Heating your home with a data centre - Microsoft

A paper from Microsoft Research and the University of Virginia - The Data Furnace: Heating Up with Cloud Computing – has suggested a novel way to use the heat generated by data centres. It argues that servers could be sent to homes and office buildings and used as a primary heat source. It goes further in discussing the feasibility of Data Furnaces (DFs), small data centres of 40 to 400 CPUs that could serve as the main heat source for a single-family home.

While there’s much talk about how to reduce the energy needed to keep data centres cool, an alternative approach is to make use of the heat they generate. For example, there have been several proposals in the UK to build a data centre/business/residential complex so that the other facilities can use the data centre’s heat output.

In this study, though, the idea is to put mini data centres directly into buildings to provide cloud computing capabilities whilst also heating the building. The paper argues that by piggy-backing on only half of the energy needed for heating, the IT industry could double in size without increasing its carbon footprint or its load on the power grid.

The most appropriate locations would be office buildings
and apartment complexes. A mid-sized data centre could be hosted inside the building and the heat produced circulated using the existing heating systems. Networking and security infrastructure can be built around the data centre, with a dedicated operator to manage it.

But the paper also looked at the idea of Data Furnaces (DFs) to heat individual homes. DFs reduce the cost of conventional data centres by reducing the initial infrastructure costs, lowering operating costs and saving the expense to buy and operate home heating - the cloud service provider can sell DFs at the price of a furnace and charge household owners for home heating. The problems are the limitations of the existing power and network infrastructure, security – DFs would be in the most insecure environment – and the need for zero-touch management.

 

Well it’s an idea worth exploring, but there are some significant issues. For example, what happens when the buildings don’t need heat? If you also need to cool the data centre in summer then much of the gains are lost. Although I guess it could be used to heat water or for some other use instead.

In the case of home heating, what’s in it for the home owner? There will be issues of space, security, etc. that would need some incentive to make it worthwhile. The Microsoft study puts all the gains with the IT operation.

But the point really is that rather than just making data centres more energy efficient we should also be looking at the potential to make better use of the heat they generate. Unfortunately that’s not something that’s covered in the usual measures of ICT efficiency, such as the PUE, so not the basis on which data centre operators are judged. It’s another reason for a more comprehensive measure of data centre efficiency.

Cloud computing makes the UK more vulnerable to climate change impacts

The Foresight Programme from the UK’s Government Office for Science produces in-depth studies looking at major issues 20-80 years in the future. It recently published its final project report on the International Dimensions of Climate Change (2011).

The report focuses on how international climate change, i.e. outside the UK, is likely to affect the country through its global dependencies. It concludes that the impacts of climate change overseas could be as important as the direct impacts within UK shores over the next few decades.

The report covers a wide range of aspects, one of which is infrastructure and within that, communications:

• The report identifies a significant vulnerability from cloud computing and the increasing use of international data centres. As more data centres are needed and with the UK a relatively expensive location, more will be going offshore. But the report points out that data storage facilities have already suffered from flooding and cites the Vodafone data centre in Ikitelli, Turkey, which was affected by flash flooding in 2009, putting a quarter of the local network at risk.

• In August 2009 the rainfall from Typhoon Morakot caused rivers to flood in Taiwan flushing large volumes of sediment into the ocean. This led to several submarine landslides which broke at least nine communications cables 4000m down and over 300km offshore. It disrupted the Internet and telecommunications between Taiwan, China, Hong Kong and other parts of Southeast Asia.

• The study also points out that over 95% of global communications traffic is handled by just one million kilometres of undersea fibre-optic cables. Rising sea levels increase the risk of flooding of coastal cable facilities and may also affect the stability of the seabed, making cables more vulnerable. Increased rainfall leading to higher levels of river sediment being delivered to the continental shelf, may also damage cables.

 

It makes worrying reading, particularly since it doesn’t include the direct impacts to the UK of things like increased rainfall and higher sea levels. There are also some more unexpected impacts. Caroline Spelman, the UK Environment Secretary, recently warned that a warmer climate will have an impact on wireless transmission, which is directly dependent on temperature. More wireless masts may be needed to cope, but tower structures themselves may also be impacted by flooding damage to foundations and storm damage to above-ground infrastructure.

And these are all the direct impacts on ICT capabilities. It doesn’t touch on the indirect impacts on finance and business or the foreign policy and security risks.

While we are all (with the apparent exception of the US Republican Party) fighting to try and minimise climate change, we’re already too far down the road to stop some of the inevitable impacts. The impacts listed in this report are worth bearing in mind in the cloud computing/green data centre debate.

US data centres still lack effective efficiency management - Emerson

A study from Emerson Power has found that although the use of data centre infrastructure management (DCIM) is improving it still lacks the level of insight required to improve data centre availability, enhance efficiency and manage capacity.

The research is the result of a survey of more than 240 US data centre professionals from a variety of industries. The main conclusion was that lack of visibility into system utilisation, absence of documented efficiency strategies, and lack of functionality within management systems were acting as barriers to optimising data centre performance.

 

The study findings included:

• 92% of respondents had virtualised at least some of their servers, but 44% still expect the number of physical servers in their data centre to increase over the next three years.

• Only 2% believe all servers in the data centre will be virtualised in the next three years.

• 65% are using less than 70% of their computing capacity, but nevertheless 57% plan to add additional servers in the next three years.

• The most commonly used management tools in the data centre are facility monitoring (65%), equipment tracking (54%), and cooling management (53%).

• Least commonly used are tracking virtual machines (28%) and IT capacity management (27%). Less than a quarter (24%) of respondents has achieved any integration between virtual and physical management platforms.

