Sustainable IT | Ted Samson | October 2007

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October 2007

October 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft to shine spotlight on green-tech initiatives

Though the green credentials of Microsoft's flagship OS are suspect, the company is making clear efforts to both embrace and push sustainable products and practices. The company is a partner in the Clinton Foundation's environmental initiatives, for example, and earlier this year, it broke ground on a new datacenter in San Antonio where it will employ various green technologies

More recently at the Cleantech Forum in Toronto, Rob Bernard, Microsoft's general manager of development and platform evangelism, announced a new program to boost the visibility of green-tech solutions to its ISV partners.

The program includes an initiative to present case studies and videos about clean-tech companies on the ISV showcase on Microsoft.com. "Through our ISV showcase, we'll expose your portfolio companies and expose them to much more volume in the world," Bernard said. "We know from experience that that exposure accelerates sales and adoption, and it's good for Microsoft and the clean-tech industry. We have literally millions of users visiting these every month."

More interesting to me: Microsoft will encourage energy-efficiency-related innovation in its Imagine Cup program, a competition that encourages participating IT students to develop green-related "software to change the world."

Posted by Ted Samson on October 30, 2007 07:50 PM

October 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)

IBM's silicon recycling technique a boon for solar

Big Blue has devised a technique to reduce silicon waste that will save the company money and benefit the burgeoning solar-power industry, according to a Reuters report.

The company has found a way to remove silicon circuitry from wafers -- discs of silicon -- that are deemed too flawed to be used for processors, according to the report. Those little pieces of silicon have traditionally been discarded.

However, IBM engineers has come up with a technique to remove the circuitry "with an abrasive pad and water, which saves money and leaves the silicon in better shape for reuse," according to the report. "Eric White, one of the engineers behind the process, said it would let IBM get five or six monitor wafers out of one that otherwise would be scrapped. By extending the life of the silicon, IBM believes it will save about $1.5 million a year and leave more of the material available for the solar industry, where supplies have been tight."

Posted by Ted Samson on October 30, 2007 09:29 AM

October 25, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Strategic steps down the green IT path

Guidance from Forrester Research, along with real-world examples, shed light on the precarious path toward sustainability

Green IT
Vendor and analysts can talk about the benefits of pursuing sustainable IT practices until they're blue (or green) in the face. The difficulty at this point isn't necessarily understanding the potential benefits for going green; it's knowing where to start and how to proceed.

Fortunately, organizations with expertise on the subject are stepping forward to dispense and demonstrate guidance down the green path. Among them are organizations such as The Green Grid, vendors such as Sun, HP, and Fujitsu, and research companies such as Gartner and Forrester Research. Forrester, in fact, recently released a report titled "Creating the Green IT Action Plan." As the title suggests, it provides high-level advice on the subject.

The first step companies need to take, Forrester recommends, is identifying and prioritizing your goals. That task in and of itself can demonstrate just how complex a green transformation can be.

For example, your goal might be business-oriented, such as reducing electricity consumption or making better use of existing IT equipment. Then again, your main objective may be geared more toward CSR (corporate social responsibility) and environmental stewardship, such as reducing your carbon footprint, and meeting current and future environmental standards.

Tangentially, Gartner's recent report "Conflating Lean and Green Is Unwise" notes that there may be crossovers between the lean objectives and the green ones, but in general, it's best not to lump them together.

Once you know what goals you want to achieve, the next step is assessment, Forrester recommends. It's like joining a gym on Jan. 1 to fulfill a drunken New Year's resolution to get in shape. First, you submit yourself to a series of prods, pokes, pinches, and a weighing to determine how out of shape you are. That way, if you stick to your regimen, you can go through it again in a couple of months to determine how far you've progressed. (Pants falling down to your ankles as you stride down the hallway is another indicator.)

Where was I? Oh, assessment. Your assessment steps will, of course, reflect the objectives you've set. For example, if you're aiming to reduce energy waste in the datacenter, you might measure the facilities PUE (power usage effectiveness), a measurement devised by The Green Grid consortium that's gaining popularity in the IT world. To measure PUE, divide your total facility power by IT equipment power.

By Green Grid's estimates, "PUEs range from rating of 1.3 (77 percent of the total power supplied to the data center is used to power data processing equipment) to a poor ratio of 3.0 (33 percent of total power actually reaches the IT equipment)," according to the Forrester report.

On the CSR side of the spectrum, Forrester suggests you examine your supply chain and procurement process. The supply chain indeed plays direct and indirect roles in your company's overall green picture, a fact not lost on companies such as HP. The company goes to great lengths to ensure its suppliers don't use chemicals that would violate stringent regulations such as ROHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances), which protects HP's bottom line. But it also goes so far as to train its suppliers in places such as China to embrace better environmental and social practices, because it reflects HP's own corporate values.

One other critical piece of advice from Forrester on the subject of assessment: Specify IT's organizational role. "A crucial part of that is identifying the leadership and execution role of IT relative to facilities, HR, legal, and marketing. Green IT must also be explicitly aligned with CSR and other green initiatives including regulatory compliance and reporting. And green IT efforts must fit with the technology organization's anticipated budget and capacity trajectory as dictated by the growth-of-business requirements," the report says.

As a third overall step in crafting your blueprint for a sustainable IT action plan, Forrester recommends going after the low-hanging green fruit; that is, the quick, easy, relatively low-cost steps toward cutting waste. There are plenty of opportunities here: improve datacenter cooling and airflow; cut print waste; and power down PCs and monitors at the end of the day. Savings here can add up, plus they set the tone organization-wide for a green evolution.

Finally, step four. And watch this step, because it's a doozy: "Craft and communicate an action plan." The communication bit is less daunting: It's a matter of effectively promoting the eco-ambitions to employees through various channels, and making sure they're engaged.

But an action plan itself is a complex document. Forrester recommends breaking it down into four components: "revising processes and metrics; optimizing efficiency of existing IT assets; revamping architecture and infrastructure; and [and] positioning IT to enable green business practices."

