December 2008 Archives

What will 2009 hold for one of our favorite green computing topics?

ServerWatch's Amy Newman gazes into her crystal ball and comes up with some pretty solid predictions. I have to agree with her assertion that the stalled economy plays into the technology's favor. However, she also touches on another topic that's near and dear to my heart: security.

So far, virtual machine platforms have remained largely immune to security breaches. But expect hackers to pour more effort into the holy grail: hacking the hypervisor for full access to guest operating systems.

For some time analysts have predicted a security breach would bring the public's attitude toward virtualization back down to earth. Surprisingly, that has not yet happened. As the number of virtual deployments increases, however, so does the likelihood. Especially given the current economic climate, where many enterprises are thinking in terms of short-term savings and virtualizing without proper process.

It may be a perennial prediction at this point, but with as companies virtualize as quickly as they can to save money on equipment, mistakes will be made. These mistakes will range from virtual machine sprawl to wrongly provisioned hardware (most likely resulting in downtime) to gaping security holes.

Read the rest of her predictions here.

Love 'em or loathe 'em, it's that time of year. With the advent of Digg, you can argue that top x-number lists are fashionable year round, but no matter...

Here's a sampling, a list if you will, of 2008's best of compilations that you can find online:

The 10 Biggest Cleantech Victories of 2008 - Earth2Tech

The Top 10 Green-Tech Breakthroughs of 2008 - Wired

It Must Be Something We '08 - Grist

6 Clean Tech Start-Ups to Watch in 2009 - Treehugger

Top 21 Greentech Deals of 2008 - Greentech Media

... and a bonus and although not really green related, it's good for a Jean Luc Picard caliber facepalm!

21 Dumbest Moments in Business - 2008 - Fortune

Indeed.

Need to fill out your schedule for 2009? CleanTechies.com has you covered.

They have started compiling a list of conferences, and while the list so far is short, it spans the globe. Highlights include the World Future Energy Summit in UAE and The Permanent Oil Crisis: Challenges and Opportunities in Amsterdam.

Catch the rest of the list here (and a couple more in the comments).

Oops.

Apparently fearing the loss their netBook trademark, Psion Teklogix is sending website owners cease and desist letters warning them to stop using the term netbook to describe the compact notebooks that are taking the IT world by fire. Or else...

A little too late, methinks....

[via Gizmodo]

Although the holidays are upon us, folks just can seem to stop making green headlines...

Green Rack Systems announced a new green data center equipment line of servers, storage systems and workstations with an emphasis on low-power processors for that green datacenter refresh you're undoubtedly considering.

They offer PDF spec sheets on their gear and related info on how it adds up to a green datacenter. You can also get a sense of the server options they offer by visiting their site.

Thanks Dan!

By now you've undoubtedly seen those Apple ads claiming that their new MacBooks are the greenest notebooks around, or something to that effect.

Dell is hearing none of it.

In a post on Dell's community site, Bob Pearson, VP of Communities & Conversations, took Apple to task for their campaign, adding that the company ought to be "making a difference rather than making ads."

Take, for instance, this snippet.

Focus on Actions, Not Ads - we are highly focused on tangible actions, not rhetoric. It was in one of our regular sustainability meetings that Michael challenged us to offer free recycling worldwide for consumers. A big goal and we did it. We hope Apple does the same someday. We challenged ourselves in 2007 to meet a carbon-neutral goal for our operations in 2008 and we did it in August, about five months ahead of schedule. We hope Apple decides to do the same. We challenged ourselves to see how much packaging we could reduce and this led to our recent announcement that we'll eliminate 20 million pounds of laptop and desktop shipping materials. Again, same point. It's why we ask our primary suppliers to disclose GHG emissions data during quarterly business reviews. It's why we have green teams at Dell inside our company continually telling us how we can improve our lighting or flooring or any other aspect of our facilities. And it's why our engineers remain highly focused on ensuring our product line becomes increasingly green across the board. It's become a point of pride for our employees to reach and exceed each goal.

