Sustainable IT | Ted Samson | January 2008

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January 2008

January 31, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Green features bloom in unexpected places

With organizations becoming increasingly keen on green, vendors are injecting green-oriented features into a predictable set of products. We've seen a server management suite, for example, groomed to cap the amount of energy a machine will consume at a given time.

But as the sustainable-tech movement gains momentum, more green-hued features are materializing in product types you might not necessarily expect -- and they're advancing, moving beyond measuring and reducing waste to tracking and reporting organizations' dread carbon footprints. Thus, customers are finding themselves with more options than ever for advancing down the green path and calculating their progress.

For example, PeopleCube, a provider of workplace and resource management technology, is padding its Resource Scheduler product line with some greenery. (Resource Scheduler allows users to reserve rooms, equipment, and services for meetings, training, and the like.) PeopleCube has announced plans to roll out tools in Resource Scheduler through which customers can remotely monitor and control the lighting and HVAC systems of any facility they oversee, down to an individual room -- so long as those systems are Web-services friendly. (Major vendors such as Honeywell do support that type of functionality in their more modern offerings.) Thus, a meeting room, floor, or the entire building's light and HVAC could be turned off remotely if not scheduled for use.

Resource Scheduler also announced some new reporting features that tie in to the green movement. One, for example, helps companies measure the total carbon footprint of a given facility and calculate cost savings relating to reduced energy consumption. There's also a telecommuting analysis report, aimed at helping companies calculate carbon emissions saved when employees telecommute instead of drive to the office. Similarly, a videoconference savings report illustrates cost, productivity, and carbon emissions saved when geographically dispersed participants conduct meetings via video teleconference instead of traveling to meet in person.

"The market is demanding efficient and environmentally sound workplaces," says Rebecca Wettemann, vice president of research at Nucleus Research, in a written statement. "PeopleCube is providing facility managers ... tools they need to achieve what their management and other constituents -- employees, customers, shareholders, or students -- are calling for in terms of eco-friendly, lower-cost operations."

Then there's BigFix, which has been steadily building on the Power Management module it released in late 2006. BigFix, of course, is an intelligent policy enforcement engine that employs agents to enforce policies on hardware throughout an organization. Similar to PC power-management offerings from Veridiem and 1E, BigFix's Power Management module lets admins set up and enforce policies to ensure that end-user systems are put into low-power mode when they're not in use, and are roused from sleep automatically, through wake-on-LAN technology, for patching. (Organizations can save upward of $75 per system annually if they implement PC power management.)

On top of that valuable functionality, BigFix has added graphical displays for calculating electricity, cost, and CO2 reductions from various customer-selected conservation policies.

Dave Robbins, president and CEO of BigFix, said that a power-management tool marks a natural evolution of the company's solution. "Though BigFix started out solving IT problems, our architecture is uniquely applicable to many critical problems – and no problem is more critical than the state of our environment," he said in a written statement.

There's no doubt in my mind that this trend will continue as more tech vendors unveil sparkling green features in their product lines. In some instances, such as those I discussed, the advances will add real value. But this trend also opens the door to plenty of green-washing opportunities. Some vendors might try to pass off what amounts to a simple energy-usage gauge as "evidence" that their eco-unfriendly wares are somehow green.

Ted Samson is a senior analyst at InfoWorld and author of the Sustainable IT blog. Subscribe to his free weekly Green Tech newsletter.

Posted by Ted Samson on January 31, 2008 03:00 AM

January 28, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Intel goes on green-tag buying spree

In an effort to fuel the growth of the clean-energy market, Intel today announced plans to spend an undisclosed sum purchasing more than 1.3 billion kilowatt hours per year in renewable energy credits (RECs). According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, this move makes Intel the single-largest corporate purchaser of green power in the United States.

As explained by the EPA, "RECs (also known as green tags, green energy certificates, or tradable renewable certificates) represent the technology and environmental attributes of electricity generated from renewable sources. Renewable energy certificates are usually sold in 1 megawatt-hour (MWh) units; a certificate can be sold separately from the MWh of generic electricity it is associated with. This flexibility enables customers to offset a percentage of their annual electricity use with certificates generated elsewhere."

Sterling Planet, a national supplier of renewable energy, energy efficiency and low-carbon solutions, will handle Intel's REC purchase, which includes a portfolio of wind, solar, small hydro-electric and biomass sources.

"The EPA estimates that Intel's REC purchase has the equivalent environmental impact of taking more than 185,000 passenger cars off the road each year, or avoiding the amount of electricity needed to power more than 130,000 average American homes annually," according to Intel's announcement.

These green tags/RECs shouldn't be confused with white tags, or energy efficiency credits, which represent megawatt hours saved through power-saving projects such as server consolidation.

I commend Intel here for its move. In an ideal world, of course, companies seeking to run their operations on clean technology would be able to draw on clean energy straight from the grid, rather than having to buy RECs. Given the momentum of the clean-tech movement, that should become feasible in coming years.

Posted by Ted Samson on January 28, 2008 02:41 PM

January 28, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Ecobutton a quick, slick reminder to power down PCs

Not only are tradeshows growing greener; so to is the promotional swag companies are doling out. One fine example is a clever device dubbed the ecobutton from called a company called BIG.

The concept behind the ecobutton is pretty straightforward. You connect the device to your computer via USB and download the necessary software. Then the big green illuminated ecobutton sits atop your workspace, reminding you how much you like nature and/or dislike wasting energy (or paying to waste it). Whenever the time comes to take a break -- short or long -- you simply press the button. Doing so puts your system into what BIG deems ecomode, "which ensures that both your computer and monitor draw only the same nominal power as when they are shut down."

When you return from the break, you press the ecobutton again and voila, your system awakens instantly, according to BIG. (I'd love to actually see for myself whether it can rouse my machine instantly, as opposed to "eventually.")

As a bonus, the accompanying software lets users see how much money, power, and carbon units they've saved using the device. PC power management tools like this can save you as much as $50 per year in energy bills. (By the way, the ecobutton is also ROHS compliant.)

What makes the ecobutton promotional tool? Companies can order ecobuttons in bulk and have their company logo, message and Web address incorporated into the ecobutton splash screen.

It's a neat idea, this ecobutton. Some might argue that it's a bit too ironic to promote waste-reduction by attaching yet another piece of plastic and metal to your machine, and that there are tools available that enable you to put a machine to sleep with a couple of mouse-clicks. However, I see a positive trade-off here: The brightly illuminated green button should serve as a constant visual reminder to users to not only to power down their systems but to hopefully conserve in other ways.

The ecobutton starts at around £12.76 ($25), and bulk discounts are available. Go to the ecobutton Web site for more information.

(Thanks to Environmental Leader for the find.)

Posted by Ted Samson on January 28, 2008 10:44 AM

January 24, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Report: Green tech could save Feds nearly $275M per year

Efficiency doesn't tend to be a hallmark of the federal government, which might explain why the words government contract induces salivating amongst some CXOs the way bells caused Pavlov's pups to slobber.

Green technology stands to reduce some of that wasteful tax-fueled inefficiency, a proposition presented by HP and Intel in a couple of reports titled "Go Green Power Play" and "Go Green PC Power Play" aimed at the U.S. federal government.

The short of it: Were the Feds to upgrade all of their PCs, monitors, and servers to energy-efficient alternatives, and were they to adopt some power-saving technologies like virtualization, they could save taxpayers around $275 million in energy costs per year, according to the reports from HP and Intel. In the process, the sustainability move would ease the pressure on the nation's overstrained power grid by one billion kWh per year.

Breaking it down, HP and Intel assert in "Go Green Power Play" that the Feds could drive down their datacenter energy costs, estimated at around $479.5 million annually, by as much as 40 percent (that is, around $192 million) by employing various green technologies. Those include virtualization, consolidation, better cooling technology (specifically HP's own Dynamic Smart Cooling and Thermal Mapping technologies), more energy-efficient IT systems (specifically Intel-powered machines from HP), and power-distribution efficiencies.