Revising processes and metrics is pretty clear and highly important. If your goal, for example, is to reduce electricity consumption, you might want to "forge links between IT and facilities" to measure energy consumption and devise methods to measure it. Another procedural shift, drawing from the green supply chain concept, is to review CSR requirements for your suppliers and the methods you use to measure whether your suppliers are meeting them.

Optimizing efficiency of existing IT assets alludes to making the most out of the hardware you already have. Depending on your goals, it might mean a server virtualization project, a storage-consolidation effort, or implementing a system for managing PC power consumption.

Somewhat related, "revamping architecture and infrastructure" means investing in new facilities and gear to meet a green tech goal. If reducing energy consumption is a high priority, you might consider moving from a PC-based office to a thin-client-based office. Building or consolidating an entire datacenter -- a project we've seen companies such as Sun and HP recently undertake -- also fall under this category.

Last on the action-plan list, there's "positioning IT to enable green business practices." This point relates to in-house technology investments that result in a green (and potentially lean) payoff. Examples might include investing in a teleconference solution to reduce environmentally unfriendly air travel or "looking at alternative energy technologies and suppliers," as Fujitsu recently did with the investment in a hydrogen fuel cell.

All told, I commend Forrester on this report, and I've just scratched the surface here of the document. Over the past several months, we've all read about the various technologies, practices, and projects out there that companies are using in the hopes of becoming green organizations. The report is an important reminder that, tempting as it may be to start throwing resources around to reap rewards of sustainability, planning, assessing, monitoring and procedural changes are critical -- and IT has a central role to play in it all.

Forrester's "Creating the Green IT Action Plan" is available for $379.

Posted by Ted Samson on October 25, 2007 03:00 AM

October 24, 2007 | Comments: (0)

RIP, DC power?

In the high-voltage battle between AC and DC power, DC will be the ultimate loser, predicts Robert Mitchell over at Computerworld.

The observation is particularly timely in that The Green Grid consortium has just released to the public a new whitepaper titled "Qualitative Analysis of Power Distribution Configurations for Data Centers," which discusses the qualitative differences between seven possible configurations that can either be found in the United States or Canada today, or could be used in the future.

AC power is, of course, the reigning electricity standard these days, but it's garnered criticism from penny- and eco-conscious souls for its inherent wastefulness compared to DC: "IT equipment power supplies convert incoming AC power to the various DC voltages the subcomponents require. While some equipment also accepts DC input power, most data centers distribute 208-volt AC out to the racks. At least 10 percent of the AC power coming into data centers is lost to AC/DC and DC/AC conversion inefficiencies before it reaches the IT equipment," Mitchell writes.

But DC has two factors working against it. First, any company seeing to take the DC route in its datacenter would have to make some hefty infrastracture investment. "Adopting DC would mean maintaining two power distribution infrastructures, since there will always be equipment in the data center that needs AC. And without a major financial payback, organizations are unlikely to invest the time and money to move into new and uncharted territory," Mitchell writes.

Moreover, by some accounts, DC's advantages over AC are negligible. According to a study from APC (American Power Conversion) [PDF], "a detailed analysis and model show that many of the common benefits claimed for DC distribution are unfounded or overstated." Among APC's findings, "the DC approach with the best performance is the high voltage DC distribution architecture, which offers as much as a 4 percent improvement when compared with other approaches. However, this approach requires a new generation of IT equipment that does not yet exist."

The Green Grid's report has similar observations that DC, though possibly more energy-efficient, faces an uphill battle. Of the DC configurations, the consortium is most bullish about 380V DC, which "appears to promise the highest efficiency but will require the introduction of new products, including UPSs, and changes to IT equipment power supplies."

Among the AC configurations, the paper suggests that 400V AC holds the greatest promise. (480V and 600V are currently the standards for datacenters.) "400V AC can be implemented today, is compatible with a wide variety of power distribution and IT equipment, and has the potential to increase system efficiency," the whitepaper says.

The Green Grid, by the way, intends to examine compare AC and DC in quantitatively and in more detail down the road.

Posted by Ted Samson on October 24, 2007 01:15 PM

October 23, 2007 | Comments: (0)

HP deploys 7,500 Dynamic Smart Cooling sensors in new Bangalore datacenter

Add HP to the list of IT companies using large datacenter projects to showcase their energy-efficient practices and wares. The company today announced that it's consolidated 14 separate datacenters in Bangalore, India into one high-density, 70,000 square foot research facility, cooled by the largest implementation of HP's Dynamic Smart Cooling (DSC) system to date.

Released in September, DSC employs sensors to monitor the temperatures of invidual server racks and adjust to meet their respective cooling needs.

The idea behind the system is, it saves on cooling costs because it eliminates the need to blast A/C throughout the entire datacenter at a low temperature. (Having visited HP's research datacenter in Palo Alto, Calif. where Dynamic Smart Cooling is used, I can attest to the fact that it doesn't feel at all like, say, Antarctica.)

The Bangalore facility has a total of 7,500 DSC sensors, monitoring the temperatures of a heterogenous environment of older legacy equipment and newer server racks and blades, according to HP. The DSC deployment, HP reports, is yielding a 20 percent reduction in cooling power consumption.

When fully optimized, the datacenter is expected to yield up to a 40 percent reduction in energy consumption over today's typical datacenter cooling methods, HP says. The company anticipates it will save 7,500 megawatt-hours annually.

As part of the sensor network, an agile mechanism responds to facility failures, anomalies and brown outs.

HP says it was able to remotely conduct the implementation of the DSC technology at the Bangalore datacenter from its facility in Palo Alto. Moreover, the company is able to monitor the datacenter from the California lab.