 

It’s all a bit disappointing really. It’s clear that more companies are making use of virtualisation, but only up to a point and they’re not keeping track of it. At the same time, they are increasingly monitoring what’s going on in their data centres, but again, only in a piecemeal fashion. If anything it looks like the focus is on the non-IT energy use, e.g. cooling, rather than IT efficiency. Maybe it’s an attempt to achieve a better PUE, but there can still be wasted energy in the IT infrastructure itself – the levels of under-utilisation seem to bear that out.

What it shows is that there is still a long way to go to get real green IT in data centres. The way Blake Carlson, VP global IT markets, for the Avocent business of Emerson Network Power, put it was; “If you compare managing a data centre to flying an airplane, what we are seeing now is that organisations are no longer willing to fly without instruments—as they have done for the past twenty years—but have not quite reached the point of automation”. It seems to me that ‘automation’ is still a long way off.

US launches electronics stewardship strategy for greener IT

Last Wednesday the US government published its ‘National Strategy for Electronics Stewardship’ aimed at  making government IT more energy efficient, encouraging vendors to manufacture more recyclable devices and addressing the problems caused by e-waste.

The strategy was co-chaired by the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the General Services Administration (GSA). The recommendations in the strategy fall into four areas, summarised below.

Incentives for the design of greener electronics

• Establish multi-stakeholder groups to accelerate green electronics design standards.

• Promote consumer purchasing of green electronics.

• Promote R&D that improves the ability to recover and market valuable materials from used electronics.

• Launch electronics stewardship competitions to stimulate innovations in green product design and recycling.

• Ensure expansion of quality green electronics certification programs, including EPEAT.

Ensure that the Federal Government leads by example

• Establish a government-wide policy on used electronics that maximises reuse and ensures that all Federal electronics are processed by certified recyclers.

• Encourage electronics manufacturers to expand their product take-back programs by increasing the use of such agreements in Federal electronics purchases.

• Require recipients of former Federal equipment for reuse to use certified recyclers and follow other environmentally sound practices.

• Improve tracking of used Federal electronics throughout their lifecycle.

• More effectively direct Federal Government spending on electronics toward green products.

• Expand the use of the intergovernmental cooperative agreements to make it easier to ship used electronics to original equipment manufacturers or other entities for reuse.

• Identify markets, as well as market and financial assistance opportunities, associated with managing and recycling used electronics.

Increase safe and effective management and handling of used electronics in the US

• Launch voluntary partnerships with the electronics industry.

• Provide guidance to electronics recycling employers on health and safety.

• Establish approaches to provide public access to information on quantities and movement of used electronics within the US.

Improve safe handling of used electronics in developing countries

• Improve information on trade flows and handling of used electronics, within the limits of existing legal authorities.

• Provide technical assistance and partnerships with developing countries to better manage used electronics.

• Work with exporters to incentivise and promote the safe handling of remanufactured, recycled and used electronics.

• Regulatory changes to improve compliance with the rules governing the export of cathode ray tubes destined for reuse and recycling.

• Support ratification of the Basel Convention on the Control of Trans-boundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal.

 

It’s a comprehensive package and federal purchasing power is likely to ensure it has an impact on the market. For example, not only will the GSA join the EPEAT standard development process, but it will also work to remove all non-Energy Star and EPEAT products from approved purchasing lists, wherever possible.

Revised policy will also require Federal agencies to only dispose of electronic equipment via refurbishers or recyclers certified under an accredited scheme. The EPA and GSA will develop a set of minimum criteria for electronics recycling standards for Federal Government’s used electronics.

Many large IT suppliers to the US government will have green products available and recycling take-back schemes in place, but this policy should ensure that the green IT strategies are more comprehensive and adopted by more suppliers, not just the major players. The whole market should benefit, which is one of the aims.

Cloud computing reduces carbon emissions says a Carbon Disclosure Project study

According to a study from the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), large US companies that use cloud computing will be able to save $12.3bn in energy costs and 85.7 million metric tons of CO₂ emissions annually by 2020. The energy savings are equivalent to 200 million barrels of oil – enough to power 5.7 million cars for one year.

The study ‘Cloud Computing: The IT Solution for the 21^st Century’ was conducted by Verdantix and sponsored by AT&T. In-depth interviews were carried out with multi-national firms in various industry sectors who had adopted cloud services for at least two years. Many of those interviewed reported cost savings as a primary motivator, with anticipated cost reductions as high as 40–50%.

The study found that significant non-monetary benefits can also be achieved with cloud computing, including business process efficiency and increased organisational flexibility. As well as the energy and emissions savings, the research found that cloud computing benefits include:

• Helping users avoid capital investments in infrastructure

• Improved time-to-market

• Greater flexibility in resource use

• Avoiding the continual maintenance of excess capacity needed to handle short-term demands

• Improved automation that helps drive process efficiencies

Paul Stemmler from Citigroup (one of the companies interviewed) commented: “Carbon reduction is one driver, but not the primary driver. The primary driver is time to market.  Developers used to take 45 days to get new servers, but in the internal cloud infrastructure that we operate in our own private network, it takes just a couple of minutes.”

The study also found that companies plan to accelerate their adoption of cloud computing from 10% to 69% of their IT spend by 2020.

 

 

It’s not always clear whether the comments are about IT services delivered through a cloud or the use of an internal cloud, but either way I don’t think there are any great revelations here. Cloud computing can certainly be more efficient in delivering IT because it can make better use of resources, whether internal or external. As well as cost savings there is a lot more flexibility, which is the basis of all the other benefits mentioned.