The figures are based on IDC's estimation that the current installed server base of the U.S. Department of Defense and civilian agencies is just under 600,000, that each server currently consumes 2,000 kWh per year, and that the average energy cost is 10 cents per kWh.

In the PC-oriented "Go Green" report, HP and Intel suggest that the Feds could save more than $82.4 million annually in energy costs by upgrading all their Energy Start 3.0-compliant desktops, laptops, and monitors to Energy Star 4.0 models. Activating power-management features to ensure machines power down when not in use plays into the savings equation.

Here, the report assumes Feds are powering around 4.5 million desktops, 440,000 CRT monitors, nearly 4 million LCD monitors, and just over a million laptops.

A final point in all this: The Feds aren't the only ones who could benefit from investing in some of those green-tech upgrades. This kind of energy waste is rampant at organizations large and small. It certainly scales impressively in the context of the government's vast fleet of systems, but organizations of all sizes could stand to assess their respective situations. There's plenty of potential gain, both monetary and environmental, to be reaped.

Posted by Ted Samson on January 24, 2008 04:40 PM

January 24, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Dell's shiny green blade server

The PowerEdge M-series from Dell has it all, from a hyper-efficient power supply to superior cooling and power management
From a green-tech perspective, the most intriguing server I've ever known (from a distance) was the Gemini Green Series from Open Source Solutions (OSS). Highly efficient power supplies? Check. Efficient internal cooling? Check. Easily swappable components -- from motherboards to memory to power supplies -- to eliminate the need for ripping and replacing upgrades? Check.

Alas, OSS is no more, but its legacy won't be forgotten -- not by me, anyway. The fact that it's gone the way of rainbow suspenders is no reason to dismiss the beauty of its product design either. In fact, I see glimmers of the Gemini in Dell's newly announced PowerEdge M-Series chassis and blades. Dell designed the M-Series "from the ground up using Dell Energy Smart technologies, resulting in 30 industry patents," clearly with sustainability in mind.

Playing it cool
Like the OSS Gemini (which was a 2U server, by the way), Dell's new PowerEdge blades employs 90-plus percent efficient power supplies, developed in-house. (For reasons I still can't fathom, the standard among server vendors still appears to be in the realm of 80 percent.)

Not only is Dell's power supply capable of hitting a higher energy-efficiency level; it does so more quickly than rival power supplies, according to Mike Roberts, senior product planning manager for the M-Series line. He says that most power supplies achieve their maximum level of energy efficiency only when the supply is running at 90 to 100 percent utilization -- which certainly isn't the norm. "We get to a really good efficiency level at relatively low threshold, 88 percent at only 20 percent utilization," he says.

Those seemingly small differences among power supplies can actually make a dramatic difference in terms of reducing a server's power and heat waste -- and the associated costs scale impressively the larger your datacenter.

Dell also claims to have developed an innovative internal cooling system, designed to adapt to the needs of both high-end and low-end configurations. In addition to its optimized fans (as well as their underlying algorithms), the system boasts a superior airflow design, according to Roberts; Dell has taken great pains to remove impedance throughout the chassis. "The easier the air flows, the less hard the fans have to work," says Roberts.

The chassis also has three distinct cooling zones, each cooled by its own fan bank. In lower-end configurations where the chassis isn't fully loaded with blades, "the fans on the side can run really slowly because they don't have to work hard to cool their zone," says Roberts.

There's also the swappability factor (a word you will not find in Webster's, by the way). In an ideal green-tech world (mine anyway), an IT admin would be able to swap in and out all major components in his or her servers, while they're on the rack, such that machines wouldn't need to head to the shop or, more likely, to the recycling bin if a substantial upgrade is needed. It doesn't look like the major hardware vendors of the world are ready to offer that level of hardware interoperability, but here, Dell has taken a step in that direction.

Specifically, the company has developed what it dubs FlexIO switch technology for easily upgrading the machine's network connectivity up to 10Gig without replacing the base switch. For the enclosure, customers can opt for an upgradeable Dell PowerConnect M6220 Layer 2/3 Ethernet blade switch, with 1Gb ports and optional bays that can support either 10GbE or stacking ports.

Further, customers have three Cisco Ethernet switch choices, including a switch with a variety of 1Gbps, 10 Gbps, and stackable ports. Also available: a Cisco Infiniband switch. Add to that the options for two Brocade 4Gbps Fibre Channels, as well as Fibre Channel and Ethernet Pass Through options.

Additionally, with an eye on the future, Dell has designed the M1000e enclosure not to be dependent on specific server processor/chip set architecture. Further, it will be able to accommodate double-wide blades down the road.

Secret software sauce
Dell's hardware choices alone don't result in a more energy-efficient machine. Like an increasing number of vendors, Dell is turning to server management software to rein in energy waste -- a promising development that stands to lower those power bills and extend the life of hardware.

In Dell's case, that software takes the form of its Version 5.3 of its OpenManage systems management suite, released last November. Dell touts the package -- which comes at no cost with the blade package -- as "easy-to-use yet powerful management tools that help reduce the cost and complexity of managing computing resources."

Among its features is dynamic power management, which enables admins to set high- and low-power thresholds to help ensure blades operate within their defined power envelope. The norm is for servers to consume the maximum recommended amount all the time, even if they're not usually being run at full bore. Moreover, the package offers real-time reporting for enclosure and blade power consumption, and the ability to prioritize blade slots for power to provide optimal control over power resources.

So, for example, if an admin were to allot 3,000 watts to a given chassis, the system would distribute power evenly among all the blades. However, if the chassis wasn't pulling enough power, for whatever reason, it could be set to prioritize which blades would be throttled down first.

Your benchmark or mine?
As Dell tells it, the various greenovations it's injected in these babies reap superior power efficiency (that is, performance per watt) over rival blade offerings from HP and IBM. According to a Dell-sponsored study by Principled Technologies, "the PowerEdge M-Series consumes up to 19 percent less power and achieves up to 25 percent better performance per watt than the HP BladeSystem c-Class. Compared to the IBM BladeCenter H, the M-Series consumes 12 percent less energy and achieves up to 28 percent better performance per watt."

Were you to apply a cost-per-kilowatt amount to those figures, as Dell has, you'd save $2,600 annually per year over HP's blade competitor and $1,500 per rack per year over IBM's.

I wouldn't discount Principled Technologies figures outright, just because the study was sponsored by Dell. It's entirely conceivable that, given the power-efficient measures Dell has taken, its blades consistently delivered better per-watt performance -- but only in that test, which used the SPECjbb2005 benchmark.

Problem is, that benchmark wasn't really developed to measure power efficiency. Organizations and analysts are still grappling as to what method is best for accomplishing that, as evidenced by a recent study comparing the power efficiency of AMD and Intel's respective quad-core chips.

The point is, benchmarks are slowly emerging, such as SPEC's recently announced SPECpower_ssj2008. However, that benchmark isn't suited for a blade environment. In short, work here remains to be done.

Hopefully the InfoWorld Test Center will have a chance to test Dell's claims against offerings from HP and IBM. Whatever the outcome of that test might be (again, if it happens), I still extend kudos to Dell for further raising the green bar more among hardware vendors.

One last thought: IBM and HP may claim that they're not worried about Dell's latest foray into the world of blades. In fact, a rep from one of those vendors sent me a rather dismissive note prior to the official Dell announcement: "We've been hearing rumors over here that Dell finally plans to announce their copycat blade on Monday. Odd that they'd choose a national holiday to announce, but that's another story ;-)."

Of course, when you go out of your way to eagerly point something out and declare you're not worried about it -- you're probably at least a leetle bit worried about it. Conceivably, Dell has surprised the competition with the level of innovation it's brought to the table here, enough to generate some concern.

