In August Facebook went down temporarily for some of its more than 2 billion global users after a technical error caused a glitch that blocked access to the social network. Outages are rare for Facebook, which via its social media platform and WhatsApp has become a digital front page for people to read news, share information and communicate with friends and family.

The past 24-hours have been a tricky time for social media platforms. U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal Twitter account went down abruptly for about 11 minutes Thursday evening, a brief deactivation the social media company blamed on an employee who was heading out the door.

Source: TheWHIR

“It’s too late for new players who’d want to enter the market at this point, but for us everything remains possible,” Klaba said in an interview in Paris. “Now is the crucial moment for us. We have three years to become a giant, or fail.”

The company builds servers that it assembles into huge cloud computing data centers, leasing out storage and processing power to customers such as tire-maker Michelin, insurer AG2R La Mondiale and British rail ticket retailer Trainline.

But unlike Amazon Web Services, which both hosts and competes with Netflix Inc.’s video content, OVH is a pure-player, avoiding the uncomfortable position of being a threat to customers, Klaba said.

In Europe it has been able to grow sales 30 percent per year and generate profit, flourishing as everything from vehicles to factories become connected via cloud platforms, and companies from carmakers to industrials store exponential amounts of data about their customers. OVH has also built data centers to cater for businesses that need to keep its data in the country or region it does business in.

For the next decade, the demand for space in such centers is expected to drive cloud offerings. The market will grow at 27.5 percent on average each year by 2025, to reach about $1.25 trillion, a report by Research and Markets showed. While U.S. players dominate and Asian giants like Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. fight to catch up, Europe is nowhere to be seen.

Microsoft Corp. reports having spent over $15 billion since 1989 on its data center infrastructure. OVH is a dwarf in comparison, with a plan to spend 1.5 billion euros ($1.7 billion) on infrastructure by 2020. It has built 27 data centers in countries from Poland to Canada, including two in the U.S., in Virginia and Oregon.

‘Not Doomed’

“Success for the smaller players is all about carefully defining and targeting niche markets, specific applications, specific user groups or specific geographic regions,” said John Dinsdale, chief analyst at Synergy Research Group. “OVH is most certainly not doomed. It just needs to figure out how it can build and maintain a position for itself that is not reliant on replicating Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform.”

OVH is targeting 1 billion euros ($1.16 billion) in sales by 2020, more than double the 420 million euros it recorded in the year closed end-August. It plans to hire 1,000 additional staff globally in the coming 12 months in fields from coding to servers manufacturing as well as support functions, adding to its current 2,100 employees.

The closely-held company raised 250 million euros from financial investors KKR and Towerbrook in 2016, followed by 400 million euros in debt this year, and doesn’t need more money this point, Klaba said. As it starts drafting its next strategic plan, which may include expanding into places like China, Russia and Brazil, the company will weigh whether it makes sense to go public.

“We’re the only European cloud provider with the potential to scale, in an industry where critical mass is essential,” Klaba said. “We have the capacity to invest, to grow, to innovate. Our main challenge is recruitment.”

Source: TheWHIR

The cloud business is a crucial growth area for the traditional enterprise technology pioneers, battling against rivals Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google. The public cloud services global market is likely to increase more than 18 percent to $260.2 billion this year and almost double to $411 billion in 2020, according to Gartner Inc. Microsoft, for example, said last week it had generated $20.4 billion in commercial cloud revenue on an annualized basis. Tying usage to sales incentives should help keep customers on board when it’s time to agree to a new contract, said Stephen White, an analyst with Gartner.

“The behaviors of the salespeople need to be more in tune with what a customer actually is going to need and use,” White said. “It certainly makes the renewal discussion easier.”

Oracle and IBM declined to comment.

Previously, Microsoft had been bundling cloud services, such as Azure for storing and running data and cloud applications, with many of its multiyear deals. Althoff said the shift in pay incentives is a significant change.

“We did have ill-informed behaviors,” he said. “We tried to sell Azure the same way we tried to sell everything else at Microsoft, which is adding it into our enterprise agreement. People were like ‘Do you want fries with that? Do you want Azure with that?’ That didn’t drive any meaningful work.”

The incentive plan change fits with Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella’s aim to encourage Microsoft’s products to be used and loved rather than merely paid for and tolerated.

IBM has been emphasizing selling cloud infrastructure services and software and tools geared toward specific business processes and industries such as health care and finance. Oracle has been turning its focus to the cloud as well and investing in staff. The company said in August it was adding more than 5,000 people, including in sales, for its cloud business – following other related hires earlier in the year in the U.S.

