The Green IT Review

Environmentally-friendly external hard drive solution - BytePac

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:33:00 +0000

Using delivery packaging as part of equipment casing is not entirely new. At the CeBIT 2011 trade show in Hannover Asus showed a box used for delivering a motherboard which could be turned into a PC case. It was designed to (temporarily) hold the board plus the other hardware for a working PC, with punch-out holes for ventilation and connectors.

German company Convar has extended the idea with BytePac, which it describes as a more environmentally-friendly alternative to external hard drives. The company supplies a cardboard box and connectors so that a hard drive, either 2.5” or 3.5”, can be housed and used in the box. The BytePac box is made of corrugated cardboard to protect the drive, but they can also be used as an archiving system, so that each hard drive can be extracted and used when needed.

BytePac is easy to use, with a modular design, flexible cabling and no fixed electronic components. All it requires is to put a hard drive into the box and connect it up with the cables supplied. It just needs the one connector kit, which can be used with whichever hard drive is in use. When the drive is not being used the connectors can be removed and the drive stored on a bookshelf.

The advantage is that the product generates no additional packaging material or electronic waste, both of which you would get with alternative external hard disk solutions. A conventional external hard drive casing is usually made of plastic, with all the manufacturing and disposal impact that has. BytePacs are made from renewable primary products in Europe, keeping the environmental impact to a minimum. And when the product’s life cycle is over it can be disposed of by composting, or preferably by being recycled again as waste paper.

BytePac is available across Europe via the company’s website and from Amazon. There are various permutations of what is supplied and it can include the hard drive itself. Without the drive the basic BytePac kit, with three boxes and the drive connector kit, costs just under £30 from Amazon.

The company describes BytePac as simple, practical, environmentally-friendly and affordable. It’s certainly that. But it is very basic. You may need to get your own hard disk, plus any software for automatic back-up or similar sophistication.

For me the fly in the ointment is whether there is a broad market for the product. If you need multiple drives for storage then I suspect you might look for a better solution – although anything that relies on one large hard disk constantly spinning is less of a green alternative. And does the home user need multiple drives? My guess is that this is primarily a small business product, particularly suitable for its home market in Germany.

Having said that, given the problems I’ve had with off-the-shelf back-up storage solutions, the idea of simply plugging a drive into an environmentally-sound casing is very attractive. The trouble is I only need one box.

Intel leads the US green power purchasers - again

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:32:00 +0000

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released its latest ranking of the top green power purchasers in the US. The list is once again led by Intel, with over 2.5 billion kWh of green electricity purchased, the same as a year ago, accounting for 88% of the company’s total electricity use.

Other ICT companies seem to be slipping down the rankings, though. In the top 50, Cisco was down from 11th to 15th place with 268m kWh purchased – slightly down on last year, Sprint was up to 26th place, (176m kWh – 5% of power used), Dell down to 43rd (114m kWh – 28%) and Google 47th (103m kWh, 5%). Google is a new entrant to the top 50, whilst Motorola has dropped out.

The green power rankings are based on on-site generation, purchasing green power from utilities, and buying renewable Energy Certificates (RECs). I’m not a fan of RECs. Although they encourage the development of renewable energy, they tend to distort the market – companies pay for the extra cost of renewable generation, rather than for the power itself. But then again, with green power in short supply there wouldn’t be enough to go round anyway.

But the use of RECs explains why Dell used to purchase 129% of its power from green sources, according to these EPA rankings. In fact the EPA has produced a long list of companies that have 100% (or more) green power.

Perhaps more interesting, and a better reflection of the efforts to be green, is the EPA’s ranking of the top 20 companies in terms of the power they generate on-site. The highest-placed IT company is Adobe Systems, which generates 11.6m kWh of electricity on site from biogas. That’s 17% of its total power needs. Google purchases almost as much – 10.7m kWh, from biogas and solar, although it accounts for less than 1% of the power the company uses.

Power Assure and Raritan offer integrated data centre power monitoring

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:47:00 +0000

US companies Power Assure and Raritan have come together to offer an integrated data centre power monitoring and analytics solution. The solution combines Power Assure’s cloud-based EM/4 Energy Management software and Raritan's intelligent power monitoring products. It’s apparently the only cloud-based Data Centre Energy Management solution allowing management across multiple data centres.

It works by Power Assure’s EM/4 software collecting power usage and temperature data from Raritan’s branch circuit monitoring product and intelligent rack power distribution units. Power Assure’s energy management solution turns it into useful information that data centre managers can analyse for better decision making. According to the companies, it means that data centre managers can use power resources more efficiently, improve uptime and reliability, reduce capital expenditures and save on operating expenses, and provide accurate PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) metrics and drive green data centre initiatives.

The overall aim is to help users manage their data centres more efficiently and reduce costs, compared with ‘alternative approaches that are more expensive and less reliable’.

It’s another coming together in the fragmented data centre energy management market. This is a green ICT sector awash with various technologies and solutions, from long-established vendors and new start-ups, so consolidation through partnerships and acquisitions is inevitable.

It looks like consolidation may be gathering pace, though. Just last month I reported that Schneider Electric had acquired Viridity. In fact it was ‘a strategic technology acquisition of the Viridity EnergyCenter 2.0 platform’ – primarily the software assets and staff. Despite my comments at the time, rumour has it that although Viridity has an innovative product - the software identifies equipment in use, records utilisation and uses reference tables to assess energy use – company sales had not matched expectations.

It may be that business pressures in the current economic climate are adding to consolidation pressures and starting to speed up the process. We shall see.

Going modular: opportunities to improve energy efficiency in the data centre

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:04:00 +0000

A guest post from David Palmer-Stevens, Systems Integration Manager, EMEA at Panduit.

