Friday 23 August 2013

Green Fatigue - An open blogletter to Andrew Fryer and Peter Judge

An open letter to Peter Judge and Andrew Fryer

Morning Guys,

I'll come on to the video later but I would like to dissect the following article from Andrew's blog post on techweek europe dated the 22nd August the actual link is here Green Fatigue and reproduced below with my comments in italics.

I recently got asked to do an interview on  for TechWeek Europe about green initiatives in the IT industry. However let’s be honest, computers burn a lot of power, require a lot of power to make and are made of some nasty exotic compounds and chemicals, so they aren’t going to save the planet by themselves.

No, this is true, but its what they can do that is the real game-changer, think of green IT as a platform, a road if you will, to allow the greening of the supply chain in all areas of life, logistics, energy, smart grids etc, all will requires compute.

However a few years back everyone was talking about Green IT, and more properly sustainable IT, and while that topic is no longer trending, we don’t seem to have done anything about it and Green Fatigue has set in across IT .

Green Fatigue has NOT set in across IT, it is more that the large corporates look to the tech companies to provide them with solutions and they, the tech co's are only interested in revenue for server/desktop/application sales and do not have the capability to look holistically across the systems.
Its called "Green IT by default" and it assumes that the technology companies will embed greenness throughout their sales process.
Another problem is the silo mentality of large corporates, servers there, desktops here, networking over there, and storage in the cupboard at the back, how on earth can you implement a "green IT system, when you have competing silo's, this in my opinion is the fault of the senior management teams not willing to really look at Green IT.
Perhaps it is too difficult for them, if so , move over and let some real professionals take charge.

There is a very clear pathway to becoming green in the ICT sector, but it involves a radical analysis and change process, something IT doesn't do very well as all.
So, how to rectify? This requires an education process, something we do as independent consultants, we explain concepts and technologies rather than silo's and products, we look down from a high level and in all honesty, the implementation of proper Green IT in an organisation is going to be difficult and challenging.

Looking at what has been happening in the data centre then good work has been done, but not in the name of green IT. For example server consolidation has meant physical servers are better utilised now; they are typically running 10+ VMs each rather than idling at 10%.

Visualization is a recognised Green IT action

We have also got better at cooling those servers, but this has sometimes been driven not by a green initiative but because of the cost of power and the capacity available from the power supplier in a particular location.

No, it is a green initiative, but its not a green IT initiative, its because cooling and power is in the realm of facilities managers not IT managers, there needs to be collaboration between the two departments, some corporate IT organisations have merged facilities and IT but only in the data centre area, most co-location and hosting companies recognise that the two departments need to be co-located, some even have professionals with skills in both IT and M&E.


Later versions of virtualisation technologies always make best use of the latest hardware but swapping out server hardware to get the benefits of the latest CPU or networking has to be balanced against the cost of making the new server and disposing of the old one, so you’ll want to focus on how you can extend the life of your servers possibly by just upgrading the software.

This is the technology companies fault, stop enhancing the server platform so frequently then, most servers just need to do what it says on the tin, they don't need to be ever faster or process larger amounts of data every two years, you wouldn't upgrade a car this often. Perhaps the industry needs to re-evaluate its business model.


Virtualisation by itself can also cause more problems for the environment than it solves because while you  have achieved some consolidations you may well end up with a lot more VMs that aren’t doing much useful work.  Effective management of those VMs is the key to efficiency for example:
  • Elimination of  Virtual Machine sprawl.  Typically this shows itself as a spread of numerous dev and test environments, and the only way I can think of to check this over use of resources is to charge the consumer for them on the basis of what they have committed to use so chargeback or at least showback.
  • Dynamically optimising a workloads based on demand – Reducing the capacity of low priority under used services or stopping them altogether to free up resources for busy services without needing more hardware.  
  • Extreme Automation to reduce the number of IT guys per VM, these reduces the footprint per VM as each member of IT uses energy to do their work and often has to travel to work so if this can be distributed across more VMs than that is more efficient.
Its called "server creep" and its the management of the IT estate and the data centre that is at issue here, I don't know if that's a green IT thing, but its certainly a management thing.
 