While Amazon remains the largest provider of cloud computing infrastructure, the traditional companies are showing signs of improvement. In its last quarter, Microsoft’s Azure service,  grew 90 percent while Office 365 increased 42 percent. Oracle reported that its overall cloud sales expanded by more than 50 percent during its last period to $1.5 billion and IBM’s sales in the market jumped about 20 percent in its third quarter to $4.1 billion.

Source: TheWHIR

READ MORE: Here’s How Much Water All US Data Centers Consume

“We definitely want our portfolio companies to be cognizant of their water use and take the appropriate steps to minimize their water use and recycle water,” said Brian Rice, portfolio manager at the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, which manages about $189 billion in assets as of June 30. He cited water usage as a concern at data centers as well as at other portfolio companies, such as those in agriculture.

Golden State

California—home to companies running some of the world’s biggest data centers—houses more than 800 of the facilities, the most of any U.S. state, according to Dan Harrington, research director of 451 Research LLC, a technology consulting firm.

Water usage there is especially a concern as the state’s drought pushes into its fifth year. California Governor Jerry Brown issued an executive order in May to extend statewide emergency water restrictions, establishing long-term measures to conserve water.

RELATED: Why Salesforce Bought Coolan, a Data Center Optimization Startup

The water risk to investors of California-based companies operating data centers will not affect them gradually, said Julie Gorte, senior vice president of sustainable investing at Pax World Management LLC. “It will probably come in one big splashy moment,” she said.

As a result, some sustainable-minded investors are trying to enhance their understanding of water risk before it becomes a liability, said Cate Lamb, head of water at investor environmental advocacy group CDP. The group held a series of workshops this year for investors to discuss their most crucial water reporting needs, such as isolating water risk of individual assets. The number of institutional investors committed to its water engagement program with companies has grown to 617 from 150 in 2010.

Operational efficiencies at data centers have a direct link to companies’ profitability and pose an increasing risk for investors in a “tense” climate change environment, said Himani Phadke, research director at the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, a non-profit that writes corporate sustainability reporting guidelines for investors.

Companies, like investors, are trying to get ahead of the risk.

Corporate Response

Bill Weihl, director of sustainability at Facebook Inc., said the company uses a combination of fresh air and water to cool its data centers. In 2015, Facebook said it used a total of 221 million gallons of water, with 70 percent of that consumption at its data facilities. “We designed our data centers to use about half the water a typical data center uses,” he said in e-mailed answers to questions.

Around Facebook’s Prineville, Oregon, data center in particular, water efficiency has become “a big issue,” Weihl said. The center is east of the Cascade Mountains, a region that tends to be drier than western side of the state, and businesses must compete with farmers and a growing local population for water.

Weihl said rainwater capture and reuse, which is used for irrigation and toilet-flushing at the center, saves 272,000 gallons of municipally treated water per year. Facebook is also working with the City of Prineville and its engineers on the town’s water plan, which includes water mitigation and recycling “grey water” from buildings, he said.

Water consumption at eBay Inc.’s Salt Lake City-based data center rose 14 percent in 2014 to 31,354 gallons, according to the online retailer’s sustainability report, while its Phoenix facility saw usage drop 3 percent to 57,421 gallons. A company spokeswoman declined to comment.

Google declined to say how much water the company’s data centers use, but said that the company redesigns its cooling technology on average about every 12 to 18 months. The company has also designed data centers that use air instead of water for cooling, it said.

“There is no ‘one size fits all’ model — each data center is designed for the highest performance and highest efficiency for that specific location and we’re always testing new technologies to further our commitment to efficiency and environmental responsibility,” vice president of data center operations Joe Kava said in an e-mail adapted from an earlier blog post.

Growing Issue

The environmental impact of data centers is poised to grow as the world produces more data each day. Carbon emissions from data centers already represent 0.2 percent of the world’s total carbon dioxide emissions, compared to 0.6 percent for airlines, according to a 2010 McKinsey & Co. report. And more companies are developing larger data centers as they transition to cloud computing, increasing the demand for water needed for cooling their data servers, said Pax World’s Gorte.

The need to boost water unit efficiency at data centers is driving some companies to open up locations near water sources and cooler climates. Menlo Park, California-based Facebook, for example, began operations at its overseas data center in Lulea, Sweden in 2013 near the Arctic Circle. Mountain View, California-based Google operates a total of 15 data centers with four located in northern Europe.

