Tuesday 26 August 2014

Q4 Outlook

Hello again, its the day after the coldest bank holiday in August since records began and still we have some of the legislature in the US denying climate change, it simply is so depressing that some people are willing to jeopardize their childrens and grandchildrens future for short term gain instead of stepping up to the plate and designing solution(s) for the problems we face.

Anyway, enough of that, I've just taken a quick glance at my calendar for the rest of the year and have been pleasantly surprised at the work, conferences and other stuff I got pencilled in!

First up, I shall be attending the CDCAP course in Bury St Edmonds run by C-Net, more details here
Then I'll be off to the Energy Event at the NEC, more details here and probably shooting off to London to be a participant on the latest BCS Green IT SG webinar on the "What is a sustainable Data Centre?" more details here.
The day after I shall be in the DCA team at the 1st DCA Charity Golf day, more details here  

 The following week I'll be in London for DCA and BCS events followed by a BCS CEEDA assessment in Scotland.

The week after I'll be in Brussels for the annual EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres (Energy Efficiency) bets practices update meeting and something with DG Connect.

I'll then be off to London with the family for a very old friends 50th Birthday Party, this will be held at The Valley, home of Charlton Athletic FC, my team since childhood.

At this point my movements are subject to change as I may be in Melbourne, Australia to speak at the DCD converged Event, undertaking 2 possibly 4 BCS CEEDA assessments and visiting Mauritius for the 2nd time this year to undertake some training and possibly attend the BCS Mauritius Branch awards ceremony.

I'll then be back in Brussels for the Green Grid EMEA event on the 28th/29th October

I'll most definitely be in London from the 18th - 21st Nov to chair the DCA energy efficiency and sustainability committee, followed by the DCD London converged event where I shall be speaking and holding 121's with potential BCS CEEDA clients.

Then (If it goes ahead) I'll back back to Mauritius for the 3rd time this year to attend INFOTECH 2014 from the 23rd - 30th November.

Back to the UK for the final event of the year, the DCD awards on the 11th December.

After that little lot I'll be taking an extending Christmas break and will be back in the fold for Jan 2015.

I'm looking forward to it!

Of course I'll be updating the schedule and blogging about green IT and Data Centres as well, so until next time...


Monday 18 August 2014

Mauritius 2014 Part 2

Just a quick recap of our recent trip to Mauritius.
The training went well. could have done with a few more delegates but hey, sometimes you have to work with what you're given!
Please see the previous blog entry for info.

Our last 2 days included. a visit to a potential client, this was for the ICEOTOPE product, apparently the CEO had seen the module I had presented at INFOTECH last year and had requested his guys to look into it.
So, I visited their site and had a look around, I also had the opportunity to visit their shared DR site as well.
I am disappointed to reveal that the PUE fudge reared its ugly head, I was told that the PUE of the site was between 1.5 -1.8, however the raw data indicated that the "real" PUE was considerable higher, it was actually 2.6.
I knew it was going to be a lot higher than they had told me because I could see that not even the most basic of the EUCOC best practices had not been implemented, the temps and the humidity range were also high.

Being a good consultant often means advising customers even if you're not being paid so I sent them a few documents to help them on their way to energy efficiency.

We could easily save them a lot of money by the use of ICEOTOPE and we're currently preparing some costs for them.

The other meetings included a visit to my chums at the National Computer Board, we have a number of potential projects with them in the offing and we'll update you all when the picture becomes clearer.

Later that evening I presented to the BCS Mauritius branch on the topic of "Mauritius' impending energy problem and how ICT can help".
I was actually given a police escort to the venue, but tis not what you think!

I had taken a cab from Port Louis to Rose Hill (up in the highlands) but the cabbie had no idea of the actual location and dropped me in the centre of town, well I don't know if any of my readers have been to Mauritius but it seems that only the main streets are named and it can be quite difficult to find what it is you're looking for, so after about 30 mins wandering the streets of Rose Hill, I decided to go to the police station and ask for directions.
The end result was that the desk sergeant got one of his patrol cars to actually take me to the venue and its a good job that he did, otherwise I'd still be wandering the streets.

