Monday 27 January 2014

Whose Bill and Whose responsibility!!

According to an article I read today in the Uptime Institute Blog here .
"In recent years many facilities managers have made great strides in cutting energy consumption, but with only 16% of IT departments responsible for the power bill, there is currently little incentive to reduce the IT load"
16% ? 16% that's an outrageous figure and of course the UI are right to point out that there is little incentive to even look at energy efficiency.

So, something needs to be done, and we have the answer in our area (West Midlands, UK) with our Greenprint product, this is a full survey of all your IT, its governance, systems, and management and we identify areas where you could improve your overall IT sustainability goals moving forward.

I suppose it's all down to the ambition of an organisation to be sustainable and not to waste money, it seems that 84% of companies want to waste money. Very sad.

Don't be a company that wastes money, call us today 01926 843835 or drop us an email to info@carbon3it.com

Thursday 16 January 2014

Getting the right advice..

can be difficult.
There are many "building energy management" companies in the UK who will tell you how to reduce energy consumption in your offices, factories, schools and other buildings, and that is great.
However, when some of them start to look at server rooms, data centres and other ICT related projects and identify huge energy savings, and then tell you how to do it. STOP! RIGHT THERE.
Think about who is telling you what to do, are they ICT specialists?, do they understand IT?
In all probability the answer is going to be NO!
Now, obviously we are looking at this with a very vested interest, but we should, because we only look at IT systems, server rooms, data centres etc and we wouldn't dare to enter their territory, and we don't want them looking at ours.
We've spent the last 10 years looking at Green IT, and this includes server rooms, data centres, desktops, printers etc
We know what we're doing and we have the qualifications to prove it, such as:
The Foundation Certificate in Green IT, the Intermediate Certificate for EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres (Energy Efficiency), ISO 50001, and we have PRINCE2 so we know how to manage a project, and ITIL Foundation, so we know how this links in with the wider Information Technology Infrastructure Library.
I personally sit on the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres (Energy Efficiency) bets practices committee and review most of the applications.
I am the lead auditor for the BCS CEEDA programme (Certified Energy Efficient Data Centres Award)
I am the chair on the Data Centre Alliance Energy Efficiency group
I also sit on the BSI ISO IST/46 Sustainability for and by ICT, as well as the NSF ELSS Servers (Energy Star) v2 standard.
I have contributed to the Greenhouse Gas Protocol ICT Sector Guidance and have been asked for my input into the EU ECODirective for Servers and other global standards.
And I am the Vice Chair on the BCS Green IT committee.

We have no problem with Building Energy Management companies taking energy readings and telling you how much energy they use, but when they make suggestions to reduce energy consumption, do yourself a favour and call on the experts just to get an independent view.
Our day rate is a very reasonable £500+ VAT, so spend out £600 and get some peace of mind.
For a little bit more you can get our "Greenprint" service, this is a full review of your entire IT system and where you can make energy savings, because we only work in IT we can assure you that you will receive independent advice on the products and solutions we suggest.

We look forward to your call.

Tuesday 14 January 2014

Our TIF event...

will be held at the Rural Innovation Centre on Stoneleigh Park, on the 5th February from 9:30am - 12:30pm.

The full press release can be found below

"

Technology and Innovation Futures Funding

What does information technology have to do with your energy costs?

Trying to keep the energy costs under control?  Have you looked at information technology?

Figures claim 10% of global energy use is down to information technology¹ with the rising cost of energy this is just not sustainable in the long term.
Everything we do these days is down to information technology, from processing orders, to running machines, to social media and phone systems. 
The EU and the UK Government have got their eye on the energy that information technology is using and the carbon that is emitted and they are coming out with a range of controls (and big fines) to manage that in the near future.

Carbon³IT specialises in energy efficient IT and in implementing solutions that cost your organisation less money in the long run.  In conjunction with Coventry University Enterprises and the EU we are able to offer up to 50% funding for consultancy around being more energy efficient with your information and other technologies and making sure that it is working for you and your business.

Carbon³IT are holding an event at the Rural Innovation Centre on Stoneleigh Park, Kenilworth on Wednesday 5th February from 9:30am to 12:30pm where participants can discover what being energy efficient with technology actually means (beyond switching the PC off overnight!) and how much, making the right decisions can save them in the long run.

