Solarflare Teams Up with Digital China To Expand World-Class Networking Solutions

Digital China Solarflare

Following a number of exciting partnerships over the past year, Solarflare is bringing its world-class application-intelligent networking solutions to a large new audience. In a new partnership with Digital China—the largest integrated IT service provider in China—Solarflare products will now be widely available for customers in China. Digital China will sell and support Solarflare’s complete line of software and hardware solutions including SolarSecure, OpenOnload, and SolarCapture as well as Flareon adapters.

This partnership marks a huge growth opportunity for Solarflare’s products and services, as Digital China is the leading IT provider in the country. Digital China has played a huge role in driving IT growth in a country that has been going through a huge upgrade recently, with networks moving from 1 GB to 10 GB and beyond. This major upgrade phase allows Solarflare to reach many new customers who are looking to accelerate, monitor and secure their networks with next-generation server solutions.

In addition to this growth opportunity, Solarflare’s robust security offerings will also be supported by Digital China’s security division. “Solarflare provides a new level of enterprise protection solutions for our clients who require mission critical applications,” said Tony Liu, General Manager, Digital China. “With Solarflare’s best-in-class technology software and hardware solutions, we can provide clients with an unprecedented level of high performance computing and security benefits, giving us a tremendous competitive advantage in the marketplace.”

To drive its APAC growth, Solarflare recently appointed 27-year industry veteran Thomas Chin as Vice President of Sales, Asia Pacific. In his new role, Mr. Chin will oversee sales and business development in Asia.

Solarflare’s CEO, Russell Stern, has been excited to announce this partnership. “Digital China’s leadership and expertise in security and capture makes them an ideal partner to help us bring software and hardware solutions to businesses that need to maximize performance, improve efficiency and secure data across the enterprise.”

This is not the first time Solarflare has worked to improve network access, speed and security in China. China’s former internet barriers were commonly known as “the great firewall,” in reference to long site load times and multiple filters that hindered performance. Last year, the San Francisco based security company CloudFlare turned to Solarflare for server solutions, as they needed a 10 GbE capable of keeping pace with their massive growth and rapid-fire networking needs. Last year CloudFlare also joined forces with Baidu, or China’s equivalent of Google, to address the country’s network issues. Since then, they’ve created an internet superhighway that has enabled millions of website page views to experience super-fast load times and optimized performance for the first time. For more on how Solarflare and CloudFlare are working to bring unparalleled performance to China’s internet users, check out the full blog post here.

Solarflare’s recent partnership with Digital China comes at an exciting time, as the IT provider carries out its mission of digitizing China. As the first company to develop China’s “Sm@rt Cities,” Digital China is not only driving China’s IT growth, but also its citizens’ connectivity. Solarflare is excited to be a part of China’s online renaissance.

How to Combat Top Security Threats We’ll Face in 2016

matrix-434036_1920

All companies should be concerned with how to stay ahead of security breaches and mitigate damage in an age where hacking methods continue to grow ever more sophisticated. We’re likely to see more evolving techniques in 2016, so it’s important to stay ahead of the curve with a multi-layered security approach.

From Sony to Ashley Madison to Juniper, there’s been no shortage of large scale security breaches recently. The takeaway from these breaches is that all enterprises should boost their  server protection. For tips on how to do this, check out my recent blog post on how Solarflare’s accelerated, monitored and secure server solutions can drastically improve your company and customers’ sensitive data. Read on for solutions on how to combat three security threats we’re likely to see more of in 2016.

1. Cloud Computing

As more companies move sensitive data to cloud storage infrastructures, we can expect to see a rise in revenue for centrally hosted cloud based software companies, to the tune of $33 billion in 2016, according to tech investing firm Centaur Partners. With this move to cloud hosting we can expect to see hackers shifting their focus from physical network hacks to cloud breaches. Solarflare’s recent partnership with DigitalOcean, the world’s second largest cloud hosting provider, illustrates the proper approach to safeguard against cloud hacks. With 60,000+ developers depending on its network, DigitalOcean turned to Solarflare to enhance, accelerate and secure its network. Utilizing Solarflare’s Flareon 7042 Series 10/40GbE PCIe 3.0 server I/O adapters, DigitalOcean can now scale network capacity much more efficiently and with greater throughput than other solutions on the market. For tips on how to make your cloud partnership more stable and secure, check out my recent post on DigitalOcean.

2. Extortion Hacks

Extortion hacks, in which sensitive data is released, have been on the rise ever since the Sony hack back in 2014. These are the worst kind of attacks for a company to recover from, because they destroy customer trust, confidential information is revealed, and lawsuits can result. Last year’s big extortion hack was the Ashley Madison case, so we can expect to see more in 2016. The best method for mitigating the likelihood of an extortion attack is through utilizing a packet capture approach to add an additional layer of protection at the server network. Read more about how to do this in my recent blog post on why packet capture tech is essential for strong security, as it brings an additional layer of protection to the top of every rack of every server.

3. Abusive Bots

The rise of abusive bots and DDoS attacks that interfere with website performance have made protection software a top concern for high traffic sites. The recent partnership between Solarflare and CloudFlare illustrates a great solution to this very real threat.

