Sustainable IT | Ted Samson » TAG: Microsoft

May 07, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft developers trim code internally to cut costs

TAGS: Microsoft

You likely know already what a resource hog Windows Vista is. The fat code has high system requirements and puts a heavy strain on your hardware, as evidenced by the data Randall Kennedy has collected through InfoWorld's Window Sentinel program. And guess what? Fat code also translates to higher energy consumption as a machine works extra hard to process queries.

[Add your Windows systems to the exo.performance community, plus monitor how they specifically perform, with InfoWorld's Windows Sentinel tool.]

The folks at Microsoft know this first-hand. Michael Manos, the company's chief of datacenters, made that abundantly clear as he touted Redmond's internal datacenter monitoring program, called Scry, at the recent Uptime Institute Green Enterprise Computing Symposium.

The system gathers all sorts of data on energy usage, temperature, carbon emissions, and more from all of Microsoft's datacenters. It also ties in to the company's asset management, ticketing, and CMDB (configuration management database) systems.

Users can log in to Scry via a Web browser to view information on power consumption, carbon emissions, and such for multiple datacenters, a single datacenter, a group of servers; they can even drill down to a very granular application level. That's how the company is able to charge business units for the specific datacenter resources they use.

According to Manos, the chargeback program has driven Microsoft developers to alter their code to make it more efficient. The reasoning: More efficient code requires fewer computing cycles, which means a lower energy bill for the department at the end of the period.

"Now that we're exposing the power costs and the cost of the infrastructure ... we now have product groups making decisions on, 'Does this query take more power or less power? Is it more efficient or less efficient?'," Manos says. "We have decisions being made based on their overall power consumption in addition to the overall efficiency of the code itself."

Now that Microsoft is visibly pushing the green-computing movement, and now that it's demonstrating to the world that fat code does translate to inefficiency, one can only hope that the next version of Windows will prove far trimmer than Vista.

Posted by Ted Samson on May 7, 2008 10:33 AM

March 13, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Where will Microsoft's green path lead?

TAGS: Microsoft

For months now, many of the hardware technology heavyweights -- HP, IBM, Sun, Dell, AMD, Cisco, and Intel, for example -- have gone to great lengths to highlight their green products, plans, and corporate visions. Other green IT benefits not withstanding, this strategy makes sense from a marketing standpoint: By demonstrating and accentuating the greenness of their wares, they're better positioned to sell processors, PCs, servers, and other gear to customers hungry for leaner, greener operations.

Now the software behemoth Microsoft has stepped forward to loudly proclaim its support for the sustainable IT movement. The company's off to a good start: Beyond a list of notable green credentials already under its belt, Microsoft has a newly appointed chief environmental strategist in Rob Bernard, charged with guiding and promoting the evolution of the company's green agenda. The company's newly released server platform Windows Server 2008 is garnering praise for its energy efficiency. The company is even starting to share, for free, its best practices for datacenter management.

By shining a green spotlight on itself, Microsoft is calling attention to the fact that it understands the role that it -- and the software and platform industry as a whole -- has to play in the complex green-tech ecosystem. What remains to be seen is how that seemingly newfound green religion will manifest itself in future product offerings, particularly, in my mind, with respect to the successor to Vista.

Green in Redmond
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer used the Cebit stage to not only tout the energy-efficiency features loaded in Windows 2008 Server and other Microsoft products; he told the world that the company would soon release a set of best practices for datacenter management, drawing on energy-saving strategies the company has adopted in its own operations. The first set of best practices, in fact, is already available for download.

Microsoft's interest in green tech has been evident for a while. Beyond the green features the company claims in Vista and Windows 2008 Server, Microsoft was among the first members of The Green Grid, a consortium of high-tech companies looking to holistically address the challenge of curbing power consumption in the datacenter. It's also a part of the Climate Savers Initiative, which aims to increase energy savings in computers and servers. Moreover, the company reports incorporating green practices in developing its facilities in India and Quincy, Wash. Microsoft also joined forces with the Clinton Foundation last year to develop free software for cities to monitor their carbon emissions.

Even more recently, a new chief environmental strategist, Rob Bernard, came onboard to develop a company-wide green strategy. "We had a lot of well-intentioned and productive work happening around environmental issues, but we recognized that it would be more powerful, and that we'd have the ability to derive impact at scale, if we created a strategy to drive out environmental issues across our product lines, in how we run our business, and in how we think about our partnerships," Bernard told me.

