Then, a couple of weeks back, when preparing my slides for my Cloud Computing’s Green Potential talk for the Cepis and Hepis Green IT conference in Athens, I discovered that Verdantix and the CDP had published
a new report [PDF] on the business and environmental benefits of cloud computing in France and the UK
Unfortunately, not only does the new report make the same mistakes as the original one, but it further compounds those errors with an even more fundamental one.
Let me explain.
In the key assumptions section of the report it talks about the metric tons of CO2/kWh in both the UK and French electricity grids (0.000521 tonnes and 0.000088 tonnes respectively). It uses these figures to extrapolate the savings in both France and the UK for companies migrating their applications to cloud computing.
So? You say. Sounds reasonable to me.
Well, the issue is that they didn’t do any work to identify where applications migrated to the cloud would be hosted. The implication being that UK applications migrated to the cloud, will be hosted on UK cloud infrastructure and French IT applications will be migrated to French hosted cloud infrastructure. In fact this would be a highly unusual scenario.
A quick look at where most cloud hosting takes place shows that the vast majority of it is occurring in the US, with quite a lot happening in Singapore with a lesser amount in Europe (and that split between Ireland, Germany, UK, etc. but almost none in France – Ireland is underestimated in the list as it doesn’t include Microsoft which has a significant Cloud hosting facility in Dublin which it is now expanding or Google’s Dublin facility)…
When I published my review of tech company sustainability reports a couple of weeks back, it was suggested that I should add in telco’s as well. Instead, for clarity, I decided to publish a separate review of telco sustainability reports here.
In an otherwise good report, it was disappointing to see the Chairman’s involvement was a cut & paste of an online discussion he had about sustainability on another site as opposed to something specific to the report. Also, the fact that it contained a photo of the Chair using bottled waste doesn’t speak well for his commitment to sustainability
China Mobile is the 1st mainland Chinese co. listed on the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes and the thoroughness of this report is a testament to that (in English)
Download procedure for PDF is not straightforward and commitment to produce 2009 report by May 2010 has not been met. Also the report is short on numbers and more especially targets.
1E entered the power management space about 10 years ago when they wrote NightWatchman. NightWatchman is a PC power management application which aims to reduce the energy wasted by computers not being turned off at the end of the working day.
They were well ahead of the market (remember, they started 10 years ago, long before there was any power management built into the operating system) and, in fact, they had a hard time selling NightWatchman until about three years ago.
NightWatchman is now deployed on 4 million PCs worldwide savingcustomers US $360 million in energy costs and preventing 3 million tons of CO2 emissions, according to 1E.
As an interesting aside, the name NightWatchman came from the fact that the software was originally written for a company who had a security guard going around at night turning off computers and monitors! In fact, in the first seven years it was sold as a security and patching tool (it would allow companies to shut off computers in the evening and schedule a window in the middle of the night during which the computers would power up to download any security updates and patches which had been released).
It is impossible to monitor and report on the energy used by your PC estate (and therefore the cost and CO2 emissions this causes) using only the built-in tools that come with Windows. Because of the lack of built-in monitoring of energy usage, organizations are unaware of the lack of effectiveness of Windows sleep timers.
Windows power schemes should therefore not be used as the mechanism for reliable overnight and weekend energy saving for PCs.
1E NightWatchman software saves files and closes applications and shuts down or places into sleep mode computers in the Microsoft Windows environment while preventing data loss and application errors. It also allows computers to be turned off from a central location, at a specified time, while providing extensive reports for management.
NightWatchman works with SMSWakeUp, which repowers computers in synchronization with Microsoft SMS. Administrators can boot computers from a centralized command so they can deploy security patches or new applications during off-hours.
By deploying 1E’s NightWatchman and SMSWakeUp applications to its 50,000 client computers, Dell expects to realize up to a 40 percent reduction in computer-related energy costs, which could translate into US$1.8 million in savings annually.
[AT&T] is launching the NightWatchman® PC power management solution from 1E on 310,000 desktop computers across its domestic operations to help improve energy efficiency. Powering down corporate PCs during non-work hours is expected to save AT&T more than 135 million kilowatt hours of electricity a year and eliminate 123,941 tons of carbon dioxide emissions — equivalent to the electricity required to power 14,892 homes.
1E also have a server version of their NightWatchman software – this program identifies under-utilised servers, allowing them to be either re-deployed or decommissioned – fewer servers means less energy consumed by server sprawl. NightWatchman Server also has an energy management component built-in which has the added benefit of reducing heat from servers and therefore the air conditioning load in data centers required to cool the servers.
All of this means less energy costs and fewer CO2 emissions for companies. Go 1E!
Unlike the Allfreecalls service, Yak4ever users need to register their number and have to enter a list of (up to 10) numbers they will be calling. This is for legal reasons according to Pat.
Our allfreecalls provider in Iowa today took flight due to increasing pressure from a large USA based carrier.
We are working on getting a new number up.
We expect to be back in business on Monday afternoon.Please watch the site for the new number and this blog for updates
So much for FCC rules in the USA.
I would like to personally apologize to all our customers and can assure you that we are working as fast as humanly possible to rectify this.
Unfortunately it is timed to perfection as we have issues with access to engineers over the weekend.
In a move that has stunned corporate America – newly re-branded AT&T has announced that it is to purchase Google. The price paid has not yet been released but it is anticipated to be in the hundreds of billions making this one of the largest deals ever in US corporate history.
In a statement released early this morning Irish time, Edward Whitacre, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of AT&T said:
It’s a very good deal for AT&T. The price is good, and synergies make sense. It is good news for employees as well as shareholders of both companies. Such a merger creates a strong U.S. competitor in the global telecom marketplace with the resources to substantially advance the rollout of high-speed broadband and other services and drive economic growth and job expansion.”
One of the main affects of this deal for the consumer is that AT&T’s plans for a two tiered Internet, already given tacit approval by FCC chair Kevin Martin, now look unstoppable and in fact are likely the main motivating factor behind the purchase. AT&T have also said that they will start to charge for the free wifi services which Google has been providing in San Francisco.
The Google brand will remain but Google’s two founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are, according to a joint statement, leaving the new Google to “pursue other interests” – current Google CEO Eric Schmidt will remain in place for 12 months.
