Saturday, April 25, 2009

What is the position of Equinix within the financial industry?

an interview with John Knuff, Equinix Director of Business Development/Global, on a customer's site (emphasis added on the Amsterdam news):

>>What have you seen change in the past few years in terms of what is needed and what you provide?

A couple of things have changed. There is now recognition from major exchanges that co-location is important to their client base. They understand that traders want proximity to their matching engine. We’re also seeing increasing fragmentation in the markets – first in the securities world in the U.S. and now in Europe with the creation of multi-lateral trading facilities (MTFs). We’ll be seeing this in Asia soon as well. With all of the fragmentation, what’s important again is the network-rich offering. If your firm does market sweeps or smart order routing, it’s critical that you be in a location where you don’t have a latency disadvantage.

How have 9/11 and the recent economic crisis affected your way of doing business?
9/11 had a tremendous impact, of course, on everyone. In our case, we were very focused on September 17, 2001, when we were reconnecting networks and service providers and addressing the major outage in Manhattan as the markets prepared to re-open. Post 9/11, what really hit home for companies was the importance of eliminating the possibility of single points of failure and putting disaster recovery plans in place. There was increasingly demand for a location that was geographically distant from the primary site.

In regard to the current economic crisis, we’ve seen an uptick in business and acceleration of projects. Those firms that haven’t been exclusively employing electronic trading are recognizing the ability to reduce costs and increase efficiencies. Firms are also increasingly interested in pre-trade and post-trade risk monitoring. With all of the M&A activity, that tends to lead to a good upsurge in demand for our services as well.

What is your outlook for 2009?
In 2009, we are expanding our presence in Asia beyond Sydney, Singapore, Hong Kong and Tokyo. In addition, we’re extending our Equinix Financial Exchange offering to Amsterdam, which is a good location for firms trading between London and Frankfurt. This will supplement our Chicago, New York, London, Paris and Frankfurt offerings.

some Equinix comments post earnings...

Post earnings comments on the web:

Data Center Links


Equinix Q1 Profit Triples at $15.5 Million

Equinix announced their first quarter 2009 results today. Proving that the demand for colocation and data center services is still high, they had some good numbers.

I loved the reference to the old times and Jay:

When searching around for Equinix today I ran across a pretty interesting article at Forbes.com. It was from December 2, 1999. It gives the historical perspective on just how far Equinix has come..... I still put Jay Adelson as one of my top "Tech People to Know" list.

I really think the original team deserves a big thanks for their vision and the business model they left as heritage. And Jay is really a great guy, too.

Slacy_book_party_039

Telecom Rumblings

Equinix Strides Easily Into Q2

Colocation specialist Equinix (EQIX: chart, news) shrugged off the effects of the economy and posted some nice results.

Overall, a solid quarter and a great lead in for the rest of the datacenter space.

Data Center Knowledge

Equinix: ‘Significant Pickup’ in March

Colocation and interconnection specialist Equinix (EQIX) saw a “significant pickup” in customer activity in the month of March, as customers that had deferred decisions made commitments.

Equinix said it was continuing to see strength in bookings from network companies and financial services firms with electronic trading operations. The company added 161 new customers in the quarter, and now has 2,384 customers leasing 44,500 cabinets. Smith said the company would continue to invest in expanding its facilities in key markets, and will be able to self-fund the construction.

Thanks to both Telecom Rumblings and Data Center Links for their mentions about our articles.

AppNexus

AppNexus provides the infrastructure building blocks needed to deploy and manage high-availability production infrastructure quickly, securely, and reliably, with a minimum of capital expense.
  • High-end dedicated servers, which you can provision in minutes with the OS image of your choice
  • Geographically disparate data centers, with dns technology to route users to the closest one
  • Carrier-class networking, redundant from box to backbone at 1GigE or more
  • Private vlans and configurable firewalls to protect your data
  • Global and local load balancing on redundant f5 machines
  • Isilon storage cluster with tens of terabytes of capacity and 300Mb/s performance
These building blocks are provisioned on demand using a single set of apis and command-line tools.
Adding a new instance takes under five minutes; configuring a complex load-balanced application
takes under an hour.
The simplicity of infrastructure as a service means a minimum of headaches and hr investment.
And production-class slas, 24/7 phone and email support, and internal and external monitoring
make AppNexus a perfect fit for the enterpris.

