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March 27, 2008 | Comments: (0)

There's no question that some companies pursue green solutions because it's the right thing to do. But plenty of them also do it for the cost savings.

Thus, I'm continually surprised by the persistent assumption that being environmentally conscious and fiscally smart are at odds with one another.

Talking about the state of the country's lagging economy, a guest on NPR recently suggested that the looming recession should compel organizations to abandon green IT initiatives. He essentially dismissed green efforts as "feel-good" projects that don't do much to help an organization's bottom line in the short- or midterm.

Apparently, this fellow wasn't alone in missing the potential connection between adopting green-tech practices and reducing expenses: CIO Talk Radio hosted a roundtable discussion on Wednesday built around this astonishing (to me, anyway) premise: "Green IT initiatives are primarily to help improve the global environment rather than our balance sheets. While organizations may join the bandwagon for visibility, do they really care about it, given that there is not a significant tangible ROI on related investments?"

The fact of the matter is, many -- not all, but many -- green-technology investments positively affect the bottom lines of the companies that make them. After all, the very purpose of such projects is to reduce energy consumption and other costly waste at an organization. These steps then result in environmentally friendly benefits, such as a smaller carbon footprint and fewer squandered natural resources.

Another plus: It's not hard to measure the financial benefits of green-technology investments. They offer predictable, measurable financial benefits. If, for example, you find you'll be able to unplug a third of your servers or reduce paper and ink usage by 40 percent, you can plug some numbers into Excel for a quick prediction of how much money you'll save.

Many datacenter operators foresee running out of space and power in their datacenters in the not-too-distant future. Pursuing a well-planned green-tech initiative today could serve not only to lower energy costs but to allow for future growth when the economic tide turns.

Still not sure if green means business? Peruse these examples of green-technology projects and investments that, in the right organization, will likely yield cost savings while delivering environmentally friendly benefits.

1. Desktop-power management
For every PC and monitor left on at your company 24/7, you're paying between $25 and $75 more per year on power bills. Yes, you may have reasons to keep those machines on, such as being sure they're properly backed up and patched after hours, but by investing in PC power management solutions from companies such as 1E, BigFix, Kace, or Verdiem, you can set policies to ensure that machines automatically power down when they're not in use and get woken up for patching, backup, and so forth.

So let's see: Multiply $50 per year times the number of machines throughout your organization. Compare that to the cost of the licenses for the software. The ROI there shouldn't be too tough to calculate. (For the city of Boston, as an example, it paid for itself in a year.) The environmental benefits are pretty obvious: Less power waste means fewer carbon emissions.

2. Server virtualization
A server virtualization project can be complex. It also might not suit the needs of your organization. Caveats aside, it has the potential to bring significant green benefits to your organization.

Numerous companies have large server rooms or datacenters filled with pricey servers, many of which spend the majority of their days mostly unused yet nonetheless drawing power from the wall and adding heat to the environment.

The idea behind server virtualization is to move the workloads from underutilized servers and consolidate on far fewer machines. I've seen case studies of successful server virtualization projects through which organizations have managed to transfer the work of 1,000 servers down to 270, or 260 machines onto 11.

Considering the costs of not only powering servers but also cooling them, this kind of effort can result in big savings on your power bills. It can also save money on future hardware investments -- and spare the environment the greenhouse gas emissions that would have gone into running and chilling those extra machines.

3. Thin provisioning
Thin provisioning is a storage strategy touted by Hitachi Data Systems, HP, and other vendors. The premise behind the technology is pretty straightforward: It lets IT admins view all of their storage hardware as a great big pool and divvy up slices as needed, rather than allocating separate arrays for different business units that might not be taking full advantage of the pricey hardware you've set aside for them.

The result, if all goes well: You can purchase just enough storage machinery to meet your organization's collective needs, which means you're paying less money for arrays running at 20 percent utilization while you pay for 100 percent of their drives to spin. Once again, you get a cost savings and an environmental benefit. (Notably, thin provisioning isn't the only storage strategy that can result in cost savings and eco-friendly benefits.)

4. Document-technology systems and print management
Research finds that the average employee wastes $85 worth of printer paper and ink each year through unnecessary printing. Those numbers can build up fast if your organization prints more than the average number of contracts, legal briefs, marketing materials, manuals, spreadsheets, and the like. Add to that the cost of powering and maintaining various document-printing machines, including copiers, printers, and faxes.

