Google invests a further €150 million in Finnish data centres following a visit by President Sauli Niinistö at Google's Hamina server hall. 

The investment will expand the Hamina facility by effectively doubling the site's footprint. 

The building housing the Hamina server hall was a part of a 56-year old paper mill Google bought from paper maker Stora Enso for around $52m back in 2009. It has underground tunnels running into the Baltic Sea-- creating an ideal cooling system using cold water from the Gulf of Finland.

The expansion will take over a Read more...

It is easy for one to assume Microsoft makes more revenue from Windows than something as humble as servers-- but they'd be wrong. In fact, the Microsoft Servers and Tools division generated more revenue than Windows in fiscal 2012. 

The S&T division covers server versions of Windows, database software, Azure cloud services, software development tools, systems management products and enterprise services. 

As one can see in the Silicon Alley Insider chart, 2012 S&T revenues total $18.7 billion, while Windows revenue reaches $18.4bn. 

One has to keep Read more...

The Superior Court of California decides in favour of HP in the legal battle against Oracle-- ruling Oracle of breach of contract when it dropped HP Itanium server support for future database software versions.

The court demands "Oracle’s obligation to continue to offer its products on HP’s Itanium-based server platforms lasts until such time as HP discontinues the sales of its Itanium-based servers."

Worthy in the least of a made-for-TV legal drama, the Oracle vs. HP war started back in 2010, when HP kicked then CEO Mark Hurd following his re-routing expense money to soft core porn star turned B-film actress Jodie Fisher. A tennis buddy of no other than Oracle CEO Larry Ellison (who described the firing "the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs many years ago”) Hurd quickly got a job running Oracle sales and operations.  Read more...

VMware acquires software-defined networking (SDN) and network virtualisation specialist Nicira for $1.3 billion, bringing news of big purchases of young start-ups to the datacentre segment. 

Nicira is a 5-year old company with only one finished product to its name-- the Nicira Network Virtualisation Platform (NVP), a software solution allowing customers to create "thousands" of virtual networks (complete with virtual switching to virtualised layer 3-7 services) on top of existing physical networks. 

NVP users include AT&T, DreamHost, eBay, NTT and Read more...