Posted by Ted Samson on January 24, 2008 03:00 AM

January 17, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Dell, HP join effort to measure supply chains' carbon output

Feeling increasing pressure, both internally from high-level execs and externally from customers, investors, and politicians, companies are taking the size of their carbon footprints quite seriously.

Yet more companies are determining that their own daily operations aren't the sole contributors to their carbon emissions. Rather, they're factoring in the emissions produced by the vendors down their supply chains. No one wants to be a greenhouse gas spewer by association, so to speak.

Exemplifying this trend is a recent announcement from the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), a collaboration of over 315 institutional investors managing more than $41 trillion in assets. CDP is working with 11 corporate giants -- including IT heavyweights HP and Dell -- to develop a standard method to gather carbon-emissions information from suppliers.

According to CDP, developing a standard means for suppliers to deliver carbon-emissions information "will vastly decrease the burden on [those] suppliers who might otherwise receive several separate requests for similar information."

Indeed, suppliers have already been facing increased scrutiny for customers further up the supply chain, such as HP, IBM, and Wal-Mart, to demonstrate their environmental and social stewardship.

"The Supply Chain Leadership Collaboration is a key step towards a unified business approach to climate change," said CDP CEO Paul Dickinson in a written statement. "By bringing together the purchasing authority of some of the largest companies in the world, CDP will encourage suppliers to measure and manage their greenhouse gas emissions. This will enable large companies to work towards managing their total carbon footprint, as the first step to reducing the total carbon footprint is to measure its size."

A pilot of the project is now under way. Each participating member of the Supply Chain Leadership Collaboration has selected as many as 50 suppliers to respond to the CDP pilot information request in the first quarter of this year. From there, the project will be rolled out in May.

In addition to Dell and HP, other companies participating in the Supply Chain Leadership Collaboration include: Cadbury Schweppes, Imperial Tobacco, L'Oreal, Nestle, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, Reckitt Benckiser, Tesco, and Unilever.

More information about CDP's Supply Chain Leadership Collaboration is available on the CDP Web site.

Ted Samson is a senior analyst at InfoWorld and author of the Sustainable IT blog. Subscribe to his free weekly Green Tech newsletter.

Posted by Ted Samson on January 17, 2008 03:54 PM

January 17, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Digital Realty to host free datacenter-cooling seminars

Cooling is a piping-hot topic among datacenter operators who are struggling to control costs and reduce energy waste. Plenty of vendors are touting state-of-the-art cooling technologies, which certainly have their place in the big chill picture. However, in addition to some relatively simple tips, there's an abundance of best practices companies can adopt to quickly realize greater efficiency and lower bills.

Those best practices will be the focus of a series of free, two-day seminars hosted by Digital Realty Trust, an owner and manager of corporate datacenters and Internet gateways. At the seminars, dubbed "Everything You Need to Know About Datacenter Cooling," three industry experts will dispense their knowledge.

The experts include:
-- Robert "Dr. Bob" F. Sullivan, Ph.D., the Uptime Institute's datacenter cooling expert, who originated the concept of hot-aisle-cold-aisle datacenter design

-- Dr. Amir Radmehr, an extensively published datacenter cooling expert from Innovative Research

-- Jim Smith, vice president of engineering at Digital Realty Trust, a recognized authority on efficient datacenter operations and green datacenter design

I can certainly attest to Jim's wealth of knowledge on the subject; I had a chance to interview him last year. He'll be giving a talk on the green datacenter at the InfoWorld Virtualization Executive Forum in San Francisco next month.

As for the datacenter cooling seminars, the schedule is as follows:
-- San Francisco Bay Area, February 26-27
-- Dublin, April 16-17
-- New York City, May 21-22
-- Chicago, June 18-19

Further information about the seminars is available at the Digital Realty Trust Web site.

Ted Samson is a senior analyst at InfoWorld and author of the Sustainable IT blog. Subscribe to his free weekly Green Tech newsletter.

Posted by Ted Samson on January 17, 2008 01:19 PM

January 17, 2008 | Comments: (0)

From Macworld to CeBIT, trade shows get greener

The wasteful excesses of the trade shows from the dot-com days are blissfully behind us, good news both for the planet and company coffers. (Yes, I have actually worn those ridiculous logo-emblazoned T-shirts handed out at every table back in the day -- but only for sleeping or painting.)

These days, organizers and participants are taking a kinder, greener approach to shows. Not everything is clean, pristine, and carbon-free -- but from CES to Macworld to the forthcoming CeBIT show, sustainability is on display.

Greener Apple
I wrote previously about some of the greenness seen at CES this month. Meanwhile, Dan Frake and Dan Moren have discovered flickers of green on the Macworld floor. "Of course, Steve Jobs noted the environmentally-friendly construction of the new MacBook Air," they note, which makes the laptop that much cooler. (If you haven't seen InfoWorld Chief Technology Office and Apple Enthusiast Tom Yager's take on the MacBook Air announcement, check it out.)

As for the machine's eco-friendliness, Macworld reports that the machine "has a fully recyclable aluminum case, and is 'the first' to have a mercury-free display with arsenic-free glass. All the circuit boards are BFR-free and PVC-free, and the retail packaging uses 56 percent less material than the MacBook packaging." (I'd like to know how much power it consumes compared to rivals.)

Sascha Segan over at PCMag.com offers a particularly interesting take on what he deems Apple's subtlely "radical new environmental vision." The short of it: He says Apple is focusing on new apps and software upgrades, which in effect extends the life of hardware:

"By focusing on the excitement of software upgrades, Steve Jobs is pointing us towards a world that's better for consumers and that's better for the Earth. Software is generally less expensive than hardware ... and it generates no landfills, no heavy-metal poisoning, and no toxic clouds."

Bit o' green at CeBIT
Meanwhile, this year's CeBIT show, to be held March 4 through 9 in Hannover, Germany, will enjoy an injection of green. The Climate Savers Computing Initiative will be contributing content and participating in a variety of Green IT-related activities at the show. (Climate Savers is a consortium of manufacturers, businesses, organizations, and individuals working to significantly increase the energy efficiency of computers and servers.)

The show will feature a Green IT Village in which Climate Savers and individual exhibitors will present their solutions for more energy-efficient computing. A Green IT Guide will provide answers to green-tech questions. Green IT will also feature prominently in the congress program that accompanies CeBIT 2008, according to the announcement.

Related links:
CES grows greener
Apple shocks boneheaded bloggers
Tech companies unite to tackle desktop energy waste

Ted Samson is a senior analyst at InfoWorld and author of the Sustainable IT blog. Subscribe to his free weekly Green Tech newsletter.

Posted by Ted Samson on January 17, 2008 12:15 PM

January 17, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Earth Class Mail delivers efficiency and waste reduction

Startup's innovative green approach to sorting and deliver mail stands to revolutionize the postal industry

One fine Monday morning, an 8-by-10 manila envelope arrives at the central mailroom of SquidCo's expansive campus. It's addressed to a sales rep named Jim Johnson. The folks in the mail room toss the envelope into a bin alongside all the other mail for sales. A van transports the bag to the sales team's building across campus. There, another mail person discovers that Jim telecommutes. She packs up all of his mail -- including that manila envelope -- and ships it to him for $8.50 via overnight delivery. Yet once it reaches Jim, he takes one glance at the return address and realizes it's more hard spam from an annoyingly persistent vendor. Within two seconds, the envelope goes directly into Jim's recycling bin.

Though ridiculously wasteful and inefficient as that scenario might seem, it's certainly not implausible. Every day at organizations large and small, countless pieces of mail get pushed and pulled hither and yon, transported on fuel-guzzling vehicles -- only to end up in the recycling bin or, worse yet, the trash. Important mail, meanwhile, can linger in limbo or move at a sloth's pace because the person sorting it doesn't realize it contains a check for $5,000.

