JouleX Blog

Join Us at Cisco Live US, in San Diego June 10-14, 2012

Ida Davidson — Wed, 23 May 2012 17:00:00 GMT

The JouleX Team would like to invite you to join us at Cisco Live US, in San Diego, from June 10-14, 2012.

We will present live demos throughout the event at Booth 1746, and will be featured in the Cisco EnergyWise Pavilion at Booth 2776.

We are also anticipating a great visit at from Cisco CEO, John Chambers, at our booth. More information on this as we get closer to the event.

Six of our knowledgable team members will be in attendance to show you the features and benefits of the JouleX Energy Manager platform, as well as ask any questions you may have.

Not registered to attend yet? Head over here to take care of that now.

We look forward to discussing your energy management challenges with you at Cisco Live US!

*If you're not attending Cisco Live US, but would like to learn more about JouleX Energy Manager and how we can solve your energy management problems, start by downloading our Data Center White Paper here.

Cisco Demos UPOE, EnergyWise and JouleX at Interop 2012

Ida Davidson — Fri, 18 May 2012 13:19:00 GMT

Over on the Cisco Borderless Networks blog, there are a couple of great videos covering Cisco UPOE and EnergyWise at Interop 2012 in Las Vegas. The management application on display is the JouleX Energy Manager.

In the first video, Jimmy Ray from TechWise TV receives a live demo from Rich Zavala, Technical Marketing Engineer. Rich is demonstrating how Cisco Energywise automates energy management for both IT and non-IT related equipment that are connected to Cisco UPOE switches.

At the 7 minute mark, Rich and Jimmy Ray talk about using JouleX for monitoring and control of network connected devices.

The second video shows Pradeep Parmar, Senior Marketing Manager of Borderless Networks at Cisco, delivering a presentation on the business benefits of Cisco UPOE. He discusses how you can save more than a quarter million dollars for a 1,000-port deployment with Cisco UPOE and EnergyWise.

All in all, this is a pretty great way to learn quite a bit about the benefits of Cisco UPOE in just under 20 minutes.

We hope you have a great weekend!

Video: Scott Paisley at Green IT and Cloud Summit 2012

Ida Davidson — Mon, 14 May 2012 15:20:00 GMT

We have received a lot of great feedback for Scott Paisley's, Americas Technology Director, presentation at the Green IT and Cloud Summit 2012* last month and we are pleased to share with you some video from his opening.

*Green IT & Cloud Summit 2012 is a one day conference on April 18 in Vienna, VA and brings together leaders from the private and public sectors to transform the ideas around sustainable information technology generated during the 2010 GreenGov Symposium into actionable plans. It also provides a forum to forge the strategic alliances and partnerships necessary to realize the promise of sustainable IT for federal, state and local agencies.

This day was packed full of great information by knowledgeable industry professionals, and we were thrilled to be able to participate in that. Take a look at the video clip below to see just a small portion of the information shared.

Data Center Challenges Survey

Ida Davidson — Wed, 09 May 2012 06:00:00 GMT

The challenges faced by data center managers today are unprecedented; rapidly expanding volumes of data and a growing number of mission-critical applications, managing highly complex and wildly heterogeneous environments, meeting more demanding service level agreements (SLAs), and implementing a variety of emerging "green" business initiatives in an environment of fiscal constraints that have resulted in reduced capital and operating budgets. JouleX is committed to helping you gain efficiencies in the data center so you can achieve the agility required to respond at the speed of business.

In order to understand more about the data center environment you’re currently operating in, we would like to invite you to participate in the following survey. All responses are anonymous, and we do not collect any personally identifiable information from any respondants. We will share the survey results in an upcoming blog entry.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us in our ongoing efforts to fully address the needs of our customers.

JEM Manages the Important Energy at Cisco Expo 2012 in Berlin

Ida Davidson — Wed, 02 May 2012 06:00:00 GMT

As we mentioned last week, the JouleX Energy Manager(JEM) is being used to monitor, measure, and control the energy consumption of the venue, O₂ World Berlin, and all IP connected devices at Cisco Expo 2012 today and tomorrow.

To show you how JEM really works, we've decided to share with you the energy consumption of a process that is near and dear to all of our hearts here at JouleX... the beer coolers.

The image below shows that we are able to meter the energy needed to power the beer coolers.

The next image shows the Top Ten energy consumers at O₂ World Berlin. As you can see, beer cooling is ranked number 6 (…right after ventilation). Clearly, cold beer is almost as important as breathing.