A green-tech investment in print-management software from companies such as Equitrac can help you reduce paper waste and ink waste -- and save you a substantial sum of money in the process. Equitrac's wares let admins set up policies that prevent users from, say, printing Web pages in costlier color ink, or defaults certain types of documents to two-sided printing instead of one. It also ensures that a machine doesn't print a document until a user is actually at said machine to collect it. The result: You save money on paper and ink -- plus preserve some trees and other natural resources.

Meanwhile, Xerox points to both the cost and environmental benefits of multifunction devices over single-function models. The idea is, if you unplug several old, power-draining copiers, printers, and faxes and trade them in for fewer MFDs, you reap cash and carbon savings. (As I noted earlier this week, Xerox has developed a Sustainability Calculator to measure the potential environmental impact of moving to fewer, more energy-efficient machines, as well as going from single- to double-sided prints -- but those also translate to monetary savings.)

5. Refurbished machines
Even during tough economic periods, you may need to replace or add new hardware, such as PCs, servers, routers, or storage devices. Satisfying as that new hardware smell may be, refurbished systems can be a great alternative. Unless your organization really and truly needs a top-of-the-line desktop or server, it's entirely possible that a machine from, say, a year or two ago will suit your requirements splendidly.

Of course, you're rightly worried about buying a lemon, same as you'd be if you went down to Crazy Cowboy Bob's Used Car Corral to buy a new sedan. But there are reputable vendors out there -- including third-party sellers as well as the original manufacturers of the products. As you shop, just make sure the machines are pretested and come with acceptable warranties.

As for the ROI on this green-tech investment -- well, you'll save a tidy sum of dough buying used. Environmentally speaking, you spare Mother Nature the waste that goes into building and transporting new machines.

These are only a few of the green-technology projects that, at the right organization, could deliver an impressive ROI, both in terms of cash savings and environmental benefits. If your company is among those facing tough choices due to the frosty economic climate, don't be too quick to dismiss any proposal with the word "green" attached.

Posted by Ted Samson on March 27, 2008 03:00 AM

March 24, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Xerox develops Sustainability Calculator for doc tech

Add Xerox to the list of vendors adding green-o-meter functionality to their wares. The company Tuesday will unveil what it dubs a Sustainability Calculator, designed to help customers evaluate the environmental impact of their document-technology systems, such as printers, faxes, and copiers.

Part of the company's Xerox Office Services, the Sustainability Calculator measures the waste and greenhouse gas emissions associated with powering printers, copiers, fax machines, and multifunction devices. It also measures the differences, in environmental terms, resulting from practices such as printing single-sided documents instead of double-sided, or using different types of ink.

In addition to the aforementioned version, which Xerox reps would use during an assessment for a customer, the company also has developed a slimmed-down Web-based version.

Both calculators require a user to input information about the various machines in his or her organization. They then employ "proprietary algorithms and document assessment research to deliver data about a company's entire fleet of office products, from printers to multifunction devices and copiers, regardless of the equipment supplier," according to Xerox.

Once a customer has a glimpse of the inefficiency of its document-tech systems, the next step (Xerox hopes) is to show customers how to gain efficiency by, say, in retiring various older copiers, fax machines, and printers for fewer, newer MFDs.

It might be tempting for to dismiss this type of tool as simply a marketing scheme to exploit CXOs who've caught a case of the green fever that's swept the U.S. and beyond. But the reality is, there are cost savings to be had from certain sustainable practices, and making adjustments to your company's network of printers and other document-technology products is one of them. That includes moving to fewer multi-purpose machines as your older ones are ready for retirement.

First, a new model MFD should be Energy Star compliant, which means it has a significantly lower power draw -- as much as 70 percent, according to Xerox -- than that of its one-function predecessors combined. Also, from a green perspective, manufacturing and shipping four machines -- a copier, a scanner, a fax machines, and a printer -- requires more resources than does building and shipping a single MFD that can do the work of four.

According to Patricia Calkins, vice president of environment, health, and safety at Xerox, many customers have been asking for more information about the green benefits of consolidating doc-tech systems and improv-ing their printing practices. "I was very surprised as I've been doing customer roundtables," says Calkins. "We talk about optimizing the office, and people have said, 'We understand the financial benefits. We want to talk about the environmental benefits."

Global defense and technology company Northrop Grumman worked with Xerox at one of its sectors to reduce a fleet of 2,000 printers, hundreds of MFDs, and stand-alone copiers to fewer than 1,100 devices. According to the Sustainability Calculator numbers, the change resulted in a savings of 27 percent in energy usage while reducing GHG emissions by 26 percent and solid waste creation by 33 percent.

