Moore's Law of Health Care

As organizations focus on strategic business initiatives, tried-and-true data mining technologies and processes are moving from the halls of academia into mainstream business practice.
##CONTINUE##
Increased IT processes throughout the health care industry enable organizations to collect and store information on nearly every interaction with patients and payer organizations — and from internal operations. In fact, according to a July 2003 report from IDC, the U.S. health care industry spent $17.3 billion in 2003 on IT systems. Today, a significant percentage of technology spending is allocated to database systems, which help capture patient-level financial and clinical data, as well as a swelling stream of data associated with physician drug orders (CPOE), medical images (PACS), electronic medical record text and hospital materials.

Unfortunately, a health care organization's ability to effectively utilize this collected information to support strategic business decisions lags behind the capacity to collect and store it. Nonetheless, if a health care organization can leverage data for supporting intelligent and integrated analysis about its operations, it will have an edge in today's increasingly competitive care delivery marketplace.

Consider the economics behind the technology intended to facilitate and improve the business processes and profitability of health care organizations. Gordon Moore, who later went on to co-found Intel, defined what's now known as "Moore's Law" in 1964. The law roughly states that computer processing power doubles every 18 months at a fixed cost. As a result, today we're able to easily purchase computers with processing power that dwarfs the capabilities of the machines available even five years ago.

But computer storage manufacturers have outpaced their colleagues who build processors. The amount of computer storage that can be bought for a fixed cost doubles approximately every nine months.

The effect of this new storage paradigm is that the means of accumulating information and storing it far outstrip an organization's capacity to process, sift through, analyze and utilize data. Moreover, as time passes, we're seeing an exponentially widening gap between the capacity to store data and the ability to process, prepare and analyze it.

Experts who can design and build data storage and transformation systems that efficiently support high-level strategic analysis play a primary role in bringing together an organization's data and its decision-makers. These experts provide business analysts and administrators with solid, supportable data and trends that translate into improved understanding of granular levels of financial and clinical performance.

Some forward-thinking organizations have begun to harness the value of the immense amounts of data captured through the information systems in which they have invested heavily. Uses range from advanced analytical reporting about drug order entry related to a patient's clinical outcome to drill-down trending reports that allow business analysts to ask ad-hoc questions about their data.

The data game
Significant progress has been made over the last three decades by academic researchers in database technology, statistics and machine learning. Now, tried-and-true data mining technologies and processes are moving from the halls of academia into mainstream business. Data mining, when correctly applied, helps put business decision-makers and their data assets "on the same page."

Historically, health care IT staff members have been the only ones with clear access to collected data. But things are beginning to change as business analysts and some clinicians request and generate reports from large database systems. However, those reports often take hours or days to run and do not enable the viewer to perform rapid and flexible analysis. Under current conditions, the ability to utilize trends and patterns for improved operations, quality measurement and profitability can be hampered due to the constraints of the information systems and the ability of the IT staff to service the needs of the entire organization.

In addition to enabling advanced trending and drill-through analysis, data mining can provide ample opportunity to uncover operational issues, abnormal trends, unidentified correlations and other "red flags" in an automated fashion.

Is your organization ready?

-----------------------------
BY Mike Albainy
Source：advanceweb.com

Mr. Albainy is a senior manager of client services with Chicago-based Apollo Data Technologies. He specializes in the deployment and analysis of data mining models, and leading the development of OLAP and data warehouse reporting systems.

© 2009 Merion Publications.

Intel is the largest green power purchaser in the U.S.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the greenest of them all? Yes, you have read the headline already and Intel can tout that no one else in this country buys more green power than the chip giant. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the nation’s top 50 purchasers are buying more than 11 billion kWh of green power annually, equivalent to the carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) that would be produced from the electricity use of more than 1.1 million average American homes.
##CONTINUE##
The EPA said that Intel leads the ranking with 1.3 billion kWh of wind power, which is purchased from PNM and Sterling Planet. Pepsi is second with 1.1 billion kWh, followed by Kohl’s Department Stores (601 million kWh), Dell (554 million kWh) and Whole Foods Market (527 million). Other IT companies in the ranking include Cisco (#9, 401 million kWh), Sprint Nextel (#38, 88 million kWh), Sony DADC (#40, 83 million kWh), Motorola (#44, 78 million kWh) and AMD (#46, 74 million kWh).

Intel’s green power purchases equal the consumption of electricity of 130,000 average U.S. homes.

Despite the huge amount of green power purchases, the company is only covering 46% of its U.S. power needs through green power, the EPA said. Dell, for example, purchases 158% of green power for its own power needs, Cisco 46%, Sprint 47%, Sony DADC 44%, Motorola 20% and AMD 101%. Other U.S. entities that purchase a 100% share of green power include Pepsi (and subsidiaries), Whole Foods Market, the U.S. EPA, New York University, The World Bank, Dannon, Coldwater Creek, ING, REI, and the University of California Santa Cruz.

-----------------------------
BY Wolfgang Gruener
Source：TG DAILY

© 2009 DD&M Inc.

A Blueprint for Healthier Healthcare IT

Latest Connected Health Platform supports and accelerates optimized IT for health organizations.
##CONTINUE##
Small budgets. Outdated technology. Pressing regulatory issues. Critical information scattered among multiple organizations. Employees squeezed for time. When it comes to challenges in combining technology with business, the healthcare industry stands out.

To address this, Microsoft has been drawing on its global experience in tackling the range of issues facing healthcare IT.

“Healthcare is traditionally years behind other industries when it comes to creating efficiency through technology,” says Tim Smokoff, general manager of Microsoft’s Worldwide Public Sector Healthcare division. “Our goal is to change that using what we’ve learned from customers. We’re taking a real-world perspective and putting it together in a way that organizations can really use.”

Based on its experience with health care, Microsoft continues to enhance its guidance and “solution accelerators,” to help customers and partners build e-health solutions that can handle the pace of change and varied landscape of the healthcare environment.

The work has resulted in two offerings to help healthcare organizations get the most from technology and position themselves for the future with a modern systems architecture.

The Connected Health Framework Architecture and Design Blueprint (CHF) is “technology-agnostic” guidance and best practices for building an agile and adaptable e-health infrastructure. Along with that is the Connected Health Platform (CHP), a set of assessment tools, deployment guidance and solution accelerators for building such an infrastructure on Microsoft technologies. Two weeks ago at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) 2009 Annual Conference & Exhibition in Chicago, Microsoft released the latest versions of CHF and CHP.

Both offerings are available for free and can even be used to develop proprietary applications for resale. In Spain this week for the Local and Regional Government Solutions Forum (LRG), Smokoff say he’s hearing a lot of interest about the new offerings and their implications for helping public health organizations promote improved citizen health and wellness.

“If we want to accelerate the uptake of e-health applications, we need to freely distribute an architecture and design blueprint along with bits of code and guidance papers so that people can use them,” Smokoff says. “Partners can easily build their own versions and keep the intellectual property because CHF and CHP are free to use and open to innovate on top of.”

An Ounce of Prevention

Version two of the connected health offerings is widely expanded to cover the entire continuum of care, with an emphasis on promoting lifetime health and managing chronic diseases — areas where a great deal of savings can be achieved from automating routine tasks such as monitoring blood glucose levels in diabetic patients.

The extensions announced in Chicago include an enhanced design blueprint, which updates and expands the thinking about long-term care, social welfare, social care and other wellness programs, along with a number of new accelerators and guidance.

According to Smokoff, the changes were driven largely by a shift in philosophy surrounding healthcare in the Western world.

“For the most part, healthcare has been focused on waiting for people to get sick and then curing them,” he says. “So much of healthcare costs in developed nations result from the management of chronic disease such as diabetes, obesity and pulmonary disease. Today we’re shifting that focus toward prevention, and technology needs to keep pace.”

How can technology help manage disease and facilitate healthier lifestyles? According to Smokoff, as patients and doctors increasingly buy into the philosophy, a new class of applications is emerging to make better use of information about patients and their conditions.

“Information is a key asset in facilitating better health, but health organizations have too often kept data locked into their own systems and applications,” Smokoff says. “By liberating the information from those silos, you give consumers the ability to manage their own health, and you give organizations the ability to work cooperatively for better patient outcomes.”

Smokoff says personal health applications such as Microsoft HealthVault have been a hot topic that allow people to take charge of their health, but that is just the beginning of a transformation taking place in healthcare. New applications capable of freely sharing data might help coordinate complex procedures such as surgeries where the surgeon, anesthetist, nurses, patient and the facility itself all must be scheduled and briefed.

Applications can also be created to help patients manage a chronic condition over time. With diabetes, for example, it might track the patient’s historical blood glucose levels, logging each test daily and providing a picture that can identify trends and help to prevent an acute episode. Someone who could be diagnosed as “pre-diabetic” could use tools to track exercise, keep her metabolic index down, and prevent her from developing diabetes at all. Patients with health problems arising from obesity can track diet and exercise routines.