Greener software pastures
Microsoft's commitment is critical to the overall greening of the technology landscape. As companies suffer the burden of high energy bills and power limitations, they're clamoring for higher performance per watt from their machines. While processors, memories, power supplies, and other such hardware components certainly contribute to the amount of energy a machine consumes, software and server platforms play an integral role as well.

For starters, servers and PCs have grown progressively more powerful -- and, thus, more energy-hungry -- over the years to keep up with the demands of swelling software requirements. Yet some critics argue that many of today's apps are unnecessarily fat and inefficient, requiring companies running them to invest in more powerful hardware than might otherwise be necessary.

Additionally, software has a role to play in helping rein in the power consumption of servers and PCs, which is a critical part of an overall green IT strategy.

Win some, lose some
Microsoft developers were evidently mindful of the second point when they coded Windows Server 2008 and Vista. As noted by Bjarne Dollerup, senior product planner in the Server and Tools Business Marketing and Solutions Group at Microsoft, "both Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 take steps to address ... power consumption by implementing updated support for ACPI processor power management (PPM) features, including support for processor performance states and processor idle sleep states on multiprocessor systems."

Additionally, Windows Server 2008 boasts plenty of support for virtualization, a strategy for reducing a company's server count (and energy bill). Improvements to Terminal Services are a boon for thin clients: "More basic terminal hardware and thin clients can be used in placed of complete desktop systems, helping lower costs," according to the company.

However, Microsoft has arguably stumbled on the green IT path with Vista in terms of the fat code and resulting fat systems requirements of the platform. Yes, Redmond made efforts to improve the power-management capabilities of Vista. Still, the fact remains that Vista has markedly higher system requirements than Windows XP -- a painful lesson learned by consumers in 2006 who purchased new PCs with "Windows Vista Capable" stickers, only to find out after Vista was released that said machines could run just the lackluster Home Basic Edition of the OS. (Microsoft is fighting a class-action lawsuit over this issue.)

In other words, most Windows shops facing the likely inevitable move to Vista will have to upgrade their existing PCs to support the OS. Unless these companies are indeed reaping a substantial business benefit from the migration, trading in all those PCs for more powerful, truly Vista-capable ones is a decidedly wasteful exercise.

It will be interesting to see where Microsoft's green path will lead the company, its partners, its customers -- and its products. The fact that the company is working with other vendors through The Green Grid and Climate Savers is advantageous: It means we can expect greater green synergy among Microsoft products and other vendors' wares. There's also positive signs that the company will, indeed, make the next version of desktop Windows slimmer (or even modular?).

What would you like to see Microsoft do to demonstrate its commitment to green IT?

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 March 13, 2008 03:00 AM

February 11, 2008 | Comments: (0)

MS-Yahoo marriage could drive green SaaS innovation

TAGS: Google, Microsoft, SaaS (software as a service), Yahoo

I've been out of the country for over a week, and thus I'm a bit late to the Microsoft-Yahoo party. But I saw that The New York Times had an interesting take on the subject that spoke to my green-tech sensibilities. The idea is, Redmond's not just seeking a bigger piece of the savory search pie; it's looking to build on Yahoo's technology platform and expansive user base to advance its Web-based software strategy and compete against Google Apps.

I'm certainly a firm believer in the SaaS model. For the end-user, it means having the convenience of creating, editing, and sharing documents from anywhere you can get online. For an IT admin, it means fewer headaches maintaining software on user systems. And from a green IT perspective, it means users can get by with less expensive, less resource-intensive machines, since most of the processing and storage is being taken care of on the back end. That means companies get to spend less money on replacing and powering machines.

As it stands, Google has been making rapid advancements in the world of SaaS (software as a service), having just recently unveiled a Team Edition of its Internet-based productivity suite. According to IDG News Services, more than 500,000 organizations have signed up for Google Apps thus far.

Microsoft, meanwhile, hasn't made much progress on the Web-software front. Yes, it has its Office Live Workspace program (currently in beta), but that's really just an extension of the processor-hungry, hard-drive-bound version of Office. Yet surely the company can't ignore the success Google is enjoying with Google Apps, which, again, is likely figuring in to its desire to buy up Yahoo.