Posted by Ted Samson on October 23, 2007 12:01 AM

October 22, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Chemical industry group defends Apple iPhone

Apple has found a new ally against ongoing criticism from environmental group Greenpeace. The Bromine Science and Environmental Forum (BSEF), the international organization of the bromine chemical industry, today "condemning the environmental lobby group for making unfair criticism of Apple's iPhone's green credentials," according to reports.

The BSEF's declaration comes in response to a report released by Greenpeace last week in which the group blasted Apple for using BFRs (brominated flame retardants), as well as hazardous PVC (polyvinyl chloride), in multiple components of the handsets.

"All the substances reported by Greenpeace are approved for use, and provide critical performance and safety functions in a wide range of electronic products," the organization's declaration says.

The BSEF accuses Greenpeace "raising an alarm" of environmental concerns without "knowing which brominated flame retardants Apple uses in the iPhone."

The BSEF goes on to speculate that "the BFRs most likely used in the iPhone is actually a reactive -- it reacts with other substances to form a plastic and, once reacted, it is also no longer available to the environment."

The BSEF's statement focuses almost entirely on the BFRs, not a surprise, considering the group represent the bromine industry. The report doesn't specifically mention the phthalates found in the headphones wires of the iPhone. Those are a source of contention: Soon after Greenpeace released its report, the Center for Environmental Health threatened to file a lawsuit against Apple, alleging that the company broke California law for failing to carry a warning label on the iPhone alerting consumers of the presence of phthaltes, a reproductive toxins.

Posted by Ted Samson on October 22, 2007 03:21 PM

October 22, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Citrix unveils energy-saving PowerSmarts for Presentation Server

During peak hours, admins want their servers fully charged and running at full bore to ensure their apps are delivered without annoying service lapses. But during non-peak hours, there's no logical reason why machines need to feed on as many watts of energy.

In an effort to help cut down on that energy waste -- and the associated energy and cooling bills -- Citrix today announced a new PowerSmarts feature for its Citrix Presentation Server line, which lets admins set policies to "automatically dial server power down based on application traffic levels," according to the company.

The company claims the feature can help customers datacenter energy consumption costs by up to fifty percent, a rather impressive claim if it's accurate.

"The key to any effective response to green IT challenges is to be able to maintain, and even increase, the capacity of IT infrastructure while reducing its energy consumption," said Scott Herren, Citrix group vice president and general manager of the Citrix Application Virtualization Group. "By powering down unused Presentation Servers during off-peak usage, we are helping our customers be more green and at the same time putting money right back into their wallets."

Citrix also announced that HP is the first company with hardware to support the PowerSmarts feature in its HP ProLiant portfolio.

Notably, HP itself unveiled a power-capping feature of its own earlier this year called HP Insight Power Manager, part of the company's Systems Insight Manager (SIM) hardware management platform.

PowerSmart is compatible with all current versions and editions of Citrix Presentation Server and iLO-enabled HP servers. It will be available in December to all Citrix Presentation Server customers as a free download at www.citrix.com/cdn.

Posted by Ted Samson on October 22, 2007 02:56 PM

October 20, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft to trim Windows bloat for 2010

I continue to be interested in how app and OS code plays in to the energy-efficiency equation. What it seems to boil down to is, the smaller the application footprint, and thus the less memory and CPU power it needs, the lower the power requirements of the hardware.

With features such as the Aero UI, Microsoft Vista has been deemed a pretty hardware-intensive OS, especially if users want to reap every shiny bell and whistle it has to offer. I was thus interested by an IDGNS article from the other day about Microsoft's plan to slim down the Windows kernel.

Microsoft's Distinguished Engineer Eric Traut had this to say about Windows: "A lot of people think of Windows as this large, bloated operating system, and that's maybe a fair characterization, I have to admit," Traut said. "But at its core, the kernel, and the components that make up the very core of the operating system, is actually pretty streamlined."

The company has created a beta version of the OS, called MinWin, which will be a part of Windows 7, and which lacks a GUI. According to the IDGNS report, MinWin "takes up just 25MB when stored on disk, compared to the massive 4GB the full Windows Vista OS needs."

Given the focus companies have on energy efficiency these days, it makes perfect sense for MS to put the kernel -- as well as its other OS offerings -- on diets.

Posted by Ted Samson on October 20, 2007 04:16 PM

October 18, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Sun boasts benefits of Internet-delivered stock docs

I'm always interested in ways that companies can reduce their paper waste -- especially if it also can reduce the amount of mail I receive that generally ends up going straight into the recycle bin.

Thus, I was pleased to learn, albeit belatedly, that the SEC has deemed it acceptable for companies to make proxy materials available to shareholders via the Internet, rather than having to mail them thick packets of documents. Under the SEC ruling, shareholders still have the option of having the printed materials mailed to them.

A Sun rep sent me a note telling me about the company's success thus far with the SEC ruling: "On September 25, Sun announced that it will leverage this new approach and made its own materials available on sun.com for its 2007 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. We were very pleased by the environmental savings that resulted from cutting the number of printed proxy materials from 800,000 down to 75,000 copies."

By Sun's calculations, reducing the number of printed materials totals:
- 11,964 trees
- 9.5 million gallons of waste water
- 515 metric tons solid waste diverted from landfills
- 99,700,000 fewer pages (or 199,400 reams of paper)

The benefits here aren't strictly environmental, of course. This saves Sun a tidy bundle of cash in printing and mailing costs, though the company didn't specify how much.

Here's hoping other company's embrace the SEC ruling, if not for the Earth, or for their bottom line, than for the sake of mail carriers everywhere.

Posted by Ted Samson on October 18, 2007 11:57 AM

October 18, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Dell launches green-computing contest

Eco-geeks, take note: Dell is looking for designs for environmentally responsible computing technology, and it's ready to pay you for the best ones.

The company today announced a contest called "ReGeneration: International Green Computing Technology Design Competition," though which competitors are invited to submit "ideas that demonstrate fresh approaches and responsible solutions for green computing technology." In other word, the abacus, as eco-friendly as it may be, is out.