No one doubts your commitment, but that paragraph was very dense. Maybe put a cute commercial together and saturate the airwaves to get your point across.

[Source]

Like Amazon and others, Sony is aiming to eliminate those obnoxiously hard to open plastic clamshells (aka blister packs) that encase many a gadget. The electronics giant claims to be on the verge of introducing its environmentally friendly alternative.

For now, they're putting the word out via a Death to Clamshell campaign. They've also put together a little video to illustrate the frustrations of Consumer Joe as he attempts to liberate an electronic device.

Warning, if you can't stand the sight of fake blood don't watch. Video's embedded after the 'more' link...

[Source]

Some interesting news from Dell today. The computer maker is reducing the amount of packaging it plans to use going forward -- 20 million pounds of the stuff they use to entomb desktops and laptops to be exact.

It's part of a plan that the company says will save them $8.1 million over four years. For the environment, the news gets even better:

With today’s announcement, Dell is the only major computer manufacturer with a global packaging reduction target for desktops and laptops. In 2007, the company exceeded its goal to reduce outbound packaging by 10 million pounds by nearly 10 percent. The company’s desktop and laptop packaging goal announced today will help preserve more than 150,000 trees.

Dell's site has more information on the initiative, including extensive use of recycled and recyclable materials.

Kudos to Dell!

Telecommunications giant Verizon says energy efficiency will be one of the biggest technology trends in 2009. The company's Business services unit sees getting a leg up on greening IT as a competitive advantage:

Anther technology trend that will help cut costs is the greening of IT. Corporate social responsibility is becoming increasingly important to how companies are viewed by employees, customers and investors, and going green early will help businesses get a leg up on their competition, Verizon said.

"Savvy companies today are embracing the green initiative to get ahead of government and business mandates that will eventually force the issue," Verizon said.

Sounds good to me. Also making the list are SaaS, IPv6 and unified communications (duh).

[Source]

As counterintuitive as it is to think that the maker of those hulking mainframes is one of the greenest tech companies around, IBM has indeed earned the distinction.

Big iron site, IT Jungle, brings us some interesting news on a report in which IBM takes top honors.

A report put out last week by Ceres, a coalition of investors, environmental groups, and various public interest organizations that is trying to goad corporations into taking some responsibility for climate change, reviewed 63 of the world's biggest companies in 11 different industry sectors and gave them grades on how green they were.

...In the tech sector, IBM had the highest ranking, at a score of 79, which was the highest score of any company examined. Dell came in next, with a 77 score, followed by Sun Microsystems with a 63 and Hewlett-Packard with a 62. Apple had the lowest rank of the seven IT vendors in the report, with a score of 28.

It must be said that Dell also earns a hearty congrats for a strong second place.

[Source]

So I put my money where my mouth is and bought items on our green geek gift guide. I hope you'll understand that I have to be vague in case someone on my list reads this blog.

But I can give you my personal recommendation on Brand of the Free tees. They are nice and soft and made of organically sourced cotton. No sweatshops were involved in their making and they are made in the USA. A rarity in and of itself, but it also means that their goods didn't spend time on a big freighter on a journey from the other side of the planet, polluting all the way.

If you dig their designs, head on over and enjoy some great bargains just in time for the season.

Thumbs up!

The green computing standard just crossed an encouraging threshold last week. It racked up its 1,000th computer related product, the Sony VGN-SR290PDB laptop.

More than just a green seal of approval, an EPEAT nod is important because it influences Federal IT purchasing. Since EPEAT-rated electronics must make up at least 95 percent of new buys, you can start to see why earning the distinction is a pretty big deal.

Congrats Sony!

[Source]

When you think of a lobbying in Washington, and you're likely thinking of huge industries and political groups that pour amazing amounts of money into getting our elected representatives to see their point of view (to put it mildly). Cleantech start-ups and environmentalist groups were traditionally at an advantage.