“It’s about capturing physiological information and providing the useful and personalized tools to help patients keep up with a specific dietary, exercise or drug regimen,” Smokoff says.

According to Smokoff, standards and interoperability are a key element of the new connected health platforms. The new versions of CHF and CHP feature more code accelerators to help applications work well with information residing in many different places, and the architecture can be used with any software that supports Web services and services-oriented architectures (SOAs).

The new features, compatible with federally recognized standards, were demonstrated successfully in February at the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise Connectathon 2009 in Chicago.

Tackling Healthcare’s Biggest IT Issues

While these kinds of applications are showing a great deal of promise in promoting “self care” and patient wellness over time, there is much that healthcare organizations can do to become leaner as well.

And according to Smokoff, there are many obstacles to overcome before the healthcare industry as a whole is able to really digest technology the way that other industries have.

For one thing, the sensitive nature of healthcare information and subsequent government regulation of how that data is used, which varies widely by country, creates an enormous emphasis on privacy and security that any enabling technology must fully address.

“Today regulation and innovation must work in harmony to allow connected care systems to free data so it can be used by individuals and their healthcare systems, while at the same time protecting the information from misuse,” Smokoff says.

In Germany, for example, information created inside a hospital cannot be duplicated and stored in another location, creating the need for technologies that can access patient data from various locations.

Such regulations, while critical to the industry, amount to additional hurdles for technology aimed at enabling healthcare information-sharing.

“Security of information is incredibly important,” Smokoff says. “It’s imperative to help the industry with this issue, so a big part of the infrastructure optimization outlined in the CHF and CHP deals with securing access and providing aggregated views of health information, whether it’s in the hospital environment or federated outside to other agencies for effective coordination and post-care.”

This issue of systems federation is another that looms large for healthcare. The industry consists of thousands of clinics, hospitals, laboratories and public agencies, each of which has its own systems and its own segment of a patient’s overall medical profile.

Complicating this issue is the prevalence of “legacy” technologies, outdated systems that may go as far back as the green-screen era but which still contain valuable and pertinent medical information on patients.

“Interoperability is probably even ahead of privacy and security as the biggest issue facing healthcare technology,” Smokoff says. “We talk about liberating data. There is a lot of information out there, but historically systems have not talked to each other. Only in the last couple of years have standards for healthcare interoperability been accepted.”

Smokoff compares the situation to railroads in Australia or the early American West, where different gauges of track meant that trains could only make part of a crossing before entire cargoes would have to be offloaded to another train.

“When these systems are not consistent, it becomes very costly to integrate them,” he says.

This issue is also gaining increased attention of late, as a new presidential administration looks at ways to reduce the cost of healthcare delivery in the United States.

“As the stimulus comes out, we have to focus on separating the data from applications and organizations, and using the technology capabilities we have now to give people a holistic view of their health history,” he says.

“To do that, the medical community also has to be on board, so another key element is, what is the incentive? For this to work, we have to look at rewarding doctors and clinics that are ahead of the curve in terms of technology and efficiency.”

Making the Rounds

Smokoff agrees that building better information and communications technology into healthcare is a classic technology story with the dual benefits of greater process efficiency, and better information, both of which help organizations do what they do best.

“There is a real need to help these organizations be more efficient,” he says. “We’ve seen so many systems that were built up piecemeal and suddenly the organization is juggling a dozen different applications. They’re burning their IT budgets just keeping the lights on.”

According to Smokoff, the architectures and toolkits provided by Microsoft can help reduce the cost of running a system while simultaneously improving its agility, allowing organizations to invest that savings into more innovative technologies to support practitioners, or to simply reduce IT budgets so more of that money can go elsewhere.

For most people who work in healthcare, though, the ultimate goal isn’t to “create efficiency” in and of itself, but to deliver the best possible care however they can. And it’s there that IT really has potential to make a difference, both in the lives of individuals and in the economies of nations. By providing more information, and better access to it, effective IT can actually facilitate better care delivery.

“With access to all the different information about a specific case, providers can make more informed decisions,” Smokoff says. “So by embracing these modern architectural principles, organizations not only save money, but are able to deliver better care.”

And with a renewed focus on wellness, technology has the potential to take things a step further and help people take charge of their own health.

Says Smokoff: “Even more importantly, by empowering people with better information about their own health, they too can take control, be more proactive, and hopefully lead healthier lives.”

-----------------------------
BY WebWire editorial staff
Source：WebWire

WebWire® 1995 - 2009.

Green IT: Why Now?

Should IT Embrace Energy-Conscious Computing In An Economic Downturn?
##CONTINUE##
Key Points
• More energy-efficient computing means lower power bills and lower energy costs.
• There’s a competitive advantage in promoting green computing across a company.
• Even if some of the more expensive “green” decisions must wait, some are easy to implement now.

In a poor economy, green computing often moves from an interesting idea and a popular buzzword to a budget category that’s easy to remove. It’s true that there are obvious environmental factors, and combating global climate change is important, but the perception is that going green—especially in a data center—can be a major expense. And, in most cases, a wholesale replacement of power-hogging servers, changing over to a completely new air-cooling system, and embracing virtualization as a way to reduce power usage are all cost-prohibitive. Yet, the eventual savings from “going green” are often a compelling factor that motivates a small to medium-sized enterprise.

“Businesses of all sizes are still focused on green—the difference now is that the primary focus is on green as in money,” says Steve Grobman, the director of business client architecture at Intel (www.intel.com). “While many businesses still realize the importance of the environment, it’s taken a secondary position to simply staying in business. But the two are not mutually exclusive. SMEs that ‘go green’ can also save money, which helps the bottom line.” Grobman encourages small to midsized enterprises to consider the financial benefits of better power efficiencies in a data center. Grobman admits that spending money in a downturn doesn’t always make sense, but green computing has a particular advantage in often paying for the investment in a short period of time—it has a higher ROI than other infrastructure decisions, such as consolidating storage.

Is Now The Right Time?

Even when an IT manager agrees that more efficient computing makes sense, there’s still a lingering question about whether right now is the best time. One reason to still consider green computing, says Nathan Coutinho, a solutions manager at CDW (www.cdw.com), is that some local power companies are offering credits for pursuing emerging technologies such as virtualization. As the economy worsens, the incentives are sometimes greater depending on where the data center is located. Coutinho says a good first step is just to call the local power company and find out if there are rebates available.

Virtualization is one of the key technologies for companies moving to a green computing environment because it means using fewer servers to provide more IT power.

“Customers who virtualize are able to reduce power, cooling, network, and SANs [storage-area networks] and keyboard, visual display unit, and mouse [KVM] ports that are required to run the business,” says Coutinho. “Reduced hardware also means reduced warranties to manage and renew.”

A second “why-now” factor has to do with the competitive advantage of investing in more efficient systems. Bob Woolery, a spokesperson for green storage provider Nexsan (www.nexsan.com), says that current SATA drive technology is actually twice as fast as the Fibre Channel drives from a few years ago, yet they run about 30% more efficiently.

Christophe Peretou, the VP of operations at WAN optimization company Streamcore (www.streamcore.com), says that a corporate initiative on green computing provides advantages that go beyond just the dollars saved in energy efficiency. A company can champion energy consciousness in IT and expand that mindset to the entire company. IT can lead the charge in creating energy policies on reducing power consumption that can catch on and make an entire company more aware of energy usage. That, in turn, can lead to a distinct competitive advantage, as well.

Easy Changes For Greener IT

Even if a company has decided to forego a major investment in green computing, there are still some easy changes to make that can save money and promote better efficiencies. Lawrence Webber, who wrote the book “Green Tech: How to Plan and Implement Sustainable IT Solutions,” suggests that some of the energy-conscious decisions that IT can make are easy to implement and do not cost a dime. For example, he says that companies that have normally decommissioned hardware when the warranty has expired can consider extending contracts or using the equipment longer. Another approach: Companies can start using tape backup systems for more efficient data archives instead of using hard drives that are constantly spinning. This requires a change in mindset: Not all data needs to be readily available.

Weber also says that current desktop and server systems already offer the ability for data centers to be more energy-efficient. “Operating systems support complex power management that can turn off the PC, printer, and monitor when they have been idle for too long,” says Weber.

Toby Velte, co-author of the book “Green IT: Reduce Your Information System’s Environmental Impact While Adding to the Bottom Line,” which was published last October, says the first place to start in considering green computing is to analyze and monitor usage, which often does not require a major investment. Even in a poor economy, companies can determine where they have inefficiencies and create a plan to deal with those power-usage problems. “It’s important to get a handle on what you consume in terms of energy, hardware, paper, water—including space costs and management costs. You must start with a baseline usage and costs associated with those resources,” says Velte. “That way, you have gained the experience and confidence to take on more challenging green projects.”

In the end, being more energy-conscious in IT does make sense in the long run for better sustainability. Yet, making decisions now about green infrastructure can pay dividends in better performance and better server utilization. It may be a buzzword, but even in a poor economy, it pays off.