The professionally juried competition is open to all, with a focus on students of universities and colleges that offer design programs

Finalists will receive $10,000 each. Another $15,000 will go to the competitors whose idea who wins a popular vote to be held online. If that winner is a student, his or her school will be eligible for another $15,000.

The submission period spans January through April, 2008; finalists will be announced next May.

For more information, go to www.dell.com/designregeneration.

Posted by Ted Samson on October 18, 2007 11:29 AM

October 18, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Factor sustainability into your SaaS decision

software as a service Virtualization remains, in my eyes, the poster child of sustainable technology for business. After all, it gives companies a way to do more work with fewer servers, which in turn frees up datacenter space and lowers energy bills. That's lean and green, a sentiment expressed in the Gartner report I discussed last week.

But alongside virtualization, Gartner alluded to SaaS (software as a service), an interesting proposition indeed as the model becomes increasingly popular and viable. According to Gartner, the market "is projected to surpass $5.1 billion in 2007, a 21 percent increase from 2006 revenue.... The market is poised for strong growth through 2011, when worldwide revenue will reach $11.5 billion."

Just this week, in fact, HP unveiled a SaaS version of its Business Technology Optimization (BTO) suite, aimed at helping companies manage IT projects and services, ensure quality and performance of applications, and monitor online businesses.

The whole concept behind SaaS, of course, is to pay another company to host applications for your organization. Thus, rather than dedicating server, datacenter space, and IT resources to, say, a CRM, ERP, or even security, you have Salesforce.com or NetSuite handle all that back-end stuff. Thus, you have potentially fewer servers, which means less heating and cooling and more datacenter space.

Of course, it's entirely possible that you're going to quickly fill that freed-up datacenter with a new crop of machines dedicated to some other in-house application. Thus, you're actually not reaping any of the more obvious green benefits.

But consider this point, well expressed by Chuck Schaeffer, CEO of Aplicor: "Instead of thousands of customers individually operating thousands of servers and the power-hungry facilities to support those servers, the SaaS multitenant model centralizes datacenter operations to use less equipment and a small fraction of the supporting facility costs." In other words, the service provided is going to use fewer machines to deliver apps than it would take if customers opted to run apps themselves in-house. That means less energy consumed and fewer carbon emissions produced on a global scale.

The potential efficiency of an outsourced application doesn't end there; the SaaS model, along with technologies such as virtualization, screams for more efficient coding, an intriguing point raised by Alistair Croll, vice president of product management and co-founder of Coradiant. There's "a lot of distance -- and computing overhead -- between my code and the electricity of each processor cycle. Architecture choices, and even programming language, matter," he writes.

Indeed, heavy, fat, complex code results in more energy-wasting processor calls. While that may be more tolerable if the app is loaded on your desktop system, or even on an in-house server, it becomes less so as the distance between application and client grows. SaaS providers need to deliver applications speedily, both for the sake of reputation and to meet the requirements of SLAs.

On a related note, the SaaS model is logical evolution of the thin-client model, which also warrants consideration as a lean, green technology. Rather than loading applications on individual desktop PCs throughout the organization, IT admins can give users lightweight systems and load the apps on back-end servers. That not only nets you energy savings, but it means fewer "house calls" to the help desk, which means admins can devote their time to more important tasks.

SaaS is, of course, not for everyone, but as the model continues to prove itself viable, adoption will increase. If your company is among those weighing it as an option, be sure to factor in lean, green benefits. In this day and age, they're quite valuable.

Posted by Ted Samson on October 18, 2007 03:00 AM

October 16, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Office Depot offers one-stop shop for electronics recycling

Although I moved nearly nine months ago, I still haven't finished unpacking all of my boxes. Sad, but true. But I have tackled some over the past couple of days. In the process, I found plenty of papers to recycle, which is pretty easy. But I've also discovered I've amassed a number of old keyboards, mice, cords, as well as an old cell phone. What's to be done with that stuff?

I was thus interested to learn that Office Depot is now offering its Tech Recycling Service at its 1,100-plus locations in North America. The service essentially provides a one-stop shop for unloading electronics, including monitors, small televisions, printers, keyboards, digital cameras, cords, and cables.

The idea is, you go to the store and buy one or more Tech Recycling Service boxes, which cost $5, $10, or $15, depending on the size. Load your electronics into the box, then return them to Office Depot. The company takes it from there. The price of the box covers the shipping and handling.

Office Depot also offers a range of other recycling services, through which customers can recycle cell phones, rechargeable batteries and ink and toner cartridges. Through the Ink and Toner Cartridge Recycling Program, you can get a $3 coupon in exchange for eligible empty cartridges returned (up to 25).

The Tech Recycling Service strikes me as a rather valuable service. Frankly, I don't know what else to do with my array of old and unwanted electronics. I don't want to toss them in the trash, but I doubt any school or second-hand store would want them.

What do you think? What do you do with your old, unwanted electronics?

Posted by Ted Samson on October 16, 2007 12:12 PM

October 16, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Report: Apple asserts iPhone meets eco standards

Facing a lawsuit for allegedly using toxic substances in the iPhone, Apple today told MacWorld that the device "meets the restrictions placed on hazardous substances."

"Like all Apple products worldwide, iPhone complies with RoHS [Restriction of Hazardous Substances], the world's toughest restrictions on toxic substances in electronics," an Apple spokesperson told Macworld. "As we have said, Apple will voluntarily eliminate the use of PVC and BFRs by the end of 2008."

The declaration comes in the wake of a report from Greenpeace accusing Apple is using phthalates in the plastic earphone wiring. Phthalates is considered a reproductive toxin.

Although the iPhone may meet ROHS standards, the Center for Environmental Health (CEH) is asserting the Apple has violated California law, which says that products that can expose consumers to phthaltes or other such chemicals must carry a warning label.

The CEH has given Apple 60-days legal notice, which is the first required by California law before a lawsuit is launched.