All the way from design to operations, 2012 will be a challenging year for the data centre industry. The main challenge stems from the ever-increasing availability of cloud computing services. With its seductive pricing model, CFOs will be asking why their internal IT resources cost more to run than renting cloud services. Interestingly, the steps that can be taken to compete with cloud services push traditional data centres into much greater energy efficiency.

Going modular is the key to efficiency. However, the first step in this game of survival is to consolidate everything possible, using virtualisation as an effective way to combine servers. Consolidation must be deployed in modules, building up and out, and using the form of containment that best fits the environment.

Once the surplus IT equipment has been shed, the next step is to review the construction model in the data centre, focusing on power and cooling systems. Using Hot Aisle or Cold Aisle can achieve up to a 23% reduction in cooling by keeping the cooling closely coupled to the IT load. This allows the cooling system to reduce its own output alongside low periods in IT use. Using variable torque motors can also save 50% of the electricity for a 20% drop in load.

Internal IT staff must furthermore design in the kind of flexibility and scalability inherent in cloud deployments within their own data centres, in order to compete with external cloud suppliers. But since spare capacity is wasteful - in the same way that over-provisioning is wasteful in traditional data centres - the answer is modular construction. Modular data centres - pre-fabricated date centre units that are easily portable and scalable - can offer flexible expansion options including variable cooling and power generation options. A modular construction keeps the use of resources to a minimum while allowing the same dynamic load response delivered by cloud services.

There are aspects of cloud services that can bring benefits to internal IT support, since they offer staff a useful way to instantly provision new services. Throw out the old provisioning process which, in some market sectors, can take up to 90 days from service request to service delivery, and replace it with services from the cloud. The instant availability means IT staff can meet business requirements while gaining time to construct additional modules. Using containment, these modules can run in parallel with the external service, before switching over to being run by the business.

To deliver cloud services and be affordable in the future low provisioning costs are essential. Data Centre Infrastructure Management (DCIM) is a key tool now gaining acceptance in the market for bringing management and automation to the physical deployment and environment of IT equipment. The old adage ‘you cannot manage what you cannot see’ very much applies to the data centre’s physical connectivity, power distribution and cooling efficiency, including airflow and humidity. Traditional data centres have relied on periodic Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis to gauge cooling efficiencies. The deployment of DCIM means dynamic CFD analysis can take place in real time, providing more information on how the data centre performs over time.

This ability to gauge trends and patterns across both IT demand and power consumption will provide a firmer overview of how the company is performing in terms of Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) and overall business benefit. The aim is to reach a PUE of close to 1.0, with higher figures indicating less energy efficiency. Traditional data centre rooms or buildings can have a PUE of 2.0 or more. HP claims their modular EcoPOD data centres, which use mostly external air for cooling, can attain a PUE of 1.2 depending on external air temperature.

Consolidation of traditional server rooms and use of modular data centre construction can significantly streamline IT infrastructure while increasing efficiency and therefore energy consumption. The move to modular data centres is not only cost effective but, fortunately, can be implemented quickly, with the modular design optimal for fast deployment and construction. And time is of the essence if traditional data centres are to keep up with the fast-paced competition offered by cloud computing services.

Smart meter implementation in the UK no longer universal?

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:53:00 +0000

According to a report in the Daily Telegraph on Wednesday, the UK government is drawing up plans to allow people to reject smart meters. Previously the five-year implementation plan, due to start in 2014, did not allow for any such individual requests.

It’s not exactly clear what’s been said. Some news outlets are reporting that energy minister Charles Hendry, said “We believe people will benefit from having smart meters. But we will not make them obligatory”, but I don’t know where this comment came from. Hendry did write a letter to the Daily Mail on January 20th (it seems that that newspaper is now an official communications channel for UK government) which referred to the Public Accounts Committee’s reservations about the roll out and also said that ‘consumer protection is at the core of the programme and we’ve been consulting consumer groups over the past year’.

Anyway, in response to the coverage Mark England, CEO at smart grid and metering technology company Sentec, made the following comment:

“The news that smart meters will no longer be compulsory shows that more work is needed to educate consumers about the benefits they can deliver. Although the concept of half-hourly data may seem to threaten privacy, in reality this granularity is needed to enable smart decisions, for example time-shifting certain activities to reduce bills or to manage capacity on transmission and distribution networks. It certainly won’t be possible to effectively compare different tariffs and suppliers without this detailed data. As prices rise, so too will the importance of smart meters and the behaviour change they can inspire. Consumers who opt out may lose the opportunity to benefit from favourable tariffs and other incentives from energy suppliers, which will become more important to households as energy bills increase.”

Whilst I agree with his comments, the problem is that much of these benefits won’t really be available until we have smart grids. And whilst in the UK we have a fixed programme for meter introduction, smart grids are still a long way off. So at the moment there are limited benefits to a costly plan to introduce meters that some see as detrimental to health and privacy.

But spare a thought for the companies that have been working hard to put together plans for the ICT infrastructure to support the UK-wide implementation. They are just approaching the tender phase but now must be wondering just how many meters they will actually be supporting.

Energy management system for new Viking Line ferry

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 10:42:00 +0000

Switzerland-based power and automation technologies company ABB is to provide an energy management system for what is described as one of the world’s most environmentally-friendly cruise ferries. The ship, which is being built at the STX Yard in Turku, Finland, is due to be delivered to Viking Line in 2013. It will have the capacity to carry 2,800 passengers and will run between Turku and Stockholm in Sweden.

The new ferry will be powered by liquefied natural gas, a first for a passenger vessel of this size. The fuel will ‘have extremely low emissions and virtually zero marine emissions’.