Green IT Ideas
There are a few steps managers can take to give data centers a green tint. Consider these options.

• Virtualization can save energy by making more use of the physical server to run multiple operating systems and lowering overall costs to run the data center.
• Data center consolidation can reduce energy usage and increase overall performance.
• Policies regarding energy management on desktop systems can promote green computing.
• Monitoring and analyzing energy use is usually a good first step toward green computing.

-----------------------------
BY John Brandon
Source：Processor

Copyright © by Sandhills Publishing Company 2009. All rights reserved.

Cisco Pushes Green Technology In China

Cisco and China's Tsinghua University have jointly set up a laboratory for green technology.
##CONTINUE##
The laboratory, which is jointly led by Cisco and the Department of Electronic Engineering at Tsinghua University, will focus on developing network-based smart urbanization technology and solutions in support of China's strategy for the green development of the economy, energy saving, and emission reduction.

John Chambers, the chairman of the board and CEO of Cisco Systems, says that Cisco's innovation plan and the establishment of this green technology laboratory show the company's long-time commitment to China and its high level of confidence in the Chinese market.

As part of its commitment to China, Cisco has also announced that it will set up a supply chain school with Fudan University to push forward the development of the country's logistics industry with world class education.

Considering the strategic position of China to its global operation and the company's promise to investing USD16 billion to China in the coming years, Cisco has launched a coordinating innovation mechanism which aims to stimulate local innovation via capital, technology, flow management, resource incubation, and leadership training.

In November 2007, Cisco announced that it would invest USD16 billion in the Chinese market in the next few years for innovation and sustainable development.

-----------------------------
BY N/A
Source：China TechNews

Copyright 1999-2009 ChinaTechNews.com. All Rights Reserved.

SMBs Continue Investment in Green Technology

It isn't always easy to be green, but the future for energy-efficient small businesses is improving, and midmarket companies are continuing their investment in green IT--despite the economic downturn.
##CONTINUE##
A global study sponsored by technology giant IBM found most midmarket companies have initiatives under way that will reduce the environmental impact of their information technology. Almost two-thirds of all companies say they are currently, or are planning to within the next 12 months, adding virtualization technology to their servers, consolidating storage systems or retrofitting their server rooms.

The study, conducted by Info-Tech Research Group, is based on a survey of more than 1,000 IT executives at companies with between 100 and 1,000 employees across industries and in a dozen countries including the United States, Canada, France, Germany, India and the United Kingdom.

The study found companies typically fall into one of four green IT personalities: green advocates, smart spenders, green observers and green seekers. Green advocates—companies that integrate environmental considerations into all areas of their business—made up about 25 percent of the companies surveyed.

Smart spenders make up 38 percent of the survey group and are defined as SMBs willing to make upfront investments if long-term cost reduction is viable. Green observers, who make up 30 percent of the survey group, do not have specific environmental goals and need management support for green initiatives. Green seekers, at 7 percent, are interested in adopting consumption-conscious technology but are unsure of where to start and how to quantify results.

“This study demonstrates the clear connection between meeting environmental goals, reducing expenses and driving change that can foster innovation and growth,” said IBM’s general manager of global midmarket sales, Marc Dupaquier. “IBM offers services, hardware and software that can help midsize companies be both greener and leaner.”

Controlling cost is the strongest factor driving all 11 initiatives. The reasons most often cited for undertaking environmentally friendly IT projects is decreased electricity use, followed by decreased consumables use, increased features and functionality for the business, decreased future operational expenses or investments, meeting customers’ demands, and realizing credits or rebates from local utilities and governments.

Saving electricity requires the measurement of IT electrical consumption, something many companies cannot do. However, the survey finds more than 50 percent of companies have implemented some form of energy measurement for their information technology infrastructure, and about one-quarter plan to do so in the year ahead.

As the survey noted, the concept of going “green” has generated a lot of hype among companies interested in realizing business, environmental and corporate reputation benefits. Green IT initiatives, in particular, present SMBs with the opportunity to reduce their carbon footprint while also reducing costs.

Interestingly, when respondents were asked to weigh the importance placed on business benefits against environmental benefits, the split was approximately 60-40 in favor of business motivators—both before and after the implementation phase. The slight slant toward business motivators substantiates the common sentiment among companies that green IT initiatives must yield financial returns in order to get the green light.

Countries with some of the highest fuel prices in the world have not, up to this point, turned to remote conferencing and telecommuting initiatives to reduce both cost and environmental impact. The survey found while 50 to 60 percent of North American, British, Indian and Brazilian businesses are up and running with telecommuting and virtual conferencing capabilities, Germany, France and, to a lesser extent, the Nordic countries have been slower to adopt these technologies.

Initiatives intended to reduce travel are clearly receiving the most attention from geographically “big” countries over the next 12 months. From Brazil to Canada, more than 30 percent of businesses will aggressively pursue remote conferencing and telecommuting strategies.

Virtualization is also being perceived as a major step in a green direction. The rate of server virtualization across most regions (with an average implementation rate of 48 percent) is evidence that initiatives with a business case composed of clear cost savings and environmental benefits will win first. For new initiatives to gain acceptance from stakeholders who may be skeptical, a clear case for cost containment, savings or other business benefits must be made first.

IT recycling is also gaining traction: Overall, 56 percent of the companies surveyed have either completed or are implementing outdated hardware recycling programs. Approximately 23 percent of IT departments report plans to adopt IT equipment recycling and energy measurement practices within the next 12 months.

In general, companies thinking about implementing a green IT project should consider that the majority of implementations are considered successful. In 65 percent of all implementations, the study found organizations’ initial goals for these projects are met or exceeded. In other words, businesses usually accomplish what they set out to do, and realize additional benefits they weren’t expecting.

Green Cells
An ABI Research report on the mobile communications market suggests the mobile industry is going green as well. The report forecasts that in 2009 over 800,000 base stations will utilize alternative energy solutions such as wind or solar energy, and that nearly 70 million mobile devices will be ethically disposed of or will be recycled in 2009.

Small businesses looking to make a positive impact on the environment can often start with something as eco-friendly mobile communications devices and recycling handsets (as well as office appliances) that need to be replaced. At this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, for example, LG and Samsung debuted solar-powered handsets. Samsung even went a step further, manufacturing the “Blue Earth” handset from recycled plastic bottles.

-----------------------------
BY Nathan Eddy
Source：eWEEK.com

Copyright ©1996-2009 Ziff Davis Enterprise Holdings Inc. All Rights Reserved. eWEEK and Spencer F. Katt are trademarks of Ziff Davis Enterprise Holdings, Inc. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Ziff Davis Enterprise Inc. is prohibited.

Eco-China Website Formally Launched

The National Forestation Commission, China Ministry of Forestry and China Green Foundation jointly held a press conference on the launch of the Eco-China Website at Eco.gov.cn during this year's Tree-planting Day.
##CONTINUE##
In the meantime, the parties launched an initiative based on the objectives of China's eco-civilization campaign. They also set up an Eco-China Work Commission to hold events surrounding the Eco-China annual award, green outings and green citizenship to jumpstart the eco-civilization activities.

Zhou Youliang, vice chairman of China Green Foundation, said that the global environmental crisis has become even more serious and this is something that all people around the world should take seriously of. Zhou said that the Eco-China activities will play an important role in the realization of sustainable development and they hope that more organizations and individuals will join in this campaign via the website.

-----------------------------
BY N/A
Source：China Tech News

Copyright 1999-2009 ChinaTechNews.com. All Rights Reserved.

Clean tech is Silicon Valley's hope in tough economic times

Green-energy innovation is Silicon Valley's best hope for emerging from the recession, a new report said.
##CONTINUE##
But there is room for other regions, including Austin, to play a role in clean-technology development, experts say.

The 2009 Index of Silicon Valley paints a bleak picture of the Northern California technology hub's economy, but it singles out clean technology as the smartest path to job creation and a stronger high-tech base.

"The climate crisis is an opportunity to innovate, to invent new technologies, to commercialize them, to grab market share, to create whole new clusters of green jobs and grow the economy," said Russell Hancock, chief executive of Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network, an organization that assesses the region's social, economic and environmental health and publishes the annual survey.

Although Silicon Valley is the dominant player in the emerging industry, President Barack Obama's promise of $17 billion for renewable-

energy projects will create opportunities for areas around the country, said Stephen Levy, director of the Palo Alto-based Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy.

"The new administration's emphasis on science and technology and innovation has to be good for both San Jose and for Austin," Levy said. "I don't personally like this idea of this competition between regions. I think the competition is between us and other parts of the world."

Reed Benet, the new head of the Austin Technology Incubator's clean-energy division, said that as long as "Silicon Valley is the 800-pound gorilla in terms of a concentration of academic institutions, venture capital and corporate funding, a deep bench for 'been there, done that' management, and an infrastructure of product and service providers," it will continue to have an undisputed edge.

But that's OK, Benet said.