I delivered the presentation to about 70 people overall and had quite a few questions afterwards, this was followed by an excellent meal with the BCS Mauritius branch committee, on account of one of their members having a birthday and a short trip home.

The next day involved some 20 hours of travel door to door, but I did have a very nice chap who had been in Madagascar on a field trip as a companion, we chatted for ages about climate change and its impact in Africa.

Here in the UK, we moan about bad weather but at least we have food on our tables, there, bad weather often means that the crops fail and people die.

I'm not going to get involved in the politics of the situation, but it does seem to me that we need to do more, and that the use of technology is going to be key, green technology solutions and energy efficiency in particular.

Its still holiday season so not much seems to be happening, but we have quitre a few interesting projects and assessments to undertake, and the rest of the quarter and Q4 looks very very busy.

Until next time, oh and congratulations to the England Women's Rugby Team, World Cup Winners, and Charlton, beating Wigan in the last minute in the Championship this weekend, C'mon you Reds!

Sunday 10 August 2014

Mauritius - August 2014

I find myself back in the beautiful green island in the South West Indian Ocean, Mauritius, to deliver Green IT and EUCoC training to a mixture of private and public delegates, organised by our newest partner Focus Global Ltd, based on the island.
Focus Global Ltd provide high quality training courses on a variety of topics and further information can be found here.
The training covered the syllabus of the BCS Learning and Development curriculum for the Foundation Certificate in Green IT and the Intermediate Certificate - EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres (Energy Efficiency).
All of the delegates responded well to the training and we incorporated a lot of interactive workshops and joint activities, this was very well received and we'll be amending our courses to include more interactive sessions.
I've extended my stay to undertake a client visit to assist in the possible implementation of the first ICEOTOPE installation in the southern hemisphere and to deliver a presentation to the BCS Mauritius branch on the impending energy crisis on the island and how ICT can assist in mitigation and adaptation activities.

We've also been invited to conduct some more training courses at a later date, and also to provide consultancy services on Green IT and energy efficiency in Data Centres/Cooled Server Rooms.
There are also a number of public tenders that we are evaluating for joint ventures.

We seem to be entering a new era of energy efficient computing with many different opportunities presenting themselves, the first series is that the UK have incorporated a Climate Change Agreement for Data Centres, this scheme allows participants to reduce frictional costs such as the Climate Change Levy and CRC taxation in return for quantifiable energy reductions/operational efficiency in data centres based upon an improvement in baseline PUE.
A sector target of 15% reduction in PUE over the first 5 years has been decided upon.
The scheme will be reviewed in 2020, when a further reduction of 15% over the next five years (subject to confirmation) has been mooted.
The scheme ONLY applies to "wholesale" operators, i.e. those organisations that provide co-location or hosting services to other clients, this means that owner/operator or enterprise data centres are not included, at least for the present, but this could mean a shift from on site data centre operations to colo data centres in order to achieve energy efficiency savings and a reduction in costs, but could also accelerate a shift to "cloud" computing.

The second major event is the Energy Saving Opportunities Scheme (ESOS), this is the UK's interpretation of Article 8 of the EU's Energy Efficiency Directive (Oct 13) and requires mandatory energy audits to commence in April 2015 by most large organisations, this will include reviews of ALL activities undertaken by those organisations and will of course include Green IT and Data Centre energy saving opportunities.
Carbon3IT Ltd have a range of services to meet the new legislative regime, please contact us for more information on how we can assist you.

Finally, our partners Datacenter Dynamics are ramping up BCS CEEDA programme activities in the APAC, CIS and Latam regions and as lead assessors/auditors to the programme we will be undertaking a lot of trips to various data centres both in the UK and those regions, we are going to be extremely busy.

We will be looking to recruit additional experienced personnel to enable us to meet these opportunities so please send us your CV's (send to info'carbon3it.com, and put CV in the subject line) or call us for a chat.

Until next time and remember that Carbon3IT Ltd practices #Green IT in action, we practice what we preach.