As fate would have it, a relatively new startup called Earth Class Mail (ECM) has devised a very innovative system for efficiently handling postal and interoffice mail, leveraging the SaaS (software as a service) model, e-mail, OCR (optical character recognition), digital scanning, and old-fashioned hands-on sorting.

I recently had a chance to speak to Ron Wiener, the CEO and founder of the company, and he explained it all to me. Based on his description, I'd say that ECM makes today's traditional approach to handing paper mail look a lot like the Pony Express.

"We're undertaking a massive transformation from the centuries-old physical-delivery model to the electronic delivery model of the modern Internet age, and it's really shaking up this trillion-dollar [postal] industry," says Wiener.

Paper mail without the waste
Here's how Earth Mail works. An organization sets up an account with the company, arranging to have mail delivered to one of the ECM's growing network of 20 U.S. addresses. Just like using a P.O. box, the new address you hand out will still contain your company's name; there's no indication to the sender that their posts are going to a third party to handle.

If your company's mail volume is large enough, you may be able to continue to have your mail come to the address you use today but authorize Earth Class Mail to pick it up at your postal branch for processing.

As new mail arrives, the outside of each envelope is scanned in color, front and back, and bar-coded with a unique ID number. These numbers are essential: They're used to track a given piece of mail at any time. Using OCR, the system is able to recognize the person or department the piece is addressed to. (Undeliverable mail can be conveniently vetted by a mail room employee remotely through a Web console.)

After the envelope is imaged, an e-mail alert is sent to the recipient -- in this case, the company employee. The e-mail will prompt the user to log in to his or her Earth Class Mail account, accessible anywhere via the Internet, to see what's arrived. Once online, the user can view the scanned images of each envelope.(Later this year, the company plans to offer a plug-ins for various e-mail and Webmail platforms, allowing users to manage their postal mail and e-mail from one UI.)

Upon viewing his scanned envelopes, the recipient has some choices: If he can tell he has no interest in a message, he can click Recycle, which, of course, means Earth Class Mail will recycle the piece of mail. He also can choose Shred if he thinks it's an item he doesn't want but that contains sensitive corporate or personal information: a credit card application, for example.

According to Wiener, 45 percent of all unopened mail ECM receives ends up recycled; another 22 percent of that ends up being shredded.(All in all, the company ends up recycling or shredding an astounding 94 percent of all the mail it processes.) Wiener notes that, environmentally speaking, recycling is superior to shredding in that shredded paper can't be made into new paper. Earth Class Mail is able to still recycle shredded paper, however, by separating it out to sell to tissue manufacturers who can use the short fibers.

But suppose the user, judging by the envelope, sees a piece of mail that may actually be important, and he wants to take a peek at what's inside before determining its fate. Here, the users can choose the powerful Scan option.

Scan and deliver
Clicking Scan results in one of Earth Class Mail's employees being prompted to open the piece of mail and scanning its contents into the system. Once it's scanned, the recipient can view the file in its entirety from his account as a digital PDF file.

Now, the thought of having a third-party company's employee opening up your potentially sensitive mail might cause those hairs on the back of your neck to stand at attention. But according to the company's CEO, Earth Class Mail has developed a pretty hard-core security system (my words, not his).

"Over the past four years, we've developed this process and the underlying proprietary technology in consultation with fraud experts and law enforcement, including FBI cybercrime experts and USPS postal inspectors," says Wiener

Among its security practices, the company employs only individuals with previous Department of Defense security clearances to open customers' mail. These clearances are refreshed every six months with civilian equivalents, and with even deeper background checks.

Wiener specifically noted that the company employs disabled veterans for the task whenever possible, many recently returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He says workers, donning pocketless overalls, enter individual "clean rooms" carrying no personal items (such as pencils, mobile devices, cameras, trained monkeys). There they sit through their shift, devoid of any human contact. Mail that has been requested to be scanned is delivered to them automatically. They will take an envelope, scan the bar code, open it, remove and scan the contents, then place the contents in a new envelope with a new bar code, seal it up, and scan the bar code again for verification before the item is sent back to itinerant inventory. Rinse and repeat.

ECM goes so far as to record the video of each scanning session, says Wiener. The company soon plans to turn this security video around to the customer so that each user may see firsthand that a piece of mail was not mishandled or compromised in any way while it was open.

Back up that mail
So then: Once the scanning is complete and the digital file is in the system, the recipient can again log in to his account to see just what was in that envelope. And once again, he has choices. In addition to having the mail recycled or shredded, he can choose Transfer, meaning he would transfer ownership of the envelope and document to someone else to deal with. Carlos in Sales might, perhaps, transfer an applicant's resume to Diane in HR.

The recipient could print the document, too, and have Earth Class Mail store the digital copy indefinitely -- as well as the original hard copy, à la Iron Mountain.

"We're completely unique in the records management industry in that every document we receive first arrives in an envelope, which we uniquely bar code, and then stays stored that way. Everyone else in the industry still does it the old-fashioned way, storing up to 2,000 pages in multiple folders in a cardboard box -- not only more prone to losing a specific document but much, much more expensive to store and retrieve," says Wiener.

Or, if a physical original is needed for any reason, the recipient could click the Ship button and have that piece of mail delivered the traditional way to anywhere in the world.

The aforementioned process can be further streamlined, thanks to the Earth Class Mail application's smart rules engine. A customer could set up the system to take specific actions for mail coming in specific types of envelopes or posts addressed to specific people. For example, if your company has a specific type of postage-paid envelope that customers use to mail in payments or orders, you could have the system send them directly to Scan or immediately forwarded to a specific recipient.

Companies that don't want to entirely entrust their postal mail to Earth Class Mail's custody, for whatever reason, can opt to use the Earth Class application through the SaaS model. The company would help these customers purchase the custom equipment it has exclusively licensed to mail sorter manufacturer NPI and off-the-shelf scanning equipment, then leave the back-end processes to them.

Earth Class Mail is adding new features to the system this year to further streamline the process. First, the system will allow users to automatically deposit scanned checks into bank accounts, saving trips to ATMs or bank tellers. Bank of America will be among the first institutions to support this feature. Second, users receiving unwanted catalogs or similar missives from retailers will be able to click a button, alerting Earth Class Mail to get that mailing address removed from the company's mailing list.

Stamps of approval
As a privately held company, Earth Class Mail will not disclose the number of customers, other than to say it's "in the thousands and scaling rapidly." Wiener states that Earth Class Mail has users in more than 130 countries, including individuals, SMBs, and Fortune 500 organizations.

Further, it has wrapped up a phase-one pilot run with an undisclosed Fortune 50 company and is progressing to a phase-two implementation at this client's corporate headquarters. If all continues to go well, a rollout to tens of thousands of additional employees nationwide will be the next step.

Once any kinks are ironed out, the company will make its services widely available to all would-be enterprise customers. "Fortune 500 and government customers are lining up for pilot implementations. We're adding resources to get them online as quickly as we can, but we're taking it slow because we want to make sure these first implementations go very smoothly," says Wiener.

Wiener has ambitious plans for Earth Class Mail: "We're already in discussions with the national post offices of 18 countries to deploy our platform for use by every citizen and enterprise within their borders," he says. "We're getting a lot of attention from the more progressive postal operators right now -- especially in Europe, where they have all been privatized -- and particularly since we announced our partnership with Microsoft, which allows us to scale the platform to millions of simultaneous users."

Needless to say at this point, I'm bullish about Earth Class Mail -- and judging by the VC funding the company's enjoying, I'm not the only one. Earlier this month, ECM landed $13.3 million of investment, led by Ignition Partners. The value proposition is evident: Customers, from the individual on up to the enterprise-size, can enjoy a level of paper-mail efficiency like never before, resulting in less wasted time, easier-to-access documents, and fewer wasted resources. That's sustainability at its finest.

Ted Samson is a senior analyst at InfoWorld and author of the Sustainable IT blog. Subscribe to his free weekly Green Tech newsletter.

