The Esports World Cup Foundation and HONOR have announced a main partnership for the Esports World Cup, set to take place this summer in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The HONOR 200 Pro will be the official smartphone of the EWC, leveraging the device’s cutting-edge technology to power esports competitions in popular mobile games like Free Fire, Honor of Kings and Women’s ML:BB tournament.

As the ultimate smartphone for mobile gaming enthusiasts, the HONOR 200 Pro offers a suite of outstanding new features that appeal to both esports athletes and casual players. Highlights include:

• ● Snapdragon 8 Series Mobile Platform: Boasting a CPU clock speed of up to 3GHz for smooth graphics rendering and real-time responsiveness.
• ● 5200mAh Silicon-Carbon Battery: Providing up to 61 hours of use on a single charge.
• ● 3840Hz Risk-Free Dimming: Verified by TÜV Rheinland Flicker Free Display Certification and TÜV Rheinland Full Care Display Certification, with Natural Tone 2.0 for optimized display color temperature.
• ● Advanced Cooling: A vapor chamber covering 36,881mm², 10% larger than the HONOR 90, for exceptional heat dissipation.

The partnership will focus on engaging global gamers, strengthening brand identities, and fostering a community driven by the spirit of competition.

“We are thrilled to join forces with as a partner in the Esports World Cup,” exclaimed CEO Ralf Reichert at the Esports World Cup Foundation. “EWC athletes demand the absolute best in gaming technology, as it is essential for maintaining competitive integrity and delivering an unparalleled experience. The HONOR 200 Pro is an exceptional smartphone, equipped with cutting-edge technology that surpasses the high standards set by EWC athletes. We are eager to witness its incredible performance this summer in Riyadh.”

“HONOR is very pleased to join forces with the Esports World Cup and provide the official smartphone for its mobile competitions,” said Dr. Ray, CMO of HONOR. “As a brand dedicated to its consumers, HONOR strives to offer products that provide a superior experience and elevated performance, particularly among gamers. Our technology enables players to push their limits and achieve new heights in their gaming journey. We look forward to seeing the HONOR 200 Pro power the best esports athletes in the world as they strive for international greatness at the Esports World Cup.”

Beginning July 3, the Esports World Cup will transform Riyadh into the epicenter of esports fandom and gaming culture. Located in Boulevard City, fans can watch their favorite athletes and clubs compete across 22 game championships for a share of more than $60 million in life-changing prize money — the largest prize pool in esports history. Across eight weeks, the Esports World Cup will also feature festival activities that include numerous gaming activations, community tournaments, pop culture celebrations, international experiences, and more.

Kayvan Karim, Assistant Professor at Mathematical and Computer Sciences, Heriot-Watt University Dubai

In recent years, the landscape of data centre technologies has significantly transformed, shifting from the traditional hardware-based infrastructure to more flexible and efficient software-defined solutions. This change, driven by the increasing demand for scalable, agile, and cost-efficient computing resources in a rapidly digitised world, has brought numerous benefits. In this op-ed, Kayvan Karim delves into the journey of hardware-centric data centres. He explains how virtualisation, containerisation, and cloud computing have revolutionised data centre design, scalability, and efficacy.

Traditional Data Centres: The Era of Hardware Infrastructure

In the not-so-distant past, data centres were synonymous with massive physical servers, storage, and networking equipment housed in dedicated facilities. Once the gold standard, these environments were burdened with high capital costs, limited scalability, and resource inefficiencies. The exponential growth in data volume and the increasing complexity of business applications have made these traditional architectures obsolete. This stark reality underscores the need to embrace more modern, software-defined solutions.

The Rise of Software-Defined Data Centres (SDDCs)

To address the issues of hardware-centric data centres, the concept of software-defined infrastructure emerged as a game-changer. Software-defined data centres (SDDCs) are a paradigm shift. They decouple the management and control of data centre resources from the underlying hardware, enabling administrators to programmatically provision, manage, and orchestrate assets. This shift toward software-defined solutions has revolutionised how data centres are designed, deployed, and operated, offering unprecedented agility, scalability, and cost-effectiveness. These transformative benefits of SDDCs paint a promising picture for the future of data centre technologies. According to Precedence Research, the global software-defined data centre market size is expected to hit around USD 350.53 billion by 2032, poised to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22.9% from 2023 to 2032.