"Silicon Valley venture capitalists are calling around looking for deals and actually traveling beyond the magic 90-mile radius from their home offices," he said. "And if a city like Austin — with all its critical mass advantages in photovoltaics, mixed semiconductors, batteries, information technology and wireless, semiconductor fabrication and automotive electronics — can self-organize itself on a 'rising tides raise all boats' principle, we can really make a mark, and maybe even shoot for a top position."

As examples, Benet cited recent efforts to leverage Austin Energy, considered a national leader in renewable energy, as an ally for alternative-energy projects. They include the newly launched Pecan Street Project, a public-private initiative to develop a local clean-energy power system.

Austin attorney Pike Powers is also building business, government and political alliances to pursue several clean-energy economic development projects tied to batteries and smart grids.

Still, it's money that matters, and it's more abundant on the West Coast.

In Silicon Valley, investment in clean technology grew 94 percent between 2007 and 2008, reaching nearly $1.9 billion, according to the report, accounting for about 31 percent of all clean-tech venture investment in the United States.

With the exception of HelioVolt Corp., the Austin-based solar-power technology company that has raised more than $109 million in funding, the boom in clean-tech investing has largely bypassed Austin.

In Central Texas, software, chip design and medical implant startups dominated venture capital activity in 2008.

Austin Ventures, which provided seed money for Central Texas' software and semiconductor design industries, has mostly steered clear of clean tech, making just one investment, in Austin-based AstroWatt, which is developing a technology for producing affordable solar cells.

But outside venture players are beginning to scout the area, and two have recently done deals here.

Clean-tech investors Quercus Trust of Newport Beach, Calif., and 21Ventures LLC of New York announced in January that they've founded two Austin companies: Advanced Hydro Inc., which is developing advanced water filtration systems, and Graphene Energy Inc., which is commercializing advanced energy storage.

Both companies were formed by licensing technology from the University of Texas, and 21Ventures said it is looking to make additional deals.

In addition, the Texas Emerging Technology Fund, which awards money to promising startups in cutting-edge fields such as clean technology, has invested $42.6 million over the past four years in 15 Central Texas companies and seven regional institutions and universities.

Austin economist Angelos Angelou said he thinks that Texas's biggest competition for clean-tech jobs won't be Silicon Valley but states that are offering major incentives to lure projects, including New Mexico, Iowa, Michigan and Oregon, which has won a number of big solar energy plants in the past two years.

"Everyone is jumping on this, and others are catching up," said Angelou, who said he thinks it's crucial for Austin to win a major manufacturing project. That would allow Central Texas to build its green-energy base like it did with the semiconductor industry with Motorola Inc. in the 1970s.

"There is not an infinite number of manufacturing projects out there," Angelou said. "If one of those companies makes a decision to go elsewhere, then the chance of winning another becomes that much harder."

-----------------------------
BY Lori Hawkins, AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Source：AMERICAN-STATESMAN

Additional material from the San Jose Mercury-News.
lhawkins@statesman.com; 912-5955.

How Green is Google, SOA, SEO? How Green is My IT?

This article was authored by Chuck Rogers II, who writes on a variety of topics from his home somewhere in America. The article was originally published in NOW Magazine (www.nowmagnow.com), which retains all rights.
##CONTINUE##
How Big Is Your Digital Footprint?
The amount of information created and replicated worldwide in 2007 totalled 281 exabytes (an exabyte is a billion gigabytes). How much of that did you create? Now you can find out.

The Personal Digital Footprint Calculator, based on research from IDC and sponsored by EMC, determines the rate at which you create and store digital information. A picture of your all-around digital lifestyle emerges here after you answer a few questions concerning your usage of things such as email, downloads, digital cameras, personal video, and how much video surveillance is in your life.

To see your footprint go here.

It Still Takes Power

Incredible decreases in the cost of processing power, storage, and bandwidth can lead us to the notion that personal IT is somehow not really tangible. Yet it is, and it takes a lot of old-fashioned power generation to support.

Recent power issues in the UK, for example, have created problems in keeping data centers up and running. A recent power shortage Manchester forced data center operator UK Grid to create strategies for generating its own power. The company is now considering investing about $9 million USD in combined heat and power plants to support a center the city's Northern Quarter alone.

Meanwhile, Dresdner Kleinwort is moving its data center out of London's Docklands area in an effort to lower electricity costs and improve power reliability. The investment bank will relocate in Watford in addition to another facility in Camberley, supporting the company's entire UK operations. The move reflects actions taken by a number of other large businesses as power reliability and energy costs in London have become challenging.

Meanwhile...

Amazon's S3 utility storage service now holds more than 10 billion objects, after surpassing the 5 million mark in 2007, up from a mere 800 million in July 2006. S3 offers storage space to serve as the backend for web applications, and is part of a broader suite of utility infrastructure services offered by the giant Internet retailer. Yet Amazon finds itself constrained by demand rather than capacity. Amazon said that more than 290,000 developers have signed up to use Amazon Web Services since its launch in March 2006.

Amusing Ourselves to Death

Can you imagine being a server at a Yahoo data center? You are part of the huge cloud infrastructure, with enormous computing power at your virtual fingertips. And yet, how are the untold masses of users using you? Let's see, the top-five Yahoo searches last year were: Britney Spears, WWE, Paris Hilton, Naruto (a Japanese manga series), and Beyonce. Serverlicious!

Your life wasn't much different if you were a server at a Google data center, with the top five searches being American Idol, YouTube, Britney Spears, the 2007 Cricket World Cup (think India), and Chris Benoit.

So there are slight cultural differences in the user demographics of these powerful search sites. None the less, they were generally searching for the same sort of thing. For sure there are very good academic and business searches happening on a daily basis as well. Yet, not so many. "The Vast Wasteland" of early 1960s TV (in then-FCC Chairman Newt Minnow's memorable phrase) has been joined at the hip by the Interwebtubes.

This leads to the question: is the Worldwide Web as "green" industry as many might think? For example, recent research has shown that an avatar on Second Life and an average real-life Brazilian both use the same amount of electricity. Of course, the avatar is not "alive" 24 hours a day, but it clearly does have a significant effect on the environment.

Worldwide, the electricity demanded by data centers supporting cloud computing requires the resources comparable to 14 power stations, which in turn emit the same amount of carbon dioxide as the entire airline industry.

So it's no wonder that Google built a data center near the Dalles Dam, a hydroelectric power plant in Oregon. Google can buy electricity from the plant at a fifth of California prices, as well as using the cool Columbia River water to run the eight multistory cooling towers designed to handle the heat created from all the important searches we do daily.

All this for pop culture.

-----------------------------
BY Roger Strukhoff
Source：SYS-CON

All Rights Reserved. All marks are trademarks of SYS-CON Media.

Open Source is Already Naturally Green

For years now, there's been talk brewing about the concept of Green IT. Pundits have predicted in years past that sustainable IT would be job one soon, really soon. Gartner said in 2007 that in 2008 it would be THE most important checklist item for IT managers. 2008 has come and gone, and I don't remember hearing a whole lot about green-ness being the top priority for tech executives. Perhaps that has something to do with sustaining the company being more important than sustaining trees. In any case, it looks like green IT is still in the forefront of executive minds, and with a new administration it may become even more important even than Gartner said it would - it may become the law. So where does open source software fit into the mix? How green is the GPL? Pretty green, if you ask me. In fact, companies that already use open source software are well on the way to greening their IT departments.
##CONTINUE##
Open source lives in the cloud
Companies and individuals usually get their open source software via download, which means that packaging waste is eliminated. You can copy the software over and over again, so even on the off chance that it does arrive in a pretty box, you only need one pretty box for the entire company, as opposed to a separate copy and license for each person. Heck, if you play your cards right, you only need one pretty box for the entire office building. Open source software documentation, if it even exists, is almost always online or distributed inside the program, and almost never printed into an actual book, meaning even more trees get to live and no plastics were killed in the making of your favorite Linux distribution or Microsoft Office replacement. Because open source software lives mostly in the cloud, fuel costs could decrease dramatically since downloading eliminates fighting traffic to get to Best Buy. Not only that, but it eliminates daily UPS shipments.

Open source uses power more efficiently
Open source developers think it's fun to make software that runs as efficiently as possible. Commercial software companies probably think the opposite since their marketing partners can sell more hardware if it burns up quicker or you need more of it to gain the same amount of computing power. Open source runs cooler and quicker and uses fewer resources. It also runs on commodity hardware, so when a server does need replacing you can use recycled or resurrected equipment instead of spending big coinage on a new proprietary piece of metal.

Open source is made at home, by real people
Open source software is developed organically by people, not by corporate entities, which means those people are writing software right where they're at. Because open source software development lends itself to telecommuting, developers don't need a special commute, a special office, or even special clothes to create open source software. And even if they do all those things already because they have a "real job" at a corporate software development company, they only have to do it once. Even corporate-sponsored open source projects are more eco-friendly because of this. Open source saves water, too, since software developers who work from home don't need to shower as often. More cows live longer lives too because when you code at home, shoes are optional.