But while cloud computing can be more efficient, and hence save power and emissions, it doesn’t mean it always is. Much depends on how much power is wasted in the data centre delivering the service (and the type of energy it uses), as well as things like virtual server sprawl in the IT infrastructure itself.

If you’re primarily looking for cost savings and flexibility then the energy and emissions savings may not be an issue. This research suggests that there will, in any case, be significant environmental gains along the way for the market as a whole. But if energy and emissions are a significant part of the reason to adopt cloud computing, then you really need to look much more closely at how the service is being delivered in order to be sure it really is greener IT.

Verismic survey suggests more company energy-saving policies are needed

PC power management software company Verismic has released the findings from a recent user survey that suggest that UK businesses are not taking advantage of staff attitudes to power consumption at work. Almost half of respondents shut down their PC at the end of the day because they want to conserve power, rather than because of any corporate policy.

The survey, which was conducted in June, received responses from 122 organisations across all sectors of UK business. Jean Richie, former services director at the University of Edinburgh Data Compute Facility, analysed the data. Findings included:

• Overall, 44% of respondents didn’t take steps to save power at work, although 49% worried about energy use at work and 91% cared about how much their employer spent on energy.

• When it comes to their PCs, 48% switched them off at the end of the working day, leaving 52% powered on.

• The survey found that 24% of employees took no measures to reduce energy use. Of those, 44% cited inconvenience – too long to start their computer in the morning – as the reason.

• The majority of UK employers were regarded by their staff as being aware of energy matters. In total, 74% were said by their employees to care about energy usage while 23% were seen as needing to care more.

Among the conclusions drawn from the responses were that the employee enthusiasm for power savings combined with limited action suggests that stricter corporate energy savings policies would be welcomed by staff, to reflect their belief in their employers’ values and to prove their commitments to Green IT.

Jean Ritchie commented, “While 91% of respondents ‘cared’ how much their employer spent on energy, 49% ‘worried’ about energy usage at work. Possibly the remainder thought that employers were taking appropriate steps to limit energy usage, or perhaps they felt there was nothing they could do to change the situation.”

 

There seem to be mixed messages here and I haven’t seen the original questions and responses to judge (and was it 44% of respondents who didn’t take steps to save power at work or was the figure 24%?). Nonetheless, the issue of whether companies are missing a trick by not instigating energy savings policies did generate discussion this morning at a round table debate I attended (hosted by Verismic) to discuss the research findings.

It was quite a wide-ranging discussion – there are lots of issues in reducing energy used and emissions generated by PCs, ranging from processor technology and thin-client computing to the use of carbon offsets.

In terms of corporate energy-saving policies, my own view is that while more companies need to have a policy in place, it’s not sufficient on its own. A green policy needs active management to drive it throughout the company – things like assigning all energy costs to the responsible departments. It also needs the support of employees. In the case of PC power management, not just in providing individual feedback but also in company comparisons with other employees or between departments. Competition is a great incentive.

PC power management certainly should be more widely used. Last year the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was working on the assumption that in a commercial environment only 36% of PCs are turned off at night and weekends. Given the financial and sustainability benefits there’s really no excuse for any commercial organisation not to have effective PC power management policies/practices/software in place.

Pharos print management adopts Preton’s green printing technology

Preton, which provides software to save ink and toner costs in printing, has formed a partnership with print management software and services company Pharos Systems. Together they are offering a bundled software package aimed at increasing the control and cost savings of corporate printing.

Pharos Blueprint Enterprise software is designed to reduce printing cost and waste through tracking, monitoring and controlling corporate printing activities. It’s been enhanced by the integration of Preton’s Pixel Optimizer technology, which maintains print quality but reduces the ink used by leaving out pixels. The reporting features from the PretonSaver solution relating to ink and toner consumption have also been incorporated into Pharos’ Blueprint software.

Keith Nickoloff, President of Pharos Systems said “Pixel Optimizer will benefit our enterprise customers with a non-intrusive method for determining maximum savings levels and reducing supplies consumption.”

 

Printing is one area of green ICT often overlooked, as I discussed here almost a year ago. There are various solutions available on the market that can reduce the use of both ink and paper and there’s much that companies can do without spending any money, such as defaulting to a greener font, printer sharing, default duplex printing, etc. But this is the first time I’ve seen a tie-in between a print management solution provider and a company with specialist ink or print saving software. There are other companies, such as Ecofont, that offers ink-saving variants for common fonts, that may well be looking for a similar tie-in.

Oracle introduces environmental accounting and reporting solutions

Oracle has introduced Environmental Accounting and Reporting and JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Environmental Accounting and Reporting modules. The release is a direct result of the company’s acquisition of Australian GHG accounting software company Ndevr, which I commented on in March.

The modules, which are available as options for the Oracle E-Business Suite Financials and JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Financial Management, enable organisations to track their greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental data against reduction targets. It’s all done within the existing ERP system and uses Oracle Business Intelligence to provide immediate feedback of environmental data to identify CO₂ and cost reduction opportunities.

The methodologies for greenhouse gas calculations apparently comply with global standards for both voluntary and legislated emissions reporting schemes. The modules also enable the production of environmental reports, for instance for the Carbon Disclosure Project, in various formats.

“Environmental considerations such as emissions reporting are part of the new-normal for all organisations, and Oracle is committed to providing comprehensive solutions to meet these requirements," said Jon Chorley, Vice President of Product Strategy, Oracle. “With the introduction of Oracle Environmental Accounting and Reporting and JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Environmental Accounting and Reporting, customers can embed this capability within in the context of their normal business operations, delivering the required results at the best total cost of ownership."