The future of SaaS certainly doesn't hinge on Microsoft's ability to snag Yahoo. If it does happen, though, I expect we'll see some real Web-app innovation thanks to the combined mindshare of the two companies. In the meantime, I'm curious whether Microsoft, or Yahoo, for that matter, will show us anything that will compete with Google Apps.

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 February 11, 2008 02:08 PM

November 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)

The greener -- and darker -- sides of MS's refurbisher program

TAGS: Microsoft, PCs, Recycling, Waste reduction

Microsoft has launched the Microsoft Authorized Refurbisher (MAR) program through which companies that sell refurbished PCs can easily load licensed versions of Windows XP and necessary drivers onto their wares. You can read the details right here.

I've got mixed feelings about the MAR program. On the plus side, it may encourage more environmentally concerned, pennywise, and/or cautious-minded companies and home users to consider purchasing refurbished PCs. Let's break that down.

I say environmentally minded because every year, as recently reported by Leon Erlanger, the e-waste problem is big and growing. To paraphrase some of his report:

According to IDC, in 2006 alone, 30.7 million commercial PCs, or 70 percent of the total commercial installed base, were retired. Yet IDC estimates that only 33 percent of U.S. companies, mostly large enterprises, have made use of the asset disposal industry. In the European Union the number is closer to 40 percent. That's unfortunate, because the increasing number of retired PCs that end up in landfills results in more toxic pollution. PCs and monitors, especially old ones, contain a multitude of hazardous substances.

That's not good news. But what is good news is the fact that the market for refurbished systems is growing. Up to 28 million refurbished PCs will be sold this year, making up 10 percent of the global PC market, according to Microsoft said Hani Shakeel, senior product manager of the genuine Windows product marketing team.

I say that that refurbished PCs in general should appeal to the penny-wise because they simply cost less than new ones. It's entirely likely that two-year-old computers will suit the needs of the average home user or employees at an SMB, so if you go the refurbished route, you can save some cash.

Finally, there's the cautious-minded aspect to the MAR program, which I know is a controversial topic. Like it or not, if you want support from Microsoft, including access to necessary patches and updates, you need to be running a legitimately licensed version of Windows.

Through MAR, companies and end-users who buy systems from a participating reseller will know the machines are fully functional and ready to work out of the box, loaded with a version of XP that Microsoft will recognize and support. That provides some peace of mind -- and saves time that would be spent loading Windows onto the machines at the office. Those benefits could encourage more people to consider refurbished PCs as an alternative to new ones.

Now here's what might bother you about MAR, and it certainly gives me pause. Suppose a company sells 50 PCs to, say, TechTurn, one of the two refurbishers currently participating in MAR. The systems are in pristine condition, and all are running licensed versions of Windows XP Pro. However, the company's IT admin didn't keep the original OS CDs to demonstrate that each version of XP was legit, which is pretty common.

So TechTurn does a full wipe of the systems, down to the bare metal. Then, as a result, thanks to Microsoft's end-user license agreement, TechTurn has to pay for new Windows licenses for each one of those systems. Albeit, the licenses are discounted ones; still, that's an expense that presumably gets passed on to the buyer. So ultimately, Microsoft is reaping the benefits of selling a second Windows license for a PC that was already running one fair and square -- because the admin or user didn't save the original installation CDs. That part's not quite fair, now is it?

The thing is -- and this is me speculating -- Microsoft should have ways of probing systems to ensure they're running legitimate versions of XP. Why not supply refurbishers with the tools to do just that before wiping them? Systems that are could then be reloaded after they're wiped with the same licensed version of XP they ran pre-wipe. The refurbisher could even burn a copy of the necessary backup CD, for a neglible fee, and package it with the system.

What do you think about the MAR program?

Posted by Ted Samson on November 9, 2007 11:47 AM

October 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft to shine spotlight on green-tech initiatives

TAGS: Microsoft

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 20, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft to trim Windows bloat for 2010

TAGS: Energy conservation, Microsoft, Windows

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

August 28, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Linux, Windows duke it out over energy efficiency

TAGS: HP, IBM, Linux, Microsoft, Novell, Platforms

The battles for energy efficiency aren't just being fought by chipmakers, server and PC vendors, and other hardware companies out there. There's a similar battle heating up on the OS layer between Microsoft and Linux.