San Francisco based startup CloudFlare accelerates, optimizes, and protects over 2 million sites and counting, by expanding its capabilities of mitigating growing DDoS attacks (among other things). To help with this process, CloudFlare partnered with Solarflare to add an additional layer of security and headroom at the server level. By headroom, we mean that the insertion of Solarflare builds depth, performance, and responsiveness into the CloudFlare servers in the face of DDoS attacks. CloudFlare reports that the Solarflare SFN5122F server adapters run circles around other offerings in the market. In CloudFlare’s SYN flood tests, they performed 180% better than the competition. According to CloudFlare benchmarks, Solarflare hardware and software delivered 16 million packets per second (at 60 bytes per packet, the typical size of a SYN packet in a SYN flood attack), compared with the next best alternative topping out around 9 million packets per second.

Staying ahead of abusive bots and DDoS attacks is a matter of being armed with the best server adapters and filter engines. Solarflare’s SolarSecure paired with its best in class 10GbE servers pack a strong one-two punch to any imminent threats that hackers might throw your way.

 

World’s 2nd Largest Cloud Hosting Provider Partners with Solarflare

Screen Shot 2016-01-08 at 10.48.45 AM

From partnering with CloudFlare to boost the internet in China to joining forces with Stratus and Velocimetrics to improve financial service performance, Solarflare has entered into some exciting partnerships lately. The latest milestone in Solarflare’s quest to bring improved network performance, speed and security to performance cloud, data center and financial institutions comes in the form of a partnership with rising tech star DigitalOcean.

DigitalOcean is the fastest growing cloud infrastructure provider for software developers. The nimble startup is giving giants like Amazon, Google and Microsoft a run for their money by providing a simple and scalable SSD cloud server platform. Instead of focusing on matching these huge companies’ quantities of servers, DigitalOcean has shifted its attention to user experience instead. This winning approach has brought the startup over $183 million in funding and a meteoric rise to the world’s second-largest web hosting provider.

Screen Shot 2016-01-08 at 10.34.15 AM

To fuel such explosive growth, DigitalOcean has turned to Solarflare to enhance and accelerate its network. Utilizing Solarflare’s Flareon 7042 Series 10/40GbE PCIe 3.0 server I/O adapters, DigitalOcean can now scale their network capacity much more efficiently and with greater throughput than other solutions on the market.

DigitalOcean provides developers with KVM based cloud infrastructure on demand, allowing them to easily create and build new applications and websites. Utilizing Solarflare’s unique network adapter technology allows developers faster system access while utilizing less network and CPU resources in the process. At the same time, users will be able to scale more efficiently during high periods of demand while offering greater server density per virtual machine (VM).

Ben Uretsky, CEO of DigitalOcean, sees the partnership as a huge win: “Solarflare’s technology roadmap and the company’s dedication to network performance and security made them an ideal strategic partner to meet the demands of our explosive growth.”

DigitalOcean’s 600,000+ developers need the utmost levels of speed, flexibility and scalability to effectively build and customize such a high volume of applications and sites. Solarflare’s Flareon hardware and software ensures that those needs are consistently met by delivering industry-leading message rates with lowest latency and jitter, along with low CPU utilization. In this way, multi-core CPUs can be fully leveraged to efficiently distribute I/O processing workloads, thereby eliminating bottlenecks.

As DigitalOcean continues its rapid growth, their recent partnership with Solarflare takes performance potential to the next level.

How Solarflare Dramatically Improves Risk Management & Performance for Financial Institutions

Recent improvements to Solarflare’s Capture SolarSystem (CSS) have addressed key risk management and compliance issues facing financial institutions. CSS enables packet capture deployment on the top of every server rack in the data center, which provides enhanced “DVR-like” real time lossless data recording. The latest version of CSS allows customers to capture the entire network traffic flow in a rapidly searchable form. Providing valuable features for financial institutions involved in high volume trading, CSS enables these four key capabilities:

  • Greater visibility and network instrumentation capabilities for regulatory reporting
  • Enhanced network capabilities for performing risk analytics
  • Greater performance monitoring
  • Next generation threat detection

Designed with a scalable approach in mind, CSS is an open software platform that enables distributed, high performance, pervasive capture of all network nodes. Key features include line rate capture to disk (up to 40 Gb/sec), indexed query of captured data, and intuitive GUI allowing rapid deployment of data capture solutions across enterprise data centers and other high-demand networks. With an open API, CSS can also be easily integrated with third-party analytic applications to create customized data retention and analytics solutions.

dollar-exchange-rate-544949_1920

CSS positions financial institutions for success by enabling both buy-side and sell-side market participants to address several types of risk issues, including:

  • Mitigating cybersecurity risk by providing greater visibility into enterprise network, enabling prevention of hostile intrusion and data theft.
  • Enabling firms to effectively address regulatory compliance requirements and deliver a comprehensive record of audit trail.
  • Improving operational efficiency by proving proof of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) compliance, enhanced troubleshooting process and network analysis.
  • Optimizing electronic trade execution management with high performance precision time stamping capabilities.

The updates to Solarflare CSS are exciting because they give real solutions to financial firms facing new regulations and cybersecurity concerns. CSS gives traders a streamlined way to capture, analyze and manage massive volumes of data across global trading systems. Combined with updated risk management capabilities, CSS is a giant step in reducing the time and cost between intrusion detection (IDS) and prevention (IPS). Solarflare’s updated CSS technology is a win-win for financial institutions looking to stay ahead of risks and regulatory reporting while also improving performance and mitigating threats.