Posted by Ted Samson on January 17, 2008 03:00 AM

January 16, 2008 | Comments: (0)

AMD yields more efficiency, Intel more throughput in quad-core CPU showdown

AMD yields more efficiency, Intel more throughput in quad-core CPU showdown In a recent gauntlet of tests comparing AMD's quad-core Opteron processor (Barcelona) to Intel's quad-core Xeon (a.k.a. Tigerton), the Xeon delivered up to 14 percent more throughput, but the Opteron used up to 41 percent less energy.

The series of tests were conducted by Neal Nelson and Associates, an independent consulting firm. If you've been following my blog for a while, that name may sound familiar: Nelson has run similar power and performance tests over the past year, one in July and one in August.

Nelson conducted this series of tests using similarly configured quad-core Xeon and Opteron servers using 1GB memory modules at 4GB, 8GB, and 16GB main memory sizes. He also used one- and two-socket configurations at speeds of both 2.0GHz and 2.33GHz.

Cutting to the chase, Nelson determined the following in his tests:

-- When the sizes of the database working sets were small enough to fit in the servers’ kernel disk buffer cache, such that there was virtually no physical disk I/O, the Xeon-based servers delivered up to 14 percent higher throughput than the Opteron-based servers.

-- When the sizes of the database working sets were too large to fit in the kernel disk buffer cache, which forced substantial physical disk I/O, the Xeon-based servers delivered up to 3 percent higher throughput than the Opteron-based servers

-- When the servers were subjected to various identical levels of transaction arrival rates, the Opteron-based servers consumed up to 32 percent less power than the Xeon-based servers.

-- When the systems were idle and waiting for transactions to process, the Opteron-based servers consumed up to 41 percent less power than the Xeon-based servers. ("The power consumption at idle is particularly significant since studies have shown that many servers are powered on, but idle, 80 percent of the time," Nelson notes.)

"By themselves, the Intel processor chips may use less power, but all current Intel Xeon servers require the use of fully-buffered memory modules [FB-DIMM]. These FB-memory modules appear to consume more power than the DDR-II memory modules used by the AMD-based servers. The result is that in many cases an Opteron-based server actually uses less total power than a Xeon-based server," says Nelson in a written statement.

A better green benchmark?
Nelson reached his conclusions by employing what's he's dubbed Neal Nelson's Power Efficiency Benchmark. The benchmark works as follows: Nelson simulates users from 32 separate computers submitting individual transactions to similarly configured servers running Apache2 Web server, the MySQL relational database, and Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise Server O. He measures the throughput and power usage of the systems in increments of 50 users, from 100 to 500, over half-hour sessions. "The benchmark has a complex multi-user load with a large memory footprint, a high volume of context switches, significant network traffic, and substantial amounts of physical disk I/O," according to Nelson.

In addition to sharing his conclusions for his test, Nelson has made an effort to differentiate his power-efficiency benchmark from the one recently unveiled by SPEC. "The SPECPower test has a single-client machine feeding batches of 1,000 transactions to a small number of Java-based application programs," says Nelson. "[It also] has a small memory footprint, a low volume of context switches, simple network traffic, and it performs no physical disk I/O. The SPEC test was created by a committee of computer vendor employees, and SPEC offers no guarantee that their numbers will correlate to a customer's real-world experiences."

Nelson's test results can be viewed in their entirety on his Web site.

Ted Samson is a senior analyst at InfoWorld and author of the Sustainable IT blog. Subscribe to his free weekly Green Tech newsletter.

Posted by Ted Samson on January 16, 2008 11:50 AM

January 15, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Linux a greener alternative to a forced Vista move?

If you read my blog yesterday, you noticed my entry about Microsoft's move to retire XP and effectively force Windows shops into a wasteful migration to Vista.

I spelled out a couple of scenarios:
1. Stick with XP and hope you can gather the licenses you need to run your business as it grows, all the while waiting for a better version of Windows to emerge down the road.

2. Cave in and adopt Vista, either taking a headache-inducing piecemeal approach or an all-out expensive (and again, wasteful) mass migration.

Lo, there's another alternative, one that has been pointed out by a some respondents to my previous post: Move to Linux.

For example, this comes from Gostak:

"I am suggesting VMware on Linux with your current crop of XP licenses. Mission-critical stuff that must run on XP is available, meanwhile you can be working on migrating everything to a native Linux environment that will not toss you on your keister in a few years. Further, the one big thing coming down the pike, 64-bit computing, is fully supported with Linux, so you don't have to worry about being able to fully utilize the next generation."

It's an excellent point. Companies concerned both with sustainability and Microsoft's current ploy may indeed find Linux an appealing alternative. Some IT leaders out there have already observed that, among other things, Linux seems to have a "green" advantage over Windows in terms of energy efficiency.

While we're at it, how about adding thin clients to the list of alternatives to moving to Vista-desktop world?

Thanks for the feedback, everyone. Keep the ideas coming.

Ted Samson is a senior analyst at InfoWorld and author of the Sustainable IT blog. Subscribe to his free weekly Green Tech newsletter.

Posted by Ted Samson on January 15, 2008 12:23 PM

January 14, 2008 | Comments: (0)

IBM, Nokia, and Sony back green-patent giveaway

As sustainability continues to percolate in minds of business and technology leaders worldwide, we're witnessing more and more companies stepping up and sharing their resources and brainpower for the greater green good.

The latest example comes from IBM, who has partnered with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development on an initiative to make publicly available a host of donated "environmentally responsible" patents. Nokia, Sony, and Pitney Bowes have thus far joined the cause.

The portfolio of patents, dubbed the Eco-Patent Commons, will "feature innovations focused on environmental matters and innovations in manufacturing or business processes where the solution provides an environmental benefit."

Said benefits might be energy conservation, pollution prevention, usage of environmentally preferable materials, and increased recycling opportunity.

"In addition to enabling new players to engage in protecting the environment, the free exchange of valuable intellectual property will accelerate work on the next level of environmental challenges. We strongly urge other companies to contribute to the Eco-Patent Commons," said Dr. John E. Kelly III, IBM senior VP and director of IBM Research, in a written statement.

As I write this, the Eco-Patent Commons contains 31 patents, 27 of which come from Big Blue (known for cranking out patents like bunnies crank out more bunnies). Those include an "apparatus and method for reusing printed media for printing information" and a "system for cleaning contamination from magnetic recording media rows."

Nokia has one on the list ("systems and methods for recycling of cell phones at the end of life"), as does Sony ("flocculating agent and a method for flocculation"). The other two comes from Pitney Bowes ("ink-jet printer having variable maintenance algorithm" and "multiple overload protection for electronic scales").

These companies are the first IT heavyweights to share their resources toward a common green good. Consider the Green Grid, a nonprofit consortium of tech companies that's focused on developing metrics, standards, and best practices for curbing power consumption.

Moreover, Sun last year unveiled OpenEco.org, an online community providing free tools and resources for calculating, tracking, and comparing greenhouse gas emissions.

Additionally, Cisco has volunteered time and resources to the William J. Clinton Foundation to develop technologies and strategies to help cities reduce their negative impact on the environment.

Additional information about the Eco-Patent commons is available on the WBCSD Web site.

Ted Samson is a senior analyst at InfoWorld and author of the Sustainable IT blog. Subscribe to his free weekly Green Tech newsletter.

Posted by Ted Samson on January 14, 2008 10:27 AM

January 14, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Retiring XP means wasteful upgrades to Vista-capable PCs

Every so often, an organization has to refresh some or all of its users' PCs. Perhaps the sales team's laptops are suffering from wear and tear and need replacing. Maybe the finance department requires more powerful desktops to run a newly purchased, resource-intensive, business-critical app.

From a sustainability (that is, green) standpoint, those scenarios are perfectly reasonable -- especially if your organization is recycling the old systems for reuse and even investing in perfectly useful refurbished systems that meet your company's business needs.