Under the Reports tab, we chose the Consumption w/ Stats report to show how much energy has been needed to run the all laptops, desktops, and VoIP telephones running in the venue for the last seven days, then compared that to the amount of energy consumed to cool the beer. As you can see, the beer coolers are working much more diligently than all of the distributed office equipment combined.

The report below compares the energy consumption for powering the lights at the venue to the energy consumption for cooling the beer for that same seven day period. Although the lighting systems did consume more energy than the beer coolers, we would like to think that's simply because everyone needs to have the lights turned on to find the beer.

We hope that you'll stop by the JouleX team in Lounge 207 and let us show you all of the other cool things that you never knew you never knew about how energy is really consumed and managed.

Join us at Cisco Expo 2012 in Berlin May 2-3

Ida Davidson — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:14:00 GMT

JouleX is a proud Gold Sponsor of Cisco Expo 2012 at O₂ World Berlin. Since O₂World Berlin is a customer, and utilitizes the JouleX Energy Manager platform, we will be monitoring, analyzing and controlling the energy consumption of the venue through facility management integration and also monitoring the IT equipment. We invite you to visit us in Lounge 207 to see JouleX Energy Manager in action.

In addition to ongoing demonstrations and Q&A in Lounge 207, our team will be presenting these topics on the Unified Data Center and Borderless Network – Connecting the Cloud Securely tracks:

May 2 at 2:30PM: Increasing Data Center Capacity through Cisco UCS, Nexus and the JouleX Energy Manager
May 3 at 1:00PM: Reducing Energy Consumption from the Core to the Edge with JouleX and Cisco Energy Wise

We look forward to seeing you there and discussing how you can leverage JouleX with your Cisco infrastructure to gain efficiencies and savings!

Friday Roundup - Green Energy Edition

Ida Davidson — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 19:06:00 GMT

Happy Friday! We're happy to share that the third in our series on Facilities & IT was published this week. You can see that here: Facilities and IT: The Similarities.

You can find the first two articles here Energy Management: Building a Bridge Between Facilities and IT and here Facilities and IT: Learning to Speak the Language.

Since Sunday is Earth Day, most of the articles coming out around sustainable business are very Earth Day focused this week. Here are a few that we found useful or interesting.

10 Ways for Executives to Green Their Business "In honor of Earth Day, here are 10 ways that executive women can leverage their influence to make a difference."
Game Consoles Waste over $1B Worth of Electricity Per Year "Analysts at Carnegie Mellon University report that game consoles are wasting power at record levels: 10.8 terawatt-hours, by their estimate, costing U.S. homeowners some $1.24 billion a year."
Greenpeace's Clean Cloud Push "In its trademark smashmouth style, Greenpeace this week took cloud computing companies to task for using dirty energy -- and then came under fire itself over its methods and assertions. "
High Speed Rail Isn't the Most Efficient Way to Cut Carbon Emissions "The California High Speed Rail Authority claims that by 2030, if the train ran entirely on renewable energy, then it would start reducing the state’s carbon emissions by about 5.4 million metric tons per year. That would mean the rail network would cut California’s emissions at a cost of, at the very low end, $250 per ton of carbon dioxide over the ensuing 50 years, given the system’s current price tag"
Northeast States Bucking Carbon Emissions Trend "Study finds that cap-and-trade and other clean energy policies have helped Northeastern states cut CO2 emissions faster than the rest of the nation."
Business Roundtable: Create, Grow, Sustain 2012 Report "now in its fifth year, features narratives from 126 CEOs on how their companies are leading the way with solutions to make the U.S. economy more sustainable while also driving economic growth and job creation."

We hope you have a Great Weekend and a VERY Green Earth Day!

JouleX Participating at Green IT Summit

Player Pate — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 13:58:00 GMT

JouleX is proud to participate at today's Green IT Summit in Herndon, VA. JouleX Technical Director Scott Paisley is delivering a presentation this morning on the benefits of employing enterprise energy management solutions. JouleX has also been named a finalist for its Energy Management award.

If you are in the area, please drop by and say hello to Scott and to our Federal Director, Tom Ebert. They are demonstrating a host of new features in the JouleX Energy Manager platform. The event is showcasing great solutions and speakers from across the industry and we are proud to participate.