What ABB brings is its energy management system for marine applications software – EMMA – to help manage energy-related processes, practices and decisions on the ferry. The EMMA software compares and analyses the historical and current operational data of the vessel, then calculates and advises on areas for improvement. It also includes an energy management tool that models energy consumption and calculates optimal operating conditions.

EMMA is based on ABB’s process automation software for energy management, which already has more than 60 process industry customers.

It’s a good example of how technology can contribute to reducing the energy use and emissions across a business. In the case of the ferry, the fuel is the main factor in reducing emissions, but the ABB technology will be able to maximise those savings.

This is where the ICT focus should really be, rather than endlessly trying to reduce emissions from data centres. That’s only really useful for internet/IT services companies who have little business outside these facilities.

Remember, ICT is responsible for 2-3% of global CO2 emissions (depending on which figures you believe). So if we reduce ICT’s emissions by 50%, it will only make a difference of 1-2% to the global figure. But the Smart 2020 report (and other similar research) has found that the effective use of ICT could help reduce global emissions by as much as 15%. That’s where the focus should be, but it’s not an area that is talked about much by the ICT companies themselves. So I don’t get to report on it much.

Google and IBM receive green data centre recognition

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 10:59:00 +0000

Both IBM and Google received recognition in January for the energy efficiency and energy management of their data centres:

IBM: At the beginning of the month the European Commission (EC) recognised 27 IBM data centres across Europe as conforming to the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centre Energy Efficiency. That covers over 70% of IBM's (strategic) outsourcing data centres in 15 European countries - apparently the largest portfolio of data centres from a single company to receive the recognition (although how many companies have that many data centres across Europe? – ed).

The assessment is made against a set of best practices, including the use of energy efficient hardware, installing free cooling and cold aisle containment. Power usage effectiveness (PUE) is one indicator and in May last year the Uptime Institute gave IBM data centres a rating of 1.65 for average power efficiency, compared to the industry average of 1.8.

Google: The search engine giant’s achievement has been in the US, where all the company’s owned and operated data centres have received ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001 certification. The company claims to be the first major Internet services company to gain this certification for all of its US data centres. (Do other ‘major’ internet services companies limit such actions to the US? – ed)

The ISO 14000 family addresses various aspects of environmental management and the first standard, ISO 14001, deals with the requirements for an environmental management system. OHSAS 18001 is the British Standards Institution (BSI) specification for Occupational Health and Safety (OH&S) Management Systems. It specifies the requirements for a management system to enable an organisation to control its OH&S risks and improve its performance.

Google says that it has looked to be certified ‘because we want to be the gold standard in environmental and workforce safety, and because we care about the communities where we live and work.’

Commendable actions from both companies. They come with rather vague claims to market leadership, but we shouldn’t blame them for that. If they can get good PR from it (as they clearly have) then it is an additional reward for the effort.

The problem is that these sorts of initiatives do seem to be led by the major IT services/internet companies, and there aren’t that many of them. They set a good example, and given their size their green efforts to make a real and significant difference, but I don’t see a great deal of trickle-down to smaller IT services outfits.

I’ve always said that one of the most significant things that such companies can do is to be evangelists for green/sustainable ICT, pushing the industry as a whole to do better. I know they do get involved in cross-industry initiatives, but they could do a lot more.

ICT is well represented among the most sustainable corporations in the world

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 10:51:00 +0000

In a ranking of the most sustainable corporations in the world the ICT sector is well represented, with at least 13 companies in the top 100 list. (Possibly more, depending who you include). Heading the ICT companies is Nordic telecoms company TeliaSonera, in 13th place, followed by Intel (18), but with IBM in a relatively lowly 69th place.

Corporate Knights, a Toronto-based media, research and financial products company, formed the Global Responsible Investment Network to create the 2012 Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World (the Global 100) list. According to the company, The Global 100 is the most extensive data-driven corporate sustainability assessment in existence.

The rankings are determined through a two-stage research process. Firstly the ‘Global 400 Sustainability leaders’ were selected based on their ratings from The Global Sustainability Research Alliance (GSRA) and on their performance on a financial stress test administered by Global Currents. Then the Global 400 companies were ranked against their industry peers on 11 KPIs used in the Corporate Knights research model.

Looking through the rankings, ICT companies in the top 50 (with ranking) include:

TeliaSonera (13)
Intel (18)
Swisscom (20)
Schneider Electric (26)
SAP(27)
Dassault Systemes (32)
BT Group (33)
Siemens (41)
Logica (46)

Also included in the top 100 are Vodafone (65), IBM, in (69), Ricoh (72) and Samsung (73). (Of course it’s not always clear cut as to who is an ICT company and who isn’t – Schneider Electric might not be considered mainstream ICT, but is a major supplier of power and cooling products and services for data centres).

It’s noticeable how relatively poorly US companies do in this rankings, given the country’s leading position in the global ICT industry. Europe is much more strongly represented, and its good to see three UK companies in the top 100 (there aren’t very many UK ICT companies big enough to get into these rankings!).

Corporate Knights says that its aim is ‘to mainstream sustainability in the business community’. It wants to create a virtuous cycle where the most sustainable companies attract the most capital and earn the best returns. It also points out that these companies are models for the art of the possible, ‘living proof of how billion dollar entities can squeeze more wealth from less material resources while honouring the social contract.’

Ebay launches its new green web site

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 11:00:00 +0000

The eBay Green Team, a global team of 2,500+ eBay employees and more than 300,000 members of the eBay community, last week launched a new destination for all things green at eBay. The aim is to help users buy, sell and think green every day.