On the other hand, refreshing your organizations' fleet of desktops for reasons that have no positive impact on your business whatsoever is clearly wasteful (that is, not green) on many levels: It's a waste of your staff's time and energy. It's a waste of your organization's money. And whether the systems end up refurbished, recycled, or tossed in a landfill, it's a waste of resources.

Thus, I have to get behind InfoWorld's Save XP campaign. (No, there was no interoffice memo requiring me to do so.) If you're not already aware, Microsoft has announced plans to end OEM and shrink-wrapped sales of Windows XP on June 30, 2008. Redmond has committed to continue supporting XP for a few more years. OK, that's great. You can continue running your business on XP comfortably for a while longer. Or can you? Sure, you may have enough XP licenses for your current number of systems, and those licenses can presumably be transferred to new machines when it's time for a refresh. But what happens to a company that happens to be enjoying success and growth and thus has to purchase additional systems for new hires?

That's where the headaches begin. You won't be able to buy new systems loaded with XP, at least not easily. You could scrounge for used machines that have legitimate XP licenses on them -- an approach I certainly advocate if it meets your needs. However, that route might not be ideal for all organizations that want to continue with XP but need the horsepower that more up-to-date PCs offer. In short, as XP licenses become increasingly scarce, banking on acquiring XP licenses to suit your long-term needs becomes a gamble.

The safer route is to do what Microsoft presumably wants you to do: Migrate to Vista -- even if you don't really want to. Given the criticism the OS has garnered for its subpar performance and judging by its sluggish adoption rate, moving to Vista isn't particularly enticing to many organizations.

But again, with XP licenses becoming more difficult to acquire, making the Vista migration becomes appealing -- the way a sprained ankle is preferable to a broken one. What then? Do you take a piecemeal approach of buying systems loaded with Vista as you need them? That sets up you up for the headaches of managing two different desktop environments at once.

Or do you just bite the bullet and make a mass migration to Vista? In the long run, that's probably easiest of all from an IT administration standpoint -- but for many organizations, the migration would require a systems upgrade more or less across the board, thanks to Vista's propensity to hog more resources than XP. Thus, the easiest route is also the most wasteful: Essentially, you're retiring perfectly good machines for more powerful ones, yet you're not reaping a measurable business benefit. In fact, you may just be taking a performance ding. As I said before, that's hardly ideal from sustainability standpoint.

So add me to the list of those opposed to Microsoft's decision to stop selling XP licenses come July and thus force companies to make difficult choices that resolves in headaches, wasteful and unnecessary systems upgrades, or some combination thereof.

Rather, here's what Microsoft really needs to do: Shelve Vista, just like it did Windows ME. Extend XP's stay of execution until Windows 7 comes out. Work on making Windows 7 greener. That is, drop the obese code, which your engineers have publicly acknowledged needs trimming. Kill the system-hogging resources that don't benefit end-users. Dare I suggest Microsoft release a new version of Windows that uses the same system resources as XP does, if not fewer?

Ted Samson is a senior analyst at InfoWorld and author of the Sustainable IT blog. Subscribe to his free weekly Green Tech newsletter.

Posted by Ted Samson on January 14, 2008 08:53 AM

January 10, 2008 | Comments: (0)

CES: HP pledges to cut PC power usage by 25 percent

Using the greener-than-ever CES as a backdrop, HP this week announced plans to reduce the energy consumption of its volume desktop and notebook PC families by 25 percent by 2010 -- relative to its 2005 numbers.

HP's strategy for achieving this goal is pretty straightforward. In part, the company will continue to integrate more efficient power supplies and lower-energy chip sets into its systems. Here, HP is safely betting on the fact that these component vendors down the supply chain will continue to crank out increasingly efficient wares.

Power to the PC
HP's approach to power supplies is worth noting; I find it quite interesting, given the green agenda the company has embraced. In 2007, HP rolled out smaller form factors for its USDTs (ultra slim desktops). The HP dc7800 Ultra-slim Desktop PC, for example, is 46 percent smaller than previous models.

As part of the new design, the company incorporated a standard 85 percent efficient external power supply, according to Andrew Medlin, senior manager of business PC product marketing at HP. (External power supplies tend to be more efficient than internal, Medin points out.)

That's fine for small systems. Large-chassis systems, however, run on internal power supplies. HP customers seeking to purchase a larger system with a relatively more efficient 80-plus percent internal power supply will need to pay a $20 premium.

In other words, HP isn't making the more efficient supply the standard here. "There is significant cost associated with more efficient power supplies in general, and since not all customers value the more efficient power supplies, we chose to provide them a choice," says Medin.

Of course, I'd love to see HP and other PC vendors pushing green agendas to make efficient power supplies the standard on all of their machines. Yes, I can appreciate that the cold, hard reality of the bottom line can offset the greenest of intentions, a fact that many a vendor is dealing with. Even pushing the efficient power supply at a discount (say, $10 a piece) and highlighting the green and cost-saving benefits would be a good start.

Resting easy
In addition to using efficient components to achieve its goal, HP says it will employ more energy-saving technologies and processes into its volume PC portfolio. As an example, the company pointed out that Verdiem's Surveyor remote power management software agent comes preloaded on all its dc7800-series PCs. "When activated, Surveyor can help measure, manage, and reduce power consumption on PCs and monitors by up to 33 percent, or about 200 kilowatt-hours per PC annually," according to HP.

Indeed, there are cost savings and other green-related benefits to be enjoyed through PC power-management tools. But, as with an 80-plus percent efficient power supply that comes at a premium, the Surveyor tool isn't free; it's costs around $20 per licensee to activate.

Here, I'm less critical of HP's choice. Verdiem's offering is geared toward managing power consumption of PCs throughout a larger organization and is far more powerful than the run-of-the-mill tools that put the average home PC in sleep mode when it's not in use. Tools from Verdiem and its competitors are designed for remotely managing a fleet of PCs, ensuring they're powered down when not in use and turned on just before end-users come to their desks in the morning. Many of these power-management solutions are also designed to wake up systems from sleep mode after hours for patches and backups, then put them back to sleep. Given the power and complexity of these types of tools, it's only fair that HP pass the cost to large-size customers.

HP's Medin does add that HP is working on a power-management tool aimed at small businesses and SOHO customers that "will eventually be available at no added cost."

The bottom line here, as I see it, is that HP's on the right track in pursuing its green agenda. In fact, given all the increasingly efficient components and energy management software we're seeing, I don't expect it will be too difficult for the company to attain its goal of cutting energy usage of its volume desktop and notebook PC families by 25 percent by 2010.

I am, however, interested to see how HP and its competitors will continue to raise the green bar. Will we, in fact, see a company commit to making the most energy-efficient power supplies out there the standard in their systems? Will more PCs come preloaded with better power-management tools? I certainly expect so.

How do you envision PC vendors making their wares greener?

Ted Samson is a senior analyst at InfoWorld and author of the Sustainable IT blog. Subscribe to his free weekly Green Tech newsletter.

Posted by Ted Samson on January 10, 2008 12:58 PM

January 10, 2008 | Comments: (0)

InfoWorld Green 15 will celebrate 2007's innovative green-tech project

InfoWorld Green 15 Concerns over datacenter power shortages as well as global climate change seeded the green-tech movement some time ago, but it really started to bear fruit in 2007.

I've made a sincere effort to highlight green-tech projects of note over the past 12 months, but let's face it: I'm but one man (by my most recent count), and there's little doubt in my mind that many more organizations out there have wrapped up some excellent, innovative IT projects geared toward realizing their sustainability goals.

In an effort to recognize companies for their innovative green-tech efforts -- and to demonstrate to the rest of the IT industry how it, too, might go about tackling energy shortages, reducing waste, and being kinder to Mother Nature -- InfoWorld is pleased to announce that we're accepting nominations for our newest award: the Green 15.

Here's how it's going to work: Through the end of February, we'll be accepting nominations for, generically speaking, green-tech projects that were completed, or mostly completed, in 2007. Just what, you might wonder, constitutes a green-tech project? Excellent question.