 

So there you have it – emissions reporting is part of the ‘new-normal’. It’s certainly heading that way as companies are increasingly expected to report on environmental factors. Legislation is helping, with Australia’s National Greenhouse Energy Reporting (NGER) legislation and a push for mandatory emissions reporting in the UK. But there’s also a lot of pressure emerging from investors and customers.

Oracle has pretty much followed the expected path in reaching this point. Initially slow to realise that businesses will need to count carbon, it has caught up by acquiring the capability from Ndevr, which started out as a JD Edwards consultancy and subsequently developed GHG Accounting Software for the NGER legislation and the GHG Protocol. Expect to see more market consolidation as enterprise software companies look to integrate carbon accounting capabilities, which is likely to be an ongoing process as corporate requirements become more sophisticated over time.

Software as a service to grow 21% in 2011 - Gartner

Gartner has predicted that worldwide revenue from software as a service (SaaS), which the analyst firm defines as software that is owned, delivered and managed remotely by one or more providers, will reach $12.1bn in 2011, up 20.7% from last year. By 2015 the market will be worth $21.3bn, a 16.3% compound annual growth rate (CAGR), compared with a total application market CAGR of 8.5%.

"Initial concerns about security, response time and service availability have diminished for many organisations as SaaS business and computing models have matured and adoption has become more widespread," said Tom Eid, research vice president at Gartner

The analyst firm says that over the last two years, the interest in SaaS and other off-premises models has shifted to cloud computing. Gartner estimates that at the moment three quarters of the revenue from SaaS delivery could be regarded as cloud services, and this could exceed 90% by 2015.

Customer relationship management (CRM) is the largest SaaS market, forecast to reach $3.8bn revenue in 2011, up from $3.2bn last year. Gartner expects SaaS to represent nearly a third of the CRM software market revenue in 2011. On the other hand, only around 7% of enterprise resource planning (ERP) revenue is delivered as SaaS, worth just $1.5bn in 2010, rising to $1.7bn by the end of 2011. The highest proportion is in Human Capital Management (HCM).

 

The question here is how much of this SaaS business is greener than the in-house alternative. Theoretically, the provider’s data centres should be more efficient, thanks to economies of scale. But there are also lots of small companies offering SaaS solutions, including many of the carbon emissions management software suppliers. They may have relatively small data centres or themselves use a hosted data centre environment from which to offer the service.

So whether or not SaaS is more carbon-efficient depends on individual circumstances, including whether it has actually made any difference to the user’s in-house ICT. A company running under-utilised ICT infrastructure might be greener keeping a solution on-premises rather than going down the SaaS route. There’s no simple answer if the aim is to be greener.

ITU Symposium attendees push green IT at COP-17

Attendees at the ITU Symposium on ICTs, the Environment and Climate Change in Ghana earlier this month have renewed calls for global leaders to recognise the power of ICT to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change.

The purpose of the Symposium was to further discuss using ICT to monitor climate change and to mitigate and adapt to its effects, and hence identify future requirements for ITU’s work. It particularly focused on Africa and the needs of developing countries and the topics included mitigation and adaptation to climate change, e-waste, disaster planning, cost-effective ICT technologies, challenges and opportunities in the transition to a green and resource efficient economy.

An outcome document from the Symposium asks that the ITU, as the UN agency specialising in ICT, lead a coalition urging delegates at the next UN Climate Change Conference (COP-17) in South Africa later this year to address the enormous potential of ICT to cut emissions across all sectors. It also asks for recognition of the value of ICT in monitoring deforestation, crop patterns and other environmental phenomena.

The belief is that specific mention of ICT in the COP-17 negotiations, along with the adoption of a methodology for measuring the carbon footprint of ICT equipment and its inclusion in National Adaptation/Mitigation Plans, would provide an incentive to the ICT industry to invest in developing countries, help reduce the digital divide, and at the same time help fight climate change.

Dr Hamadoun Touré, Secretary General of the ITU, stressed the organisation’s commitment to providing the technical know-how to mitigate and adapt to climate change. “It is now clear to most observers that ICTs have a very important role to play here. Recognition of this at the international level will provide countries with a solid argument to roll out climate change strategies with a strong ICT element,” he said.

 

There does still seem to be a reluctance amongst governments to accept the role of ICT as a green enabler, but there is now plenty of research to suggest that technology is going to be a major factor if national carbon reduction targets are going to be achieved.

There is still an entrenched government mindset that often sees investment in ICT as non-essential and frequently wasted through failed projects. This is particularly true in the UK, where the cost of public-private partnership and private finance initiatives have resulted in the public sector paying well over the odds for ICT projects.

So, when they’re trying to reduce a national deficit, investing in large-scale ICT projects is very low on the list of priorities. But it’s only going to get more urgent as time passes and emissions targets loom. One thing the government has (hopefully) learnt is that rushing the decisions only makes a project more likely to fail. On the other hand, it’s hard to see how you ever make government ICT procurement truly effective.

‘Securing a clean energy future’ in Australia

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has announced the Australian Government’s plan for tackling climate change, which goes under the title of ‘Securing a clean energy future’. Under the plan the country is expected to cut 159 million tonnes of CO₂ emissions a year by 2020 – ‘the equivalent of taking over 45 million cars off the road’ (although there are only about 13 million cars in Australia). The Government is committing to cut pollution to 80% per cent below 2000 levels by 2050.

The plan includes a carbon tax. The initial price has been fixed at AUS$23 (US$24.4, £15.4) per ton on July 1, 2012, with a rise of 2.5% a year in real terms until July 1, 2015. After that it will move to an emissions trading scheme as the number of permits issued by the Government each year will be capped and the price set by the market.