Virtualisation: Empowering Data Centre Efficiency

Virtualisation, a key component of contemporary data centre technologies, has proven worth it. Allowing several virtual instances to run on one physical server significantly improves resource utilisation. This abstraction from underlying hardware systems regarding computer storage and networking capabilities provides greater flexibility and makes workload management easier. As per VMware estimates, virtualisation can reduce hardware and operational costs by up to 70%. This is a testament to its effectiveness and the reassurance it brings about the future of data centre technologies. Additionally, a survey conducted by Citrix revealed that 74% of companies experienced reduced IT expenditure due to virtualisation. This underscores the importance of virtualisation in enhancing data centre efficiency.

Containerisation: Driving Portability and Scalability

Containers have become popular for packaging applications in lightweight, portable environments. Unlike virtual machines, containers are based on the host operating system kernel; thus, they are resource-efficient and faster to deploy. Docker and Kubernetes containerisation technologies, among others, have been widely adopted, allowing organisations to build, deploy and scale applications with unprecedented speed and flexibility. According to Mordor Intelligence, the containerised data centre market size is expected to grow at a CAGR of 18.49% to reach USD 33.77 billion by 2029. This depicts a fast-growing trend of containers being used by many companies, where enterprises use software-defined solutions that could efficiently be utilised to streamline the management or deployment of such containers.

Cloud Computing: The Future of Data Centre Infrastructure

Cloud computing has fundamentally changed how organisations consume and deliver IT services by offering on-demand access to different computing resources over the internet, which can be used anytime needed. Public-private hybrid cloud deployments have also become increasingly common, enabling businesses to leverage upon scalability, flexibility, and cost advantages cloud technologies provide. According to Mordor Intelligence, the cloud computing market is expected to reach USD 1.44 trillion by 2029, growing at a CAGR of 16.40% during the forecast period (2024-2029). This shows that most firms are accelerating their adoption of clouds to enjoy benefits like agility scaling capabilities and cost savings from moving workloads into these platforms.

Embracing the Future of Data Centre Technologies

The transition from traditional hardware infrastructures to software-defined solutions in data centres signifies a complete change in how computing resources are allocated, administered, and optimised. Technologies such as virtualisation, containerisation, and cloud computing have made this shift possible, enabling organisations to construct adaptable and efficient data centre infrastructure. The future is likely characterised by software-defined data centres that bring with them new prospects for innovation, growth, and competitiveness in the digital age.

The evolution of data centre technologies holds an incredible prospect for businesses that want higher levels of efficiency, flexibility, and scalability within an increasingly analytic society. By taking advantage of recent developments in virtualisation, containerisation or cloud computing technology, corporations can prepare their data centre infrastructure for success in the digital age while making it more resilient at a relatively lower cost.

Toshiba Electronics Europe GmbH (Toshiba) announces the release of its MG10-D Series, a family of air-filled conventional magnetic recording (CMR) HDDs supporting SAS and SATA interfaces and capacities of up to 10TB. Crafted with precision engineering and over 50 years of Toshiba experience, the MG10-D Series delivers improved performance and power efficiency over prior generations. With sanitize instant erase (SIE) and self-encrypting drive (SED) options, valuable data is safeguarded by a storage solution known for its robust performance and unwavering dependability.

Built for the increasing application demands of enterprise server and storage solutions, the MG10-D Series delivers a new level of performance. For example, compared with the previous model, the new 10TB MG10ADA10TE provides an approximately 13% better maximum sustained transfer speed of 268MiB/s and doubles the cache buffer size to 512MiB. It also reduces power consumption in active idle mode by approximately 21%, to 5.74W. Architected to deliver improved total cost of ownership (TCO), the new MG10-D Series fits seamlessly into a wide variety of business-critical applications, such as email, data analytics, data retention, and surveillance.

“Toshiba’s MG10-D Series delivers exceptional performance to meet the demands of growing business critical applications. The new cutting-edge design of the MG10-D Series is engineered for sustainable enterprise environments and fits seamlessly into existing infrastructure reducing TCO,” said Larry Martinez-Palomo, Vice President, Head of Storage Products Division at Toshiba.

The MG10-D Series is a 5-disk CMR standard 3.5-inch, 7200 RPM air-filled platform. Available capacities are 2TB, 4TB, 6TB, 8TB, and 10TB for both SAS and SATA. SATA is also available in a 1TB drive. The series supports 6Gb/s SATA or 12Gb/s SAS interface options in Advanced format 512e and 4Kn. A 512n option is available on the 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB offerings to support legacy systems with native 512 byte block sizes. Designed for 24×7 enterprise reliability, the MG10-D Series has a workload rating of 550TB, an AFR of 0.44% and an MTTF/MTBF of 2M hours.

The MG10-D Series will be available in CQ3.

MG10-D Series