Linux appears to have an advantage at the moment: Companies are becoming increasingly open to adopting the platform both in the server room and on the desktop. Big-name vendors like IBM, HP, and Novell are giving the penguin a push in the datacenter, framing it as a flexible and energy-efficient platform. The fact that Linux offers greater virtualization opportunities than Windows (a sentiment recently expressed by the VMWare CTO Mendel Rosenblum) only strengthens the platform's green standing.

Microsoft isn't resting on its laurels, though. It plans to make power-management tools a central part of Windows Server 2008. Further, it's advancing its own virtualization strategy.

The Linux Foundation has spelled out plans to bring improved power management to the OS in an effort called the Green Linux Initiative. The workgroup's efforts could bring longer battery life to battery-powered mobile devices and lower operating costs in the server room.

Some of the projects the Linux Foundation envisions includes:

• Developing a tickless kernel, which enables the processor to sleep between tasks
  
• Creating power-aware applications and policies
  
• Boosting power management for USB peripherals
  
• Improving suspend and hibernate reliability
  
• Fixing bugs in userspace applications that cause unnecessary processor usage

"At the Linux Foundation, we've realized that while there have been many recent advances in Linux power management, there are still new, untapped ways to make Linux more green," said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, in a written statement. "Our Green Linux initiative will leverage the power of our members ... to enhance these improvements. We expect Linux to be a leader in this area and for Linux customers, and the environment, to realize the gains brought about by our members' efforts."

One company heavily involved in the big green push is Big Blue. In conjunction with the Linux Foundation, IBM announced its own Big Green Linux initiative to help customers further integrate Linux into the enterprise so as to "to reduce costs and energy consumption by building cooler data centers," according to the company.

IBM is making noise about the energy-saving consolidation potential of Linux in conjunction with its own hardware, particularly its System z mainframes. Eating a healthy helping of its dogfood, IBM is consolidating approximately 3,900 of its own servers onto about 30 System z mainframes running Linux.

Joining IBM and the Linux Foundation in the green push is Novell, which is touting the greenery of its flavor of Linux. "With every release of our SUSE Linux Enterprise platform, Novell finds new ways to help customers reduce power consumption through improvements in policy-driven power management and system monitors for servers, along with better suspend functionality for laptops," said Roger Levy, senior vice president and general manager of Open Platform Solutions for Novell, in a written statement.

It doesn't end there: HP is also singing the praises of Linux, noting that it has a key role in next-generation datacenter strategy. At LinuxWorld earlier this month, Ann Livermore, executive vice president of the Technology Solutions Group within HP, talked up the penguin, according to an IDG News Service report. "The energy efficiency of all servers has become the issue 'every customer wants to talk about,' she said and applauded the new functionality added to the Linux kernel that improves energy efficiency by putting Linux systems into low-power states when there's a pause in computing."

Microsoft isn't blind to the high demand for more energy-efficient systems. The company went to great lengths to talk up the power management features of Vista and has green aspirations for the next version of Windows server. In a recent interview on SearchDataCenter.com, Stephen Berard, program manager of the Windows Platform Architecture team, detailed some of the future OS's power-management features.

Among them, he says that, "in Windows Server 2008, you can lock a processor in a state right off the bat. We also have finer-grade controls for thresholds that can address cases where the default settings don't fit what you want to do. The defaults that come out of the box are going to be good for the vast majority of people."

Posted by Ted Samson on August 28, 2007 03:00 AM

June 06, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft talks power savings for the datacenter

TAGS: Microsoft

Redmond talks up 20% power-use reduction in Windows Server 2008, secret green datacenter plans

Mary Jo Foley conducted an interesting interview over on Redmond Developer News with Bill Laing, the general manager of Redmond's Windows Server Division. With power savings high on IT admin's priority lists, companies contemplating migrating to Windows Server 2008 (the platform formerly known as Longhorn) might be interested in this quote:

We've done power management by default in Longhorn Server. And we think average machines will see maybe 20 percent reduction in power use. You kind of slow the clock down when it's not busy. And it's dynamic enough that you can literally slow the clock down across a disk I/O. If you've got nothing to do while you're doing a disk I/O, it actually drops the power use for that short period of time. It's not like sleeping [for] the laptop; this is really short, what they call P-state for processor state.

In her blog, Foley also points out an entry by Lewis Curtis, Microsoft infrastructure architecture advisor, in which he writes that he is "working towards a Microsoft comprehensive Green Datacenter Strategy. ... We're scheduled to give an internal presention to inernal employees at ... the end of July. This presentation will focused on having a energy consumption strategy in the datacenter, what the industry is doing, what customers expect from us and ideas for Microsoft for the future."