Industry will get a helping hand with a Jobs and Competitiveness Program that will provide AUS$9.2bn assistance for companies that produce a lot of carbon pollution but who can’t easily pass on the costs. There will also be a AUS$1.2bn Clean Technology Program to help directly improve energy efficiency in manufacturing industries.

While the carbon tax itself is expected to encourage investment in renewal energy, another AUS$13bn will be invested in clean energy projects. This will come via a AUS$10bn new commercially-oriented Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) to drive innovation, and AUS$3.2bn invested in an Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) to coordinate existing grant funding programs for research and development. The plan is that large scale renewable electricity generation will be 18 times its current size by 2050, comprising around 40% of electricity generation by that time.

The Government will also create an independent body, the Climate Change Authority, which will track Australia’s pollution levels and provide independent advice to the Government on the performance of the carbon price and other initiatives.

But it remains to be seen whether the legislation gets through. The coalition government has a one-seat majority in the lower house, the opposition is strongly against the measures and previous attempts at legislation have failed.

 

Well the proposed legislation has caused some consternation in Australia, with protests that it will somehow destroy the Australian way of life (as if climate change isn’t doing that already). But this does seem to be a comprehensive plan and addresses concerns. The expectation is that “The prices of most household purchases will barely be affected by the carbon price - for almost everything other than electricity and gas, the estimated price impact is likely to be less than 1%. Taking electricity and gas into account, the overall impact on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is expected to be around 0.7% in 2012-13”. That’s something that’s going to be difficult to control, but households will be helped with tax cuts, higher family payments and increases in pensions and benefits to help meet the costs passed through by some businesses.

It’s a real attempt to address the impact of climate change on Australia. Compare and contrast with the US, where Tea Party Republicans have been pushing hard to repeal the 2007 law which simply phases out inefficient incandescent bulbs, even though it is expected to reduce household energy costs by 7%. Fortunately the Republicans failed to achieve the two-thirds vote they needed to stop the law (introduced by a Republican president - George Bush!).

Getting back to the green IT aspect, there will be a need to count and trade carbon if and when the Australian tax comes into effect. The only way to do that effectively is through various software solutions available on market. There will be a limited number of companies directly impacted by the legislation – mostly high carbon emitters – but it’s bound to encourage other organisations to follow suit. The renewable energy push will also be a stimulus for those technology companies involved in the management and distribution of power from new renewable energy sources, itself a growing market that a number of major IT companies are pushing into.

1E targets the German market

Energy efficiency software company 1E, best known for its NightWatchman PC power management product, has opened an office in Frankfurt to serve Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Heading up the operation is Radu Gheorghievici-Pohl, who has 30 years’ experience in the enterprise software industry, including working for VMware, Amdocs and Microstrategy. All of 1E’s suite of efficient IT solutions will be immediately available through the new office.

1E sees a particular opportunity in the German region. The press release points out that in April the German Corporate Energy Efficiency Initiative (DENEFF) said that €165m and 1.1 terawatt hours (TWh) of savings could be realised every year through energy efficient IT. The government has allocated €25m to ‘IT Goes Green’ initiatives.

It also comes on the back of the recent cancellation of Germany’s nuclear programme. Deutsche Bank analysts estimate that an extra 370 million tonnes of CO₂  will be released between now and 2020 as Germany looks for alternative energy sources, most of which will be coal-based in the short-term. And that’s on top of Germany’s commitment to reduce national carbon emissions by 40% by 2020.

 

It’s a good time to be in the German green IT market, but 1E is not going to have it all its own way. Most of its main power management rivals already have at least some dedicated German presence, be it in-house or through a partner. There is also a small local solution provider in the form of Enviprot (founded by an ex-Sybase European Marketing Manager) that sells at very low prices to the public sector, which must be a prime target sector for 1E.

On the other hand, 1E is not just a one-trick pony. The company now has a range of software aimed at making ICT operations more energy efficient, so it has a stronger base to work from than most of its rivals.

Opower home energy management software comes to the UK

In its first move outside of the US, home energy management (HEM) software company Opower is partnering with UK energy supplier First Utility to supply Opower’s software to First Utility’s smart meter customers.

The software is designed to help energy customers find ways to save on their bills and is apparently the first of its kind in the UK. Opower’s software translates First Utility’s smart meter data into a range of tools, including reports that show comparative consumption together with an analysis of household energy usage. The information can be accessed via mailed reports, web portal, email and SMS messages, as well as social media.

The Opower/First Utility tie-in has already received some coverage through its mentions in Behaviour Change and Energy Use. This is the UK Cabinet Office, Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), and Department for Communities and Local Government report just released. It’s a review of the potential for information obtained via smart meters to help reduce energy bills. (It goes some way to addressing the smart meter roll-out criticisms from the National Audit Office which I mentioned a couple of weeks ago). 

It seems that the UK Cabinet Office’s spookly named ‘Behavioural Insights Team’ is working with Opower and First Utility to examine the potential for comparative consumption and other information to help UK consumers with smart meters to save energy.

 

This is where we are at with smart meters. It’s increasingly clear that the meters alone are not going to have a significant impact on consumer energy use – it needs much more information and support to be effective. In fact I would argue that smart meters will never really come into their own until we have smart grids in place. Only then will consumers be able to more actively participate in when they use energy, by choosing time-of-day tariffs, for example.

But this looks like a good move for both companies and puts them at the centre of smart meter discussions in the UK. It’s also interesting to note that First Utility was a Google partner for the now defunct PowerMeter. The more sophisticated approach of Opower and the trials by the UK government and utilities may go some way to explaining why Google has withdrawn from the market (for the time being). It’s a more complicated and involved aspect of green ICT than it initially seemed.