Now that Obama is calling for the New Deal Part II, green companies are lining up in droves for a piece of the action. The Wall Street Journal reports:

Nearly 300 green companies and industry groups have signed up Washington lobbying firms seeking tax breaks, research grants, contracts and other government business during the current two-year session of Congress, according to disclosure forms reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. That is an eightfold increase from the previous session.

The growth in the green-lobbying business is the offshoot of converging economic and political trends: Rising energy prices and concerns about global warming have created a need to find alternative energy sources. Meanwhile, the 2006 and 2008 elections have empowered Democrats who are more inclined to use the government to boost energy efficiency and renewable fuels. That has put billions of dollars up for grabs.

Let the games begin.

This has made the rounds earlier, but it's the first time I've sat down and really pondered it. As you can see from a more detailed screen grab below, this holey font is supposed to reduce the amount of toner and ink you consume by up to 20 percent.

Ecofont came about after SPRANQ exhausted every ink-saving method they could think of. Pretty clever, but I find that the font is a bit challenging to read for my eyes, even at the recommended 9 pt and 10 pt. sizes. Nothing offensive, mind you, just a bit off compared to other, more commonplace fonts (take Helvetica, for instance).

Other ways of saving money on ink and toner are to print less and save and send as PDF whenever possible.

Over at the mothership, we published a list of gifts that many a techie wouldn't mind find hanging from a (Big Foot sized) stocking, under the tree or parked in the driveway. But what about the green geek in your life?

We've got you covered!

Read on savvy shopper, and sound off on your gift ideas in the comments. Don't forget to hit up the online coupon/deal/bargain sites to really get your money's worth this year.

Hypermiling, the art of squeezing every last mile out of a gallon of gasoline with some skillfully frugal driving, has not only been made linguistically official, it's the latest trend automakers plan to incorporate into their rides.

Wired has a neat story on how instrumentation on newer cars will offer feedback to drivers on how efficiently they are operating their vehicles.

It's easy to dismiss the LCD displays as gimmicks — and some have — but we're going see more of them. Auto designers, academics and industry watchers say it won't be long before everyone's offering green gauges in an effort to make us all greener drivers. Some automakers are even thinking about using emerging technology in in-car internet development to let people compare stats and compile "top score" leader boards to make green driving a social activity.

"That kind of eye candy has huge appeal to consumers," says Eric Noble, president of The Car Lab, an auto industry consulting firm. "They'll provide huge amounts of information regarding fuel economy. There already are prototypes that are 3-D."

I can see an Xbox Live-esque leaderboard catching on with already obsessive car enthusiasts.

Another year is coming to an end. That means another top ten list! Or, if you're Time, a slew of top ten lists.

Surprisingly (or maybe not consider the year we've had), politics has a big presense on the list. We'll leave you to discover what (or who, rather) is occupying the number one spot, but other notable stories include the passage of renewable energy credits by Congress, threatened polar bears and the first CO2 auction.

What a year, huh?

The first thought about occupying more square footage for any business is how much it's going to cost. One tech company is lowering the cost of doing business by investing in energy efficient technologies while making the move.

Tripwire recently moved to One Main Place in downtown Portland and their new surroundings sound like the envy of green office planners:

The new space is 20 percent larger than Tripwire's previous downtown location, and was unfinished before the move occurred, affording management the opportunity to outfit the space with sustainable building materials. These include carpet tiles and flooring made of recycled materials, as well as recyclable desks, panels, and whiteboards. The new location also features numerous large windows, making use of more natural light and decreasing the company's dependence on artificial light.

Nice, but what are they doing technology wise?

Tripwire also now purchases renewable energy for its server room, which features new racks and a more efficient cooling system, and continues to investigate technologies that reduce the lab's carbon footprint. These include virtualization, which enables IT staff to run several servers using one single machine, which can dramatically reduce energy costs. Tripwire leads the IT security market in its partnership with VMware.