Green.eBay.com brings together the content-focused eBay Green Team site and the shopping-focused green.eBay.com. It combines community-generated content, green products and projects and news about programmes and partnerships, all designed for a greener lifestyle.

The site includes:

New product categories to suit the more environmentally aware.
Member recommendations for greener products
Guest bloggers with a green voice
The Green Team Talks blog on eBay green initiatives
The new Green at eBay section, which will pull together all of the company’s green programmes, policies, credentials and progress all in one place.

eBay is hoping that the new site will “become a place that you regularly visit for lifestyle inspiration, and where you can share your favourite green ideas, projects and products with others like you.”

It’s a lofty ambition and I’m not sure it’s the first place a dedicated environmentalist would visit for information and advice. But eBay does have a very valuable role to play in extending the lifecycle of all the stuff we consume. It would be interesting to assess just how much dumping on landfill has been avoided by using eBay to extend the life of products and make money at the same time. So it’s a good idea for eBay to expand on that green benefit on the web site.

Sustainability may be on the corporate agenda, but most companies still don’t know what carbon counting is

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 10:44:00 +0000

A couple of reports published this week give contrasting views of the extent to which companies are addressing sustainability and their carbon footprints.

The latest annual ‘Sustainability & Innovation Global Executive Study’ from The Boston Consulting Group and MIT Sloan Management Review is based on survey responses from 3,000 managers from 113 countries. In the responses, 70% of executives said that their companies have made sustainability a permanent fixture on the management agenda.

Sustainability seems to be gaining ground, with two thirds reporting that it’s necessary to being competitive, up from 55% in the previous survey. Nearly a third also said that sustainability contributes to profitability. Nevertheless, the survey showed there is still a long way to go. Sustainability may be on management agendas, but the responses indicate that it’s the eighth item behind various other more important considerations.

In contrast, US ERP software company Epicor Software has announced the results of its global carbon accounting survey, which finds that most companies are still lagging in their comprehension of carbon accounting as a whole. The survey was of nearly 1,000 companies worldwide, but with quite a large proportion (43%) from organisations with $50m revenue or less. There was also a strong emphasis on manufacturing companies (48%).

But the top level finding is that 58% of companies surveyed had not heard of the term ‘carbon accounting’. Less than a quarter could accurately describe what the term means and 80% don’t monitor their company’s carbon footprint. The survey also revealed that although the CEO is the most likely person to be responsible for a company’s green strategy, 50% of companies surveyed don’t have any C-level involvement at all in their carbon accounting initiatives.

OK, so these surveys are very different in terms of who and what they cover and the way they are reported (for example, for Epicor 48% is a majority) but I believe there is an interesting point here.

Sustainability is increasingly on the corporate agenda, led by larger companies. It’s nowhere near the top of the agenda and it’s not clear what aspects of sustainability are being discussed - economic sustainability was the most common aspect according to the survey responses. A lot of companies globally have yet to discuss carbon accounting at the highest level.

But it at least means that sustainability is in the early stages of corporate policy and strategy, which will inevitably mean a trickle down impact on the rest of the organisation in the future. And where these larger companies go, so smaller organisations will follow.

As sustainability moves up the corporate agenda, so the impact on ICT operations will change. To date many ICT carbon saving initiatives have been instigated by the IT department as a money-saving exercise and often assessed and approved as part of IT budget considerations, possibly with the involvement of the CFO or equivalent. Most have not been part of a corporate sustainability policy initiative, more likely as part of a company-wide cost cutting exercise.

We will shortly see the next stage of green/sustainable ICT. As companies increasingly incorporate sustainability into their corporate strategies, so IT operations will have to align with that strategy. IT initiatives will cease to be primarily a piece-meal approach and become an integrated aspect of the corporate sustainability objectives, driven by IT governance. There will be no distinction between whether it’s so-called ‘green for IT’ or ‘IT for green’, but all part of a wider corporate strategy.

Smart grid-ready building management tools launched into a growing market

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 11:02:00 +0000

US energy control company Echelon has launched a suite of tools and products for energy management in buildings aimed at integrating a range of devices, applications and building automation standards. The idea is to make buildings more ‘grid aware’ and ultimately work with, and benefit from, emerging smart grids.

The new suite builds on Echelon’s existing open standard, multi-application platform for buildings. It pulls together a building specification guide to help design and build energy efficient buildings, an application that enables an open building automation architecture, a building network operating system to manage energy management systems and a building energy management toolkit to incorporate a range of devices and applications in a customised energy management solution.

Eric Bloom, research analyst at Pike Research, commented that "Commercial buildings consume about 25% of all electricity worldwide today, so boosting efficiency in the commercial sector is crucial to reducing operating expenses and carbon emissions. To meet these challenges, new energy management technologies are starting to transform the way in which businesses, government agencies, and utilities manage and reduce energy consumption in buildings.”

In fact Pike Research has just released a report on the building energy management systems market. It points out that in the current economic climate governments, building owners and companies are looking for ways to become more efficient and building energy management systems (BEMS) are a key element.These systems include the software, hardware and services for the monitoring, management and control of energy, particularly for reducing energy consumption and costs.

According to Pike’s report ‘Building Energy Management Systems’, worldwide revenue from building energy management systems will increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of nearly 14% through the rest of this decade, reaching just under $6bn a year by 2020.

Echelon’s new product suite highlights the nature of this market at the moment, with disparate solutions addressing different aspects of building energy efficiency (at least that’s my perception – I haven’t read the Pike research). It’s this issue that the new offering from Echelon is addressing – it also represents an opportunity for an ‘open’ solution to pull all these pieces together.