These three things are actually all key characteristics of clouds so my assertion is that cloud computing is more environmentally efficient, without necessarily being Green IT per se.  Given the fact that public clouds operate at much greater scale and efficiencies than what is possible in many internal data centres1 plus they are often located specifically to take account favourable environmental conditions all of which means they are greener than running services in house.

 Aha, now the real thrust of the Microsoft evangelist, selling cloud services, the "greenness of the cloud" is a much cited concept, and you know I really really want to believe it, but its simply not true, perhaps some of cloud data centres are greener, but greener than what exactly?, this report The Environmental Benefits of Moving to the Cloud.is riddled with caveats and assumptions and does not take into account the network energy (although some would say that this is so small as to be not worth considering), but just looking at the CRC table for the UK indicates that BT is the 3rd largest emitter of CO2, and that in the top 100, ten data centre companies feature.

The takeup of cloud is not as assured as you might think, there are plenty of organisations who have cloud trials underway, and invariably security, and cost concerns, yes the cost of cloud servers gets larger over time compared to in house facilities are swaying the result, after all if you put all your eggs in one cloudy basket, how many IT staff do you need in house?

So we are getting greener, it’s just we don’t call it that, and no doubt no that we are fed up with the word cloud as applied to IT we’ll change that to something else as well. 

We are mostly NOT getting greener, Jeavons paradox sees to that, but in certain quarters we are getting more efficient, there is still a lot more work to be done, and may I say it needs a more radical approach to the problem than what we are getting from the tech companies now.

Now to the video...

Andrew says that audiences turn off when he mentions "Green IT", and start to fidget, oh dear, perhaps he needs to enhance his presenting skills, when I present about Green IT I have the audience eating out of the palm of my hand, perhaps this is due to the fact that I'm not selling anything, except the notion that ICT can help reduce the impacts of climate change.

Cloud Computing is a new name for Green IT, WHAT?  get out of here Andrew, cloud computing is not Green IT, it is however a small part of a Green IT system.

Then he talks about cooling, raising the temperatures in the Data Centres, well the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres (Energy Efficiency) as well as other Global codes and guidance cover this in detail.

Then we have another veiled sales pitch, our data centres are located in the same place as Google and Amazon, so we're all green together, ahem, perhaps the greenest data centre is one that uses renewable energy, liquid cooling or the latest low energy, low heat ARM chips and can be located anywhere on the planet.

Now I'm sure Andrew means well, but in all honestly Techweek should be looking a bit wider if it wants so real intel on Green IT and where it is going.

Green IT is alive and kicking and it most certainly is not suffering from tiredness, it just needs to become a bit more market savvy and educate the people as to what it is, and how it can do it.

We'll be presenting our views in the BCS Green IT SG debate on the 29th October 2013 in London, the debate "Is a digital Britain, a greener Britain" will be proposed by myself and opposed by the stalwart Dr Ian Bitterlin, tickets and further details will be advised closer to the date.

Andrew/Peter, you are both cordially invited to attend and to put your views across.

And I'm available for interview at any time.




Thursday 22 August 2013

A low carbon ICT strategy

We first wrote our Low Carbon ICT strategy back in 2011, but we've recently had cause to bring it out, dust it off and see if anything has changed, well the good news is no, we've not had to change anything, so we've re-issued it to our local enterprise partnership here in the UK to see if we can access any ERDF funding to make the strategy happen at a high priority level with local government and the bigger private sector organisations.

The strategy is as follows:


"To reduce the energy consumption of ICT of local government and enterprises within the defined area"

Some of our tactics will be as follows:

1. Reduce the amount of energy used by devices (desktops, laptops, tablets etc)

We will do this via the use of PC power management software.

"

Our Strategy should be to promote the use of these products in all organisations.This may be achieved through the use of ERDF funding on a 50/50 basis matched funding (subject to the project definition)



2. To reduce the amount of energy used in data centre environments

We will do this through the use the use of the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres (Energy Efficiency) best practices and other energy optimisation techniques from other global organisations.



"Our Strategy should be to require PUE’s of 1.5 or less before 2020 for new facilities and for existing facilities to be 2 or less by 2020. This can be implemented by the use of planning laws, as is the case in the City of Amsterdam where DC new build is required to have a PUE of 1.2 or less."

