, and expensive to staff.

These large data objects are out of reach of many small businesses. Thesesmaller organizations also needed speed Internet and high availability of data, but they do not have the resources to build such physically large and expense data centers. Even the equipment needed for such an endeavor was often out of financial reach of a small business.

Advent of Data Center Outsourcing
private centers became the go-to solution for small to medium information technology business needs. Data center outsourcing grew inpopularity, mainly because it was a practical and financially more viable solution to the problems created by large establishments, instead of data.

Not only are the centers are more affordable, they also remove many of the great responsibility of business. Disaster recovery, adhering to industry standards, providing a safe and welcoming environment for information storage and management, and other practice, many concerns can do at home data centers a logisticalnightmare. When organizations place their trust in a center off-site data, they do not need to own this burden alone.

What to Look For in Outsourcing Data Storage
When you outsource your data center responsibilities, you want to be selective in your choice of a data storage partner. Each moment that you network is up and running, your business is being affected. A high available data center will place a great emphasis on the following:

Qualified ITProfessionals: A data center is as good as its staff. Security and networking teams should be well trained, skilled, and experienced. Network technicians should be trained to the highest industry standards.

Proper environment: the environment of the data center is of great importance. There should be an uninterrupted power supply or backup generator, a highly sensitive in the HVAC system air filter, a fire suppression system, and proper installation of equipment.

HighConfidence: your data should be protected, and the first level of protection is physical security of the building. Should have controlled access, video surveillance, and extensive background checks of employees.

Start Line Equipment: Network infrastructure is one of the most important aspects of data center planning. When selecting a data center, make the equipment selection and infrastructure set-up to receive emphasis they deserve.

Strict ObservanceStandards: Industry standards are around for a reason. They help to provide data centers provide high quality service, maximum availability, and top-shelf security measures.

Advantage of Outsourcing

In house data centers simply can not offer the same kind of reliability and economic sustainability, as the center off-site data. An organization must allow its focus to remain on the health of its business operations, rather than getting bogged down in details of data management.Outsourcing your data center allows you to keep your focus where it should be: in your organization.

Nature of the complicated and expensive to center the data needs of today make it impractical for a company to expend huge amounts of resources in a data center at home. It just is not good financial sense. Instead, outsourcing your data center allows you to put those resources back to your company, further strengthening your organization.

Source:http://continuitydisasterrecovery.phoenix-blogs.com/data-center-to-build-and-manage-it-in-house-vs-outsourcing/

Data Dimensions, a leading provider of Information Technology (IT) and business process outsourcing (BPO) services and consulting, announced today the deployment of HIPAA 5010, ICD-10 readiness assessment and transition service to help guide conversion.

The secure, non-intrusive solution provides a comprehensive, cross functional diagnosis across all IT systems, providing an accurate impact analysis with estimates to develop a road map to the October 1, 2013 compliance deadline. In addition, the solution identifies probabilities of business impact by analyzing the historical ICD-9 data and provides a customized analytical report.

Based on General Equivalence Mapping (GEM), created by the National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, American Hospital Association, and American Health Information Management Association, our comprehensive translation tool provides accurate forward and backward conversions across open relational database systems and all versions from legacy to newer platforms.

As Data Dimensions’ President and CEO, Jon Boumstein noted, “Although HIPAA 5010 and ICD-10 conversion can seem overwhelming, the transition is an opportunity for significant improvement to health care in areas such as, improving quality care; increased accuracy in claims processing; detecting and preventing health care fraud and abuse; and better research with trending in disease and treatment. As part of this IT business service offering, Data Dimensions is excited to be part of shaping future health care by leading the way for clients to meet the necessary state and federal requirements; focusing on easing the burden while minimizing risks.”

Source:http://www.kansascity.com/2010/10/05/2279350/data-dimensions-icd-10-readiness.html

The trend toward converged infrastructure — a whole greater than sum of the traditional IT hardware, software, networking and storage parts — is going both downstream and upstream.

HP today announced how combining and simplifying the parts of IT infrastructure makes the solution value far higher on either end of the applications distribution equation: At branch offices and the next-generation of compact and mobile all-in-one data center containers.