Posted by Ted Samson on October 16, 2007 11:27 AM

October 15, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Apple faces lawsuit over toxins in iPhone

It's a good thing Apple put such a high price tag on its iPhone. The company is going to need the cash to cover iPhone-related legal fees.

The latest legal threat comes from The Center for Environmental Health in response to Greenpeace's report that the iPhone earphones contain "phthalates," which, according to Greenpeace, is known to cause sterility in mammals.

According to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald:

"An information sheet on the Phthalate Information Centre website, produced by the American Chemistry Council, said studies found that high doses of some phthalates, when administered to pregnant rodents shortly before they gave birth, 'suppressed levels of testosterone, a male hormone key to sexual development in the male fetuses, and interfered with the development of male reproductive organs.'"

"But it also noted a newer study conducted by the Society of Toxicology found similar tests conducted on monkeys had no negative effects on the development of the male reproductive tract."

However serious a threat the substances may pose to sterility, "under California's Proposition 65 law, products that can expose consumers to phthaltes or other chemicals that are reproductive toxins or carcinogens must carry a warning label, according to the Center for Environmental Health," Macworld's Jim Dalrymple reports.

This threatened lawsuit is just one of a laundry list Apple faces. By now, you've likely read about at least a couple of the lawsuits Apple faces. To recap: In September, a New York woman for price discrimination after the company cut the price of the device last month by $200 and then issued a $100 credit to some owners.

Soon after, as reported by Computerworld, a California man filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple, accusing the company of forces buyers to use AT&T's wireless service and for "bricking" phones that had been modified to call over other networks.

The same day, "a [separate] class-action lawsuit targeting Apple and AT&T was filed ... accusing the companies of illegally conspiring to tie iPhone customers to the telecommunications company's wireless network," as reported by Computerworld.

And, of course, before the iPhone was even released, the company faced legal action from Cisco as both laid claim to the moniker "iPhone." The two companies settled outside of court, agreeing to pursue interoperability between their respective iPhone offerings.

Posted by Ted Samson on October 15, 2007 08:25 PM

October 15, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Report: Toxic materials, unfriendly design make iPhone ungreen

Greenpeace International is once again calling out Apple, this time over the company's decision to use some unsavory toxic materials in the iPhone that other cell phone manufacturers have managed to eliminate. Moreover, the environmental organization has criticized the device's battery design, which makes replacement and recycling difficult.

According to Greenpeace, an independent lab tested 18 internal and external components of the iPhone and confirmed the presence of brominated compounds in half the samples, including in the phone's antenna. A mixture of toxic phthalate esters was found to make up 1.5 per cent of the plastic (PVC) coating of the headphone cables.

"Two of the phthalate plasticisers found at high levels in the headphone cable are classified as 'toxic to reproduction, category 2' because of their long-recognized ability to interfere with sexual development in mammals," said Dr. David Santillo, senior scientist at the Greenpeace Research Laboratories, who coordinated the project and deconstructed the iPhone for analysis. "While they are not prohibited in mobile phones, these phthalates are banned from use in all toys or childcare articles sold in Europe. Apple should eliminate the use of these chemicals from its products range."

Greenpeace also found that the iPhone's battery is glued and soldered into the handset, which hinders replacement and makes separation for recycling, or appropriate disposal, more difficult.

Apple has not issued a statement in regard to Greenpeace's report.

I've defended Apple in the past against Greenpeace's criticism, and I've suggested that Greenpeace be consistent in going after electronics companies for their eco-unfriendly ways, rather than fixating so much on Apple. But here, I have to side with Greenpeace. There's no reason Apple should be using toxic chemicals that its competitors have managed to eliminate. And I'm even more bothered by the battery design, both from an environmental perspective and a basic user-friendliness perspective.

These lapses are especially notable considering that some iPhones out there might be making a premature trip to the garbage bin, given that Apple has transformed so many iPhones into expensive paperweights.

For more on this story, check out Computerworld's Gregg Keizer's report.

Posted by Ted Samson on October 15, 2007 12:35 PM

October 15, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Sustainability and the supply-chain

Whether you love or loathe Wal-Mart, there's no denying the company has embraced business practices to make it one of the most powerful and influential corporations of our time.

Among those practices, the company is vigorously embracing sustainability, as outlined by Hu Yoshida, CTO of Hitachi Data Systems, in his blog. Yoshida recently attended the Wal-Mart Living Better Sustainability Summit. There, Yoshida writes, "sustainability was described by Wal-Mart to mean eliminating waste, improving quality, and driving innovation. Sustainability was presented as being about real business value and not about creating a PR image. This summit was a sincere effort to enlist the support of their suppliers."

As I wrote about not long ago, Wal-Mart is vigorously encouraging its suppliers to embrace leaner, more environmentally friendly practices. The company is relying heavily on its suppliers to embrace sustainability, Yoshida writes, to achieve its "environmental goals for 100 percent renewable energy, zero waste, and sustainable products. ... Even if they were able to achieve their targets it would only amount to addressing 8 percent of their goals. The other 92 percent has to be addressed by Wal-Mart working with their suppliers."

While I was aware that the supply chain played an important role in an organization's sustainable endeavors, those figures Yoshida cites really drive home just how critical that role is. Companies that are serious about becoming leaner and greener not only have to make changes internally; they'll clearly have to rethink how they interact with their trade partners.

Posted by Ted Samson on October 15, 2007 11:15 AM

October 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Green IT No. 1 on Gartner's top 10 techs for '08

There's plenty of hype surrounding green technology these days, and while some IT types, anecdotally, are expressing fatigue from hearing about the topic, Gartner suggests that it will be high on organizations' radar in the coming year.

As reported by Computerworld, Gartner this week released its list of 10 strategic technologies for 2008; that is, technologies "that may have an impact on a business," according to Gartner analyst David Cearley. Atop the list is "Green IT."

Green IT's high ranking shouldn't come as a surprise. Yes, it's a trendy topic, but it's also one driven by real need.