The event is hosted by the Green IT Council. The Green IT Council is a non-profit initiative started by leading experts in the IT Industry. The purpose of the Green IT Council is to educate IT professionals, managers, and government on the need for eco-friendly technology. The council works with leading experts to determine a standard for Eco-friendly technology, and the true environmental impact. It recognizes and awards companies showing a forward thinking view of technology and its environmental impact. www.greenITcouncil.org

Facilities and IT: The Similarities

Ida Davidson — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 06:00:00 GMT

This is the third in our series on brokering energy management collaboration between the Facilities and IT departments. You can see the first article here: Energy Management: Building a Bridge between Facilities and IT. The second article can be found here: Facilities and IT: Learning to Speak the Language.

We have covered the differences in both the focus areas and the terminology barriers between Facilities and IT. Now it’s time to take a look at the similarities between the two departments and the collaboration needed to successfully implement an enterprise-wide energy management solution. As with all other collaborative relationships, it is easiest to build a team effort on common ground.

Both Facilities and IT provide critical services to the rest of the organization and, although providing very different resources, each department works in a similar way. Often times, projects developed in other departments do not involve IT as an important part of the implementation until the last minute, leaving them scrambling for resources in the 11^th hour. Along the same vein, Facilities is only involved by IT when they run out of available power and the situation is critical. With data centers running out of space and power at a rapid rate, energy management has become a growing challenge for IT departments.

Because energy management solutions run on the network, Facilities may see it as an IT product. Because Facilities realize the budgetary relief of energy management, IT may view it as a Facilities product. However, it’s important to remember that energy management is not department specific. From facilities management devices ( HVAC and lighting) on the Facilities’ side, and computing devices (PCs, monitors, switches, routers, servers, VoIP phones, printers) on the IT side, enterprise energy management spans the entire organization.

Ensuring there is enough capacity to meet the demands of the IT organization for years to come is an effort that must be undertaken by both departments, as a team. Because managing energy efficiency is critical to IT’s ability to maintain SLAs, as well as Facilities’ ability to plan for and deliver sufficient power to the enterprise as a whole, neither department can afford to pass up the opportunity to collaborate in the implementation of an enterprise energy solution.

JouleX Proud to Participate in Sam Nunn Bank of America Policy Forum

Player Pate — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 18:22:00 GMT

JouleX is proud to participate in this year's Sam Nunn Bank of America Policy Forum at the Georgia Institute of Technology, themed Energy and Security: Global Challenges, Local Opportunities. The Sam Nunn Bank of America Policy Forum brings together noted academic, government, and private sector experts on technology, public policy, and international affairs to address issues of immediate importance to the nation.

We are excited to see the issue of energy being addressed by this group and proud that JouleX president and CEO, Thomas Noonan, was asked to contribute to the discussion.

Open to the public, the Policy Forum was developed from former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn’s vision of increasing understanding among policymakers, academic researchers, technologists, and citizens. Senator Nunn is a Distinguished Professor at The Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Tech.

The Policy Forum is designed to connect the academic and policymaking communities to craft effective and creative responses to critical challenges confronting the United States in the twenty-first century. Transcending disciplinary boundaries and engaging scholars, practitioners, students, and interested citizens, the Policy Forum offers a significant venue for policy-relevant research and dialogue. Insights and findings produced at the forum are shared with policymakers and the broader public through congressional testimony, circulation of proceedings, policy papers, journal articles, and educational television and Internet broadcasts.

Friday Roundup - Green Energy Articles from Around the Web

Ida Davidson — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 13:06:00 GMT

With Earth Day approaching, the news and blog worlds are abuzz with articles about green energy, sustainable business, and ways to reduce your carbon footprint. Here are some of the most interesting articles we found, and the articles you may have missed on the JouleX blog!

From the JouleX Green IT Blog:

Case Study: PPC Reduces Data Center Energy, Costs, and Carbon

Ida Davidson — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 06:00:00 GMT

To say that the JouleX team is passionate about what we do is huge understatement. Our engineers eat, sleep, and breathe developing a first-in-class product line that provide unrivaled benefits to our customers. In fact, the only people who value the JouleX Energy Manager (JEM) platform more than we do are our customers.

We recently had the opportunity to work with Project Performance Corporation (PPC) to document their implementation and success in using JEM to visualize, monitor, and control the energy usage in their data centers. PPC was able to achieve real benefits from JEM within hours of installation.

We're pleased to be able to offer our readers a free download of the resulting case study: Project Performance Corporation Reduces Data Center Energy, Costs, and Carbon Using the JouleX Energy Manager.