Posted by Ted Samson on March 24, 2008 09:55 PM

March 07, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Green tech wrap-up: Microsoft's green vision bears fruit

Every Thursday, InfoWorld sends out my free Green Tech e-mail newsletter in which I point to some of the top green IT articles of the week. Following is the content of yesterday's. You can subscribe to the free InfoWorld Green Tech newsletter (and others) right here.

Oranges. Oranges. So many oranges.

I've been the proud owner of a rather impressive navel orange tree since moving to my Sacramento home just over a year ago. It's clearly a happy and healthy tree, judging by the multitude of fruit dangling from its various branches. But my girlfriend and I honestly don't know what to do with all of them. There's only so many oranges two people (and a cat) can eat. Any ideas?

Fortunately, green-tech news remains fruitful, though not to the point of being completely overwhelming. Here are some of my picks for the past week:

Steve Ballmer talks up Microsoft's green vision - At the greener-than-ever Cebit show, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer used stage time to highlight Redmond's efforts to address customer demand for energy-saving software. Among them: He told the audience that with newly released Windows Server 2008, "We've driven down [customers'] power consumption needs by, in some cases, up to 40 percent."

IT can clean up on clean tech - Prominent members of the "Who's Who Guide to IT Heavyweights" continue to invest heavily in renewable energy. It's not just a safe way to hedge bets on the rising costs of electricity; it opens the door for new business opportunities as the nation's power grid evolves.

Greenpeace finds much room for green improvement among electronics - Greenpeace rated the greenness of 20 electronic devices from eight vendors-- including desktop PCs, notebooks, mobile phones, and PDAs. Even the best scores weren't very good.

Forrester: Green IT consulting market to hit $4.8B by 2013 - The research company expects the market for green-tech consulting services to grow 60 percent annually over the next five years. Organizations will turn to third-parties such as Intel, HP, IBM, Sun, and others for strategies to not only reduce datacenter costs, but to create and implement holistic sustainability plans.

That wraps up this week's Green Tech newsletter. I expect I'll be neck-deep in InfoWorld Green 15 award nominations over the next few days. And oranges. Oh Whiskers, why can't your voracious appetite extend to citrus?

Posted by Ted Samson on March 7, 2008 12:02 PM

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 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)

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 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 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 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)

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

December 27, 2007 | Comments: (0)

2007: The year in green

Green success stories From the trenches of the datacenter to the corner office, from the eco-minded citizen's living room to the Senate floor, it seemed that just about everyone had green on the brain this past year.

Much of the green wave can be attributed to concern over the hot topic of global warming, a phenomenon associated with carbon emissions. Lo, said gases are linked to traditional power production and oil consumption, which is inspiring more people to turn off lights, power down systems, and invest in hybrid vehicles.

But the impetus to be eco-friendly wasn't just tied to concern for our little blue-green planet. One of the obvious benefits for reducing energy waste is saving cash, be it in the form of lower electric bills or fewer dollars pumped into the gas tank.

In the world of business IT, however, lower power bills alone weren't the inspiration for organizations to green up their acts. From coast to coast, companies have been struggling with a power crisis: They've outgrown their datacenter facilities, yet have need for more computing power -- or the local utility can't consistently provide them the juice they need to keep their operations flowing and their business growing.

In response, companies have embraced technologies and practices in the name of sustainability to wring as much performance as possible out of their existing datacenter infrastructure. The opportunity to highlight their technologies as part of the datacenter-refurbishing process was icing on the cake.

What follows are some of the highlights that made 2007 the year of green tech.

A greener eco-system
From the chip level up to the application layer, vendors groomed and packaged their wares to be more energy efficient and eco-friendly.

AMD and Intel, for example, both rolled out quad-core chips delivering lower energy consumption, as well as superior virtualization performance.

Speaking of which, virtualization was the poster child of sustainable technology in 2007. Leveraging wares from the likes of VMware and XenSource, companies found they could reduce dramatically reduce the number of servers they needed to deliver their applications and services.

On the server hardware front, vendors including HP unfurled servers promising superior power performance. IBM, meanwhile, touted the green credentials of its System z mainframe.

Moreover, companies including Cassatt, HP, and IBM injected power-capping features in their systems management apps to ensure that servers were consuming only as much energy as needed to deliver service reliably at any given time.

Server cooling also proved a hot topic this past year with companies such as APC, Dell, and HP revealing more innovative, energy-efficient ways to keep datacenter equipment properly chilled.