First, companies are struggling with high energy costs to run their datacenters, as well as, for some, a lack of space or sufficient power to run and expand their operations. Emerging products, such as higher-efficiency chips, servers, and CRAC units; power-management software; consolidation technology, such as virtualization, for reducing hardware sprawl; and other innovations can all help put a dent in power bills.

Second, green is, for now anyway, marketing gold as more consumers are eager to see companies become greener. Perhaps more important, more investors are also paying attention.

Third, legislators are also paying attention to issues of carbon emissions, as well as materials companies use in their products. Thus it would behoove companies to find ways to make their operations and product more eco-friendly before the governement does.

The rest of the list of Gartner's 10 strategic technologies for 2008 is as follows:
2. Unified communications - "Today, 20 percent of the installed base with PBX has migrated to IP telephony, but more than 80 percent are already doing trials of some form."

3. Business process modeling - "Top-level process services must be defined jointly by a set of roles (which include enterprise architects, senior developers, process architects and/or process analysts). Some of those roles sit in an SOA (service oriented architecture) center of excellence, some in a process center of excellence and some in both."

4. Metadata management - "Through 2010, organizations implementing both customer data integration and product integration and product information management will link these master data management initiatives as part of an overall enterprise information management (EIM) strategy. Metadata management is a critical part of a company's information infrastructure.

5. Virtualization 2.0 - "By themselves, virtualization technologies are simply enablers that help broader improvements in infrastructure cost reduction, flexibility, and resiliency. With the addition of automation technologies ... resource efficiency can improve dramatically, flexibility can become automatic based on requirements, and services can be managed holistically, ensuring high levels of resiliency."

6. Mashups and composite apps - "Mashup technologies will evolve significantly over the next five years, and application leaders must take this evolution into account when evaluating the impact of mashups and in formulating an enterprise mashup strategy."

7. The Web platform and WOA - "Software as a service (SaaS) is becoming a viable option in more markets, and companies must evaluate where service-based delivery may provide value in 2008 - 2010. Meanwhile Web platforms are emerging which provide service-based access to infrastructure services, information, applications, and business processes."

8. Computing fabric - "A computing fabric is the evolution of server design beyond the interim stage, blade servers, that exists today. The next step in this progression is the introduction of technology to allow several blades to be merged operationally over the fabric, operating as a larger single system image that is the sum of the components from those blades."

9. Real-world Web - "The term ... is informal, referring to places where information from the Web is applied to the particular location, activity or context in the real world. ... For example in navigation, a printed list of directions from the Web do not react to changes, but a GPS navigation unit provides real-time directions that react to events and movements; the latter case is akin to the real-world Web of augmented reality."

10. Social software - "Through 2010, the enterprise Web 2.0 product environment will experience considerable flux with continued product innovation and new entrants ... . Social software technologies will increasingly be brought into the enterprise to augment traditional collaboration."

Posted by Ted Samson on October 11, 2007 12:47 PM

October 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Walking the line between lean and green

choice between green or lean IT Many an analyst, pundit, and IT enthusiast have taken stabs at defining just what "green technology" really means. One approach -- one I've admittedly taken -- is to lump environmentally friendly technology -- that is, technology aimed at reducing the harm one inflicts on the planet -- and efficiency-building technology that streamlines operations under one big umbrella. The temptation to link to two is strong. After all, the latter refers to products and projects that use less energy -- which is good for the environment -- while delivering the same or better performance than their counterparts.

I was thus quite interested in reading a report titled "Conflating Lean and Green Is Unwise," published late last month by Gartner, in which the author, Mark Raskino, makes a clear differentiation between "green IT" and "lean IT," and cautions companies not to muddle the two. Doing so "will lead to deceptive short-term progress, and we believe it will equally often lead to longer-term pain," the Gartner report says.

First, definitions. Green IT, he says, refers to "environmentally sustainable IT as well as IT that contributes to sustainable business processes." This might include revamping production processes so as to reduce the amount of energy required to deliver products, taking into account everything from the creation process to the amount of fuel necessary to ship them.

Lean, on the other hand, "means operationally cost-efficient IT," which might include streamlining the supply chain, deploying technologies such as virtualization, and taking advantage of SaaS (software as a service). "This systematic consolidation and application of standard process to achieve economies of scale is the 'industrialization' of IT," the Gartner report says.

He does note that there are instances where a technology implementation would be both "green" and "lean." Those projects would include revamping the layout of the datacenter for better airflow, which can reduce cooling needs and associated energy expenses, or deploying power-management software to put machines to sleep when they're not in use.

But in general, the Gartner report says, it would behoove organizations to approach IT projects strictly from either a lean perspective or a green one, rather than trying to kill two birds with one cake that they've both had and eaten (my words, not his). Tempting though it may be to apply a socially fuzzy "green halo" to a business-critical project could lead to headaches down the road.

One reason for that, he says, is that a company might find itself in an embarrassing situation later as more data emerges for measuring just how environmentally friendly a particular IT implementation is, not to mention as watchdog groups scrutinize companies' environmental claims.

For example, suppose your organization buys a pile of new energy-efficient servers from EarthLoveTech Inc. and proclaims to the world how green your datacenter is. Soon after, it's revealed that EarthLoveTech's main supplier is notorious for wasting energy and, as green benchmarks emerge, it's revealed that their servers really aren't all that energy-efficient, either. "Some organizations will regret squandering their 'green card' on superficial improvements or locking themselves into suppliers whose products turn out to be environmentally mediocre," the Gartner report says.

On the other hand, an organization might find itself in a situation where it's reluctant to move forward with a potentially important lean IT investment for fear, or lack of understanding, of its environmental impact. "During the next two to three years, IT managers will be pressured to learn and apply complex new techniques of leaner IT operations, such as SaaS, virtualization, and multisourcing, that will help free up investment. Adding green considerations to some of those projects makes learning cycles even harder by reducing clarity of focus on outcomes and effective measurement, " the Gartner report says.