Once you've had a chance to read the case study, feel free to contact our team through the contact page, or by email at sales@joulex.net.

Facilities and IT - Learning to Speak the Language

Ida Davidson — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 18:52:00 GMT

This is the second in our series on brokering energy management collaboration between the Facilities and IT departments. You can see the first article here: Energy Management: Building a Bridge between Facilities and IT.

Though each of these departments has a different perspective on energy (facilities ensuring that costs are kept as low as possible, while still delivering the necessary amount of power to the company; IT delivering ever increasing computing capabilities to the business, while also maintaining service level agreements) they are not as incompatible as they appear on the surface. Bridging the gap between Facilities and IT begins with understanding that each speaks a different language.

While the term "Control Points" may be alien to the IT department, the IT equivalent "IP Addresses" is just as unfamiliar to the Facilities team. We believe that learning to speak the native language to the department being addressed will go a long way toward building a collaborative atmosphere between the two departments.

By simply understanding the vernacular, Facilities and IT teams can more easily collaborate and advance energy management initiatives for the organization. Below is a reference table to help Facilities and IT teams find common ground and start a meaningful conversation.

Term	Facilities	IT
Transport	Serial Interfaces RS242, 422, 485, etc	Ethernet
Control Systems	Building Mgmt, Facilities Mgmt	Systems Mgmt, Network Mgmt
Device References	Control Points	IP Addresses
Protocols	BACnet, Modbus and dozens of other open and proprietary protocols	TCP/IP
Environment	Hundreds that are more manually managed	Thousands of devices typically automated

One area of focus for the Facilities department that doesn't really have a corresponding IT term is Plug Load. Simply put, this is the amount of energy pulled from any electrical outlet in a building. In enterprise buildings, the plug load is typically utilized 40-60% of the entire energy usage and the remaining percentage is used by the building for lighting, and HVAC, etc. Of the plug load, 60-80% is utilized by IT devices.

Building Type	Facilities	Plug Load
Office	60%	40%
Data Center	40%	60%

By learning to understand the terms and primary concerns of each team, both Facilities and IT will have the basic building blocks to understand each other's roles and begin a dialogue to identify energy savings opportunities within the organization.

Energy Management: Building a Bridge Between Facilities and IT

Ida Davidson — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 17:47:00 GMT

This is the first in a series of articles addressing the challenges faced by Facilities and IT departments when working together to implement energy management solutions. You can see the second article here: Facilities and IT: Learning to Speak the Language

When it comes to implementing Enterprise Energy Management, it is essential to have collaboration between the Facilities and IT groups within an organization. Though these departments deliver different services to the organization, they operate very similarly. Yet they rarely have the opportunity to work with one another. The IT department focuses on delivering compute services to all of the people in the organization, whereas the Facilities department provides management of physical space and power.

Both departments strive to deliver a reliable and stable service to the rest of the enterprise. The energy concerns of each department are different, however. Facilities needs to ensure that costs are kept as low as possible, while still delivering the necessary amount of power to the company. IT is under pressure to deliver ever increasing computing capabilities to the business, while also maintaining service level agreements.

The challenge here lies in the fact that an energy management implementation requires that IT act as a service provider to Facilities, since the Facilities organization is typically the economic benefactor. Facilities hasn't traditionally had the opportunity to work with IT as a service provider, because they generally don't have many projects that require IT for implementation.

In order to begin building a bridge between IT and Facilities, it is important to understand some key differences between these groups.

Some of the key differences between these departments are:

Energy Capacity Planning

When Facilities plans for energy needs, the determination is based on Power Per Square Foot or Power Per User. They typically use a standard power calculation of X watts per square foot, based on office building or data center, etc. or allocation of power per user. This metric allows Facilities to determine the energy needs of a building.

IT generally does not worry about the amount of power needed until or unless they need more.

Device Management

Although building management systems automate many of the larger devices in the facility, the majority of devices in facilities are manually managed.

In IT, there is not a single device that isn’t managed by something. IT typically has thousands of devices to manage, but facilities have hundreds of large devices.

Budget

The network-connected energy management platform is an IT product, but Facilities typically gets the budget relief of any energy savings. In general, IT does not own the energy management budget in the company; Facilities does.

Since energy is provided, managed, and budgeted through Facilities, this department now has to utilize IT as a service organization the same way all of the other business units do. We believe that there is plenty of common ground between these departments, making this an opportunity to for both groups to collaborate on reducing energy consumption and providing a more sustainable IT infrastructure.