Meanwhile, companies such as 1E and Verdiem shined spotlights on their PC-management software designed to power down systems when not in use, waking them up for patching or just before employees showed up for work.

It didn't end there: Storage vendors such as Copan trumpeted the green benefits of consolidation and MAID technology. Network companies such as Brocade and Cisco outlined ways that networking gear played into the sustainability game plan. From memory makers to power supply developers to motherboard companies, the consistent message was "we're delivering the green goods."

The green halo extended beyond products of the energy-efficiency persuasion, too. Companies such as GreenPrint as well as electronic document management companies pointed out that their products, among other benefits, reduce paper waste. Vendors such as Cisco, Polycom, Teliris, and Telanetix, meanwhile, praised their wares as eco-friendlier alternatives to flying hither and yon for meetings that could be conducted via telepresence.

Follow the rising star
The early half of 2007 saw PC vendors such as HP and Dell racing to crank out the first Energy Star 4.0 systems on the market. As the name and number would imply, the new EPA's Energy Star standard -- which took effect in July -- raised the energy-efficiency bar for desktop systems and notebooks.

Among other requirements, Energy Star-compliant systems must be set to power down after periods of not being used; consume a lower amount of wattage than the average system; and run at least 80 percent efficiency for the internal power supply.

The EPA also announced plans to develop an Energy Star program for servers, a task that is more difficult than establishing one for desktop systems, given the broader diversity of datacenter and server room machines.

Go, green power, go!
A number of companies poured some green into alternative energy sources this past year, and these investments ran the gamut. A new Web hosting company called Greenest Host trumpeted its plans to lease space at AISO.net, a datacenter facility that runs entirely on solar power. Rackspace announced plans to build a new datacenter in England that draws power directly from an alternative energy provider called Slough Heat and Power.

On the other end of the spectrum, Google completed an installation of 9,212 solar panels at its headquarters -- and reaped a hefty sum of incentive money from California utility PG&E in the process. Meanwhile, Fujitsu installed Silicon Valley's first hydrogen fuel cell generator.

All for green and green for all
The past year saw companies and organizations coming together in the name of sustainability. One of the most notable examples of companies uniting was the formation of The Green Grid, a self-proclaimed vendor-neutral consortium comprising IT heavyweight include Dell, Intel, AMD, Sun, Microsoft, HP, IBM, and many, many more. The group's goal: driving new user-centric metrics, technology standards, and best practices for curbing power consumption.

In a similar vein, several high-profile tech companies joined organizations including the EPA, the World Wildlife Foundation, and other companies to create the Climate Savers Computing Initiative. The group's ambition is to set new targets for energy-efficient computers and components and to promote the adoption of energy-efficient computers and power management tools worldwide.

2007 also witnessed investors and business leaders calling on the government to fund green-tech development and to address global climate change.

Reuse, refurbish, recycle
Companies stepped up their system refurbishing and recycling efforts, touting both the financial benefits as well as the eco-friendly advantages of reusing materials.

Microsoft, for example, teamed with select PC-refurbishing outfits to ease the installation of Windows on pre-owned systems, ensuring buyers don't get stuck with pirated, unsupported OSes.

Verizon, meanwhile, established a recycling and refurbishing program for phones, batteries, and accessories. Proceeds for Verizon's HopeLine, as it's called, go toward providing wireless phones and cash grants to shelters and nonprofit organizations that focus on domestic violence prevention and awareness.

Carbon emissions: Public gas enemy No. 1
The terms "carbon neutral" and "carbon footprint" garnered plenty of attention in the past year as companies took on carbon emissions and other greenhouse gases that were linked to their operations.

Approaches varied: Some companies opted to invest in controversial "carbon offsets"; that is, they poured cash into third-party projects aimed at fighting the effects of global warming.

Companies such as Dell, Xerox, IBM, and AMD also opted to tackle GHGs more directly, unveiling plans and successes in reduce their own energy consumption and associated emissions.

Moreover, organizations such as IBM, Microsoft, and Sun announced projects and tools to help companies measure their own carbon footprints.

The list of green-oriented developments goes on and on: More companies such as Wal-Mart revealed programs to make their supply chains greener, for example, while nonprofit organizations like Greenpeace scrutinized the eco-friendliness of IT vendors' products and operations.

Given what we witnessed green-wise in 2007, it's a very safe bet that the green movement is by no means a flash in the pan. Both the benefits and the need for more sustainable practices are evident: They're good for business and the environment. Thus, 2008 will undoubtedly yield more technological innovations and internal efforts to save energy, cut waste, and reduce GHG emissions.