Called the HP Branch Office Networking Solution, the idea is that engineering the fuller IT and communications infrastructure solution, rather then leaving the IT staff and — even worse — the branch office managers to do the integrating, not only saves money, it allows the business to focus just on the applications and processes. This focus, by the way, on applications and processes — not the systems integration, VOIP, updates and maintenance — is driving the broad interest in cloud computing, SaaS and outsourcing. [Disclosure: HP is a sponsor of BriefingsDirect podcasts.]

HP’s announcements today in Barcelona are also marked by an emphasis on an ecosystem of partners approach, especially the branch office solution, which packages brand-name 14 apps, appliances and networking elements to make smaller sub-organizations an integrated part of the larger enterprise IT effort. The partner applications include WAN acceleration, security, unified communications
and service delivery management.

Appliances need integration too

You could think of it as a kitchen counter approach to appliances, which work well alone but don’t exactly bake the whole cake. Organizing, attaching and managing the appliances — with an emphasis on security and centralized control for the whole set-up — has clearly been missing in branch offices. The E5400 series switch accomplishes the convergence of the discrete network appliances. The HP E5400 switch with new HP Advanced Services ZL module is available worldwide today with pricing starting at $8,294.

Today’s HP news also follows a slew of product announcements last month that targeted the SMB market, and the “parts is parts” side of building out IT solutions.

To automate the branch office IT needs, HP is bringing together elements of the branch IT equation from the likes of Citrix, Avaya, Microsoft, and Riverbed. They match these up with routers, switches and management of the appliances into a solution. Security and access control across the branches and the integrated systems are being addressed via HP TippingPoint security services. These provide granular control of application access, with the ability to block access to entire websites – or features – across the enterprise and its branches.

Worried about too much Twitter usage at those branches? The new HP Application Digital Vaccine (AppDV) service delivers specifically designed filters to the HP TippingPoint Intrusion Prevention System (IPS), which easily control access to, or dictate usage of, non-business applications.

The branch automation approach also support a variety of network types, which opens the branch offices to a be able to exploit more types of applications delivery: from terminal serving apps, to desktop virtualization, to wireless and mobile. The all-WiFi office might soon only need a single, remotely and centrally managed locked-down rack in a lights-out closet, with untethered smartphones, tablets and notebooks as the worker nodes. Neat.

When you think of it, the new optimized branch office (say 25 seats and up) should be the leader in cloud adoption, not a laggard. The HP Branch Office Networking Solution — with these market-leading technology partners — might just allow the branches to demonstrate a few productivity tricks to the rest of the enterprise.

Indeed, we might just think of many more “branch offices” as myriad nodes within and across the global enterprises, where geography becomes essential irrelevant. Moreover, the branch office is the SMB, supported by any number and types of service providers, internal and external, public and private, SaaS and cloud.

Data centers get legs

Which brings us to the other end of the HP spectrum for today’s news. The same “service providers” that must support these automated branch offices — in all their flavors and across the org chart vagaries and far-flung global locations — must also re-engineer their data centers for the new kinds of workloads, wavy demand curves, and energy- and cost-stingy operational requirements.

So HP has built a sprawling complex in Houston — the POD Works — to build an adaptable family of modular data centers — the HP Performance Optimized Datacenter (POD) — in the shape of 20- and 40-foot tractor-trailer-like containers. As we’ve seen from some other vendors, these mobile data centers in a box demand only that you drive the things up, lock the brake and hook up electricity, water and a high-speed network. I suppose you also drop them on the roof with a helicopter, but you get the point.

But in today’s economy, the efficiency data rules the roost. The HP PODs deliver 37 percent more efficiency and cost 45 percent less than a traditional brick-and-mortar data centers, says HP.

Inside the custom-designed container is stuffed with highly engineered racks and the cooling, optimized networks and storage, as well as the server horsepower — in this case HP ProLiant SL6500 Scalable Systems, from 1 to 1,000 nodes. While HP is targeting these at the high performance computing and service provider needs — those that are delivering high-scale and/or high transactional power — the adaptability and data center-level design may well become more the norm than the exception.