He goes on to say that "This presentation will focused on having a energy consumption strategy in the datacenter, what the industry is doing, what customers expect from us and ideas for Microsoft for the future.

Microsoft has been make some green noise of late. One of the founding members of The Green Grid consortium, the company recently announced that it would work the The Clinton Foundation to develop free Web-based software for cities to monitor their carbon emissions.

Posted by Ted Samson on June 6, 2007 04:37 PM

May 23, 2007 | Comments: (0)

HP gives WWF $2 million in tech, cash for climate-change research

TAGS: Carbon emissions, Dell, Global climate change, Green business, HP, Microsoft, Yahoo

Partnership another example of big-name IT companies like Microsoft, Dell, and Yahoo investing in environmental causes

"Technology is part of the problem, but it's also part of the solution." That, paraphrased, is one of the comments that Dave Douglas, Sun's VP of eco-responsibility, shared with me earlier this month.

The problem he was alluding to was the environmental challenges the planet faces due to global climate change. (When, and why, did the term "global climate change" replace "global warming"?) The IT industry indeed contributes to the phenomenon as its operations and wares churn out greenhouse gas in the form of carbon dioxide.

But a growing number of tech companies are owning up to the responsibility and becoming increasingly better environmental stewards, not only by boosting the energy-efficiency of their products, reducing waste, and finding ways to shrink their carbon footprints; they're also teaming up with environmental groups, donating not only money but technology and resources toward solving the problems.

Among them is HP, which today is announcing a partnership with the WWF (World Wildlife Fund) to allocate more than $2 million in cash and equipment to the non-profit for establishing three projects aimed at addressing the causes and consequences of global climate change. (HP and the WWF aren't strangers to working with one another.)

The projects, which focus on analysis, research and data collection, include:

-- The Epicenter for Climate Conservation – Focused on advancing climate adaptation and resiliency strategies and projects worldwide, the Epicenter for Climate Conservation will be driven by HP technology and led by Dr. Lara Hansen, chief climate scientist of WWF.

-- Information and Communication Technology Innovation as a Driver of Climate Change Solutions – This program will work to identify 1 billion tons of carbon reductions through the use of information and communication technology.

-- Climate Witness – An online forum to raise global awareness of the tangible consequences of climate change, Climate Witness will gather the stories of individuals and communities affected by global warming and share them with the world.

This announcement comes less than a week after Microsoft's big announcement that it would be teaming with the Clinton Foundation to develop a suite of technology tools, both software and services. designed to enable cities to monitor, compare and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

Assisting in developing these measurement tools by ICLEI (International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives)—Local Governments for Sustainability and the Center for Neighborhood Technology. Microsoft will build the software using the knowledge base that ICLEI has acquired in developing its Harmonized Emissions Analysis Tool (HEAT).

Additionally, Microsoft recently launched its "i'm" initiative, built around Windows Live Messenger. Users of the Microsoft instant-messaging client can register to have a portion of a Live Messenger session's ad revenue go to one of various non-profit organizations, including The Sierra Club and stopglobalwarming.org (not to be confused with stopglobalclimatechange.org).

The list of tech companies embarking on environmental causes (and other socially responsible ones) doesn't end there, and while I've been, well, a bit skeptical of some of the other efforts I've seen, the fact remains that these companies are making an effort and are certainly helping to raise awareness about environmental issues.

Dell, for examples, teamed up with with The Conservation Fund and the Carbonfund.org earlier this to launch "Plant a Tree for Me" -- a program through which Dell, er, lets people donate money to plant trees in order to "offset" the carbon emitted by their personal computers, laptops, and general lifestyles.

And Yahoo announced its "Greenest City in America" Challenge last week, which I'm still shaking my head over: Essentially, the city that wins is the one whose residents use Yahoo services the most for the next couple of weeks. And the prize is a fleet of hybrid taxis, or else $250,000, which can be used for a eco-friendly project of the winning city's choosing.

While the contest itself is, to me, simply ridiculous (they should have called it "The Yahoo-iest City in the U.S." Challenge), it, too, raises awareness, such as through the info on the company's new green portal -- plus Yahoo is giving out 150,000 energy-efficient CFL lightbulbs to people who participate.

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