Open source means fewer lawyers
Open source software negates the existence of software "piracy", so if enough people began using open source, the industry surrounding the pursuit and prosecution of software "pirates" would go away. All that money and energy could be spend doing something more important. Do you know how many natural resources it takes to manufacture a three-piece suit like lawyers wear? Eliminate "piracy" and you eliminate the need for thousands of three-piece suits every year. Lawyers who work for open source projects don't need to wear suits. And they probably don't need to shower as often, either.

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BY Tina Gasperson
Source：LinuxPlanet

Copyright 2009 Jupitermedia Corporation All Rights Reserved.

Study: Computing industry not embracing green IT

New report from Think Ecological warns of power shortages for data centers unless companies identify and implement cleantech strategies.
##CONTINUE##
A new survey of the computing industry shows a disconnect between awareness and actual application of green IT in Internet and e-commerce companies in North America and beyond.

Industry leadership group BPM Forum released results today of its Think Ecological survey of 175 IT professionals and executives from companies such as Yahoo and Time Warner in December and January. Think Ecological—a venture of BPM with Intel and Rackable Systems—aims to persuade businesses to embrace green IT strategies for data centers by promoting corporate responsibility and showing cost-cutting opportunities.

The survey showed that while 82 percent of IT professionals said their companies were more aware of ecological concerns than a year ago, 81 percent said the industry was failing to make changes to reduce energy consumption. More than 30 percent of respondents said their companies were doing nothing to embrace green IT strategies.

"There's a disconnect in the actions companies are taking to overcome the problems, and their awareness of the problems," said Jason Caori, senior marketing manager for Rackable Systems. "The survey showed a lack of leadership and a lack of people who own this agenda within companies."

Data centers consume about 2 percent of the U.S. power supply (about the same as televisions), and that figure is expected to roughly double by 2011.

The situation could be dire for the companies that deliver services using data centers. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said that power failures and limited power availability during the next five years will temporarily stop operations at more than 90 percent of data centers.

And researchers at Gartner said in November that nearly 50 percent of data centers worldwide will have trouble finding the electricity to run and cool equipment (see Booming data-center business creates troubles for India). Gartner suggested companies incorporate virtualization and combined heat and power technologies, also known as cogeneration, for the simultaneous production of electricity and useful heat from a single fuel source, such as natural gas, biomass, biogas, coal, waste heat or oil (see Data centers: $7B in annual energy costs).

Some of the upgrades companies could make are as simple as server upgrades, Caori said. The average server is about four or five years old. Simply using new processors and solid state hard drives could reduce energy use by more than 30 percent, he said. New hardware is being developed to withstand higher temperatures, reducing the cooling cost for data centers, he said.

And other technologies can detect inefficiencies in circulating the air that cools data centers, a field being pursued by SynapSense (see IBM rides third wave of cleantech).

"The reality is that demand for computer equipment and services is not lessening; it's growing," Caori said. "And demand grows, the power supply is not keeping up with it. That gap is not sustainable, and there needs to be a correction somewhere. If you can't decrease demand for the technology, you can increase the efficiency of the technology."

Derek Kober, program director for the BPM Forum, said the study showed a lack of awareness of available solutions, highlighting the need for third-party organizations such as BPM that can provide information. The study showed there was no common group to advise on best practices.

Additionally, many companies are focusing on minor changes to improve their carbon footprints instead of tackling substantial uses of energy and resources, he said.

"They focus on the tangible, like recycling or turning off the computer at night, or printing on two sides of a piece of paper," he said. "It's not to say those aren't important steps, but companies need to dig to the next level, not only look at day-to-day processes but look at the infrastructure driving your technology."

Kober said he was encouraged that awareness of ecological concerns had increased, with many respondents recognizing the possibilities for lowering power consumption, making better use of existing space and reducing costs. But another driver in coming months could be the good PR associated with energy reductions, he said.

"Beyond the Googles and the Amazons, which have made big announcements about their initiatives, there's not a lot of talk about the progress being made by smaller companies in these ecological practice," he said (see Google, GE team up on cleantech and Google pushes for enhanced geothermal).

The survey included input from companies across the Internet and e-commerce space, including online retail, hosting, software as a service and travel sites.

Download the report here »

-----------------------------
BY Emma Ritch
Source：Cleantech Group

© 2009 Cleantech Group LLC - all rights reserved.

Software: Lean and Green

Software vendors are competing for shrinking IT budgets by touting products that can save energy, save money, and save the environment
##CONTINUE##
When it comes to green technology, for years it's been computer makers and chip manufacturers that dominated headlines with announcements of purportedly eco-friendly products. Now software vendors including Microsoft (MSFT), Oracle (ORCL), and IBM (IBM) want their day in the sun.

As IT spending slumps, software vendors are stepping up emphasis on features they say help customers trim power usage, meet regulatory requirements, and design more efficient buildings. The new capabilities are arriving as companies keep a closer eye on climbing electricity budgets from their data centers and other operations. The products are also a way for software makers—and their customers—to position themselves as environmentally friendly at a time when being green makes good PR sense.

Analyzing Energy and Emissions Data

Microsoft is the latest software company to throw its hat into the ring. On Feb. 9 the company released a free "environmental dashboard" for its Dynamics AX business applications, which help midsize companies track financial data, orders, and manufacturing schedules. The new software aggregates information from meter readings and energy bills to give companies reports on their fuel and power consumption, and it provides them with estimates of their carbon dioxide emissions. About 2% of carbon emissions come from the computers, cell phones, and telecom equipment used by consumers and businesses, according to Rob Bernard, Microsoft's chief environmental strategist. "We spend a lot of time thinking about how software can affect the other 98%," he says.

Software is a relatively new entrant in the rush to sell technology products designed to reduce environmental damage and help companies slice energy costs. For several years computer makers and chip companies including Dell (DELL), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), and Intel (INTC) have emphasized the power-sipping nature of their products.

Software makers say their products, too, can help cut energy usage and keep electricity grids healthy by analyzing consumption and underpinning incentives to draw power during off-peak times. "Carbon auditing is a hot spot in the software and services market at the moment," says Stephen Stokes, an analyst at tech-industry consultant AMR Research. AMR estimates that the market for software and consulting services that let companies collect and report data about carbon emissions has already reached $3.6 billion.

Competing for Scarce IT Dollars

That could be good news for the software industry at a time when businesses have curtailed technology spending. Forrester Research (FORR) expects worldwide software spending by businesses and governments to be flat in 2009, at $388 billion. Overall IT spending is expected to decline 3%.

Companies in such heavily regulated segments as oil and gas production and electrical utilities may be the biggest buyers of such products. But even businesses that don't need to meet government requirements or engage in emissions credit-trading programs may find that marketing their eco-credentials can give them a competitive edge, AMR's Stokes says.

Microsoft is also tuning Windows 7—the version of its flagship operating system due later this year—to conserve PC power by reducing the amount of system software running in the background, adjusting a processor's performance to meet the user's computing requirements at any given time.

Green Building Design

In the past year, engineering and design software maker Autodesk (ADSK) has acquired three software companies whose programs help architects design eco-friendly buildings. Autodesk's Green Building Studio software can analyze a planned building's energy and water usage and carbon emissions. Its Ecotect tool lets architects and engineers see how sunlight, shade, and airflow will effect energy consumption by a building's occupants. And Autodesk bought Carmel Software, whose product computes cooling and heating requirements to help design efficient heating and air-conditioning systems. Autodesk is betting the new products will continue to drive growth of its 3D design tools, even though "some people think sustainable design is a fad," CEO Carl Bass said in an interview last year.

Other software vendors are looking at ways to make energy supplies more efficient. German business applications maker SAP (SAP) sells software called Advanced Metering Infrastructure, which lets utilities keep customers up to date on their meter readings and charge variable rates to move loads to off-peak hours. SAP is consulting with European utilities on such "smart metering" projects, and is said to be developing an application—due out this year—to help companies better track energy usage across their operations. The company's chief competitor, Oracle (ORCL), is also touting its applications' ability to help companies cut waste from their purchasing and shipping operations.

IBMis taking a different approach, emphasizing how governments and businesses can invest together in powerful computer systems and data analysis software to address problems like climate change and food supply safety. Big Blue has several projects underway in the U.S., Europe, and Asia as part of its "smarter planet" initiative, which it announced in November. In Stockholm, IBM software and computers predicted traffic flows and rewrote the city's bus schedule to cut traffic by one-fifth and reduce carbon emissions from vehicles by 12%, according to IBM. "It's a big bet, controlling the traffic for the entire city," says vice-president Bob Sutor. "But this is what IBM does well."

It's not just business software that's getting the green treatment. Google (GOOG) on Feb. 2 released a new version of its Google Earth visualization software, emphasizing features that let scientists add their own data to the virtual globe, for instance by displaying the effect of climate change on temperatures. "It's not just a fun demo," CEO Eric Schmidt said at a San Francisco press conference announcing the product. "It really is a platform for science."