A Green 15 finalist might be a floor-to-roof datacenter renovation that improves airflow, consolidates hardware through virtualization, and ultimately cuts energy waste. It might be an installation of an on-site clean alternative energy source. Perhaps you've found a creative way to cut paper waste; or to significantly reduce travel via planes, trains, and automobiles; or to reduce the number of watts that PCs, monitors, lights, or any other energy-draining equipment unnecessarily burn day and night when they're not being used.

The bottom line is, the winners of the InfoWorld Green 15 will be projects that leverage technology to measurably cut waste, reduce organizations' negative impact on the environment, and/or promote sustainable business-technology practices. Nominations for SMB projects are certainly welcome and encouraged. The Green 15 will be announced on April 22, 2008, which, by a remarkable coincidence, happens to be Earth Day.

As I said, we're accepting nominations through Feb. 28; you may submit them, free of charge, through this convenient online submission form. If you have additional questions, please, please, please read the Green 15 FAQ page before sending along inquiries to me. Sending unnecessary e-mails isn't very green, you know. Wasted storage space and all that.

Ted Samson is a senior analyst at InfoWorld and author of the Sustainable IT blog. Subscribe to his free weekly Green Tech newsletter.

Posted by Ted Samson on January 10, 2008 03:00 AM

January 08, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Green Plug looks to cut energy waste and cable clutter

Power management plays perhaps the most integral role in the whole sustainable technology movement. Reducing energy waste means lower electricity bills (and/or greater capacity for adding new machines) as well as a smaller carbon footprint. In an effort to sate customers' thirst for green, vendors have made strides to develop wares aimed at ensuring hardware is using only as much power as necessary to perform effectively.

A startup called Green Plug is adding a new solution to the mix, which it's showing off at CES 2008. The company has developed an electronics component chip, called the Green Plug Universal Power Protocol (UPP). According to the company, the chip intelligently and efficiently converts power from a single hub to meet the power requirements of various devices, from laptops and printers to MP3 players and power tools.

What does that mean? First, consider how power supplies for devices generally work today. Suppose you diligently power up your laptop, MP3 player, and cell phone every night. Each one has its own power supply, which very likely aren't compatible with one another. Thus, if you lose one, you won't be able to charge your device until you buy a replacement.

So you connect your devices to their respective power supplies. You plug the supplies into the wall socket, and you leave them plugged in for the night. Thing is, the devices likely will be charged well before you wake up the next morning -- yet the power supplies will have continued to draw energy from the wall. Even when you detach your devices from the power supply cable the next morning, the supplies will still consume energy if left plugged in.

Green Plug aims to address the various nongreen aspects of the traditional electronics-charging scenario. The company is rolling out what it says to be highly efficient DC power hub, capable of converting power to meet devices' respective voltage and power requirements. Users could simultaneously plug multiple devices into the hub via hybrid USB connectors.

The company also has developed a protocol called Greentalk, through which Greentalk-enabled devices can digitally communicate with power supplies to shut off when they no longer require power in standby or no-load mode. Moreover, the company says that consumers can configure the power supplies to charge devices during off-peak hours, thus easing demand on the power grid during peak periods.

There's a lot to like in Green Plug's product: smarter, more efficient energy conversion, plus fewer cables to deal with (which means fewer headaches as well as less waste).

The big question is, how many companies will support the technology? Greentalk won't just find its way into cell phones, PDAs, laptops, printers, digital cameras, camcorders, cordless drills, MP3 players, and all the other electronic devices the company is targeting. Moreover, not all vendors are lining up to add USB ports to their offerings.

I'll just keep my fingers crossed, though, that Green Plug's efforts aren't in vain and that vendors won't stubbornly stick to their own form factors and inefficient power-conversion methods. This approach brings green benefits to the table as well as greater convenience for end-users (this from a man who spent far too long trying to find the correct connector to transfer images from his camera to his PC).

Related links:
Highlights from CES 2008
CES groomed for green

Ted Samson is a senior analyst at InfoWorld and author of the Sustainable IT blog. Subscribe to his free weekly Green Tech newsletter.

Posted by Ted Samson on January 8, 2008 01:57 PM

January 07, 2008 | Comments: (0)

CES groomed for green

Green tech continues to flourish, and not only in the enterprise. Eco-friendlier tech wares are becoming more plentiful in the pockets and on the desks and laps of end-users, as evidenced by the green-tinged goods showing up at the annual CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas.

Among vendors bringing a bit o' green to their CES booth is Marvell. The company will show off its recently unveiled digital power factor correction (PFC) controller, designed to cut energy usage in notebook power adapters and desktop power supplies by up to 50 percent. The company says that its 88EM8041 and 88EM8011 controllers help manufacturers eliminate up to 20 discrete components, meaning more reliability thanks for fewer moving parts -- not to mention less weight for notebook schleppers.

Fujitsu is unveiling a laptop that comes with a corn-based case, rather than one made from petroleum. As noted by the Associated Press, the model has been around since 2006; Fujitsu is bringing it to North America now in response to the heightened interest here in all things eco-friendlier. Also noteworthy is the fact that the corn-based material isn't biodegradable: "The plastic still needs to be processed for recycling, after which the corn-based component can biodegrade," AP reports.

Z-Power is showing off its laptop-targeted silver-zinc batteries, which the company asserts are far greener than their lithium-ion-based counterparts. Z-Power says its rechargeable batteries contain more recoverable materials, have neither heavy metals nor toxic chemicals, and deliver as much as 30 percent higher capacity.

Vendors aren't the only ones bringing green to the CES table: Organizers have taken steps to clean up the event. For starters, CES will feature, for the first time, a TechZone "dedicated to environmentally and economically sustainable technologies which contribute to the social and cultural growth of the developing world."

Beyond that, all attendee literature is printed on post-consumer recycled paper with soy ink. All light bulbs, batteries, and electronics used by the show will be recycled and diverted from landfills. Further, 75 percent of all food containers and utensils used to serve CES attendees will be fully biodegradable and all surplus food will be donated to the Las Vegas Rescue Mission.

CES organizers are going so far as to call the event "carbon-neutral," a feat they say their accomplishing by purchasing carbon offsets through Carbonfund.org to make up for the carbon emissions of all CES venues, freight, shuttle buses, and hotel rooms. While I'm not a big fan of carbon offsets, I do appreciate the organizers' efforts here.

The earth2tech blog has a good summation of other flecks of green to be found at CES.

Related links:
InfoWorld's geek guide to CES 2008
The healthy carbon diet

Ted Samson is a senior analyst at InfoWorld and author of the Sustainable IT blog. Subscribe to his free weekly Green Tech newsletter.

Posted by Ted Samson on January 7, 2008 02:33 PM

January 03, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Research: Cell-phones plus driving equals traffic

You might just think you're an excellent driver, even while chatting on your cell phone. In truth, however, even if you've got both hands on the wheel thanks to a handy hands-free phone, you're likely contributing to aggravating, dangerous, fuel-wasting traffic.

According to a bit of research from the University of Utah, cell-phone users drive more slowly than their non-cell using counterparts, Some of you might react to this news that way I did: Rolling your eyes and saying or thinking, "No kidding." (You might have employed a naughtier word than kidding, but that's beside the point.)

Thirty-six students participated in the testing aspect of the study. Each student drove through six, 9.2-mile-long freeway scenarios, two each in low-, medium- and high-density traffic, corresponding to freeway speeds of 70 mph to 40 mph. Traffic speed and flow mimicked Interstate 15 in Salt Lake City, according to the researchers.

Each student spoke on a hands-free cell phone during one drive at each level of traffic density. The maintained conversations throughout those trips. They also did the same three drives sans phones.

The research ultimately found that "when drivers conversed on a cell phone, they made fewer lane changes, had a lower overall mean speed and a significant increase in travel time in the medium and high density driving conditions," the researchers wrote.