Is your company managing energy between these departments? To what degree do you find collaboration between IT and Facilities within your organization? Leave a comment below and tell us how it’s going.

Friday Roundup - What You Missed on JouleX Edition

Ida Davidson — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 06:00:00 GMT

It's Friday again, and we hope that you're putting your energy to good use before the weekend kicks off! To get you started, here are a few interesting articles we found from around the web, and things we posted on the Green IT Blog.

The Computerworld Honors Program: A search for new heroes “For over two decades, The Computerworld Honors Program has recognized individuals and organizations that create and use information technology to promote and advance public welfare, contribute to the greater good of society and change the world for the better.”
Uptime Institute announced the 7th Annual Uptime Institute Symposium: The symposium will be held May 14-17, 2012 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, California. The theme is Digital Infrastructure Convergence™.
What do you spend on energy?: A more informed and conscientious energy customer has the ability to reduce their own energy costs, while as a whole helping reduce national energy use.
Optimizing energy use during the workday: Typical users only use a fraction of the processing power that their PCs actually need to operate during the work day. Before now, not only has this energy waste been left unaddressed, but also largely unrecognized.
Cisco UCS - Undisputed Computing Success: UCS now boasts 11,000 customers worldwide and an annual run rate of £822m making it the fastest growing product in Cisco’s history.
Scott Paisley, our Americas Technology Director, will be speaking at the Green IT | Cloud Computing 2.0 Summit: Check out more information about the event here.
Green Data Center Management: Power Efficiency Solutions with Dell, Intel, and Joulex

Optimizing Energy Use During the Workday

Ida Davidson — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 06:00:00 GMT

At the top of every article about IT energy reduction, you will read “Turn PCs off at night and on weekends, when they aren’t in use.” Would you be surprised to learn that even when your enterprise’s PCs are in use, they’re wasting up to 30% of the energy being consumed? Typical users only use a fraction of the processing power that their PCs actually need to operate during the work day. Before now, not only has this energy waste been left unaddressed, but also largely unrecognized.

Traditional PC based power management has only looked at energy consumption during nights and weekends. It is quite simplistic: when the user is not there, power the devices off. Microsoft Windows capability has already incorporated a lot of that work for customers, devaluing the need for traditional PC power management. With power policies in Windows and more power efficient equipment that will automatically put itself in an idle mode to reduce power consumption, these devices draw much less energy than ever before. Automated sleep mode, after a defined period of inactivity, helps reduce that energy draw. This type of technology has been used in the data center and in distributed offices for some time. JouleX leverages these inherent features to deliver the ultimate in energy efficiency without affecting the end user experience. We call this capability Load Adaptive Computing.

The value that the JouleX Energy Manager platform provides to this type of distributed office environment is multifaceted. The JEM platform allows you to:

Manage devices that do not have built in power management capabilities
Better match a device’s energy consumption by the way the device is used through behavioral analysis called Load Adaptive Computing
Measure whether or not your devices actually shift to a lowered power state when not in use
Measure exactly how much energy your company is saving through these existing power management capabilities

That just scratches the surface of JEM’s unique capabilities and their benefits to your enterprise. Not only does JEM take your PC power management to the next level by enabling power management during the active day, but it also extends energy management to other network connected devices that do not have built-in power management capabilities such as monitors, printers, VoIP phones, etc.

The modern PC has hundreds of thousands of times the processing power than the computers that sent the first men to the moon. Our phones have hundreds of times the processing power than the computers that sent the men to the moon. Because of price points and Moore’s Law (every 18 months the processing power doubles at the same price point), we’re getting continually more powerful and capable PCs.

PC manufacturers and operating system vendors have developed policies that can make PCs more energy efficient. JouleX leverages those policies to dynamically adjust processor performance levels based upon how that pc is being utilized. If a PC is under heavy utilization, JEM will allow the PC to continue operating at full speed. But if, over time, monitoring shows that the PC has light or little utilization, you can enable JEM to adjust the power consumption ratio of that PC lower. This can save up to 30% of the machine’s energy without impacting the user experience.

The combination of Load Adaptive Computing and location based policy drives efficiency in the workspace by not only understanding how devices are being utilized, but also knowing WHEN devices are in use and adjusting performance and power respectively.