A raft of software companies are hoping customers take their new green products as seriously.

-----------------------------
BY Aaron Ricadela
Source：BusinessWeek

Ricadela is a writer for BusinessWeek in Silicon Valley.

Copyright 2000-2009 by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.

IT going green

Global warming has been a much talked about topic for as long as I can remember. The level of interest and the push for addressing the issues have increased significantly over the past couple of years. Fact is, everything that we do has an impact on the global climate, even the computers we use on a daily basis.
##CONTINUE##
Information Technology is responsible for 2% of all carbon emissions, about the same as the airlines industry. The carbon emission produced by the IT sector in the developed nations is as high as 5-6%. Analysts say that the IT sector’s carbon footprint will triple during the next 10-12 years.

The United States throws away 500 million computers and 130 million cell phones every year. Referred to as e-waste, these contain more than 1,000 chemicals used during its production such as lead, mercury and cadmium which can lead to cancer and other illnesses. One could question, does this really happen? How can a silly computer give me cancer! As with any kind of waste, e-waste at some point will erode and get absorbed into the earth’s atmosphere. It’s like a slow moving environment killer that, when it reaches the peak only will we see its deadly consequences.

Another way in which IT contributes to global warming is by its high demand for energy. Typically, an office building would require more than 50% of its power to be consumed by its IT infrastructure. Having to generate more energy means burning more coal or nuclear power that ends up polluting the air even more.

Truth be told, this is hardly a concern for us Sri Lankans. But it is interesting to know how the big players in the IT sector are going green which inadvertently affects our way of using computers and technologies.

Both Sun Microsystems and Microsoft sponsor active recycling and reuse programs designed to keep electronics out of the waste stream. At Sun, customers can participate in the companies hardware upgrade program, where they can return end-of-life equipment at no cost. Sun then ships the equipment to a third-party vendor, which dismantles the equipment and returns any useful parts to Sun.

Over at Apple, the company recycled 13 million pounds of e-waste in 2006, the equivalent of 9.5 percent of the weight of all Apple products sold since 2000.

Chip designers such as Intel, have realized that lowering per-core performance by 20% actually cuts power usage in half, so adding cores can improve chip performance and efficiency.

Power saving is another initiative that most software vendors such as Apple and Microsoft have continuously worked on, having developed power management features in their operating systems that help control computer energy consumption.

Who are the top 10 Green-IT vendors ?
1. IBM
2. BT Group PLC
3. Qualcomm Inc.
4. Aplicor Inc.
5. Fujitsu America Inc.
6. Microsoft Inc.
7. Hewlett-Packard Co.
8. Network Appliance Inc.
9. Other World Computing
10. Verizon wireless

Couple of points to note in this list is, Microsoft is clearly not putting as much effort as one would expect being the most popular and adopted software in the world. The other is, where is Apple?

I expect more vendors to push for products that are environment friendly and the momentum will grow as customers become more aware of the global warming crisis and look to finding better solutions that gives them a cheaper power bill.

-----------------------------
Tech Talk with Devaka
Source：THE SUNDAY TIMES

© Copyright 2008 Wijeya Newspapers Ltd.Colombo. Sri Lanka. All Rights Reserved.

IBM expands SaaS ecosystem

New ISV partnership follows on the heels of cloud-related agreements penned last week with several universities

IBM on Friday detailed a new ISV partnership, a move which, on the heels of cloud-related agreements penned last week with several universities, advances the company's cloud and SaaS realm.
##CONTINUE##
"The grand vision is about helping these partners to enable solutions to be delivered in an SaaS model," explained Dave Mitchell, IBM's director of strategy and emerging business for ISVs and developer relations. "We're looking to build out our ecosystem by providing partners more ways to work with us."

[SaaS and cloud-based services are all the rage, but what if your cloud turns stormy? For the definitive primer, read InfoWorld'sWhat cloud computing really means.]

To that end, Big Blue on Friday announced an agreement with iEnterprises that enables the latter to offer its CRM software SaaS-style to customers in the construction, pharmaceutical, legal, and other vertical industries, the companies say.

Mitchell said it is the latest in a growing number of partners that IBM has recruited. "We added more partners to our SaaS program last year than we had in the previous three years."

Last week, IBM outlined partnerships with six universities around the world to enhance projects and research initiatives by tapping into cloud infrastructure provided by IBM.

Dr. Willy Chiu, vice president of IBM's Cloud Labs, explained that these are paying customers. One such customer, Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, will open its cloud infrastructure to local businesses.

Although the announcements are vertical niche- and university-centric, Chiu said that commercial companies large and small face similar challenges -- namely the need to do more with fewer resources such as virtualization, SaaS, and cloud services.

"Academic institutions do tend to be hard up for money and resources so they have that in common, for sure," said Gary Barnett, an analyst with the Bathwick Group. "Generally, the more people playing around with cloud and SaaS, the more quickly it will develop and mature."

Indeed, Evans Data last week issued the results of two distinct surveys concluding that nearly half of developers intend to create SaaS applications in 2009 and that almost half of developers working on open source applications plan to provide them via the cloud model.

-----------------------------
BY Tom Sullivan, San Francisco
Source：Resellernews

Copyright © Fairfax Business Group
Fairfax Media Publications Pty Limited, 2009

Green Benefits to Virtualization

Virtualization used to be a somewhat esoteric technology deployed mainly in large-scale data center server consolidation projects, however, with VMware and other virtualization vendors releasing products specifically geared for the small and mid-sized business market (and priced accordingly), virtualization is now within the reach of all.
##CONTINUE##
For the benefit of readers who may not be familiar with the concept of virtualization, it is a technology that enables multiple heterogeneous operating systems to run simultaneously on the same physical hardware. This is advantageous because running a single operating system on a modern high-powered server will almost certainly result in that server being severely underutilized. In fact, in many businesses, servers are operating at anywhere between 5% and 25% of their total load capacity and, resultantly, a substantial amount of processing power is wasted. Virtualization enables the workloads from those underutilized servers to be consolidated to a fewer number of servers.

There are a number of obvious benefits to consolidating servers in this manner: reducing the installed server base reduces the amount of electricity needed for powering and cooling, reduces rack space and floor space requirements and reduces future spending on equipment.

These benefits represent the raison d'être of the majority of virtualization projects. But that is a mistake. There is a common misconception about virtualization: that is, that it is simply a method for businesses to reduce their installed server base. But, as VMware put it, “Virtualization is a strategic discussion, not a point-solution like server consolidation.” Businesses which view virtualization as a point solution are likely to sit back once their servers have been consolidation, and not explore other areas in which they may be able to cut costs – and that may cost them money.

Virtualization enables not only the consolidation of servers, but also the consolidation of people and processes. And this is critically important. According to a 2006 study by IDC, management and administrative expenditure in data centers is growing three times faster than expenditure on computing equipment. So, while it is certainly important for businesses to seek out ways to reduce their hardware spending, it is even more important that those businesses seek out ways to reduce their management and administrative overhead. And virtualization enables them to do just that.

Virtualization opens the door to a radical overhaul of both people and processes. In the virtual world, servers can be provisioned and brought online in a matter of minutes – a task that would have taken several hours in the physical world. Problems with applications that would have been tied to a specific physical server can be resolved much more speedily in a virtual environment. Management duties and responsibilities can be streamlined and rationalized. Problems that would have required onsite action can be handled remotely. Backup and recovery plans will need to be completely overhauled, but the end result will be process that are much easier to both implement and maintain. Physical servers that were managed by people become virtual servers that can be managed automatically.

Accordingly, virtualization provides a business with an opportunity to do far more than simply cut its electricity bill; it also provides an opportunity to completely rethink the existing IT strategy and reorganize practices and management responsibilities in a manner is more cost-effective and introduces real agility into operations.

Businesses can further improve their virtualization effort’s return on investment by implementing solutions that can integrate with their new virtual infrastructure. Virtual appliances, for example. A virtual appliance is, basically, a physical appliance encapsulated entirely in software. Unlike physical appliances, virtual appliances can be easily evaluated and speedily deployed, moved from one physical system to another and backed up and restored. This both reduces the workload on IT and introduces additional agility and mobility into operations.

To derive the maximum benefit from virtualization, businesses need to plan carefully – not only to ensure that they maximize their savings in every possible area, but also to avoid the perils that can be associated with an incautious, headfirst dive into virtualization. Somewhat ironically, it is some of the factors that make virtualization so appealing that can lead to problems. For example, because virtual servers can be brought online so easily and speedily, virtual server sprawl is a real risk. While those virtual servers may be less costly than their physical counterparts, they nonetheless still require computer resources and still need to be managed and tracked. To avoid this, businesses need to put in place a procurement process similar to that which is used for physical servers.

There is no doubt that virtualization - and the greening trend in general - is great for the environment. But it can be great for businesses too. With careful planning, businesses can use their green IT effort to enhance their public image, increase their agility and cut their operation costs.