Microsoft Office in the cloud goes live

In case you missed it, last week Microsoft’s Office 365 – Office in the cloud - went live in 40 markets after six months as a beta version. Office 365 includes Office, SharePoint Online (collaboration software), Exchange Online (email) and Lync Online (unified communications) in a cloud service available through a monthly subscription.

At the launch more than 20 service providers worldwide announced that they will sell Office 365 with their own services for small and midsize businesses. Among others, Bell Canada, Intuit, NTT Communications, Telefonica, Telstra and Vodafone all plan to offer the service to their customers this year.

Office 365 is apparently available in a range of service plans for businesses of all sizes with monthly prices range from $2 to $27 per user per month. While the Office products are at the heart of the cloud service the connect to Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint and Lync means they also offer communication and collaboration.

 

There’s lots of discussion about whether cloud computing in general is any greener than in-house solutions and the answer is that it depends on who’s providing it. Large IT companies tend to have more modern, energy efficient data centres than are available to in-house operations.

In the case of Microsoft, the company produced some research on the subject, which I reported on here.

 

The bottom line from the research was that, for large deployments, Microsoft’s cloud solutions (Exchange, SharePoint and Dynamics CRM were the examples tested) can reduce energy use and carbon emissions by more than 30%. For small deployments, energy use and emissions can be reduced by more than 90%.

The report, called Cloud Computing and Sustainability: The Environmental Benefits of Moving to the Cloud, pointed out the various factors that make cloud computing more energy efficient and ended with the comment; “Note that, because Microsoft applications and data centres were the basis of the study, the specific carbon reductions from running other applications from other software providers on a cloud model may vary. However, the trends shown here are instructive and may be used as directional indicators for decision makers in corporate IT and sustainability leadership positions when considering a switch to cloud computing with any provider”.

So reducing carbon emissions could be a justification for using cloud services from Microsoft (or another provider), but then there are also considerations of security, availability, etc. to take into consideration

Cloud Readiness Index maps progress in Asia

The Asia Cloud Computing Association is launching a ‘Cloud Readiness Index’ designed to track progress towards cloud computing-based infrastructures and services. The idea is that by mapping the criteria required for successful implementation and uptake, the association can identify potential bottlenecks that could slow adoption and “threaten Asia's digital future”.

According to Bernie Trudel, Chairman of the Asia Cloud Computing Association and Cloud CTO at Cisco APAC, the new index will be particularly relevant to governments. "National public policy makers are starting to understand the benefits of this new IT delivery model and how it can make their countries more competitive. However, they might not necessarily yet understand the issues that underpin cloud computing, or the impact that policy decisions, such as data privacy or intellectual property protection, can have on the success or otherwise of cloud computing," said Trudel.

The Index will analyse 10 key attributes critical to the deployment:

• Regulatory conditions
• International connectivity
• Data protection policy
• Broadband quality
• Government prioritization
• Power grid quality
• Internet filtering
• Business efficiency index
• Global risk
• ICT development

The attributes will be assessed across 14 countries; China, Australia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.

 

The press release says that worldwide spending on cloud services is expected to reach US$150bn by 2014 and spending on cloud computing is predicted to reach 30-40% of IT budgets by 2013. It also quotes figures from The Centre for Economics and Business Research that cloud computing will create 2.3 million new jobs across Europe's top five economies between 2010-2015.

The Asia Cloud Computing Association clearly wants to see a slice of that action for the industry in Asia, but John Galligan, Vice Chairman of the working group and Regional Director, Internet Policy at Microsoft, points out that “Countries with the most insightful, transparent and fair regulatory environments will be the most successful in capitalising on this new opportunity".

Basically, it’s largely down to getting the infrastructure and regulatory environment in place to allow cloud computing to take off, and that’s largely down to governments. The Cloud Readiness Index is a means to identify shortcomings and apply pressure.

Logica and SAP partner to bid for the data management role in the UK’s smart meter roll-out

Logica and SAP have decided to jointly bid to become the provider of the central data management capability in the UK’s Smart Metering Implementation Programme. It’s one part of the role of Data and Communications Company (DCC) as defined by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) in the UK’s Smart Metering Implementation Programme Prospectus.

The DCC role is central to the use of smart meters. It essentially involves gathering the meter readings and getting the data back to the suppliers. The DCC is responsible for the effective operation of the energy market, as well as minimising barriers to competition and ensuring that consumers can benefit from new services that give them control of their spend on energy.

Logica has been involved in these sorts of roles in energy markets since the National Grid was first privatised. The company set up and ran (for ten years) the UK's New Electricity Trading Agreements (NETA), which replaced the previous wholesale electricity market mechanism. SAP also has in-depth experience and expertise in the sector as a leading supplier of business software solutions to utilities. This is an exclusive partnership for this contract only. Neither party will work with any other bidder.

Last year the Government published its proposals for the delivery of electricity and gas smart metering in Great Britain for consultation and in March published its conclusions. The process has now entered the ‘foundation stage’, during which the Government will work with industry, consumer groups and other stakeholders to ensure all the necessary groundwork is done before the mass rollout. All the systems required to start the rollout will be built and tested and the DCC established during the foundation stage. The DCC needs to be up and running before the mass rollout, due to start in early 2014 and to be completed in 2019.

There are still details to be agreed, so the DCC contract value that Logica and SAP will be bidding for will not be known for some time, but it is expected to include both creating the solution and running the service and will be worth in excess of £100m. Logica/SAP have shown their hand at this stage in order to be involved in the discussions and trials.