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 December 27, 2007 03:00 AM

December 20, 2007 | Comments: (0)

IT leaders share green-tech predictions for 2008

Green tech has flourished in the past year as vendors and customers alike have invested plenty of resources in making their products and practices more energy efficient, less wasteful, and eco-friendlier.

But is this sustainable-tech trend a mere green flash in the pan? Hardly. The flourishing world of green technology is driven by true need. Companies are running out of space and power in their datacenters, not to mention struggling with high energy costs. Business leaders, politicians, and consumers alike are becoming increasingly concerned about their impact on the environment.

Still, one wonders what crop of green-tech changes the year 2008 will yield. What follows are some abridged predictions from some IT experts out there who've been immersed in sustainable tech this past year and have a keen eye on the future. I've also added some predictions of my own. Predictions are listed in alphabetical order by last name; no favoritism here.

Bogomil Balkansky, senior director, product marketing, VMware
Website: VMware Energy Savings page
With constantly increasing computing demands and rising energy costs, energy conservation in the datacenter will continue to be a very hot topic (no pun intended) in 2008. Customers will continue to right-size and optimize their IT infrastructure driven by the economic and social responsibility imperative to save energy, but we also expect to see a new trend: datacenter energy efficiency incentives or regulations from different levels of government around the world. IT vendors will respond to this groundswell by ramping up investments in technologies that will help reduce the carbon footprint of the datacenter.

Drew Clark, co-founder and director of strategy, IBM Venture Capital Group
Website: Venture Capital Group
1. In 2008, global interest in green tech will continue to grow as competitive players emerge in unexpected geographies outside the United States. Beyond investment in alternative energy, there will be a great demand for technologies that allow energy consumers (businesses and homeowners) and producers (utilities) to monitor, manage, distribute and use energy more efficiently.

2. The greening of the datacenter will continue to be a top priority for corporations, as the cost of simply powering the center begins to exceed the cost of the servers and devices in the datacenter. Key drivers to help reduce the overall carbon footprint and run more efficient centers will include intelligent sensors and advanced analytics to monitor and improve equipment utilization, reducing downtime and providing comprehensive operational visibility.

Tom Clark, chair, SNIA (Storage Networking Industry Association) Green Storage Initiative and principal engineer, Brocade
Website: Brocade greening the datacenter
1. In 2008 there will be an increasing demand for consultants and vendors to help customers re-architect their data processing and storage operations to minimize the power footprint and maximize productivity by doing more with less. Server virtualization is an obvious candidate for achieving more productivity on less hardware, and storage virtualization will also help achieve maximum utilization of assets without constantly deploying more energy consuming platforms to accommodate storage growth.

2. Just as energy costs are becoming a major portion of datacenter operational expense, energy management will start to become an integral part of data management in 2008. As a datacenter administrator, I would want to monitor not only my processing efficiency and storage utilization but also the energy consumption and heat dissipation of all the major components of my IT infrastructure. We already have the framework for this in the SNIA Storage Management Initiative (SMI-S) for managing heterogeneous environments. Tapping into energy statistics provided by disparate hardware platforms (servers, SAN fabrics, storage, tape, etc.) could give administrators the ability to monitor the overall power efficiency of their operations. These are the specific types of metrics that feed into broader datacenter energy metrics a la The Green Grid.

3. The consciousness-raising around green datacenters has been accompanied by some cynicism in the trade press ("Vendors are just trying to sell more stuff"), but the subjective motivations of any particular vendor are really irrelevant. This is not a solution seeking a problem; this is, in fact, a very real problem that will continue to worsen in 2008 and every year beyond. I think we'll see some very dramatic and perhaps unfortunate initial case studies of large datacenters that failed to react quickly enough to what is actually a pending crisis of global proportions.

Lewis Curtis, infrastructure architect and advisor, Microsoft
Blog: Thoughts from the raised floor
Companies who only rely on performance per watt (PPW) justifications for capital expenditures will see their power consumption increase. The logic goes like this: Most vendors are still parading the PPW marketing plan as their green answer today. Why doesn't this work in the real world? Because it never factors in its impact on the velocity of demand as well as the impact of the environment which must now support it. As technology capability increases, the velocity of people's demands of that technology will increase more. Therefore the demand for more servers, storage and network capability will increase. This, in turn, will increase the demand for power. Server consolidation through virtualization and blade systems will be more pervasive in 2008. However, I predict that those who rely on the PPW model alone will see their real power bills increase in the datacenters.