Datacenters

AppNexus currently runs two datacenters: LAX1 in Los Angeles and NYM1 in Secaucus, NJ. We feel that it is important to have multiple, geographically disparate datacenters that each functions as a self-contained entity with its own set of equipment.

Equinix

Equinix is the largest global network-neutral datacenter and Internet exchange services company in the world, with centers in 18 key markets across North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific and a total global footprint of more than 3 million square feet. More than 300 different carriers and ISPs now participate in Equinix IBX centers, including the world's largest IP backbone networks. Network and service provider customers include AT&T, British Telecom, MCI, Sprint, SBC, KDDI, and Level(3). Enterprise and content provider customers include IBM, Electronic Arts, Gap, General Electric, Google, Hotwire, Microsoft, Sony, Yahoo, and AppNexus. Equinix serves more than 1,700 customers worldwide.

Photographs of NYM1 from our initial build.

Floor Layout and Network Cabling

All racks are laid out in a hot/cold aisle configuration. This means that cold air is dropped down on the intake side of servers and exhausted out the back. This helps keep server temperatures low reducing failures and increasing hardware lifetime.

Akamai to Appeal Decision in Patent Litigation Case

we'll see how the market will react on Monday...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Akamai Technologies, Inc. today announced that it intends to appeal a decision by the judge presiding over its patent infringement suit against Limelight Networks, Inc. in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts. The decision, released today, granted a Limelight motion challenging a prior jury finding of infringement, based on new case law.

Tier1 Research Summit

APRIL 28
HYATT DULLES
HERNDON, VIRGINIA


2009

Friday, April 24, 2009

EUROPEAN DATA CENTRE AWARDS ANNOUNCED AT GALA CEREMONY

EUROPEAN DATA CENTRE AWARDS ANNOUNCED AT GALA CEREMONY

Best Pan European Data Centre Operator, Equinix,(Europe)

“The Awards received nominations from companies across Europe, central and eastern Europe and the panel has undertaken a rigorous review over the past three months assessing the nominations,” commented Ashley Davis, Managing Director, JP Morgan Chase, and chair of the Judges Panel. “The calibre of entry was high and very competitive. The awards have been judged on the quality of entry and we feel that these awards provide the winners with outstanding marketing differentiation.”

5th Data Centres Europe is the leading regional forum for data centre, managed services, outsourcing and cloud computing businesses. The conference brings together Data centre operators, service providers, telcos, network infrastructure providers, managed services specialists, systems integrators, enterprise and government IT directors, property and investment firms, law firms, professional intermediaries, consulting firms, regulatory bodies, and supplier organizations to inform and update, provide critical insight and offer top level networking opportunities.

Attended by hundreds of UK and international executives, the event has sustained its reputation as the leading content and networking rich brand in the data centre sector. Entries for 2010 will open this autumn.

Erlanger to bolster cancer program

from TimesFreePress.com:

>>Erlanger hospital has received state approval to buy new equipment and establish a specialty center that will improve its cancer program dramatically, officials said at Thursday night’s board of trustees meeting.

The Tennessee Health Services and Development Agency this week approved Erlanger’s request to purchase the “CyberKnife” radiosurgery technology, which provides for noninvasive surgery to dissolve tumor tissue. The cost to open the center will be $7.3 million.

Piper Jaffray Initiates Coverage on Equinix (EQIX) with a Buy; Peer Group Leader

Piper Jaffray & Co. initiates coverage on Equinix Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX) with a Buy. Price target $75.

Piper analyst says, "Equinix is the clear leader in its peer group. It is carrier neutral, meaning customers can choose from over 200 telecom providers, it is the only truly global provider, and it has created a network effect in its data centers that customers pay a premium for...Equinix has enough capital to expand its portfolio in '09 and gain further share, but it also has the discipline to pull back quickly in response to demand trends. Equinix could be a consolidator of attractively priced assets. The current management team has consistently met and beat expectations. Acquisitions have been prudent, and very well timed."

Anova Technologies Unveils the Lowest Latency Trading Route in the U.S.

Anova Technologies, a newly-formed technology provider, is already transforming the financial industry by offering the fastest Chicago to New York/ New Jersey trading route in the U.S. to date, with a round trip time of 17.2 m/s.