The fragmented nature of the market may hold it back somewhat, although continued pressure on companies and building managers to save money will certainly keep the focus on ways to increase efficiency. Integrated solutions are the way forward, but it may not be until the benefits of full smart grid integration are available, i.e. not until smart grids have actually been implemented (which is still a long way off for a lot of counties, including the UK), that the full benefits will be seen.

PrimeEnergyIT – an EU energy efficient IT project

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 08:50:00 +0000

I’ve just come across PrimeEnergyIT, an EU-funded project aimed at supporting the market development of energy efficient IT equipment, including server, data storage, network and facility equipment, as well as new power management technologies. The project has been running since 2010 and due to end this year, so I hope it’s reached its target audience (but just not me).

Anyway, PrimeEnergyIT has developed tools and services for IT people, including:

hardware and service based energy efficiency criteria and metrics
guidelines on energy efficient equipment and best practise
education and training of IT and infrastructure managers and experts
guidelines and criteria for procurement and management

The project is run by an international consortium of national agencies and research institutes in collaboration with a number of industrial partners. One outcome of the project is a 52-page overview of current technologies supporting energy efficient IT. The report, called ‘Energy efficient IT and infrastructure for data centres and server rooms’, covers all essential IT technologies in the data centre and covers a number of topics, including system design, power management for both hardware and the data centre as a whole, and also consolidation and virtualisation approaches.

It’s a useful report, with recommendations for best practice and resources for further reading. As it says itself “The brochure provides a source of basic information for IT and infrastructure managers to support energy- and cost-efficiency”.

But its not just this report. In the ‘Education materials’ area of the site there are further documents going into more background and detail of specific aspects of green IT, including servers, storage, networks, cooling and free cooling. It’s a useful resource, and all free to download.

Moving beyond power to efficiency

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 09:20:00 +0000

A guest post from Sumir Karayi, CEO of 1E.

Power management is en vogue and everyone’s talking about it, particularly as energy costs are rising in tandem with increases in consumption. There is also a general acceptance about environmental change and the need that we have to reduce our impact on the environment. Many IT folks are well aware of the importance of power management and the part it plays in reducing energy consumption and cutting costs (although how much they do about it is another matter).

The problem with power is that it isn’t a discrete component of IT. The best way to measure its impact is to look at overall efficiency. It is important to measure whether IT is doing useful work or not. If it is not, you can not only save power but see a whole host of other benefits, including reducing hardware costs (by decommissioning servers); software (by finding and eliminating applications that are not used); as well as associated maintenance. Another factor to consider is the cost of the time that people spend on managing IT. These extra costs can amount to 10x the value of power itself. So if you save £10 on power you could save £100+ in terms of total IT running costs.

So while we started the debate with power, an area that 1E pioneered 13 years ago, what we have since found is that the debate has slowly but surely shifted to one around efficiency. Improving IT Efficiency tops the list for enterprises as they go into 2012, according to independent research firm Forrester Research, Inc.: “While 2011 started with a more robust IT spending environment, many organisations began to pull back midyear, and 2012 plans are expected to be more conservative given the high degree of uncertainty. [...] Efficiency and consolidation are top IT priorities.⁽¹⁾

As an example, one in six servers – 15% in any single data centre at any one time – are not doing anything useful. It’s not about utilisation levels but about the business value that the server delivers; whether your servers are doing anything useful at all. If there’s no useful activity, then your investment is giving you absolutely no return.

Other thought-provoking statistics include:

A typical UK company with 1,000 PCs wastes £16,800 a year through not shutting down PCs.⁽²⁾
22% of purchased software globally is never deployed.⁽³⁾
Between £650 and £1300 ($1000 and $2000) is spent on Windows 7 migrations per user – this could be saved if automated
12% of IT help desk tickets are requests for new software. User self-service could save organisations in the UK and US over £5.6bn ($8.6bn) a year in IT help desk costs.⁽⁴⁾

All of these costs and waste are avoidable. In the quickly-evolving world of IT, efficiency is the next evolutionary step.

(1) Forrester Research, 2012 IT Budget Planning Guide for CIOs (October 27, 2011) (2) 1E/Alliance to Save Energy, PC Energy Report (3) 1E, Software Efficiency Report (4) 1E, Help Desk Efficiency Report

Uninterruptible Power Supplies are a key element in green IT efforts

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 10:52:00 +0000

According to a report from Pike Research, as green IT becomes an important goal, Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) systems will increasingly need to work with the existing IT infrastructures to support overall green IT objectives.

The report says that future UPS systems will combine several key features. The essential part is the built-in energy storage source, primarily batteries, flywheels or compressed air. They will also need the circuitry to supply sufficient clean power for anything from a few seconds to several hours. In addition, most leading UPS systems also have some form of surge protection or power filtering circuitry. With these features, Pike says that a UPS system can play a larger role in the overall smart energy infrastructure, part of a more holistic energy management strategy.

“UPS systems are already an important energy storage feature in cost-efficient and smart buildings,” said vice president of research Bob Gohn. “The emergence of hybrid topologies that automatically switch between different power modes can reduce energy costs over time without compromising power quality.”

There has been increasing focus on greener UPS systems in data centres in recent years, although in my experience it’s been more about just making the UPS itself greener, for instance by using a flywheel rather than batteries.

Up-time is still the single most important factor in running a data centre, though, well above any other consideration, so UPS systems are critical. Integrating the UPS with greener infrastructure management seems an obvious move, particularly as data centre power management becomes much more comprehensive. But I suspect a lot of data centre managers will be very cautious about making the UPS too complex.