Dave Douglas, VP of eco responsibility, Sun Microsystems
Blog: DD's Eco Notes
1. This year, we went from awareness to action on the environment. The term "green-washing" became more popular too, as some companies were accused of putting hype before substance. With a public and media that are far more sophisticated and discerning about all things green, the demand for authentic action will increase, and the environment will benefit. The focus in 2008 will be about what we can actually do to reduce our impact -- or better yet, what we've already done.

2. Every day we're more and more reliant on a growing web of Internet-based social and business services. Datacenters that support these services are growing at high rates, but the power grid isn't keeping up. The probability is rising that 2008 will bring a high-impact power outage that will affect consumers in new and totally unexpected ways.

Rudy Kraus CEO Photo.JPG Rudy Kraus, CEO, Validus DC Systems
Website: Validus
One answer to the growing IT energy crisis may come from an unlikely source in 2008, but one that has its roots in Thomas Edison's work from 100 years ago: direct current (DC) power. When DC is properly harnessed with today's technology, it can provide energy to data centers with 10 to 20 percent more efficiency, according to Lawrence Berkeley Lab Research. Against the snowballing IT energy crisis, those types of figures could benefit IT processes, CSR initiatives, and most importantly, the bottom line.

Paul Marcoux, vice president of engineering, Cisco development operations, and "green guru," Cisco
Website: Cisco corporate social responsibility page
1. Heading into 2008, companies will continue to emphasize their social responsibility behavior, creating an environment for industry leaders to combine the power of innovation with collaboration to create the most sustainable model for addressing global climate change. As a result, across business and IT functions, we'll begin to see industry standards and green languages emerge in 2008 to foster greater communication and collaboration.

2. If you can't measure it; you can't manage it. In 2008, we'll see a slew of technologies developed to offer real-time monitoring intelligence to measure energy consumption for products. By 2009, there will be few products available that cannot be monitored for energy consumption.

Christina Page_october 2007.jpg Christina Page, director of climate and energy, Yahoo
Website: Yahoo Green
Yahoo! expects to see increased activity in the voluntary carbon credit market, especially in the United States with the launch of the Green Exchange in Q1 2008. As more and more organizations choose to offset their carbon footprints, companies will be increasingly motivated to think seriously about their energy consumption, and take strong action to become more efficient across operations.

Ted Samson, senior analyst and Sustainable IT blogger, InfoWorld
Blog: Sustainable IT
1. Expect more organizations to follow the lead of companies such as HP and Wal-Mart in scrutinizing the efficiency, wastefulness, and eco-friendly practices of vendors in their supply chain.

2. Companies will continue to push the envelope in developing greener datacenters. They won't stop at simply employing energy-efficient hardware and cooling systems and embracing general datacenter-design best practices. They'll follow in the footsteps of companies such as Digital Realty in developing buildings that adhere to LEED. Like Google and Fujitsu, they'll install alternative-energy systems including solar panels and others. They'll raise the bar in terms of datacenter design, as did Sun with its innovative modular, forward-looking approach. They'll include eco-friendly features that have little or nothing to do with energy efficiency or cutting costs, as we saw with Unisys's datacenter that includes the conversion of 19 acres adjacent to the facility to natural prairie containing wild grasses and flowers.

3. Expect more companies to locate datacenter operations in countries outside the U.S. where energy costs are lower -- and perhaps environmental standards aren't as stringent.

4. The "energy efficiency credit" or white tag exchange will gain some momentum, though likely won't really take off until 2009 when there are stricter mandates for companies to reduce the carbon emissions.

Dave Stangis, director of corporate responsibility, Intel
Blog: CSR@Intel
1. Green will move from a specific product offering to a brand offering -- and be rewarded by Wall Street.
2. Consumer electronic brands will look to their suppliers to help position their products as "more green."
3. Technology solutions will become center stage in solving the climate-change challenge.
4. Technology will be the key in driving down the costs of alternative energy.
5. Green building design will finally transition from novelty to expectation.

Pat Tiernan, VP of social and environmental responsibility, HP
Website: HP's environmental sustainability page
Green IT will have a more significant focus as we move into 2008. This includes designing products with the entire lifecycle in mind. In addition to energy use, companies will be more vigilant in implementing plans for disposal, reuse, and recycling. Green strategy will also become an argument for the optimization of IT resources, as well as for saving money, with more energy-efficient products.