The Computerworld Honors Program: A Search for New Heroes

Ida Davidson — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 07:00:00 GMT

We recently announced JouleX’s inclusion in the Computerworld Honors Program. Knowing that the stated mission of this long standing program is “A Search for New Heroes”, this recognition is both humbling and exhilarating for all of us here at JouleX.While we would stop short of calling ourselves heroes, we do look forward to continuing our groundbreaking work in Enterprise Energy Management.

Our president and CEO, Tom Noonan, shared his thoughts about the award: “At JouleX, we are proud to play a vital role in providing organizations around the world with the visibility and analysis required to help them control their energy management across the enterprise and, ultimately, decrease energy consumption, support corporate sustainability initiatives, and reduce overall operating expenses. To have our JouleX Energy Manager technology recognized by The Computerworld Honors Program further validates both the business and environmental value we bring to the marketplace.”

Our congratulations go out to all of the other recognized Laureates and our heartfelt thanks go out to all of the judges at The Computerworld Honors Program.

From the Computerworld Honors Program press release:

“For over two decades, The Computerworld Honors Program has recognized individuals and organizations that create and use information technology to promote and advance public welfare, contribute to the greater good of society and change the world for the better.”

Scott Paisley Speaks at 2012 Building Energy Summit

Ida Davidson — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 15:19:00 GMT

JouleX's Americas Technology Director, Scott Paisley, will speak on Energy Management: Reducing Demand and Improving ROI at the 2012 Building Energy Summit in Washington DC on March 15.

Regarding the Summit, Paisley had this to say: “At JouleX, we are always excited to participate in events that bring attention to the challenges of Energy Management, like the DC Energy Summit. I enjoy the opportunity to meet with our customers, discuss their energy challenges and needs, and provide them with technology that helps reduce energy intensity and lower costs!”

If you are in the Washington, DC area, please come out to join us.

To learn about future events attended by JouleX team members, take a look at our News & Events page.

"The Summit will combine keynote presentations by industry leaders, educational breakout sessions for hands-on learning, case studies demonstrating real projects and real results, and networking opportunities to meet colleagues and solution providers. You’ll hear from owners of the most efficient buildings in town who have slashed energy costs up to 40 percent! Most importantly, you’ll leave with an action plan to achieve your energy conservation goals."

New Intel Video Features JouleX Energy Manager for Data Centers

Player Pate — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 14:23:00 GMT

Intel released a new video demonstrating how Intel, Dell, VMware and JouleX technologies optimize and reduce energy consumption in the data center, even in virtualized environments.

Data center operators around the globe tell us energy capacity planning is major concern for them. They talk about their struggles in optimizing energy while protecting service levels, as availability is clearly priority number one.

Increasing energy capacity doesn't mean turning machines off, it’s about intelligently allocating the energy you have. Even in virtualized environments, Intel, Dell, VMware, and JouleX have practical solutions that help data center operators gain energy visibility and recapture more energy capacity, save significant energy costs, and extend the lives of their data centers. All while helping data center operators protect service levels.

Check out the video below to learn more.

Friday Link Roundup - Sustainability Edition

Ida Davidson — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 16:27:00 GMT

With all of the sustainability articles floating around, it's hard to tell what you should be spending your time reading. Here are a few articles that we felt were worth sharing. I hope you enjoy them!

5 Easy Online Tools to Reduce Personal Emissions - "How can we reduce emissions in our personal lives? Keeping it simple, reducing carbon and living a sustainable lifestyle is about making educated choices and taking eco actions that can be categorized in different areas of our lives."
Ebay Data Center A Case Study In Energy Savings - "EBay’s overall goal in its data storage project was to turn 11 centers into three, but there was another challenge: it needed to consolidate its data centers and deploy new servers in a very short timeframe."
New Cisco EnergyWise Video Showcases the JouleX Energy Manager - "Cisco recently released a great new video about showing some great features for how Cisco EnergyWise can help you monitor, analyze, and control energy usage and showcases the JouleX Energy Manager as a recommended energy management system for Cisco EnergyWise."
The 10 best practices for sustainability reporting - "Whether producing their first or their fifteenth sustainability report, many companies still struggle with how to create a credible report that supports the company business strategy, while effectively controlling the labor and costs associated with report development."
Green Server Wars Heat Up: Intel, AMD/SeaMIcro, and ARM - "Green IT needs a lot of new performance metrics to measure its commitment to energy efficiency. In server terms, performance per watt is an increasingly important statistic for data centers that are maxing out their available electricity."
Suncorp Banks on Desktop Virtualization - "Desktop Anywhere was deployed in October 2011 and had 2000 users as of March this year. Staff can access a full desktop experience, including video, wherever they are working."
Big Business on the Sustainability Offensive - "For decades, many companies have typically responded to sustainability challenges by pursuing incremental operational improvements. But we are beginning to see an interesting new trend – businesses using sustainability as a tactic for long-term offense, rather than just short-term defence."