Tickets are available through Eventbrite.  The cost of the session is £25 but if participants sign up for Carbon³IT GreenPrint product (with or without TIF funding) they will refund this amount.

Visit Carbon³IT's website www.carbon3it.com for more information about this event


References:
1 “The Cloud begins with Coal”, Mark P Mills, August 2013  "


Booking Link: TIF Event 5th February

Saturday 11 January 2014

An early January Update

This week has been very busy indeed, first of all we had a few catch ups with one of our partners over a huge project they are involved in, cant say too much as its still in the tender stage but it is data centre related and could yield a lot of work for us in 2014 (we'll keep you informed)

Gary Thornton of the BCS DCSG instigated a thread on the linked in website regarding the CCA and we've made a few comments about this.
We may have some news on this soon as we understand that some behind the scenes work is being conducted by various Government departments to progress the implementation of the CCA moving forward.

We've been finalising some CEEDA assessments (3) and all of them have been delivered to the delivery partner for publishing to the clients.

One piece of very exciting news is that John is the prospective chair of the Data Centre Alliance's energy efficiency committee, this of course, builds on our work to be the first point of call for all things related to data centre energy efficiency.
More information on the work of the DCA can be found here.
We will find out on the 20th Jan if John has been selected as chair.

We'd also like to draw our readers attention to the EU's Eco Design directive for servers here, this is an very important piece of prospective legislation that we, in the data centre industry need to be aware of as it will impact on the design and operation of energy efficient data centres in the coming years (we understand that its about 4-5 years off!) 
There have been many industry comments regarding the 1 side of the PUE calculation, that is of course the IT side of  things, where M&E engineers have been bemoaning that whilst they have done all they can to reduce the cooling side of the equation, IT does not seem to have made any great progress, this really is a fallacy though, as IT has improved its energy efficiency by the use of virtualisation and the inherent Moores law of a doubling of compute power every 18 months (meaning more compute per watt).
It is perhaps in the software side of things, i.e. actually code that uses processing power more efficiently and minimising idle and standby energy that is the real key here.
However, the eco design directive is a very good start as it will ban the import of servers that do not meet a required energy efficiency standard.
As I said above this will not happen overnight so you will not see your favourite brands suddenly disappearing from sale, but you may see a slimming down of server ranges and perhaps (and we are seeing this more and more) tech companies moving into the Cloud in a big way and only offering their systems in a cloud format on a leasing basis.
This is obviously going to have a big impact on the way uses IT, perhaps it may be time for pure techies used to working on in house it systems to retrain in other fields as the days of the IT department in today's sense may be disappearing for good.

Enough doom mongering for now and lets think about sunnier climes and a more relaxed way of life and move onto to Mauritius, well we're probably going back out in April/May to lead some Green IT and EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres training courses and to attend the IST in Africa event, where we hope to present a paper (this weekends task) and maybe to establish our permanent presence on the island.

We're also planning to hold our first TIF event in Coventry soon and details on this can be found on the events tab of our website here

Have a great weekend and we'll see you again soon, until next time....

Monday 6 January 2014

Our Data Centre Assessment/Auditing Services...

are as follows:

First off, we review on behalf of the EU-JRC applications for the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres (Energy Efficiency), this is done anonymously as we do not see the participants name, merely the application spreadsheet and the country of location.

We have also been involved (amongst others) in the development of the 5 BCS CEEDA products, which are ENTERPRISE (for Owner Operators), Design, Build, Commission & Operate (DBCO) for all types of Data Centres, CEEDA Ready (for Designers), CoLo and Tenant (for CoLo and Tenants).

We also assess and in some cases audit our peers in all types of CEEDA assessments,

We are also BSI ISO50001 Lead Auditor's and ONLY conduct Data Centre audits and assessments under this service offering.

Our commercial offerings are therefore as follows:

We can assist in the production of your EUCOC application and indeed have helped 2 global telecommunications companies in the recent past, one with 1 application and one with 7 and potentially another 40 odd in the EU/EMEA region.

We can also help you with an potential assessment for the BCS CEEDA award programme, this is essentially a gap analysis and assistance to assess your current level and design programme to get you to the next or highest level as appropriate.

Our ISO50001 offering is gap analysis and assistance in the preparation of your Energy Management System documentation as required.

If you are interested in any of the above service please drop us a line on info@carbon3it.com with DC Assessment in the subject line or call us on 01926 843835.

We look forward to your call.