The full DCC will cover both communications and data capabilities, but the SAP/Logica agreement is just for the data element – there will be separate procurement for the two aspects.  According to Tara McGeehan, Director of Utilities at Logica, the company does not want to take on the communications element itself because of the potential uncertainty and future developments in communications technology. Logica is talking to all the main communications companies, though.

There are already two partnerships/consortiums lined up to bid for the DCC role (both of which I have reported on); IBM/Cable & Wireless, and BT/Arqiva/Detica (through a joint operation called SmartReach).

 

There may be reservations in some quarters about the UK’s smart grid rollout (see the National Audit Office comments last week) but the plan is pretty much in place and at this stage it looks like only details will change.

There’s going to be fierce competition for the DCC role – it’s as much about the central position in the smart meter rollout and the doors that might open in the future as it is about the specific (and by no means inconsiderable) contract value.

Outdated management thinking is preventing teleworking in the US - Citrix

A report from the Telework Research Network, sponsored by Citrix, has some interesting findings on the State of Telework in the US (which is the name of the free report – available here)

Key findings include:

• Working from home, telecommuting and flexible working is still a perk rather than an accepted business practice.

• A typical ‘workshifter’ is 49 years old, college educated and in a management, senior employee or professional role.

• More than three quarters of employees working from home earn over $65,000 per year, putting them in the upper 80 percentile of all employees.

• 64 million US employees hold jobs that could be done at home at least part of the time, yet fewer than three million get the chance (despite the fact that half of all non-teleworkers are interested in working from home).

• In fact 37% of non-teleworkers would take a pay cut to be able to have more independence in where and how they work.

• The study found no correlation between cities with the most congestion or longest commute times and number of workshifters.

 

There are some real differences here between the US and the UK. Citrix points out that in the UK 5.6% of the population teleworks regularly, compared to just 2.3% in the US. Much of that is to do with travel time, cost and reliability in the UK, although reducing the emissions from transport is increasingly being targeted by corporate CSR departments, so it kills two birds with one stone (as much green ICT does). And once set up, teleworking tends to get used more and more as the savings and advantages become apparent.

Citrix also points out that companies will ultimately have little choice but to implement virtual work practices more widely. The flexibility is a business advantage as well as offering a better work-life balance. Most of us already have, and use, much of the communications and collaboration technology to enable us to work anytime, anywhere, so it seems strange for employers to stand in the way of teleworking. As Citrix puts it ‘Outdated management thinking is often the only serious obstacle to more flexible and virtual work practices’.

Particularly since it saves money and helps save the planet.

GreenRoad enhances its fleet monitoring solution for more fuel savings

GreenRoad, which developed the GreenRoad 360 solution to monitors vehicle and driver performance, has added new functionality to the software. Idling Heat Maps give fleet managers an overview of where vehicles are left idling, for instance to warm up a bus on a cold morning. Based on the information, policies can be customised to specific fleet vehicles and operations or locations.

GreenRoad’s technology measures a wide range of driving events such as speed handling, cornering, land handling, braking and acceleration. The data provides the driver with immediate feedback and is also sent back to the GreenRoad servers, where a web site provides real-time reports and analysis.  Managers and drivers can use the information to assess how they are driving, how they can improve their driving habits and to analyse risk.

GreenRoad says that customers typically achieve up to 10% savings in fuel consumption and have seen up to an additional 5% savings through proactive idling management.

Another enhancement to the solution is the ability to automatically capture incidents where a vehicle is travelling above the posted speed limit. GreenRoad has also included a set of application program interfaces for integration with other systems, including live data delivery such as GPS data and other fleet administration automation interfaces. It’s aimed at helping the move of fleet operations solutions to a cloud computing environments.

 

It sounds a bit Big Brotherish, with driver actions pretty much continually monitored, but the idea is that it saves fuel and increases safety. I would think it needs to be carefully ‘sold’ to drivers, but systems like this certainly have the potential to make a significant impact on fuel emissions – although the 10% gain in fuel consumption is not enough on its own to save the world.

GreenRoad seems to be doing it right, with over 70,000 fleet drivers apparently using the service, which has logged over three billion driver miles. The US company (with both a US and European HQ) has blue chip customers including First Group, the UK’s largest bus and rail operator company, logistics company Ryder, Iron Mountain, MasTec, DuPre Logistics, Stagecoach, CityLink and Quickway Carriers. It’s fast becoming a green IT success story that must be good news for the company’s backers; DAG Ventures, Benchmark Capital, Virgin Green Fund, Amadeus Capital Partners and Balderton Capital.

Hohm goes the way of PowerMeter

Microsoft announced last Thursday that it would be discontinuing its Hohm online home energy management (HEM) application service from next May ‘due to the slow overall market adoption of the service’. The move came just three days after Google had announced it was pulling the plug on PowerMeter, its home electricity monitoring tool, in September because it ‘didn’t catch on the way we would have hoped’.

In its Hohm blog, Microsoft said that the feedback had been good for the beta period, but because of slow adoption the company would be focusing on products and solutions ‘more capable of supporting long-standing growth within this evolving market’. (It’s not clear what’s happening with Microsoft’s collaboration with Ford to implement Hohm in the car company’s electric vehicles).

The blog went on to describe Microsoft’s various other activities in the area, including:

• Working with partners in the IT industry to accelerate the development of energy-smart solutions for cities.

• Microsoft’s Smart Energy Reference Architecture (SERA), which helps utilities develop an ecosystem where smart devices can plug into the grid with common standards and an interoperability framework.