New Cisco EnergyWise Video Showcases the JouleX Energy Manager

Ida Davidson — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 14:50:00 GMT

Cisco recently released a great new video about showing some great features for how Cisco EnergyWise can help you monitor, analyze, and control energy usage and showcases the JouleX Energy Manager as a recommended energy management system for Cisco EnergyWise.

The video demonstrates how, "IP connects every critical system, making the network a natural control plane for energy management."

Furthermore, it shows the power of using Cisco EnergyWise to instrument your network-connected devices with energy information and using the JouleX Energy Manager to easily create policies that save energy, save money, and reduce carbon emissions.

A picture is worth a thousand words, so take a look at the video here:

Visit our Resources section to view related videos, white papers, and data sheets.

Friday Link Roundup - Co-Founders edition

Ida Davidson — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 17:25:00 GMT

This week, I'm excited to share interviews with our two Co-Founders: Rene Seeber and Josef Brunner, and some interesting reading I found around the net. Happy Friday!

Always On! An Interview with Rene Seeber: Now that the big launch of JouleX Energy Manager (JEM) Version 3.0 is in full swing, we thought it would be a great time to touch base with Rene Seeber, CTO and Co-founder of JouleX.
Interview with Josef Brunner talking about JouleX's financial customers: Non-German speakers will want to use Google Translate
3 Ways Retailers Can Help Their Suppliers Tackle Sustainability: "Based on interviews with representatives from 20 different retail companies and 30 corporate sustainability reports from that sector, the report is an intriguing snapshot of the current priorities, challenges, and opportunities the retail sector faces."
Data centre week – green awareness is growing: "I don’t normally make predictions. ... But until now what’s made the IT operation more sustainable has been primarily the cost-cutting exercises by the IT department/data centre managers. Now, though, the green agenda is being adopted at the highest level within companies as an integral element of business strategy."
How Green is my IT: "Current data centers are becoming highly energy intensive and growing rapidly. At the current rate, the consumption could double in the next five years. According to a survey, IT is contributing 2% to global warming."
IBM, Cisco and the business of smart cities: How two of the IT industry's largest companies plan to rewire urban living
Rethinking Carbon Dioxide: From a Pollutant to an Asset

Always On - An Interview with Rene Seeber

Ida Davidson — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 06:01:00 GMT

Now that the big launch of JouleX Energy Manager (JEM) Version 3.0 is in full swing, we thought it would be a great time to touch base with Rene Seeber, CTO and Co-founder of JouleX. Rene is the driving force behind our incredible engineering team, and is “Always On!” That’s more than just a slogan for Rene, who has even been known to come into a meeting with a hand full of paper napkins covered in engineering notes because that was the only paper available during a dinner with colleagues the night before.

Describe what you do at JouleX.
Rene: My days at JouleX are always a good combination of strategic product planning and working directly on the product. I listen to customer needs and feedback, and work to find ways for JouleX to address those needs through product development. I spend a lot of time figuring out where we’re going in 1, 2, and 3 years but also ensuring that JouleX is a great platform today.

Tell me a little about the projects you’re currently working on:
Rene: Now that JEM Version 3.0 has been released, we’re working on putting concrete plans in place for the upcoming next two versions. Based on customer feedback and needs, we’re really working to make the next version even better than the great products we have today.

What in your past prepared you most for what you’re working on today?
Rene: Going through all of the ups and downs with a couple of startups before JouleX was probably the best experience I could have had for being successful with JouleX. My professional training obviously prepared me for the work we do, but I’ve been through everything in startups and that’s the best experience I’ve ever had.

Is there is any relation between how the technology you built at Cobion works and techniques used in JEM?
Rene: Absolutely. Cobion was one of the biggest influencers. Cobion processed images and data and indexed it. JouleX processes energy data and indexes it. All technology relates to others.

With Cobion, we approached “content security” as a large scale data processing problem, crawling billions of internet pages and images, doing distributed content analysis to classify web sites and created enterprise products out of the result.

With JouleX, it’s quite similar. We’re using advanced algorithms in combination with large-scale number crunching on a different kind of data source, in JouleX case it’s energy related sensor data (power, utilization, temperature, etc).