Chicago, IL (PRWEB) April 24, 2009 -- In the electronic world of algorithmic trading, a single millisecond is often the difference between profit and loss. Anova Technologies, which was founded on the premise of bringing best-of-breed technology to all market participants, is now offering an industry leading, low-latency solution that bridges the two US financial hubs of Chicago and New York.

Previously, the standard trading route took 21.2 m/s. Anova Technologies is now offering a significantly higher speed route dubbed "The Redline", which has been measured at a round trip time of 17.2 m/s. This results in a reduction of trading and strategy latency of up to 4m/s. With 1G and 10G wave circuits offered, Anova ensures the most advanced communications for their bandwidth-intensive trading clients.

Founder of Anova, Michael Persico said, "When Anova first launched, we promised unparalleled speed to the markets and that is what Anova has, and will continue to deliver. We believe 'The Redline' is a significant stride for the trading industry and, with a savings of 4m/s our clients are supplied with that unmatched speed needed to get trades filled before the rest."

"The Redline" connects the two of the most utilized financial industry collocation centers in the U.S. from Equinix at 350 E. Cermak, Chicago to NASDAQ at 1400 Federal, Carteret, NJ and has an actual measured latency of 17.2 m/s gateway to gateway along with a guaranteed wavelength latency of 17.9 m/s. A second East Coast collocation facility is scheduled to come online in late Q2 at 300 East Blvd in Weehawken, NJ.

Persico continues, "By offering this high-speed connection from New York to Chicago, Anova is bridging the long-distance East Coast/Midwest gap, making inter-exchange, trade and arbitroge execution faster than ever. Anova promised to offer tomorrow's technology today and 'The Redline' fulfils that promise."

Equinix broadens data center capacity in Netherlands

from Telecom.paper BV, subscription required:

>>Equinix broadens data center capacity in Netherlands

Friday 24 April 2009 | 10:34 AM
CET

Glocal data centre operator Equinix has opened a further 500 square meters of space in its Enschede data centre in The Netherlands.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

"Haptic Effects With Proximity Sensing " eliminates lag time between touch and vibration!

from the IV MB, by cellodude:

>>"Haptic Effects With Proximity Sensing " eliminates lag time between touch and vibration!

This fantastically cool tech from IMMR eliminates the 50ms lag time between touching the screen and receiving vibration confirmation (caused by the time it takes the vibration motor to ramp up). It's one small step for technology, one giant leap for virtual reality.

But wait, there's more! Later in the document the language turns to fascinating haptic gesture control without touching the screen. The haptics are felt by the hand holding the portable device.

This really ices IMMR's dominance in the touch-screen feedback arena. If any company wants ZERO lag for touch-screen interactions or magical gesture control haptics they'll have to go through IMMR.

Excerpts from the patent application:

[United States Patent Application 20090106655

April 23, 2009

Haptic Effects With Proximity Sensing

Abstract

A method of generating haptic effects on a device includes detecting the presence of an object near an input area of the device and generating a haptic effect on the device in response to the presence detection.

Inventors: Grant; Danny A.; (Quebec, CA); Gregorio; Pedro; (Quebec, CA); Lacroix; Robert A.; (Quebec, CA)

Assignee Name: Immersion Corporation

Filed: May 4, 2007

Though down, LG beat estimates with strong (haptic) handset sales

cellodude on the IV MB:

>>Though down, LG beat estimates with strong (haptic) handset sales

[Lee Sung-Joon, an analyst at SK Securities, commented: "LG's mobile phone division showed strong profit, especially in China and North America. Instead of selling more in terms of quantity, LG sold more expensive phones."

Strong elements of the LG handset portfolio include CDMA, high end mediaphones like the [IMMR haptic enabled] Arena and Renoir, and strong sales to China.]

http://www.rethink-wireless.com/?article_id=1291

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Saint Elizabeth touts new CyberKnife

from the Lincoln Journal Star:

>>There’s little doubt in the mind of 57-year-old Ken Adams his fighting chance against pancreatic cancer — one of the deadliest — has much to do with Lincoln’s new CyberKnife.

There’s also little doubt about it in the mind of Dr. Dina Howell-Burke, who oversees the sophisticated machine at Saint Elizabeth Regional Medical Center.

The things CyberKnife does, she says, “are not done by any other known equipment in the world.”

