Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Google Involved in Trans-Pacific Cable Construction

Google is a member of a consortium for constructing a new trans-pacific cable system named "Unity". This 10,000km cable system, connecting Tokyo and LA, has a capacity of up to 7.68 Tbps and is estimated to cost US$300 million. It's expected to be in operation by early 2010.

According to KDDI, a member of this consortium and a tier-1 provider in Japan, each member of the consortium will individually operate a fiber pair. Wow! So, Google is probably going to have its very own 960 Gbps hard link between its two offices across the pacific. I wonder what Google is going to do with this. Hopefully it's not just for TelePresence...

Interesting how a software company like Google can suddenly get deeply involved in a network infrastructure business. Of course this is nothing new; Wi-Fi access is another one Google is involved it and potentially wireless mobile services. More reasons for telcos to get scared of software giants.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Apple Drops Xserve RAID

If you follow the link above, you will see for yourself.

No, this is no interest for the general public, but Apple dropped their Xserve RAID. Instead, they updated their Xsan software and partnered with Promise for the RAID hardware.

(RAID is a technology that brings big storage space and high performance for server use. This news means that we can no longer buy this hardware as an Apple brand, in which Apple was never popular in this field anyways...)

I was wondering how far Apple would go with their server hardware business and I think Apple has made the right choice of depending on a 3rd party. Although, I don't know if Promise was the right one to partner with... BTW, the Promise RAID is nothing compared to Apple's Xserve RAID, designwise for sure...

Good bye, Apple Xserver RAID.
Hello, Promise RAID...