Again, we will explore the use of various funding programmes to ascertain whether matched funding or grants would be available to implement the best practices.

3. To reduce, through the use of "reuse, reduce, recycle" the amount of e-waste within the LEP area.



"Our strategy will develop research programmes with our University partners for the recycling of components and materials for reuse, with a view to build a national computer recycling centre within the LEP geographic area"

4. To implement IT Governance into organisations within the LEP region.

 

Our strategy should be to promote a framework of IT Governance adaptable to all organisations big or small with an emphasis on sustainable and low carbon concepts.

There is a lot more detail specifically for the Coventry and Warwickshire LEP region in the strategy, but it can be tailored for your specific region, if you'd like a copy send an email to info@carbon3it.com and we'll send you one.

Go Green, it makes sense! 





Quarter 4 Speaking Enagagements - *Update*

Well, its conference season again, not that it ever seems to end and we have been invited to speak at a number of events, so we thought we'd list them here, plus some events we'll be attending in quarter 4 2013.

Campus Party O2 Arena, London

We've got a weekly pass to this event where we have noted that there is a "cleantech" and green IT section so we're going for a nosy, for more info and tickets please refer to this link Campus Party

Due to the cancellation of the FTIE (Future Tech Information Exchange) on the 10th September, we will now attend the full sessions of the Energy Show at the NEC, Birmingham on the 10th/11th, more info  http://www.theenergyevent.com/

We were thinking of attending the ITU Green IT event in Madrid, more info here ITU Green IT Week but I have booked a training course for these dates, this means unfortunately that I will be unable to attend the Datacentre.Me networking event in London on the 19th, this is now full.

Then, in October we're off to the Green Grid EMEA event in Brussels on the 15th and 16th.

On the 29th October, we'll be proposing that "A Digital Britain, is a Greener Britain" at the BCS Green IT SG AGM and Debate, up against Dr Ian Bitterlin who will be opposing. This should be a very interesting debate and I would recommend that all our blog followers tune in to see the fireworks. More details on the booking and webinar (if we do it) will be posted via our usual channels.

 We're thinking of attending the Data Centres Ireland event on the 5th and 6th November where we hope to be speaking (still need to put our application in) and this will be similar to the VMUG event in September (cancelled) and with the same topics, EUCOC and BCS CEEDA.

The week after we'll be speaking at the Telco Energy and Infrastructure event at Sixfields, more information on this link

We have a webinar we'll be panel member on the 14th, again more details when we get them.

Finally, from the 20th - 24th we hope to be in Mauritius speaking at and exhibiting at INFOTECH2013, this will be confirmed shortly, we'll probably be in Mauritius until the 20th December if all our plans come to fruition.

Until next time we leave you with one thought, we go to these events to build our knowledge and experience on Green IT and energy efficiency in data centres plus allied subjects, we know that you can't visit them all so why not take advantage of our willingness, and engage us to help you with your Green IT or Data Centre efficiency project.

You know where to find us:

info@carbon3it.com
www.carbon3it.com
@Carbon3IT on Twitter

Tuesday 13 August 2013

Quarter 4 Speaking Enagagements

Well, its conference season again, not that it ever seems to end and we have been invited to speak at a number of events, so we thought we'd list them here, plus some events we'll be attending in quarter 4 2013.

Campus Party O2 Arena, London

We've got a weekly pass to this event where we have noted that there is a "cleantech" and green IT section so we're going for a nosy, for more info and tickets please refer to this link Campus Party

VMUG Manchester 10th September *Speaking*
We have two afternoon slots at this event,  one slot will be on the updates to the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres (Energy Efficiency), including the new 2013 best practices and a brief overview on the new practices, plus the reporting form etc
The second will be on BCS CEEDA, what it is, why its useful and how to engage with the assessment programme.

We'll probably be attending the afternoon session of the Energy Show at the NEC, Birmingham on the 11th, more info  http://www.theenergyevent.com/

We're still undecided on whether to attend the ITU Green IT event in Madrid, more info here ITU Green IT Week

We'll be attending a Datacentre.Me networking event in London on the 19th, still waiting for details to be confirmed and will update via this blog and our social media feeds @carbon3IT on twitter and skype.

Then, in October we're off to the Green Grid EMEA event in Brussels on the 15th and 16th.