Steve Vassallo, principal, Cleantech practice at Foundation Capital
Website: Cleantech site
1. Water becomes more critical than oil. Major water shortages will begin to raise awareness and investment dollars into the sector.
2. We'll see a major shift in the awareness (and communication) of companies regarding their carbon footprints and energy consumption. Fortune 100 companies will bring discussion of carbon footprints into the mainstream business conversation.

Larry Vertal, senior strategist for AMD Green, AMD
Website: AMD green
EPA research shows that with relatively minor efforts by datacenter managers, including turning on already available power management features, enabling higher rates of resource consolidation, shutting off unused servers and improving infrastructure operations, we could save 20 percent of datacenter power. That's equal to cutting down the growth of our new power resources demanded by datacenters by half by 2010, or five 1,000MW power plants. So, while performance proudly held the top spot as the chief concern of all IT managers for a long time, it now needs to make room for performance-per-watt. Look for 2008 to be the year where the rubber meets the road in green computing, and energy efficiency takes over as the No. 1 priority for the IT manager.

Hu Yoshida, CTO, Hitachi Data Systems
Blog: Hu Yoshida's blog
1. The green-tech movement will drive a growing awareness that the storage of data has become highly inefficient, with low utilization, over-allocation, stranded storage, too many redundant copies, low access speeds, inefficient search, and disruptive movement and migration. Buying faster storage processors with larger capacity disks on the same 20-year-old architectures will not solve the problem of inefficient use of storage. New storage architectures will be required to meet this demand for greater efficiency.

2. Control unit virtualization of storage with thin provisioning will be recognized as the only approach to storage virtualization that can increase utilization, eliminate allocated but unused space, recover stranded storage, reduce redundant copies, increase access speed, and provide nondisruptive movement of data for multi-tiering, migration, and replication.

3. Data more than 60 days old on production systems will be considered toxic waste. Structured data such as databases and semi-structured data such as e-mail and document management data are increasing dramatically as they are required to hold more data, longer, for compliance reasons. This will call for new types of archiving systems that can scale to petabytes and provide the ability to search for content across different modalities of data.

Final thoughts
In conclusion, 2008 is shaping up to be an eventful year for green IT, to say the least. Companies have plenty of work ahead of them to stay ahead of the looming power crisis as well as governmental mandates to reducing their carbon footprints. Further, vendors' practices and products will garner even closer scrutiny from the press and the public. The good news is, plenty of smart people out there -- technologists, analysts, business leaders, and politicians -- have the challenges in their sights and are working as hard and as quickly as they can to meet those challenges head on.

What are your predictions for green tech in 2008?

Posted by Ted Samson on December 20, 2007 03:00 AM

December 17, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Green ventures in Silicon Valley, Mass. reaped most VC cash in '07

Curious where venture capitalists are seeding their green- and clean-tech dollars? Martin LaMonica over at CNET posted a well-researched piece about the scene last week.

"Most of the new company creation is rooted in the traditional financial investment centers in Silicon Valley and the Northeast U.S.," he writes. "But the middle of the country is playing a very significant role in bringing more technical innovation to energy."

The companies enjoying the cash influx aren't just working on IT-oriented wares, of course. Electric-car developers and solar-cell manufacturers, for example, are getting a piece of the pie.

Silicon Valley-based entrepenuers were on the receiving end of the most VC money, LaMonica reports. "During the first nine months of 2007, California was home to 68 clean-tech investments, according to the [North American Venture Capital Association]. That's nearly half the number of all investments made during that period and more than 40 percent of the $1.7 billion total," he writes.

Massachusetts-based green/clean-tech companies received the second highest percentage of VC funding, according to LaMonica, "with 11 deals totaling $292 million."

Third on the list were organizations in Texas, reaping $149 million in VC cash, followed by Washington state.

Finally, LaMonica reports, the remainder of the VC cache spread throughout the States, from a Boise State University has "a lab devoted to technology that converts kinetic energy, or motion, into electricity."

"Two cellulosic ethanol companies -- Range Fuels and Mascoma -- have announced plans to build plants that use wood chips to make ethanol in Georgia and New York," he adds.

LaMonica's piece has a bit of advice, too, one that many an investor might have heeded prior to the dot-com bust. "As has been demonstrated in the IT and life science arenas, investing in new technologies can be wrought with pitfalls and is not for the inexperienced or the faint of heart," said Mark Heesen, president of the North American Venture Capital Association in a recent report. "Short-term 'tourists' should steer clear."