Schneider acquires Veridity and merges their data centre power management solutions

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:02:00 +0000

In case you missed it, just before Christmas energy management company Schneider Electric announced that it had acquired Viridity’s EnergyCenter Data Centre Infrastructure Management (DCIM) Software. Viridity’s methodology for measuring server power consumption will be merged with Schneider Electric’s StruxureWare for Data Centre Operations DCIM suite to provide data centre asset tracking, capacity planning and energy visualisation.

Viridity’s EnergyCenter software provides an analysis of energy use and trends for servers and other devices. The software looks up reference tables for the energy consumption of the equipment it identifies and combines it with utilisation data (based on processor activity) to analyse overall equipment energy used. (Viridity also had a free online utility called EnergyCheck that provided a data centre energy health check and suggested actions to cut power consumption. It doesn’t seem to be available via Schneider’s web site).

Schneider Electric’s StruxureWare is a combination of its DCIM and Data Centre Facility Management (DCFM) software tools. The software gives an integrated view of the physical systems in the data centre. It also gives executives and managers visibility and control over their data centre’s daily operations.

Viridity hasn’t been around long – founded in 2007, it launched its first product in 2010. But it clearly had potential. The company raised $15m in financing from investors (North Bridge Venture Partners and Battery Ventures) and last year won the Uptime Institute’s 2011 Green Enterprise IT Awards (GEIT) in the ‘Outstanding IT Product In a User Deployment’ category. I would guess that the investors got a handsome return.

What’s different about Viridity’s solution is that it doesn’t need any additional hardware or software installed – it just identifies the IT equipment and application and checks its database for energy use. It means it’s fast to implement and relatively inexpensive. That complements Schneider Electric’s more hardware-based approach, focused on the equipment used and management of the facility power. The Viridity acquisition is an attractive option to expand Schneider’s offerings and customer base.

As I’ve said before, the data centre is becoming a battlefield for a range of solutions to monitor and manage power use. I would expect to see an increasing number of acquisitions (and partnerships) in this area in the next year or two.

Mountains, fjords and data centres

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 08:43:00 +0000

There’s a lot of talk about locating data centres in places where they can make best use of the surrounding environment. Few can be as well-placed as the Green Mountain data centre located in a former NATO ammunition depot inside a mountain beside a fjord in Norway.

In summary, the facility features:

Nine halls inside the mountain with 15,692 m2 floor space in total, plus admin building and warehouse.
Access to cold water for cooling - 8°C all year.
Expected PUE (Power Usage Efficiency) of less than 1.2 (The Green Grid Platinum level).
Use of renewable energy (60% of Norway’s power is renewable, mostly hydropower).
Multiple high capacity communications lines to Oslo, directly to the UK and to continental Europe.
Direct power lines from several power stations.
As secure as you would expect, given its previous use.
Quay with "roll on-roll off" option.
30-minute drive from Stavanger, with direct flights from Stavanger across Europe.

The data centre is a partnership between investment company Smedvig Eiendom, utilities company Lyse Energi and ErgoGroup, the largest provider of ITC services in Norway.

The developers are in the late stages of negotiations with Norwegian clients, but believe the facility will also be attractive to multi-nationals based in the US and Europe. The build-out of the co-location halls is expected to start this month and Green Mountain expects the first clients to be installed in late 2012.

It seems like a pretty ideal location. The use of the cold water is a significant factor in making it very efficient in its use of power, the majority of which will be from renewable sources anyway. And in that location its pretty well hidden and protected from most other outside factors.

If only all data centres could be so ideally placed. I wonder how many redundant NATO ammunition depots there are in Europe?

Interxion provides 50% renewable energy to its data centre customers

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 18:55:00 +0000

Netherlands-based co-location company Interxion has announced that more than more than half of the power provided for its data centre customers now comes from renewable energy sources. Solar, wind, geothermic, tidal or hydro energy is available in its data centres in 11 countries across Europe and 100% green power is used in the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

The provision of power from renewable sources to drive down carbon emissions is one of a range of sustainable initiatives from Interxion. The company has also driven its PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) down year-on-year through a mix of design, procurement and operational measures. The company also uses alternative cooling sources, such as sea-water cooling, wherever practical and is in the process of implementing closed-loop energy recycling systems, where the heat generated in the data centre is recycled for use elsewhere.

All good stuff, but not entirely altruistic. Peter Cladingbowl, Interxion SVP Engineering & Operations Support, is quoted as saying “Over half of the power we provide comes from sustainable sources in order to offer a choice of renewable energy to our customers, many of whom are among the global leaders in addressing corporate social responsibility issues and the environmental impact of their ICT infrastructure.”

If you want to supply the big companies then you can’t ignore their sustainable IT/supply chain programmes, which will inevitable include reducing carbon emissions. It’s good to see that Interxion is also addressing data centre efficiency and heat output issues as well, though – just using renewable power is not the complete solution.

Carbon Trust online tool encourages employees to save power

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 10:25:00 +0000

The Carbon Trust, the UK government-supported low-carbon agency, has launched an online tool called ‘Carbon Trust Empower'. The tool enables employees to make practical commitments to cutting energy and waste through an interactive, animated tour of a typical workplace. It’s seen as a springboard for larger organisations to introduce their own internal behavioural change programmes.

Using Empower, employees can explore energy saving opportunities throughout their office. It starts with how they arrive for work, with options to travel by public transport, before moving on to their desk, where, for example, they can commit to switch off their PC when not in use and teleconference rather than travel. The tool also provides facts and figures so that employees’ energy savings can be assessed.