Specifically, in medium- and high-density traffic, drivers talking on cell phones were 21 percent and 19 percent, respectively, less likely to change lanes (roughly six lane changes per 9.2-mile drive versus seven or eight lane changes by drivers not on cell phones).

Further, "in low-, medium-, and high-traffic density, cell phone users spent 31 percent, 16 percent and 12 percent, respectively, more time following within 200 feet of a slow lead vehicle than undistracted drivers. That meant they spent 25 to 50 more seconds following another vehicle during the 9.2-mile drive."

The researchers acknowledge that, at first blush, these findings might seem pretty minor. But it scales when numerous drivers are yakking on phones as they putter about in their vechicles. "If you get two or three people gumming up the system, it starts to cascade and slows everybody's commute," says University of Utah psychology Professor Dave Strayer, leader of the research team, in a written statement.

The researchers have started to plug the data into computer simulations of multiple vehicles. She studied repeated simulations with the proportion of drivers on cell phones ranging from none to 25 percent.

"We saw an increase in delays for all cars in a system, and the delays increased as the percentage of drivers on cell phones increased," says Ivana Vladisavljevic, a doctoral student in civil and environmental engineering who also participated in the research.

Strayer stresses the importance of studying how cell phone uses affects traffic. "When people have tried to do cost-benefit analyses to decide whether we should regulate cell phones, they often don't factor in the cost to society associated with increased commute times, excess fuel used by stop-and-go traffic and increased air pollution, as well as hazards associated with drivers distracted by cell phone conversations."

Notably, Stayer has performed additional research on how cell-phone use affects driving. His findings include:

-- hands-free cell phones are no less dangerous while driving than hand-held cell phones because the conversation itself is the major distraction.

-- When young adults talk on cell phones while driving, their reaction times become as slow as reaction times for senior citizens.

-- Drivers talking on cell phones are as impaired as drivers with the 0.08 percent blood-alcohol level that defines drunken driving in most states.

For more information about the Univeristy of Utah's study, go here.

Ted Samson is a senior analyst at InfoWorld and author of the Sustainable IT blog. Subscribe to his free weekly Green Tech newsletter.

Posted by Ted Samson on January 3, 2008 01:56 PM

January 03, 2008 | Comments: (0)

The definition of green

One of my blog readers, the author of the "Green" Supply Chain Analyst Weblog, posed an interesting question in one of my previous posts. Essentially he asked, What defines a green product or service?

Not only is it an interesting question, it's an important one. Vendors and their marketing departments are, of course, keenly aware that organizations have green in their sights and are thus cranking out products and unveiling services touted as being eco-friendly. But how do you know whether an offering is a victim of a vendor's green-washing scheme or if it really is "green"? And that goes back the original question: What defines a green product or service?

Well, I find it difficult to devise a simple and succinct definition on which everyone can agree. On the most extreme end of the spectrum, one might argue that any product or service you can buy off the shelf, via the Internet, or over the phone isn't technically green. The process of transforming a natural resource into something else requires the use of additional materials and energy and, even in a minute way, detracts from the environment. In that realm of thought, a soybean growing in the wild would be green whereas tofu wouldn't.

Now, if businesses were to exercise that level of discrimination in their ambition to invest only in green products, they wouldn't accomplish much. Hence, that definition is pretty useless in the context of commerce or generally going about one's day-to-day life, unless one happens to live in the forest naked, scrounging bark and berries fallen off of trees and bushes.

But here's what I consider a more practical definition that companies might employ to gauge a product or service's "greenness": A green product or service is one that delivers comparable or superior performance, utility, or other benefits to an alternative one while utilizing fewer resources, containing fewer toxic materials, and/or boasting a longer lifecycle.

So, for example: Suppose the fictitious company SustainoTech (not a registered trademark as far as I can tell, so snag it quick) were to roll out a blade server that used 25 percent less energy and produced 30 percent less heat than the average comparable blade server on the market. Moreover, it would be ROHS-compliant and designed such that individual components could easily be swapped in and out -- plus, the system as a whole could be efficiently dismantled for refurbishing or recycling. That, in my book, would be a mighty green server. (I expect to see at least one major vendor roll out a server that meet most of those criteria -- if not all -- within the next year, a prediction you may add to my list.)

No, SustainoTech's server wouldn't be made of a renewable resource such as bamboo. Yes, it would still use electricity and create heat. It would still require the usage and alteration of natural as well as hazardous resources. It would contribute to your company's carbon footprint. But it would deliver comparable performance to the competition with a lower drain on the environment. Hence, it's green. Or at least greener. The bar will inevitably rise as companies come up with new technologies.

There are other examples of products out there that I'd readily categorize as being green, such as telepresence. I haven't drilled down into the relative energy requirements of the various telepresence solutions on the market today, but I'd file the category under "G" for "green." My reasoning is, employing telepresence as an alternative to using planes, trains, and automobiles means less fuel consumption. Further, telepresence, unlike videoconferencing, delivers a meeting experience that is comparable to an in-person meeting. (Admittedly, that's based on plenty of secondhand accounts; I've not yet experienced telepresence.)

What about systems management software that lets admins ensure that a server is using just as much electricity as it needs to in order to run effectively? So long as it performs as well as other management software, yeah, that's green. Virtualization, which lets you wring the same amount of work out of fewer machines? Again, green. Electronic document management outgreens paper-based systems. Solar power beats coal power. And the list goes on.

A couple of final thoughts on this subject: First, if a vendor comes to your door hawking what it deems a green product, be sure to ask just what makes it so green.

Second, bear in mind that a product deemed green today will be considered wasteful and eco-unfriendly tomorrow. Technological advancement coupled with relativity is funny that way.

Finally -- and this is a point I'll keep making until my fingers ooze (the blogging equivalent to the expression "talking until I'm blue in the face"): Green products alone simply can't make your company green. A blueprint for long-term sustainability is a must, and the products you employ are but a piece of the puzzle. Deploying virtualization in your datacenter may very well help you make better use of your resources in the short- or midterm. It may also reduce your company's carbon footprint. But you most certainly need to plan beyond that for the sake of your organization's future prosperity -- as well as for the sake of the environment, if that is, indeed, a concern for your company.

How would you define a green product or service?

Ted Samson is a senior analyst at InfoWorld and author of the Sustainable IT blog. Subscribe to his free weekly Green Tech newsletter.

Posted by Ted Samson on January 3, 2008 03:00 AM

January 02, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Sun to host free OpenEco Energy Camp on Jan. 10

Just because it's winter doesn't mean it's too early for camp. Sun Microsystems will host the OpenEco Energy Camp on Thursday, Jan. 10, and swimsuits and sleeping bags are purely unnecessary. (Marshmallows are optional.)

Eco-minded business leaders and analysts as well as open-source software developers will be attending the event in San Francisco, which Sun is dubbing (in addition to Energy Camp) an "unconference." "Sun will provide access to environmental leaders and creative tools to help spark ideas, but the real agenda and conversations of the day will be led by the audience," according to the announcement.

Speakers will include: Hunter Lovins, author of "Natural Capitalism"; Adam Werbach, founder and CEO of Act Now Products, former Sierra Club president, and Wal-Mart sustainability consultant; and Sun's VP of eco-responsibility, Dave Douglas.

Also attending: Software developers interested in "coding for the environment" by contributing to OpenEco.Org, Sun's online community aimed at providing tools to help participants assess, track, and compare energy performance and share best practices to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Green-tech is indeed becoming a hot topic at conferences around the globe (and cyberspace), from New York to Second Life to San Francisco (at InfoWorld's forthcoming Virtualization Executive Forum).

The OpenEco Energy Camp event venue is the Mission Bay Conference Center at UCSF, 1675 Owens Street, in San Francisco. The doors open at 9:00 a.m., and the event will conclude at around 5:30 with dinner. Attendance is free.