The most environmentally sound outcome can now be the most profitable one too. And that’s good news for everybody.

-----------------------------
BY N/A
Source：CIO.com

© 1994 - 2009 CXO Media Inc. An International Data Group(IDG) Company.

Stimulating Your Organization with Green Tech.

“There is no obstacle that can stand in the way of millions of voices calling for change.” In the week of President Obama's inauguration, his words are a noble call to us all to rise to meet the best in ourselves, many of us are wondering, “but how do I tangibly effect change in my own life? Or in my own organization?”
##CONTINUE##
President Obama built his campaign on the promise of economic stimulus and aggressive support for green technologies. Recently, he selected alternative energy supporter and Nobel-prize winning physicist Steven Chu to head the Department of Energy. He's loading his guns and locking his economic stimulus package. He's poised to begin executing his gleaming mission. Are we ready to execute ours?

The realities of the current economy are daunting. We have organizational goals to meet, and smaller budgets with which to meet them. Businesses are closing. People are losing jobs and homes. And amidst all this, our planet is increasingly evidencing the specter of radical climate change. The need for change is breathing hot in our faces, yet the challenges we face seem insurmountable.

As Confucius said, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” If so, then what tangible solutions are available, that can help us directly impact change in our organizations now? Help us effectively meet our goals while lowering our costs, and reducing our environmental impact?

The functional area where organizations can most effectively – and immediately – cut costs and positively impact environmental change, is IT. For example, using powerful, low-cost desktop virtualization tools, you can reduce your IT maintenance and support costs by up to 80% - while also reducing electricity usage and electronic waste by up to 90%.

Desktop virtualization technologies leverage the unused computing power of a single computer, creating an efficient alternative to traditional desktop-per-user computing. I've evaluated many companies hawking products in this space of late, and the one I've been most impressed with, is Userful (www.userful.com). Putting it plainly, Userful doesn't talk. They just walk. In an age where rampant over-rhetoric still rules the virtualization marketplace, those who let their demonstrated commitment to serving their customers and impacting organizational change speak for itself - speak the loudest of all.

Userful's PC sharing and virtualization technology turns one computer into 10; allowing up to 10 users to work on a single computer by simply attaching extra monitors, mice and keyboards. It delivers full PC performance including full-screen streaming video for a fraction of the cost of using a PC-per-user solution. Userful also enables users to manage and monitor their desktops through a central administrative web site, allowing them to control their desktops from a simple web-browser, and generating significant savings in administrative tools.

Because of the radical reduction in electricity and electronic waste (up to 90%), Userful's solutions are immediately eco-friendly. For example, a recent deployment in South Africa - which delivered 2,205 virtualized desktops to 105 South African schools using only 315 computers - saves the equivalent of over 4000 tonnes of CO2 emissions; the equivalent of taking 700 cars off the road. And with over 30,000 desktops successfully deployed in governments, schools, libraries, businesses and military in over 100 countries, Userful's virtualization tools are a proven market leader.

Perhaps change begins with a simple intention. And renewal begins when a simple intention becomes a single step, multiplied. With Obama's call to us all to be the change we wish to see - and his strong commitment to stimulating the economy and supporting green technologies - companies like Userful are well-prepared to help organizations who also embrace the call to change, to lead the way.

-----------------------------
BY Lisa Voldeng
Source：scoop

Voted one of the the "Top 25 Women in Technology" by ZDnet and one of the "Top 10 Media Thinkers of the 21st Century" by Nikkei Electronics, Lisa Voldeng is an industry analyst and CEO of Sugarlab Corp. http://sugar-lab.com/who_and_who_with.html.

Eco-friendly computing

IT decision makers are largely adopting eco-friendly computing that ensures significant energy conservation and thereby reduces operational costs associated with the usage of IT.
##CONTINUE##
As the world is looking at ways of fighting an imminent energy crisis and fixing ecological imbalances, adopting green practices has become a business imperative and is not merely a passing fad. What is reinforcing the need to go green is the association of green technology with improvements in business productivity and a significant reduction in energy costs, in addition to its contribution to a healthier environment for the entire ecosystem.

With the rising cost of energy and its increased consumption at every level, be it within data centers or branch offices, conservation and optimization strategies are increasingly important to overall profitability. Earlier, the adoption of certain practices was considered a choice that a responsible corporate made, but one which did not directly affects its bottom-line. Today, going green has become an integral part of conducting business that influences both the bottom line and draws keen interest from a company’s stakeholders.

Technology will be a key enabler of green initiatives—the network can become a platform to transform how global environmental challenges are managed. Concepts such as alternate and renewable sources of energy, re-cycling, e-waste management, green architecture, eco-friendly computing, green data centers, virtualization, power management and reducing the corporate carbon footprint will gain priority on corporate agendas.

With rising energy costs affecting the global economy, many industries are being compelled to explore new avenues with regard to identifying and developing energy saving alternatives and eco-friendly computing is surely one of the alternatives for organizations.

If we talk about the eco-friendly computing and its adoption is considerably lower, compared to the total addressable market. Despite the various benefits, it offers, to both the organization deploying such solutions and to the environment, large-scale skepticism and a lack of information have weighed down eco-friendly computing. However, this will change in the coming years. Even developing economies have shown optimistic signs of high adoption rates, and this trend is expected to continue, especially with the global economic downturn showing no immediate signs of recovery.

In 2008, market awareness and acceptance of eco-friendly computing made a substantial transition from social responsibility and environmental consciousness to economic impact and cost avoidance. The new measurements for eco-friendly computing included reduced power consumption that can be measured in savings that can directly add to the bottom line. New hardware and virtualization technologies, maximized with emerging software that monitors activity to manage hardware can reduce power consumption greatly. Many organizations utilized virtualization technologies to optimize their data centers and discovered the ability to cash in on obsolete hardware by coordinating with local recycling companies that will pay a small reward for reusable product, parts, and materials harvested from the retired products.

Moreover, the changing economic conditions and challenges in the latter half of 2008 have paved the way for a wave of eco-friendly computing advocates in 2009. Precise measurements of the percentage of organizations that have leveraged the hardware, software, and recycling solutions vary for this emerging trend. However, the increasing demand for energy efficient hardware, energy management software, and increased activity in recycling regulations and processes—all confirm that the level of eco-friendly computing is one of the fastest growing trends in IT.

Pallab Talukdar, Director-Enterprise Business, Dell India, said, “There is a growing awareness among Indian enterprises to recognize the need for green solutions and our own responsibility towards the planet. The issue is one of sustainability rather than costs, though our energy-efficient products help customers lower the cost of ownership and help meet the broader goal of protecting the environment. The focus on product energy efficiency will help customers decrease electricity usage and system operating cost.”

Akshay Heblikar, Director–EcoWatch, added, “There has been awareness about eco-friendly computing, but we have yet to witness its full-fledged implementation. We are still lagging behind as far as the adoption of eco-friendly computing is concerned. Right now, only 30-35% of the businesses have implemented it, but the remaining 65-70% need to respond and there lies the market opportunity.”

Awareness is catching up

"Measuring energy usage demonstrates fiscal responsibility as the cost savings for fuel and power during the lifetime of the equipment has a dramatic impact on IT investments" - John Mehrmann Vice President-Business Development, Zylog Systems

"We have saved about 30% of the total power used in our data center by the adoption of virtualization. The TCO calculations earlier did not take into consideration power costs as they were outside the purview of IT" - Arun Gupta Group CTO, Shoppers Stop

Today organizations such as Cisco, Dell, Steria India, Zylog Systems, and even retail major Shoppers Stop, have largely adopted eco-friendly computing. If we talk about Cisco, the organization is committed to a high level of environmental responsibility in its culture, business operations, products, and customer solutions. Some of the activities Cisco follows include reviewing energy efficiency concepts, enhancing and standardizing recycling programs and green cleaning, exploring transportation services and landscaping/parking for sustainability opportunities as well as incorporating LEED certification.

In addition, Cisco regularly identifies green energy purchase opportunities, deploys alternative energy sources where feasible, identify GhG (greenhouse gas) offset opportunities, and educates employees on their role in the journey to sustainability.

Similarly, Dell is actively pursuing green innovations from data center efficiency to the use of eco-friendly materials for everything from chassis design to product packaging. The company is committed to helping its customers reduce costs, increase productivity and improve energy efficiency while helping them meet their environmental goals. It does this by delivering the industry’s most energy efficient products and solutions, from the desktop to the data center.

Following the same lines, Steria accords very high importance to eco-friendly computing. A ‘Green Committee’ has been set-up at the group level. Each country has a representative in this committee to lead the work in the respective country.