The PODs are flexible at supporting the converged infrastructure engines for energy efficiency, flexibility and serviceability, said HP. And the management is converged too, via Integrated Lights-Out Advanced (ILO 3), part of HP Insight Control.

The POD parts to be managed are essentially as many as eight servers, or up to four servers with 12 graphic processing units (GPU), in single four-rack unit enclosures. The solution further includes the HP ProLiant s6500 chassis, the HP ProLiant SL390s G7 server and the HP ProLiant SL170s G6 servers. These guts can be flexible upped to accommodate flexible POD designs, for a wide variety and scale of data-center-level performance and applications support requirements.

Built-in energy consciousness

You may not want to paint the containers green, but you might as well. The first release features optimized energy efficiency with HP ProLiant SL Advanced Power Manager and HP Intelligent Power Discovery to improve power management, as well as power supplies designed with 94 percent greater energy efficiently, said HP.

Start saving energy with delivering more than a teraFLOP per unit of rack space to increase compute power for scientific rendering and modeling applications. Other uses may well make themselves apparent.

Have data center POD, will travel? At least the wait for a POD is more reasonable. With HP POD-Works, PODs can be assembled, tested and shipped in as little as six weeks, compared with one year or longer, to build a traditional brick-and-mortar data center, said HP.

Hey, come to think of it, for those not blocking it with the TippingPoint IPS, I wish Twitter had a few of these on those PODs on the bird strings instead of that fail whale. Twitter should also know that multiple PODs or a POD farm can support large hosting operations and web-based or compute-intensive applications, in case they want to buy Google or Facebook.

Indeed, as could computing grains traction, data centers may be located (and co-located) based on more than whale tails. Compliance to local laws, for business continuity and to best serve all those thousands of automated branch offices might also spur demand for flexible and efficient mobile data centers.

Converged infrastructure may have found a converged IT market, even one that spans the globe.

Source:http://www.zdnet.com/blog/gardner/hp-leverages-converged-infrastructure-across-it-spectrum-to-simplify-branch-offices-and-container-based-data-centers/3884

Global technology giant Xerox Corporation — keen to shed the “copier company” tag — is spreading its footprint across a slew of businesses that include business process outsourcing, document management processes and IT outsourcing. The change in track for Xerox comes at a time when data usage is
growing at a fast pace across the globe.

Xerox’s new businesses comprise services such as billing electronic toll collections to a driver’s credit card, payroll processing, travel and expense accounting, data centre, network and server support, among others. The company expects telecom, banking and insurance to be its key revenue driving sectors in India, along with manufacturing, public sector and retail.

“Things are okay for us and going well, but this is about change. The reason why we are going about business process outsourcing is not because we have a terrible technology business. Our technology business is doing very well and growing across the world. But we have a lot more capabilities that we can use and build upon,” Ursula M. Burns, chairman and CEO, Xerox Corporation told Hindustan Times.

As data grows exponentially, the veracity and usefulness of data usage declines, Burns said. “Our approach is to try and make this data overflow useful and applicable for business and the world.”

Globally, Xerox earns nearly 50 per cent of its revenues from services, up from just 23 per cent last year. In developing economies such as India, where hardware still accounts for a major chunk of its revenues, Xerox hopes services will account for 50 per cent of revenues by 2013.

Last year, Xerox acquired data major Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) for $6.4 billion and is scouting for more buys, Burns said. “The large ACS-kind of acquisition and medium-sized deals of around $1.5 billion will not happen in the near term. But deals in the range of $10 to $100 million are more likely.”

Source:http://www.hindustantimes.com/Xerox-bets-big-on-data-management/Article1-607814.aspx

Over the years, data entry services outsourcing has turned out to be an effective business strategy for achieving high-end objectives such as cost reductions and efficiency improvements. The overall quantum of benefits, however, depends a lot on the competence of the data entry services outsourcing provider. As such, if businesses want to maximize benefits, it is advisable that they do their homework when choosing their data entry services outsourcing partner. Here are some essentials that the data entry services outsourcing partner should be able to provide to clients.