Immersion - Gadelius

from the IV MB, by cellodude:

Notice that IMMR mentioned Gadelius earlier this month

We discovered from IMMR's own events calendar that Gadelius was mentioned as representing IMMR at ISAKOS 2009 April 4-9 [International Society of Arthroscopy, Knee Surgery and Orthopaedic Sports Medicine] with IMMR's Arthroscopic simulator
Of all the countries listed, Japan has the most 2009 events scheduled (11) which was mysterious, now explained. The most important sentence from the PR is "The companies will immediately begin sales and marketing initiatives aimed at bringing the highest level of advanced virtual reality medical training simulators, curricula, and services to the Japanese market as it transitions from shared regional medical facilities to new centers located in all hospitals." That's multiple hospitals per city, which shows the great importance of the upcoming events. I wish them great luck with this golden opportunity.
Remaining Japanese events this year:
Japan July Japan Society for Medical Education
Japan
Japan July 16-18 JSGS - Japanese Society of Gastroenterology Surgical Congress
Osaka, Japan
Japan October 14-17 JDDW 2009
Kyoto, Japan
Japan November SimEXPO 2009
Tokyo, Japan

The sixth CK in China

from the IV MB, by yyy60:

>>The sixth CK in China

http://www.njzy666.com/jianduanshebei.asp

The Nanjing General Hospital of Nanjing Military Command acquires a CK. It is the fifth CK in Mainland (the sixth when Hong Kong is included).

Monday, April 20, 2009

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is the first Nokia phone implementing Immersion haptic feedback. This is taken from Nokia's 1Q 2009 conference call, from Seeking Alpha:

>>Along these lines, in Q1, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, our first mass market touch screen product, combined with our Comes With Music service was a big success story. The Nokia 5800 has seen very strong demand in every country, where it has been launched. Already in Q1, the 5800 was Nokia’s number one revenue and gross margin generating product and was the number one volume and value product in the UK.

Despite some capacity constraints, we received approximately 2.6 million units in Q1, as the product ramped up globally. Today, all sales channels are open. We have increased our capacity and we are shipping the Nokia 5800 at the rate of more than 1 million units per month.

Equinix 1Q 2009 earnings forecast

Equinix (EQIX) will be reporting 1Q 2009 results on Wednesday, April 22. Its numbers will probably represent a bellwether for the whole colocation sector.

Equinix guidance, given on its last conference call, was forecasting revenues in the range of $ 198.0 to $ 200.0 million (consensus is at $ 198.91 million), and EBITDA is expected to be between $ 86.0 and $ 88.0 million, with cash gross margins at 63%. The Company doesn't usually issue outlook for EPS, while analysts expect Equinix to earn $ 0.18, with a wide bracket between their numbers, ranging from $ 0.06 to $ 0.29.

The Company is also expected to spend a large part of its forecasted 2009 CAPEX in the quarter, with capital expenditures expected to be between $ 100.0 and $ 110.0 million, including $ 20.0 million of ongoing CAPEX.

This quarter should not see a strong impact from currency fluctuations (which we expect just slightly negative for the Euro and the British Pound) like in the 4Q 2008, when the European subsidiary grew on a same currency basis 11%, although it showed a 4.6% decline in US currency.

We also take the opportunity to resume the guidance issued for the whole year, as the wording of the P/R announcing the conference call (The company will discuss first quarter results ... and outlook for the second quarter and full year 2009) seems to suggest the intention to update or narrow full year outlook:

For the full year of 2009, total revenues are expected to be in the range of $855.0 to $875.0 million. Total year cash gross margins are expected to be approximately 63%. Cash selling, general and administrative expenses are expected to be in the range of $160.0 to $170.0 million. Adjusted EBITDA for the year is expected to be between $365.0 and $385.0 million. Capital expenditures for 2009 are expected to be in the range of $325.0 to $375.0 million, comprised of approximately $60.0 million of ongoing capital expenditures and $265.0 to $315.0 million of expansion capital expenditures.

To give a better sense of how some data are trending, we will include in this article some charts, courtesy of Gridstone Research, related to some of the metrics discussed (click on the charts to enlarge):



As usual in preparation for the earnings, we will go through some of the numbers that will help give some insight into the Company's performance:

Cabinets and customers addition

Although these numbers see some kind of fluctuation between quarters (ranging from 1,250 to 1,600 cabinets added per quarter and 110 to 178 new customers per quarter in 2008), it will be interesting to monitor the data to get a feeling of how customers are behaving in this new economic climate. Given Equinix comments last quarter (slowdown in decision making for new customers), the analysis of these two numbers combined will help understand where the Company will get its growth drivers in 2009.