Zylog Systems has been using eco-friendly computing since its operations began in 2006. Eco-friendly systems and controls were installed at its new headquarters, facility in Chennai, to maximize efficiency, utilization, and power consumption. Shiv Kumar, Executive Vice President, Zylog Systems, said, “These same principles are applied in the solutions designed for clients using our ‘Greenware Computing Framework’ customized applications to manage client systems and performance, and the platform created for the recycling industry. Our solutions help clients reduce costs, improve efficiency, and minimize hazardous electronic waste. The implementation of data deduplication and thin provisioning helped us to achieve significant ‘eco-friendliness’ with our clients’ computing environment.”

Additionally even retail giants such as Shoppers Stop have adopted many of the technologies associated with eco-friendly computing and built governance processes around the management lifecycle from procurement to disposal. For example, the company implemented storage virtualization around two years back, while server consolidation and virtualization gained momentum in 2007-08. Arun Gupta, Group CTO, Shoppers Stop, asserted, “Eco-friendly computing has gained awareness and momentum since 2008 and going into 2009 we see the positive impact being felt by organizations. It’s a journey, which continuously improves on the past. By end 2009, we will virtualize almost all our computing server infrastructure wherever possible. We have also implemented policies on end-user computing devices for efficient power management which helps us in reducing power consumption.”

Trends in eco-friendly computing

Cloud computing and green IT, arguably the most talked about trends in 2008, will hit mainstream audiences in 2009 as companies look to the pair to help cut costs and raise efficiency Emergence of next generation, zero carbon data centers, which are powered completely by renewable sources of energy such as wind and hydroelectric power plants Technology-wise, solid-state disks and storage-class memories are emerging as a viable and greener alternative for disks and tapes Deduplication and data optimization, which offer a cheaper and still greener alternative for conserving storage space, are expected to be more widely adopted in the next few years, especially by those who are unable to afford costly green IT assets

Business factors driving change

"Companies realize that 'green' business practices in additional to being environment friendly also make good business sense. Customers want their vendor companies to sell clean, green technologies" - Sumit Mukhija National Sales Manager-Data Center, Cisco India and SAARC

"While awareness exists about eco-friendly computing, we have yet to witness its full-fledged implementation and are lagging as far as the adoption of eco-friendly computing is concerned" - Akshay Heblikar Director, EcoWatch

Eco-friendly computing is all about minimizing environmental impact and getting the most out of technology—be it through enhanced efficiency, improved power management or better thermal management. It is also about using materials that have reduced environmental impact and are environment friendly. Hence, Green IT not only addresses the need to protect the environment but also has a significant business benefit.

Many organizations have also recognized the merit of publicly proclaiming corporate social responsibility with environmental protection policies.

However, the most substantial reason for the recent rise in demand for eco-friendly hardware, software, and recycling solutions is awareness of the measurable impact to the bottom line. Money saved from energy to power or cool systems goes directly to the bottom line. Recurring savings are the primary driving force for Green IT, and the ability to generate cash for trash is the incentive for participation in recycling initiatives for many companies.

Sumit Mukhija, National Sales Manager-Data Center, Cisco India and SAARC, pointed out, “Companies realize that ‘green’ business practices in additional to being environment friendly also makes good business sense. Customers want their vendor companies sell green clean technologies. The advantages of going green include improved business productivity in addition to cost savings for the company, its customers, partners and employees; and contribution to a healthier environment for the entire ecosystem.”

Meanwhile, the principal drivers behind the adoption of eco-friendly computing are what are referred as PCFE issues—Power, Cooling, Floor space and Environmental issues. The data center is one of the biggest energy consuming components of a business involving IT operations. Rising energy costs for powering and cooling the computing equipment and increasing cost of floor space for housing them is predominantly driving the adoption of energy-efficient computing hardware. The resulting energy conservation is not only beneficial to the organization adopting green IT solutions, but also cuts down on their carbon footprint and is therefore beneficial to the environment.

PCFE issues had little or no bearing on the purchase decisions regarding IT hardware until a couple of years ago but today, it is a very significant factor and its influence is growing. Besides, eco-friendly computing offers a competitive advantage by acting as a tie-breaking factor, even if it not a deal breaking factor yet, especially for organizations looking to improve their green credibility factor.

Rajdeep Sahrawat, Vice President, NASSCOM, said, “It is not surprising that the focus of most of the Green IT initiatives today is IT infrastructure cost management and will perhaps continue to be in the short-term. We expect a wider availability of solutions in the areas of Green data centers, energy efficient real estate, virtualization and energy efficient computing devices. We also foresee an increase in the entrepreneurial activity in the areas of e-wastage management. We also expect firms to increasingly focus on application portfolio rationalization and increasing the productivity of their investments in IT infrastructure—getting more bang for the buck.”

Diptarup Chakraborti, Principal Research Analyst, Gartner, said, “The awareness for eco-friendly computing is pretty high and one of the main factors that are driving its adoption is lower power consumption, which leads to cost savings that further results in better productivity and this finally leading to bigger profits for the organizations.”

Priority for IT decision-makers

In the past, IT decision-makers often faced the challenge of keeping pace with technology, speed, performance, and integration. In the current environment, they also have enormous responsibility to make contributions that can be measured with financial results.

Anirudh S Srinivasan, Research Analyst–ICT Practice, Technical Insights, Frost & Sullivan, said, “Eco-friendly computing is definitely emerging as a key priority for IT decision-makers, following increasing awareness on the need for environmentally friendly business practices as well as the need for novel solutions to overcome rising energy costs. The benefits of energy conservation notwithstanding, organizations would also have to be prepared for stricter governmental regulations on green practices that are likely to be enforced in the near future.”

“With paucity of power across the country and tariffs going up, there is a crying need to address these across the board and IT contributions are also measured within the company. As responsible citizens and corporate we all have to pitch in and make a difference,” added Gupta.

Satish Pendse, CIO, Hindustan Construction Company, sees things from a different perspective, “I don’t think it has become a priority for IT decision-makers as yet. IT decision-makers in India have higher priority issues to consider. Possibly in BPO industry or in data centre business, this may be a priority issue; may not be at other places. I see it more at a hype stage; a hype created by IT vendors for business gains.”

Apparently, many CIOs have started factoring performance per watt as a key metric while determining their IT investments for the data center, as this parameter will help in bringing focus to energy efficient data centers or even computing as a whole.

John Mehrmann, Vice President-Business Development, Zylog Systems, said, “Measuring energy usage as a key metric demonstrates fiscal responsibility—as the cost savings for fuel and power during the life of the equipment have dramatic impact and contributions to the IT investments in the data center. This is tantamount to comparing MPG (miles per gallon) or KPL (kilometer per liter) fuel efficiency before purchasing a new vehicle. It is important to measure the projected savings over the life of the product, especially with increasing fuel and energy costs. The Green IT movement is fueling the growth of the Cloud Computing Model which is based on pay per computing hour.”

Incurring good results

Eco-friendly computing is not just about being environmental friendly, but effectively managing costs. Energy efficient products, technology trends such as smart virtualization and a planned approach to data center practices are all about eco friendly computing. Eco-friendly computing not only help in delivering significant cost savings and increased flexibility in managing IT resources, but also compliance with environmental regulations for any organization.

Daman Dev Sood, Vice President-BCM and Green Activities, Steria India, said, “Server consolidation or virtualization, using newer energy-efficient computing equipment helps in reducing direct costs as well energy costs in running them. Smaller data centers with reduced number of equipment need lesser human resources also to manage them. The results are definable and measurable and will help in claiming compliance to related regulations.”

Sahrawat added, “Green IT is not only about making existing computing infrastructure energy-efficient. IT has a far more important role in making businesses Green. Through increasing their adoption of IT, firms can deconstruct their entire value chains and create new and environment-friendly ways of doing business. Intelligent transport systems, efficient logistic chains, smart buildings, virtual offices etc are some of the typical examples of how IT can help transform any firm into a Green business.”

Eco-friendly management controls can monitor cooling requirements, reducing power consumption associated with air conditioning, especially in large data centers. You can use software to route activities and maximize hardware utilization. This is especially important with sprawling infrastructure footprints that may previously have relied on multiple distributed racks of hardware running similar processes or patiently consuming energy while idling. Software can be used to direct the flow of activity much like a constable directs traffic, and can maximize the use of running equipment while allowing the support hardware time to rest at lower energy consumption levels. Such advances in technology can be applied to numerous devices, using the principles of eco-friendly computing to manage thermostats, lighting, and other energy starved devices.

B K Soni, Chairman, Eco Recycling, added, “Eco-friendly computing certainly help in reducing electricity costs meets the requirements of RoHS Guidelines of European Union which has been prepared keeping environmental benefits in forefront.”

Gupta concluded, “We have saved about 30% of the total power used in our data center by adoption of virtualization. The TCO calculations earlier did not take into consideration power costs as they were outside the purview of IT. Now they definitely make a strong business case for adoption of eco-friendly computing.”

Perhaps the best way look at the eco-friendly computing issue to do a thermal assessment of your existing IT infrastructure and data center and look at the technologies that can help you to reduce power and cooling costs.

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BY Nivedan Prakash - nivedan.prakash@expressindia.com
Source：EXPRESS Computer

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