The line between green and lean is a fine one, as well as a difficult one to walk. Gartner's advice to approach with caution is a good one, and focusing on projects that are clearly green and lean, such as reorganizing the layout of the datacenter or deploying power management software, makes a lot of sense in the short term. Meanwhile, Gartner advises that companies research and discuss "where your industry and company are likely heading on environmental issues during the next five years." From there, the report suggests that companies set aside some resources for projects that are strictly geared toward environmental sustainability.

One last piece of good advice in the report: Gartner warns against slapping a "green" label on each and every watt-saving project your organization pursues. Companies that get caught practicing "greenwashing" may find themselves being criticized, ridiculed, or worse. In this litigious society of ours, I can see one company suing another over its products not being as green as advertised.

I've just scratched the surface of the five-page report. "Conflating Lean and Green Is Unwise" is available from Gartner for $195.

Posted by Ted Samson on October 11, 2007 03:00 AM

October 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Talking from the other side of the mic

At the recent InfoWorld Virtualization Forum in New York, I hosted a panel discussion about the green datacenter. One of the participants was Lewis Curtis, infrastructure architect and advisor at Microsoft, who hosts a blog of his own about the green datacenter.

In addition to writing on the subject, he conducts interviews and posts them there. Well, at the event, he asked to interview me, and I was happy, if not a bit nervous, to oblige. After all, I'm usually the one asking the questions, not answering them.

I think it turned out pretty well as we covered some of the basics about green/sustainable technology, why it's important, and whether it's merely a fad. If you'd like to have a listen, check it out here.

Curtis also has an interview with Jim Smith, VP of engineering at Digital Realty. Smith was on the panel, too, plus I did a video interview with him a while back. He's a really knowledgable fellow, plus he tackles the topic of the green datacenter from a vendor-neutral perspective.

Posted by Ted Samson on October 9, 2007 11:09 AM

October 08, 2007 | Comments: (0)

VMware Infrastructure 3.5 will power down unused servers

Virtualization, in and of itself, is quite the green technology: It lets companies use fewer servers to get the same amount of work done. But the forthcoming Version 3.5 of VMware Infrastructure, which will include the new VMware ESX Server 3.5 and VirtualCenter 2.5, will include a feature designed to further reduce power consumption.

As descibed by VMware, "VMware Distributed Power Management is an experimental feature that reduces power consumption in the data center through intelligent workload balancing. Working in conjunction with VMware DRS, Distributed Power Management is designed to automatically power off servers not currently needed in order to meet service levels, and automatically power on servers as demand for compute resources increases."

That's a pretty cool trick indeed, though the "experimental" descriptor gives me a little pause. Hopefully on of the Test Center analysts will get a chance to kick those tires.

But it's certainly a step in the right direction toward a dynamic server farm.

VMWare Infrastructure 3.5 is due out later this year.

Posted by Ted Samson on October 8, 2007 03:24 PM

October 08, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Green tech vs. sustainable tech

At the end of my recent video interview with Hitachi Data Systems CTO Hu Yoshida, he paid me what I thought was a nice compliment: He told me he liked the name of my blog (that is, Sustainable IT) because he appreciated the meaning. It gave me pause to reflect a bit on the whole notion of "green technology" vs. "sustainable technology."

The terms are, of course, related, and the former enjoys far more recognition and usage. It's pretty straightforward, after all: Green is understood to mean "environmentally friendly" and "energy efficient"; technology means "technology." So a server that uses 50 percent less energy than a rival machine while doing just as much work would be considered an example of green technology. A hybrid vehicle that delivers 40mpg, compared to an SUV that gives you 14mpg, is another example of green technology.

Then there's sustainable technology. The idea is to not just haphazardly buy the newest, greenest products out there and stick them in your server rooms and on your desktops in a frantic effort to become green. Rather, it reflects planning and investing in a technology infrastructure that will serve your company's needs today and tomorrow, while helping your company save money on wasted resources such as energy and paper; make the best possible use of existing datacenter space so as to postpone having to build a new one; and reduce its overall environmental impact, which is both socially responsible and potentially advantageous should the government start cracking down on carbon emissions and the like.

This approach to implementing green technology not only helps ensure the sustainability of your company for years to come. On a broader scale, reducing waste is good for the environment, something we all depend on, plus it stretches the natural resources we use in our day-to-day lives. If more companies were to invest in a sustainable infrastructure, for example, we'd reduce the strain on utilities that are sometimes forced to initiate business-crippling brownouts.

One fine example of a sustainable technology project is Sun's new datacenter in Santa Clara. Its modular design is built in anticipation of future growth and future technology.

An electronic document management system is, to me, another example of a sustainable IT investment. It not only reduces paper waste and frees up space from all those hard copies, but it can streamline business in general, boost efficiency, and help your company better embrace growth.

All that said, I'll no doubt continue to use the terms "green technology" and "sustainable technology" interchangably. Heck, my newsletter is called "Green Tech," a branding decision made by our marketing folks, which I can appreciate.

But I'm going to continue to beat the sustainability drum and reiterate the importance of not just investing in the right green-technology tools, but advocating and adopting changes within your organization to plan and implement a long-term strategy around both products and overall business practices and organizational culture.

I'll just end with an analogy: If you want to get healthy, you're not just going to eat carrots. Sure, they're healthy, but eating your veggies is just part of the healthy picture. Rather, you plan a balanced, sensible diet. You set goals. You exercise. You see a doctor regularly. You measure your progress. It's harder. It takes more planning. And it takes discipline, at least at first as you change your lifestyle. But with time, it becomes natural, and the long-term benefits are pretty obvious.

Posted by Ted Samson on October 8, 2007 12:50 PM

October 04, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Storage grows greener

environmentally correct storage power Servers tend to take center stage in green datacenter discussions, and for good reason. Those data-crunchin', app-runnin' machines are currently the most notorious power hogs in the datacenter joint. But storage hardware is rapidly catching up in terms of power consumption, according to The Green Data Project. By 2008, power consumption by disk is expected to exceed that of all other equipment.