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

Posted by Ted Samson on December 17, 2007 01:26 PM

December 17, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Forrester: Eco-minded activity up among IT pros

Between April and October, the percentage of companies employing environmental criteria in choosing tech gear jumped 15 percent, according to a study from research company Forrester.

"As of October, 38 percent of IT professionals said that their companies were using environmental criteria in their evaluation and selection of IT equipment, compared with 25 percent in our April survey," says the report titled "Green Progress in Enterprise IT."

Also notable: When asked what was motivating their decisions to embrace more sustainable practices, the No. 1 motivator, shared by 55 percent of all respondents, was to reduce energy-related operating expenses. No surprises there. However, the No. 2 motivator cited by 50 percent of respondent was "doing the right thing for the environment."

IT vendors' efforts to spread their green-hued messages appear to be paying off, according to the report. Twenty-nine percent of respondents said they were "highly aware" of "IT vendors' efforts to promote green IT in the design, operation, and/or disposal of their products"; another 57 percent said they had limited awareness. That 57 percent figure remained consistent, but the percentage of "highly aware" jumped from 15 percent.

The sample size of the survey is worth pointing out: There was total of just 130 responses from IT procurement and operations pros from companies around the globe.

The report, authored by Christoped Mines, can be purchased here for $279.

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

Posted by Ted Samson on December 17, 2007 12:19 PM

December 04, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Survey: Apple users more likely to be green-minded

Apple users are proportionally more eco-friendly than users of other vendors' PCs. Moreover, they're more willing to plunk down extra cash for "green" products.

That nugget of information is one of many findings in a report just released by Forrester Research titled "In Search Of Green Technology Consumers: Why Tech Marketers Should Target This Emerging Segment." Forrester surveyed computer users to determine the extent of their green leanings and what drove their environmentally conscientious practices (or lack thereof).

The report finds that, all told, 12 percent of U.S. adults are "bright green," which Forrester defines as those who are "concerned about the environment and global warming, and strongly agree that they would pay extra for consumer electronics that used less energy or came from a company that was environmentally friendly."

Moreover, another 41 percent of U.S. adults are "green consumers": those who "share concerns about environmental issues and global warming, but do not strongly agree that they would pay more for environmentally-friendly electronics."

The remaining 47 percent of the population "do not (yet) share the greens' concerns about the environment or global warming."

Forrester found that 14 percent of Apple users are bright green. From there, the list breaks down like this: 13 percent of Compaq consumers are bright green; then 12 percent of Gateway users; 11 percent of eMachines buyers; 10 percent of Dell fans; 9 percent of Toshiba users; 9 percent of IBM/Lenovo consumers; and 9 percent of consumers who buy their PCs from "Other" vendors. Below the "Other" category are HP users, 7 percent of whom are bright green. (The report notes that these numbers don't reflect the green practices of the companies themselves.)

Forrester notes that PC vendors are already making efforts to embrace more environmentally friendly practices and deliver greener products for several reasons: to appeal to consumers' ever-evolving eco-leanings; to deflect criticism from watchdog groups such as Greenpeace; and to adhere to regulations such as Europe's ROHS directive.

Those greener practices are taking several forms: designing products in a more conscientious manner; boosting system energy efficiency; cleaning up their manufacturing processes; using less wasteful packaging and transport methods; and making it easier for users to recycle their PCs.

Looking forward, Forrester predicts "that green-targeted PCs and other electronics will evolve as part of the consumer electronics industry's move to go beyond "beige box" design and styling and instead incorporate consumer style into its products."

Indeed, we've already starting seeing some of this since Forrester conducted its survey in Q2 of this year. Dell, for example, recently released a greened-up version of its Inspiron desktop. Everex is also focusing on the greenness of its recently unveiled TC2502 Green gPC, which runs on Linux.

The Forrester report "In Search Of Green Technology Consumers: Why Tech Marketers Should Target This Emerging Segment" can be purchased here for $279.

Posted by Ted Samson on December 4, 2007 08:59 AM

November 15, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Green strategies for the little guys

SMBs can benefit from sustainable IT practices as much as enterprise companies. Here are six strategies.

Enterprise companies with enormous power-draining datacenters aren't the only organizations out there feeling the pinch of soaring energy bills and struggling to keep the carbon footprints in check. SMBs are seeking strategies to lower electric bills and become better environmental stewards.

A recent survey of SMBs, conducted by IBM, found that small businesses are citing energy as the biggest cost increase over the past two years. Me