On the 29th October, we'll be proposing that "A Digital Britain, is a Greener Britain" at the BCS Green IT SG AGM and Debate, up against Dr Ian Bitterlin who will be opposing. This should be a very interesting debate and I would recommend that all our blog followers tune in to see the fireworks. More details on the booking and webinar (if we do it) will be posted via our usual channels.

We're thinking of attending the Data Centres Ireland event on the 5th and 6th November where we hope to be speaking (still need to put our application in) and this will be similar to the VMUG event in September and with the same topics, EUCOC and BCS CEEDA.

The week after we'll be speaking at the Telco Energy and Infrastructure event at Sixfields, more information on this link

We have a webinar we'll be panel member on the 14th, again more details when we get them.

Finally, from the 20th - 24th we hope to be in Mauritius speaking at and exhibiting at INFOTECH2013, this will be confirmed shortly, we'll probably be in Mauritius until the 20th December if all our plans come to fruition.

Until next time we leave you with one thought, we go to these events to build our knowledge and experience on Green IT and energy efficiency in data centres plus allied subjects, we know that you can't visit them all so why not take advantage of our willingness, and engage us to help you with your Green IT or Data Centre efficiency project.

You know where to find us:

info@carbon3it.com
www.carbon3it.com
@Carbon3IT on Twitter

Sunday 4 August 2013

What is Green IT?

Good question, even IT can mean different things to different people so there's no reason why Green IT should be any different.
So, whilst scanning my tweet app on Sunday morning I noticed one of my followers had posed a link to this article http://www.greencomputingreport.com/gcr/2013-07-29/linking_academia_and_industry_in_green_it.html

I had to read it a number of times before it made any sense!

I'm going to reproduce the article here in chunks and put my take on the argument with hopefully some answers for the author.

"Having a closer look at the impact of information technology (IT) on our environment, researchers, governments, funding organizations and companies have begun to move in the direction of green IT. But what is green IT? Depending on the research and/or the interest of a group, company, university, etc., there are multiple definitions, some of which take into account only one particular issue like hardware, software, or the cooling system."

We, at Carbon3IT Ltd use the following definition, kindly borrowed by Her Majesty's Government  Green Delivery Unit.


By Information and Communications Technology (ICT) we mean, the Equipment, systems, services, technologies and methods (voice, data, visual, digital) used for communicating, processing, managing, using, storing and destroying information.
By Green ICT we mean, the tools, techniques and approaches that reduce the material impact of ICT on the environment across its lifecycle, ranging from the resources and materials used in the manufacture/development of ICT, the conditions under which ICT is manufactured or developed, the delivery of ICT to customers and users, the energy consumed in using ICT, and, the disposal of ICT at the end of its life
 Ref: HMG GDU (Green Delivery Unit)
• and the following which is a Carbon3IT Ltd statement:
 However, ICT not only has the capacity to reduce its own energy use and carbon emissions but also across the entire supply chain in virtually all other commercial, public and educational activities.
 
"In this article the working definition takes into account the motivation (social, economic, environmental, etc.) of the different players involved in the energy saving process. At its essence, green IT is the environmental and resource saving effort of IT. The reason for using green IT may arise from economic or ecological interests. Actions can affect on the whole the lifecycle of information technology – meaning from the construction via utilization through to disposal."
Please see above!
 "It must be stated that green IT is a part of IT research, which is facing the same difficulties as any other research field. Each player (industry, researchers, universities) has different objectives, different tools and different aims. These issues lead to difficulties in a permanent and an efficient co-operation, moreover it is getting difficult to have an efficient exchange of results between the players. And even if all parties see the necessity of a specific research topic, a unified approach can be daunting."
  We think that the GDU definition is very clear, and not really open to interpretation and perhaps all public research tenders should make the distinction?
 "Here the focus is on contracted research as a temporary bridge between the world of science and economy. To be successful in this co-operation the participants have to take into account the different environment of each partner and each one has to understand the point of view of the other one."
Whilst is clearly true, is it not the same for other areas of academic research, that fundamental disconnect between may I say real life and academic life ?