The Carbon Trust believes that by engaging employees in cutting energy use, paper waste and travel, Empower has the potential to save a typical small business over 15% of their energy bill or more than £6,000 a year – equivalent to powering 3.5km of street lights for a year (perhaps not the best example, given that street lights are being switched off all over the country to save power – and money). Larger businesses that base their approach on this tool could save £150,000 and over 500 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually.

Overall, the Carbon Trust estimates that employees could save UK businesses and public bodies £500m and two million tonnes of CO₂ – equivalent to the annual carbon emissions of all the households in Birmingham. Whitbread and Oxford City Council have already signed their staff up.

Well, encouraging employees to be greener firstly requires a degree of education, so that everyone understands the reasons and gets behind the initiatives. It also needs some internal encouragement, to get everyone involved. Empower seems to combine the two. It is only the very first, introductory, step, though, and needs to be quickly followed up. Internal competition to save power seems to be emerging as a great way to incentivise people, for example.

But there are some areas where more in-depth education and involvement is required because they are pivotal to energy use and helping achieve a corporate strategy and targets. IT itself is one of those. A lot more can be achieved by having an IT department that fully sees and understands the benefits of low-carbon IT and brings that view to bear on all decisions. It’s better to have the IT department initiate actions rather than a CSR department making, possibly misguided, demands.

Verdiem partners with Information Builders

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 10:44:00 +0000

PC power management company Verdiem has announced a partnership with business intelligence (BI) software company Information Builders. Verdiem will integrate Information Builders’ technology into its solution to make it easier for users to develop power management policies and manage energy consumption.

Under the agreement, Verdiem is integrating Information Builders’ WebFOCUS solution into its Surveyor 6 platform to enable centralised power management to distributed IT devices. Surveyor 6 measures key industry metrics like energy consumption, energy cost savings and carbon dioxide emission reductions. The partnership means that the data is more accessible to users, who can also drill down for deeper analysis. WebFOCUS' browser-based platform also enables self-service access to these reports and the data can also be shared with broader audiences via a web portal.

In larger enterprises it can be difficult to handle the scale of data collected by Surveyor 6, hence the use of WebFOCUS. It means the data can be more easily applied to optimise energy consumption and make more informed decisions about reducing IT operating costs and power management policies. As the variety of IT devices Surveyor supports expands, WebFOCUS can scale up.

Verdiem claims that 30%-50% energy and cost savings can be achieved using Surveyor 6, with return on investment in five to eight months.

The power management solutions market seems to be developing a fundamental rift. On one side are companies like Verdiem that offer increasingly deep functionality and the means to tailor (and integrate) the software as part of a corporate power reduction monitoring and reduction strategy. On the other side are those providing simpler and easier to install solutions. This camp includes desktop management companies offering power management functionality, but also suppliers such as Joulex, with products increasingly integrated across the IT infrastructure.

It’s horses for courses – both sectors have significant market potential. But at the top end, where the likes of Verdiem and 1E sit, there is likely to be a lot more of this type of partnering (or even acquisitions) as specialist IT power management companies come together to provide broader and more comprehensive solutions to the corporate market.

EU reaches agreement on WEEE collection rate changes

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 10:56:00 +0000

Just before Christmas the European Parliament and Council finally thrashed out an agreement on updating the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) legislation. Under the agreement the current national WEEE collection rates of 4Kg per person will remain for four years (after the legislation is passed). For the following three years collection rates will be assessed at 45% of the weight of equipment entering the market. After that, around 2020, member states can chose a collection target of either 65% of the weight of equipment entering the market or 85% of the weight of waste equipment.

It’s been a tortuous process getting to this point. As I reported last March, the Parliament wanted national collection targets to be 85% of e-waste produced by 2016. This has been pushed back to 2020 and countries can alternatively use the European Council’s preferred 2020 target of 65% of the weight of equipment placed on the market. So the Council has effectively managed to water down the EU Parliament’s proposal.

There are a number of other issues included in the legislation – various amendments will be debated when the compromise legislation goes before the EU Parliament again. But it was agreed that there will be obligations on retailers to take-back small equipment without a further obligation to buy. The scope of equipment covered will also be more broadly defined.

This was always going to be a good news/bad news sort of legislation. The targets have been lowered but on the other hand the scope is expanded and large retailers have been drawn in. In the end, though, it doesn’t really matter what the targets are if the law is being flouted and equipment taken overseas for ‘recycling’ that is dangerous to health and the environment. It remains to be seen if, and what, greater policing of the policies will be introduced, but the two should go much more hand-in-hand.

AlertMe launches into the US with a big opportunity

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 11:05:00 +0000

UK Home Energy Management (HEM) company AlertMe has announced a commercial partnership with US home improvement retailer Lowe’s. Based on AlertMe’s Smart Home platform and home hub, the partnership will deliver a cloud based home management system in North America. The service, called Iris, will enables users to monitor and control their home using their smartphone or computer.

Iris will be introduced in the second quarter of 2012 in stores and online, starting with energy and home management applications such as thermostats, smart plugs, lighting, door locks, motion sensors,etc. Lowe’s plans to extend Iris into areas such as smart appliances, vehicles, garden, and remote second-property management.

This looks like a great win for AlertMe, given that Lowe’s is apparently the second largest home improvement company in the world with 1,750 stores, nearly $50bn in annual revenues and 15 million weekly shoppers.

Just last May the company announced a new Chairman, Ron Mackintosh, ex head of CSC in Europe and said it was gearing up for expansion in the UK and the Americas. It certainly seems to have made good progress, perhaps helped by the withdrawal of Microsoft’s Hohm and Google’s PowerMeter from the market.

Lighting systems can be the key to data centre energy efficiency

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 10:31:00 +0000

There are many ways that you can address energy efficiency in data centres, but an article in The Data Center Journal suggests that the best place to start is the lights.