What moments stand out in your mind when thinking back over the young life of this (if we do say so ourselves!) pioneering company?
Rene: One moment that always stays with me was meeting with Tom Noonan (now JouleX president & CEO) and Tim McCormick (now JouleX vice president, sales & marketing) to present them with the idea for JouleX, and getting them excited about working together again with this new company. I will always remember that the day they said yes was one of the most perfect days.

Another was when we grew enough to start to hiring people we didn’t know and that we hadn’t worked with before. Taking that step was a huge moment for our company.

A little more than a year ago at the first company kick-off when everyone in the company was together for the first time. JouleX is unique in that our team members are all spread across the world, so it’s a big deal to have everyone together at once. It’s an incredibly precious time and it’s very exciting when we all come together.

How do want JouleX to be remembered 50 years from now?
Rene: In 48 years, I expect that JouleX as a company will be looking back on all of our accomplishments at our 50 year celebration. This company has the potential to be around for a long time. I don’t think of us as being remembered but still being very present in the world.

Finally, what kinds of hobbies fill your free time?
Rene: I don’t have free time. I only concentrate at one thing at a time and right now that’s JouleX. I have a wife and children and JouleX. Everything else is unimportant.

A Look Inside Joulex Energy Manager Version 3.0

Ida Davidson — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 13:13:00 GMT

Did you catch yesterday's announcement about the launch of JouleX Energy Manager Version 3.0? If not, let me introduce you to the most feature rich, intuitive, and interactive energy management platform on the market today.

JouleX recognizes that energy management challenges are a global problem, and multi-national corporations need an energy management platform that provides full functionality at both a local and centralized level. JEM 3.0 is optimized to provide for those needs locally and globally.

Some of the most popular features of JEM 3.0!

Centralized Reporting and Scalability

Architecture enhancements provide for single instance installations as well as for distributed deployments across multiple locations, creating a single repository of data that allows for centralized and localized reporting;
The JEM platform now scales to support one million devices.

Dashboard Enhancements and New Reports

New embeddable widgets, such as Heat Maps, Energy Geo Maps, Data Center Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), Centralized Server Statistics and Health Status, and Server Resource Charts, can be used exported to external websites, corporate intranets and sustainability leaderboards to share real time progress against corporate sustainability initiatives with customers and employees;
Improved screen layouts make viewing the dashboard and devices easier by moving from two columns to three and adding a wide-screen mode;
Reports are now available in six languages―English, French, German, Spanish, Japanese, and Chinese―and can be scheduled to be sent automatically.
All-new reports for:

Sustainable procurement include Model Analysis and Model Replacement;
Data centers include PUE, Under-utilized Servers, Idle Analysis, Hourly Consumption Analysis, Cost Analysis and Summary Reports;
Distributed offices include Business Hours/Non-business Hours Comparison, Consumption Analysis, On/Off Analysis and Devices On At Night/During Weekends.

Threshold Alerting and Auto Response

Users can define thresholds based on power, utilization, temperature and other indicators, and JEM can automatically send notifications or carry out automated actions;
New notification architecture triggers notifications based on policies or with the Alerts Application.

These are just some of the highlights. Contact our Sales Department for a full demonstration of what JouleX Energy Manager Version 3.0 can do for your enterprise!

In Case You Missed It - JouleX at Cisco Live London Part 2

Ida Davidson — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 06:00:00 GMT

We were excited to be afforded the opportunity for JouleX Energy Manager to monitor and report on the energy use of the entire Cisco network at Cisco Live London 2012. Attendees were able to see the real time energy usage of the entire network on large screens located in the Cisco Network Operations Center, the Cisco EnergyWise booth, and displayed in our own booth.

Having this visibility into the network of the Cisco Live London show gave many attendees their first real look into how energy is actually used in their own IT operations.

The image below shows the real time power consumption change as people arrived at the show in the morning. Applied to the enterprise, this capability would show you within a matter of weeks what your company’s day to day energy usage patterns are. If your energy usage isn’t changing when your employees get started every day, you’re wasting a LOT of energy during non-business hours.

JouleX Solutions Architect, David Prantl, was able to implement the JouleX Energy Manager for the Cisco network in less than two hours, which gave him plenty of time to visit with prospects and customers at the show.

Thanks again to everyone who stopped by our booth to visit. For those who missed the London show, visit us at Cisco Live in San Diego in June.