Interconnection business

This is the latest chart, taken from the Equinix site, showing the amount of traffic being exchanged on the common switch (GigE Exchange). This is just a small part of what is happening inside the Equinix US data centers, as most traffic is still exchanged through private cross connections, but both metrics, usually given as number of GigE ports and number of cross connects, will give insight into Equinix financial performance, especially as this business is extremely margin rich for the Company.

Further expansion

You can find an updated IBX center expansion chart at this link.

It is useful to remember that Equinix has room to add up to 90 million of expansion CAPEX without increasing the announced capital expenditure guidance for 2009.

As we noticed on our blog, the Loudoun's Board of Supervisors recently approved plans for construction of a data center in Ashburn, which could be one the next moves for the Company.

MRR per cabinet (Monthly Recurring Revenue)

Here is an updated chart showing the steady increase of this metric. The latest data centers, which are usually sold at a higher price per cabinet, because of their power density, should contribute to strengthening this metric.


Sunday, April 19, 2009

Samsung display unit sees robust smartphone growth

SEOUL (Reuters) - Samsung Mobile Display, a mobile display venture of Samsung Electronics, said on Sunday the global smartphone market was expected to grow to 500 million units in 2012 from 170 million in 2009.

Despite slowing economies worldwide and falling sales in the overall mobile phone market, sales of feature-jammed smartphones, such as Apple's iPhone and Research In Motion's BlackBerry, continue growing.

Smartphones would account for 29 percent of the entire mobile phone market in 2012, compared with 14 percent in 2009, Samsung Mobile Display predicted in a statement summarizing its recent industry event presentation.

Nokia N-Gage gaming platform

from the IV MB, by cellodude:

Nokia N-Gage gaming platform has IMMR haptic games, will release with new Nokia N97 in Europe in July

IndiaGames, mentioned in the first article, is an IMMR partner. No doubt other games will have haptics too. Is this the beginning of Vic's dream, $$$ from down-loadable content?
Also this makes the Nokia N97 with N-Gage the first mobile gaming platorm with rumble. Sony is planning a new PSP and I hope that has rumble too, but don't count on it.


[Posted: 2009-04-10 16:55:57+05:30 IST
Updated: Apr 10, 2009 at 1655 hrs IST
New York: Nokia India announced the availability of its gaming service, ‘N-Gage’ in India with additional games and an expanded online offering.
Nokia N-Gage is a part of Nokia’s internet services brand Ovi and brings alive a made-for-mobile gaming service to provide consumers the power to tailor and personalize the internet experience.
N-Gage will initially bring a catalogue of 30 exceptional titles developed by leading global as well as Indian publishers such as EA Mobile, Gameloft, Glu Mobile and IndiaGames, in addition to Nokia Games Publishing.

Nokia has also called upon Indian mobile and web application developers to create innovative consumer applications exclusively for the upcoming Nokia N97. The 100 best applications will be made available to consumers in India and across the globe on the Nokia N97.]

Akamai

Peering Information
ASN 20940
IRR AS-SET AS-AKAMAI
Peering Information http://www.akamai.com/peering/

Equinix Chicago 206.223.119.102 10 GE Pending May 2009

Kiene and crew keen on new Web challanges

HT to crvcybr on the Yahoo MB. No official announcement from Internap. Article from Lincoln Journal Star:

Steve Kiene, his keyboard and crew have moved on again, to another opportunity, delivering leading-edge, rich content on Web sites from a truly worldwide network.

After selling MindVision and eSellerate, his two technology companies, to Digital River in 2006, and sharing the proceeds with employees, the local techno-preneur carried on with a startup, Little Big Endian, at the Technology Park.

Then things changed again, as they do in Kiene-land.

He was doing some consulting for an Atlanta company, Internap Network Services Corp., which decided they needed him and colleague Ben Rush.

So they wound down Little Big Endian and Kiene became senior director, then vice president of engineering of Internap, in Lincoln, not Atlanta.

Story Photo
Steve Kiene is the VP of engineering for Internap, an internet solutions company based out of Atlanta.