One of the easy quick wins for saving money in a data centre is to simply turn the lights off. In the past data centres have been permanently lit, despite the fact that no one enters a room from one day to the next. The savings may not be huge, 3-5% of the power requirement when the impact on cooling requirements is taken into account, but why waste it?

But the article, from Sam Klepper, EVP of Building Solutions and CMO for Redwood Systems, goes further, placing lighting systems at the heart of data centre energy monitoring.

We’re not talking about standard, switched light bulbs, but an intelligent lighting system based on networked LEDs. These devices last longer, generate less heat and are connected via a direct current(DC)-powered network. One of the main advantages is that the network can also incorporate multiple sensors that can accommodate countless specialised features. Once the lighting platform is in place it supports a range of building intelligence applications.

The article says that switching to an energy-efficient lighting network that integrates building-performance systems can result in improving PUE by up to 25%.

Well, the savings aren’t from the lighting system itself, but from the ability to monitor the environment and identify where actions should be taken. This is one of a number of approaches to monitoring the data centre, some addressing the facility as a whole and some more directly monitoring (and managing) IT and other equipment.

Much depends on other energy-reduction initiatives to address the PUE. For example, running systems hotter, which is something Intel has been talking about a lot recently. Facebook refitted its Santa Clara data centre to operate at 27°C, which saved $229,000 in annual energy costs. But you really need to be sure that complete systems will be reliable at higher temperatures, which needs more than just Intel’s say-so.

The other main alternative, and one that is gaining considerable momentum, is to use the external environment to cool the data centre. Much easier to do if you’re building a new facility (more on that in a post in a day or two), less so for refits. And it depends on location. It can dramatically reduce PUE, and hence energy costs, in one fell swoop. It’s also much more under the control of the data centre manager and still leaves lots of room to make the IT infrastructure itself more efficient.

Electronic reuse and recycling is reducing e-waste dumping, but too slowly

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 09:30:00 +0000

According to a study from Pike Research, the challenge created by ever-increasing amounts of e-waste is being mitigated by strong growth in the reuse and recycling of electronic equipment. The volume and weight of equipment that has reached the end of its life will more than double in the next 15 years, but electronics recycling and reuse will increase seven-fold in the same period. In fact by the early 2020s the amount that will be recycled and reused will be more than the annual weight of electronic devices that become e-waste, the report predicts.

The total volume and weight of end-of-life electronics is expected to rise from 6.0 million tons in 2010 to 14.9 million tons by 2025. As a result, industry players, governments and advocacy groups will be looking for new ways to expand electronics recycling and reuse to prevent the environmental hazard of burying or burning. Fortunately, electronics recycling and reuse will rise from 1.1 million tons a year in 2010 to 7.9 million tons annually by 2025. But it’s still not fast enough to prevent the total volume of e-waste going to landfills from increasing throughout the period.

Pike’s analyst, Bob Boggio, said that trans-boundary shipments of e-waste from developed countries to developing countries continues and the informal recovery of components and materials in developing countries remains a concern for human health and the environment. The gap between dumping and reuse/recycling may be narrowed if national and regional governments modify their legislation to close loopholes.

The research agrees with the findings of SBI Energy, which I reported on just before Christmas. SBI’s focus was on the global market for services around the recycling and re-use of e-waste, worth close to $6.8bn in 2010, up 10% from $6.2bn the year before.

But there must be a large number of unknowns in all the estimates, not least relating to the expected lifecycle of equipment. The increasing speed with which manufacturers introduce new devices to encourage sales doesn’t look likely to slow down.

That’s not the only problem. GreenIT.fr has pointed out that two major disk drive manufacturers - Western Digital and Seagate – have just shorten the guarantee of their hard drives, Seagate by as much as 50% in some cases (more for bare drives). It leaves IT managers with the choice of the cost of the optional extended warranty or to renew their equipment more frequently. That’s a step backwards.

(Finally, for future studies in this area there’s a need to agree on terminology. For Pike, equipment that’s no longer required for the purpose it was originally acquired (end-of-life) is known as e-scrap. E-scrap that’s not recycled, reused, or stored becomes e-waste. The distinction is a necessary one, but the labels are probably better used the other way round).

Facebook hires Google’s green energy tsar

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 11:46:00 +0000

Facebook’s new commitment to greener operations, has been reinforced by the news that the company has hired Bill Weihl, the man behind Google’s green energy strategy. According to TechWorld, Weihl, who left Google in November, will join Facebook sometime in January.

It was only in December that Facebook succumbed to pressure from Greenpeace by announcing a goal of powering all its operations with clean and renewable energy. The company announced that it would work with Greenpeace on promoting renewable energy, encouraging major utilities to develop renewable energy generation and enabling Facebook users to save energy.

In an interview with Fresh Dialogues, Weihl confirmed that in the Facebook role “the focus will be on sustainability, clean energy, energy efficiency, etc.”

Given Google’s extensive involvement in renewable energy projects (just search the blog to know more) Weihl certainly looks like the right man to help Facebook.

Google continues to pour money into renewable energy, with the announcement in December of a new $94m investment in a portfolio of four solar photovoltaic (PV) projects being built by Recurrent Energy near Sacramento, California. It brings total investment in clean energy to more than $915m. In addition the company has already committed to providing funding to help more than 10,000 homeowners install solar PV panels on their rooftops.

It’ll be interesting to see whether Facebook is in a mood to match Google in its clean energy ambitions. It should, but I don’t think it will.

Merry Christmas and a green IT New Year!

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 10:40:00 +0000

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Wishing you all a green and prosperous 2012.

(I’ll be back in the New Year)