Renewable energy usually costs a premium, but if they can offset it by consuming much less power then it's a smart move all around. You can catch more of the company's views on virtualization, cloud computing and other energy efficient technologies in their blog.

Thanks Dan!

That sliver of rackmount hardware adds $700 to your electric bill each year. Multiply that by the dozens, if not hundreds of systems in a datacenter, and it's easy to see why energy efficiency and power management are quickly becoming IT priorities.

Over at CIO Update, Pepperweed Consulting's George Spafford has compiled a list of seven things that IT managers ought to consider for leaner and better-running operations. This one is particularly timely, given the economic turmoil and the possibility of tighter IT budgets:

Recognize CapEx/OpEx Trade Offs - Given that many organizations have either frozen capital investments or are at least carefully scrutinizing capital investments, management must carefully understand the tradeoffs between capital investments and changes in operating expenses. All things being equal, newer IT equipment makes more efficient use of power.

While capital investments are typically scrutinized, operating expenses around power often are not. Management needs to understand that to freeze investments in newer more efficient systems will result in higher operating costs. Already we are seeing IT assets that incur four to five times their purchase costs in the form of operating costs over their life. Sooner or later, the organization will pay in one form or another.

There's another interesting (and shocking) statistic buried in the article concerning ghost servers, but I'll leave that one for you to discover.

Sure, solid state drives are steadily making their way to laptops, desktops and a smattering of high performance arrays, but by and large, cost-conscious IT departments have stuck to traditional hard drives. Besides the cost factor, their SATA-friendly ways keeps them out of the 15K enterprise drive party.

Not anymore.

Hitachi and Intel announced a partnership to develop SSDs with SAS and Fibre Channel in mind, according to an InternetNews report.

Hitachi will offer its hard drive expertise with those two enterprise-scale storage interfaces to Intel. The deal is exclusive between the two firms, as well.

"These technologies tend to be very complex. When you partner, you pick the technology leader and put all your resources into making sure its technology works with yours," Brendan Collins, vice president of product marketing at Hitachi, told InternetNews.com. "Then you have to validate it on your file system as well. To do that with a couple of flash vendors would be kind of tough and the market is very small and wouldn't justify it."

Expect the first units to be available in capacities of up to 300 GB and in 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch form factors. And while they're deliberately targeting the datacenter in this move, both companies have left the SATA door open just a crack.

General Electric, owner of NBC and maker of wind turbines, jet engines and even medical scanners is better known to everyone as the light bulb company.

In a sign of these eco-conscious times, however, GE is changing tack on that front. The company is dropping all development on incandescent bulbs and will pursue LED and OLED lighting instead. The move comes among looming bans on incandescents by some governments.

If they can produce some bulbs (or panels, dare we dream?) with natural, warm light, I'll be hitting Home Depot as soon as they become available.

Speaking of lighting, BASF has announced that they have made big strides on the OLED front. In a nutshell, they have been able to hit the 60 lumens per watt mark, efficiently of course, and can sustain the purity of its white color regardless of intensity (Energy Star SSL Standard).

Kudos all around!

In an announcement today, QLogic listed the numerous vendor certs its 8Gb FC HBAs and switches have garnered. The list reads like a real Who's Who (IBM, HP, Dell, etc.).

Green IT watchers will be more interested in some innovations surrounding the company's 2500 series of Fibre Channel adapter (like the QLE2562), courtesy of QLogic's Star PowerGreen Initiative, that promise to lower energy costs: Dynamic Power Management and Cool HBA.

Dynamic power management is the unique ability of the QLogic 2500 to sense the type of PCI Express bus that is present and consume only the amount of power necessary to run at full speed. QLogic Cool HBA technology is the ability of QLogic products like 2500 Fibre Channel adapters to operate without any air flow, unlike competitive products which require fans to be cool.

Get the rest of QLogic's announcement here.