"In the following table the different aspects of two partners of a contracted research agreement are shown with the knowledge that some points may be omitted since certain requirements might only occur in special co-operations (special contracts) or in contracts with specific partners (partners being protected by law or dealing with security issues of a country, for example)."
My old boss always used to say contracts are necessary only because one of the parties either cant fulfill the brief or does not have the skills to either implement the project successfully or did not fully cost the project, surely this means that research projects should have a distinctive and required outcome that is fully defined. ie. the proposed system should be able to monitor energy use, calculate its cost in both kilowatt hours and currency, and provide an automatic means to turn off equipment as necessary whilst providing users to be able to continue their work. 4 clear objectives, not a wooly ill-defined statement.
 Building a bridge between these partners might be the duty of a Technology Transfer Office (TTO). These offices are dedicated to identify common aspects in the field of research and industry. They might already bring these partners together, deal with contracts, observe the market to help in the development for exploitation for a better society. Only a few points might be outlined from this table but already in line B there is an interesting and even crucial point in the co-operation. Currently there is a lot of hype around green IT and companies are interested in marketing or selling "their green IT." But how green is this IT? Is there a green label existing?
A very good point, please refer to "energy star, epeat etc, there are many defined environmental criteria "badges" or "labels"

Green IT might start if this company uses water from a body of water to cool the server room, but is this hot water afterwards used for the heating or is it just poured back into the water source, changing the ecological circumstances of the aquatic life? The industry is aware of this hype and as their aim is to gain money, this is already the first difference compared to academic researchers being interested in long-term research and in the contribution to the welfare of the society.
I know of two companies that do in fact use water to cool their facilities and both have taken steps to ensure that the "hot" water that has been through their facilities is returned after cooling and mixing with cold water to reduce and negate the impact.

Line L gives another indication for a permanent difficulty in relationships of academia and industry: It is the different funding scheme in some calls and the difficulties for (some) companies in having access to some funding. The rules for open calls are changing regularly. Beside the ongoing business in companies and the current economic difficulties, it is not evident that companies do invest in departments dealing with open calls or that they might pay an external consultant for getting information for their participation in a co-operation in an open call.
 I agree insofar as funding calls rules do seem to change as frequently as the weather, but surely this is as a result of the academic/industry feedback loops, after all there is no point repeatly conducted in the same research if the answer is the same, i.e learn form your mistakes and having recently performed some work in this field I can assure the author that external consultants are in fact called upon to provide the necessary technical assistance.

There are critical issues in both columns to find, and it is not always the industry blocking the development for a greener society, but also researchers being too far from the real industrial life. There are also the funding organizations with their long procedures and rules for projects making in difficult to include popping up research in the quick changing world of green IT in on-going projects.

This, I have to agree with.

This table is hopefully a first step for a better understanding, giving new ideas for co-operations including these various objectives. The next step will be to model the relationships and the impact of various partners in a project or collaboration by investigating already existing successful co-operations as well as co-operations which failed and the reasons for both.

Excellent, researching the researchers, part of the feedback mechanism.


There needs to be steps toward a greener society, and green IT will surely play an important role. With close co-operation between academia and industry, the opportunities for meaningful change will be magnified. Information technology will make life easier, giving support in various way, but it has to be green IT to be sustainable for future generations.

Green IT is already the platform for a greener society, the internet of things and smart/intelligent cities are already examples of this movement. and we will get there. 

To Finish Someone at a conference back in 2010 said that his organisation did not have a defacto "green IT policy" as they believed that they would become greener by default, when questioned further on this he said that as far as they were concerned it was the job of the technology companies to ensure that their equipment was sustainable, energy efficient and green moving forwards and this is very true, but, and its a big but, it is not sufficient to expect someone else to do your job for you, you have to drive the process by demanding from the companies energy efficient, sustainable and green products, you have develop your own "Green IT policy/strategy, you have to manage your systems to use less energy, you have to define and scope your systems to monitor, measure and manage where you can identify further efficiency gains, you have to decide what equipment to buy that can be recycled, reused or dismantled, and this has a cost.
It is up to you whether to adopt the triple line accounting practices of people, plant and profit, where all of the above come into play and I can tell you one thing sooner or later you will be compelled to do it, either through consumer awareness or legislation, so it makes sense to get on the job now.

Alternatively, you can get someone else to do it, or pay the price with falling sales and high tax bills.....over to you!