[InfoClipz: Green tech | Video: Hitachi CTO talks green storage ]

There are a couple of reasons for that. First, data simply continues to pile up. Second, as that data piles up, datacenter operators have an unfortunate habit of throwing more storage at the problem, rather than making better use of what they've got. That approach ends up costing you in several significant ways. You're laying down cash for new or leased storage arrays. You're paying monthly bills to power and cool those arrays. And you're sacrificing precious datacenter space for potentially superfluous hardware.

Surprise, surprise, storage vendors out there are keenly aware of the problem and are devising storage technology and products that could play a critical role in your green datacenter blueprints. Among those vendors is Hitachi Data Systems (HDS). The company's CTO, Hu Yoshida, recently sat down with me to talk about the subject. (You can watch the video here.)

Data diet
One resource-saving storage technology being pushed by HDS and other vendors, including HP, is thin provisioning. The premise behind the technology is pretty straightforward: It lets IT admins view all of their storage hardware as a great big pool and divvy up slices as needed, rather than allocating separate arrays for different business units that might not be taking full advantage of the pricey hardware you've set aside for them.

The result, if all goes well: You can purchase just enough storage machinery to meet your organization's collective needs, which means you're paying less money for arrays that are sitting there running at 20 percent utilization while you pay for 100 percent of their drives to spin. That doesn't make a lot of sense economically or environmentally. (There's also the benefit of easier management, but my sites are set on green.)

For thin provisioning to be effective, careful planning is, of course, critical, a point that's certainly not lost on InfoWorld storage guru Mario Apicella. If various departments estimate they'll need 8TB of storage but, lo, it turns out they collectively needed 10TB (oops!), you're left in an unenviable situation of playing storage catch-up.

But then, that's the challenge of running a green datacenter in general: You have to be sure you forecast and budget intelligently such that you always have just enough servers, storage arrays, and other hardware up and running at one time. That's fodder for another blog post, perhaps. On to additional green storage approaches.

Put the brakes on drives
In my interview with Yoshida, he talked about the new power-management capabilities, called Power Savings Storage Service (or secretively, PSSS), which the company recently introduced in its mid-range Adaptable Modular Storage (AMS) and Workgroup Modular Storage (WMS) systems. Once again, the premise is pretty straightforward: You have an array with various drives, but this feature gives you the ability to put drives to sleep when they're not being used. That means, of course, that you're not paying to power something pointlessly.

This technology might sound familiar to you if you've read about MAID (massive arrays of idle disk) technology. MAID storage systems also have drives which can be woken up individually and put to sleep. But there are key differences, which Yoshida has taken pains to clarify in his own blog. He goes so far as to say that PSSS is the opposite of MAID: PSSS works by putting active drives to sleep whereas MAID works by waking up sleeping drives.

The approach differs because the applications are different. The AMD and WMS arrays are RAID systems storing production data. "These HDS RAID arrays are production arrays that have no restrictions on writing or reading and can have high-performance [Fibre Channel] RAID groups and/or lower cost SATA RAID groups," Yoshida writes. "Instead of keeping all the disks idle until they are accessed, this feature enables a user or scripted application to power down a RAID group when it is not being accessed and power it back up when it needs to be accessed."

MAID, on the other hand, is geared for SATA drives storing write once, read occasionally data; that is, data stored on large-capacity drives that you access infrequently and can afford to wait for.

Yoshida concedes that MAID does technically consume less energy, which isn't surprising, considering that California utility PG&E has offered incentives for companies to enlist MAID. Byte and Switch reports that "users have already shaved around 75 percent off their energy bills through MAID, thanks to the fact that disks are typically idle. HDS, on the other hand, is touting potential savings of around 20 percent as a result of its reliance on active disks."

Of course, there's no reason you can't employ MAID and HDS's arrays at the same time. In our interview, Yoshida noted that they can certainly be complementary. Yes, MAID might use fewer kilowatts, but when you're building a green datacenter, you can't simply focus on the product that uses the least energy -- another point that Yoshida emphasized. Rather, the idea is to assemble the equipment that meets your present and future needs while wasting the fewest resources possible. Again, that takes plenty of planning, but the payoff can nonetheless be significant.

Posted by Ted Samson on October 4, 2007 03:00 AM

October 03, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Report: More utilities to dangle incentives for going green

There are plenty of enticing green technologies out there that can reduce energy bills, such as virtualization, MAID, or solar panels. While the potential long-term savings are evident, the upfront costs can be offputting for businesses and individuals. Yet in some states, such as California, utilities dangle cash incentives to lure users and businesses to the green side -- and more utilities will be following suit in the not-too-distant future, according to an article in The Christian Science Monitor.

Why do some utilities push and pay for conservation while others don't? It's to do with a concept called decoupling. Specifically, state regulators "decouple utility profits from electricity production," as CSM explains it.

"The main idea is that by rearranging the incentive structure, regulators can give utilities clear incentives to push energy efficiency and conservation without hurting their bottom lines. Under the new rules in California, for example, electric utilities could make as much as $150 million extra if they can persuade Californians to save some $2 billion worth of power, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, a New York-based environmental group."

States such as Idaho, New York, Connecticut, and Vermont have adopted decoupling this year; nine others, including Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Wisconsin, are exploring it, according to CSM.

It's certainly a positive trend, indicative of how the green movement is taking hold, inspiring businesses, individuals, and government bodies to rethink their practices for the better. And it certainly a potential boon for companies with a green-tech roadmap who need just a bit more incentive to invest in sustainable technology.

(Thanks, by the way to Sun Eco-Responsibility VP Dave Douglas over at Sun for introducing me to the decoupling concept.)

Posted by Ted Samson on October 3, 2007 01:16 PM

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