• Joulemeter, which measures the energy usage of servers, desktops, laptops, virtual machines and even individual pieces of software.  

• A focus on cloud computing as a means to save energy.

 

It’s curious that the two announcements – PowerMeter and Hohm - were so close together, perhaps they were each waiting for the other to break first.

It’s true that there are limited opportunities in directly addressing the HEM market at the moment. The best opportunities for companies like Google and Microsoft are going to be in helping utilities achieve their smart grid and smart meter ambitions. It probably won’t be clear just what the HEM market will look like until that process is well under way.

For the moment the HEM winners are likely to be companies that offer a broad, integrated hardware and software solution. For example, UK company AlertMe uses a Home Area Network (HAN) and cloud-based platform to let users monitor and control energy use, heating, solar PV, security and other devices and services online and via smart phones. (And the company’s recently-appointed new Chairman is the ex head of CSC’s European business).

But that’s not to say that Google and Microsoft won’t be back. The potential of HEM and HANs and all that entails (possibly including the ‘Internet of Things’) is too big an area of green ICT for these companies to ignore. Give it two or three years and they’ll be back, in one form or another, either through their own solutions or from the acquisition of today’s HEM/HAN start-ups.

CRC simplification proposals published

The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) in the UK has published its expected proposals for the simplification of the UK’s CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme. The CRC was the revenue-neutral, cap-and-trade carbon reduction scheme introduced by the last government. The present administration has already said that the revenue will not now be circulated back to the participants, making it effectively a carbon tax.

DECC maintains that the new CRC scheme will be simpler, easier to comply with, more flexible in how businesses take part and there will be less overlap between the CRC and other government climate policies. Among the simplifications are:

• Reduce the number of fuels covered by the scheme from 29 down to four

• Move to fixed price allowance sales. Rather than cap-and-trade with annual auctions, there could be two sales per year where the price of allowances is fixed.

• Simplify the organisational rules by abolishing the need for large businesses to participate in groups which do not reflect their natural structure.

• Make the qualification an easier, one-stage process.

• Reduce the overlap with other schemes - any CCA (Climate Change Agreement) or EU ETS (Emissions Trading Scheme) site would be exempt.

The full details are here. The next step is that the main elements will be included in formal Government proposals in early 2012. Before coming up with draft legislation there will be further analyse of participant data collected in July 2011 to ensure that the simplification proposals ‘do not undermine the environmental or fiscal effectiveness of the CRC scheme’.

 

Well it’s certainly not a carbon-neutral, cap-and-trade scheme any more. I suspect there’s going to be a lot of comment (to put it mildly) about the proposals from various quarters and doubt we will see new legislation before 2013, leaving a great deal of uncertainty in the meantime.

This time round Intellect may have more to say about the impact on the ICT industry, since the legislation does hit the data centre sector somewhat unfairly (the organisation was a bit slow of the mark when the scheme was first under discussion). It also means a rethink for all those companies offering software to help address the CRC requirements. Arguably it makes the case for the use of a broader energy/carbon tracking solution, rather than one aimed at specific legislation.

National Audit Office has criticised the UK smart meter roll-out plans

The National Audit Office (NAO), the UK government department that scrutinises public spending on behalf of Parliament, has published a report - Preparations for the roll-out of smart meters – that highlights the uncertainties of consumer benefits, because of lack of evidence. The NAO believes the risk is compounded by potential cost increases, the challenges of delivering a fit-for-purpose and secure system and the risk that suppliers do not pass on all the savings to their customers.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has estimated that installing smart electricity and gas meters will cost £11.3bn and deliver economic benefits of £18.6bn between 2011 and 2030, so the net benefit would be worth £7.3bn. But among the figures is the fact that smart meters will save the average customer just £23 a year by 2020, which, given the NAO’s reservations, has been the focus for some in criticising this level of public expenditure.

 

The NOA is right to ask for more evidence of the smart meter benefits and also in asking DECC to make sure that supplier savings are passed on to customers. But smart meters (with smart grids) bring a lot of benefits that are difficult to quantify. Much of it was laid out in DECC’s original roll-out proposals.

Benefits include:

• Consumers will have more visibility and control of their energy consumption and spending. Real-time information will give the power to change behaviour, saving energy and carbon emissions.

• Customers will be able to switch more easily between suppliers and benefit from more innovative energy tariffs, including time-of-use tariffs that support the shift of energy consumption to lower-cost time periods.

• Suppliers will be able to use consumption data to provide better energy products and services.

• The smart metering system will enable simplified and improved energy industry processes, including switching supplier, moving home, bill queries, debt management and tariff changes. There will be no more estimated bills and site visits to read meters and there will be improvements in the ability to detect electricity outages or potential fraud.

• Smart metering will enable the energy industry to manage the generation and distribution system more cost effectively. This is a major point. If renewable energy is going to become a significant contributor to the grid then demand has to be smoothed out, which means time-of-use tariffs, i.e. cheaper electricity at off-peak times and other incentives to manage demand.

• The ability to choose tariffs will also be an increasing factor in ownership of electric vehicles. The ability to charge cars at home using a low-cost/low-carbon tariff is likely to be a real incentive while also helping smooth out power distribution.

• Smart metering data will itself help network operators make informed decisions on investment in smart grids.

So, as DECC put it: “The rollout of smart meters will play an important role in Great Britain’s transition to a low-carbon economy, and help us meet some of the long-term challenges we face in ensuring an affordable, secure and sustainable energy supply.”

The trouble is that its not always possible to quantify the benefits, particularly since some rely on the future provision of smarter grids. That’s the real problem – the benefits of smart meters and smart grids really go hand-in-hand.