Investor concern about corporate water use will only continue to grow, said William Sarni, director and practice leader of Water Strategy at Deloitte Consulting LLP.

“Over the past few years, we have seen a dramatic increase of interest in water as a business risk and also as a business opportunity issue,” said Sarni. “I see it accelerating.”

Source: TheWHIR

The FBI has begun a review of whether the Clinton campaign was hacked, according to a person familiar with the probe who asked not to be identified discussing an internal inquiry.

The campaign’s announcement came hours after the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which raises funds to elect House Democrats, said that it, too, was “the target of a cybersecurity incident.” Meredith Kelly, press secretary for the organization, said the DCCC was “cooperating with the federal law enforcement agencies with respect to their ongoing investigation.”

Stolen E-Mails

Attacks on Democratic organizations, including the DNC, have roiled the 2016 political campaigns. The disclosure by WikiLeaks of purloined party e-mails forced the head of the DNC to resign as Democrats gathered for their presidential convention. The breach has stirred allegations that Russia is seeking to meddle in the U.S. election, an assertion Russian officials have repeatedly denied.

“Any of the allegations that circulate here in the U.S. about Russia’s involvement are groundless,” Yury Melnik, a spokesman for Russia’s embassy in Washington, said Friday in a phone interview. “There’s no attempts whatsoever to meddle with the political process or the results of the election. The Russian government is ready and willing to work with the current administration and any future administration.”

FBI Response

In a statement Friday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said it’s “aware of media reporting on cyber intrusions involving multiple political entities, and is working to determine the accuracy, nature and scope of these matters.”

“The cyber threat environment continues to evolve as cyber actors target all sectors and their data,” the agency said. “The FBI takes seriously any allegations of intrusions, and we will continue to hold accountable those who pose a threat in cyberspace.”

The hackers who got into the analytics program used by the Clinton campaign had access to its server for about five days, according to a campaign aide who asked not to be identified. The program, one of many used to conduct voter analysis, doesn’t include Social Security or credit card numbers, the aide said.

“Analytics data program” is a broad term that could mean many things and a key question is whether the data was breached or the program itself compromised, Herbert Lin, a cyber research fellow at Stanford University, said by phone.

“If it’s data, it’s data on people who would have been likely targets for a campaign,” Lin said. That might include details from their home addresses to their spending habits, he said.

Internet Traffic

The attack on the Democrats’ House campaign committee affected visitors who went to its website from June 19 to June 27, cybersecurity company FireEye Inc. concluded, based on an analysis of internet traffic.

Those visitors were steered to a server controlled by a hacking group known as APT 28, said John Hultquist, FireEye’s manager of cyber espionage intelligence. Other cybersecurity researchers have said APT 28 is an arm of Russia’s military intelligence service GRU, he said.

The DCCC website was altered so that visitors seeking to make a donation were redirected to a server controlled by hackers linked to the Russian government, Hultquist said.The cybersecurity company hasn’t been able to determine if the hackers intercepted the donations or succeeded in planting malware on the computers of those visitors, Hultquist said.

The attack on the DNC resulted in the theft of e-mail and internal reports, some of which have since been published by WikiLeaks. Russia is a leading suspect in that intrusion, according to a U.S. official with knowledge of the probe who asked to not be identified because the inquiry is continuing. Private cybersecurity companies have said they traced the DNC attack to groups in Russia.

DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz was forced to resign after a firestorm over leaked e-mails that showed committee staffers favored Clinton and attempted to undermine Senator Bernie Sanders for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Electronic Voting

In response to speculation that Russia is attempting to influence the outcome of the U.S. presidential race — and might even seek ways to tamper with electronic voting — Eric Schultz, a White House spokesman, said Friday, “As we’ve seen in the past, Russia has tried to influence elections in Europe. We take seriously their past record on this. We also take seriously the integrity of our voting system.”

Clinton adviser Jake Sullivan said Wednesday that the nominee has been briefed on hacking of the DNC and has been told that the weight of expert opinion is that Russia was involved.

“She does not view this as a political issue, she views this as a national security issue,” he told reporters gathered in Philadelphia for this week’s Democratic National Convention. Russia has a history of interfering in elections in other countries, he said.

“Unlike Donald Trump, who praises Putin” and adopts his positions, “Secretary Clinton will stand up to Putin,” Sullivan said.

Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, this week urged Russia to make public “30,000 e-mails that are missing” from the private server that Clinton maintained when she was secretary of state. He later said he was being “sarcastic.”

Source: TheWHIR