A highly secure work environment

Data entry services outsourcing often involves the processing of confidential data and information, which can be misused if leaked out to third-parties. Businesses may have to bear irrecoverable losses in these cases and that’s why it is necessary that the data entry services outsourcing provider implements the best security measures at the data entry work space. A secure work space will be one that includes a combination of offline and online security initiatives. Offline security would include manual checking of employees, creating restricted areas for preventing unauthorized access, and safe disposal of printed documents. Online security initiatives would include use of automated, intelligent tracking and recording systems, PGP encryption, secure FTP servers and password protected access nodes

Uninterrupted connectivity

Data entry services outsourcing projects often require a fast turnaround time, usually in the range of 24 to 48 hours. This makes it necessary for the data entry services outsourcing provider to put in place appropriate systems and infrastructure, as might be required for providing seamless connectivity. If there are FTP download and upload problems, the data entry services outsourcing provider will never be able to meet the deadline. Businesses need to look out for providers that have multiple leased lines comprising both wired and wireless connections.

Only when the above essentials have been accounted for, should businesses start working on other desirables such as the offered service rates. It will help them select the most appropriate data entry services outsourcing provider and derive maximum benefits from their outsourced data entry projects.

Source:http://cordei.com/2010/10/01/data-entry-services-outsourcing-some-essential-prerequisites/

KST Electric, Ltd., a subsidiary of Rosendin Electric, the nation’s largest private electrical contractor and a 100-percent employee-owned company, announced today it has signed a contract with Data Foundry, a leading provider of wholesale and retail data center outsourcing, co-location, and disaster recovery service, to wire the first phase of a $150 million data center in Austin, Texas. This project named Austin Data Center 2 (ADC2) is the first of a multi-phase construction project that will become a new, 250,000 square-foot master-planned greenfield data center – the only purpose-built, carrier-neutral data center in central Texas.

ADC2 is built upon a next-generation, 40-acre campus called the Data Ranch, which when completed will have capabilities to deliver over 100 megawatts of power to over one million square feet of data center space. In addition, the fully redundant ADC2 is powered by two independent substations and will feature an end-to-end underground power supply offering resilient and scalable power options.

KST Electric will be responsible for wiring the entire first phase of ADC2, including providing flexible power delivery for rooms from 2,500 square feet and up, as well as flexible power redundancy from N+1 to 2N+1 configurations. The first phase of ADC2 will support 12 MW of utility power with two redundant 12 MW feeds into the building and two independent substations, each independently connected to the ERCOT grid. All data and telecom cabling will be underground in a concrete-encased duct.

A unique feature of the current build-out is that unlike most construction projects, much of the wiring is in the open rather than hidden behind walls. Data Foundry plans to display key power rooms during tours and use KST Electric’s handiwork to showcase the wiring versatility and power capabilities of its new greenfield data center for prospective tenants.

“This is a tremendous opportunity for KST to not only demonstrate our prowess at wiring a mission-critical project such as the new Data Foundry data center, but it also gives us a rare opportunity to display our work,” said Kenneth Tumlinson, President of KST Electric.

“With the demand for high-quality data center and disaster recovery services from companies nationwide, we decided to build our new facility from the ground up, rather than compromising quality by retrofitting an existing building,” said Edward Henigin, Chief Technology Officer for Data Foundry. “We set out to build a state-of-the-art facility that competes with the best in the world. After a rigorous evaluation process, we chose KST Electric for its expertise and dedication to excellence. Together we plan to make our new Austin facility a showcase unrivaled in the Central Texas region.”

KST Electric is working with Holder Construction Company, a leading data center contractor with projects across the United States. Gensler is handling architectural design, and CCG Facilities Integration is providing engineering services for the project.

Source:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/kst-electric-signs-contract-to-wire-new-data-foundry-data-center-in-austin-104103833.html

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Source:http://www.live-pr.com/en/outsourcing-data-entry-r1048573987.htm