Little Miss Enviro Geek : Desktop strategy

Some personal news...

biwirth — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 03:24:00 GMT

Hello Dear Blog Readers,

(hmmm....that kinda sounds like the beginning of one of those SPAM emails)

I wanted to let you all know I am moving on from Microsoft and shall no longer be blogging here. I'll be moving an archive of these posts to my website http://www.greenitstrategy.com and shall continue blogging there on Green IT.

So what will I be doing now?

Well, I have decided to take some time off, write a book and maybe look into starting my own business. Regardless, you can always catch me through my website and please do feel free to visit me there.

Thank you to everyone who contacted me with their Green IT questions over the past two years and gave me feedback. I really appreciate your support and good luck with your own Green IT initiatives.

Kind Regards,

Bianca AKA Little Miss Enviro Geek

New Microsoft Services for Green IT

biwirth — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 23:05:24 GMT

I had been speaking with a couple of the local Microsoft Consulting guys recently about their endeavours to setup services around Green IT, and then found globally we already offer a couple of services in this space:

Microsoft Architecture & Planning Services - focus on reducing costs, increasing IT control & management and reducing environmental impact through the development of a Sustainable Technology Roadmap, and assessment of server consolidation, desktop efficiency, business intelligence capability and unified communications. Check out the brochure HERE.
Sustainable IT Briefing - wherever there is a Microsoft Technology Center (MTC) there is a team who can run a one-day briefing workshop covering areas such as: how Windows technologies provide built-in energy efficiency, how to optimise resources using System Center & Virtualisation technologies, identification of opportunities to reduce carbon through unified communications, how BI can provide a platform for sustainability performance management, and how Software + Services can provide workload transference opportunities. The complete brochure is HERE.

If you are based in Australia, we don't have an MTC unfortunately however there are a couple of us here (including me) who can run a Green IT session for you as part of an Executive Briefing in our Sydney-based Executive Briefing Centre (EBC). If you are interested in this, contact your local Account Manager and ask them if you can setup an executive briefing with Green IT as one of the topics (there are lots of other topics we can cover in these types of sessions as well - we have a catalogue to choose from).

Also, a quickun' today: Microsoft Australia has recently launched their Environment site - check it out at www.microsoft.com/australia/environment.

Get the Facts on Green IT

biwirth — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 20:36:58 GMT

I thought while I was sitting here in my pyjamas eating breakfast this morning I'd post a little facts blog (yes I have no life - or rather my life is so full of stuff I don't have time to blog any other time - so in pyjamas it is). Below are the top 5 facts per topic area - this great list was recently put together by our E&S team in corp...

The Products:

1. Windows Vista: According to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) customers can save about $50 each year for every desktop computer equipped with the new software. Used widely, new power management tools in the Vista operating system could shave $500 million off the nation's energy bill and eliminate 3 million tons of global warming pollution.

2. Windows Server 2008: 10% more efficient on the same workload than previous versions

3. Virtualization: Virtualization can reduce energy use by up to 90%

4. Unified Communications: According to Forrester, UC can reduce travel from 10-30%

5. MS Data Centers: current data centers are 50% more efficient than those built 3 years ago.

Microsoft themselves:

1. Commuting: With this expansion of the Connectors, estimates suggest that Microsoft will eliminate annually 6,730,020 employee car miles and 6,387,550 pounds (or 3,194 tons) of carbon emissions.

2. Microsoft reduced its waste by 50% by moving to compostables. Microsoft becomes first US corporate campus to achieve Green Restaurant Certification for its cafeterias

3. New Microsoft buildings consume greater than 20 percent less energy than existing traditional buildings

4. Through the Microsoft Authorized Refurbisher programs, Microsoft provides low-cost software licenses to help extend the life of over 500,000 computers per year

5. Microsoft is a board member of Climate Savers Computing Initiative along with World Wildlife Fund, Intel, Hewlett-Packard and other software and IT companies, is committed to reducing the IT industry's carbon footprint by over 50 million tons a year

Our Customers:

1. Volvo: "Volvo IT estimates that just the Microsoft collaboration products alone save enough travel to eliminate 900 tons of carbon-dioxide emissions per month, and use of those tools is gradually increasing.

2. Continental: saved $65/PC/Year or 2Milliion a year by deploying vista with System Center

3. City of Porto: the city saved 504 reams of paper (11 trees per year) by moving their paper based cabinet meetings online.

4. The City of Miami can "expect to save $80,000 in power costs in the first year, with that number increasing to $190,000 by year four. Not only will this save us money, but it also will enable the city to do its part to reduce the impact on the environment-with the resulting power savings equivalent to a 355-ton reduction in carbon dioxide emissions in the first year alone."

5. Kentucky Department of Education: Reduce its physical server holdings by 60 percent (approximately 120 servers); Reduce data center space by 50 percent ;Reduce power usage by 25 percent

The Market:

1. The overall market for green IT services will peak at $4.8 billion in 2013, according to a new Forrester report, The Dawn of Green IT Services. It's a $500 million market for 2008, InfoWorld reports, but Forrester expects that spending on green IT services among enterprise users will grow by 60 percent annually over the next five years.

2. Servers typically run at far below their capacity and on average only utilize 5 to 15 percent of the actual CPU capabilities

3. A recent PC Pro Labs study, showed that 25% leave their computers running all weekend and 65% running a screen saver rather than sleep.

4. Energy costs are expected to be over 50% of an IT budget for a typical data center

5. According to The Climate Group in their Smart 2020 report, transformation in the way people and businesses use technology could reduce annual man-made global emissions by 15% by 2020 and deliver energy efficiency savings to global businesses of over $800 billion.

For more information, go to www.microsoft.com/environment.

CDs bogging down your IT Dept? Go Digital...

biwirth — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 23:32:00 GMT

Even if you aren’t interested in the so-called concept of ‘saving the planet’, there is one thing you can do to help your IT department better manage your Microsoft software repository. When I was in an internal IT department we seemed to experience what I called "CD/DVD FEAST or FAMINE"! We would either receive a ‘tonne’ of CDs and end up throwing most out or have to find somewhere to store them (in our already cramped space!); or alternately we would spend ages trying to FIND a CD with the right software and the right volume licensing key!

To help with both the environmental and operational issues, Microsoft has introduced the concept of ‘Digital by Choice’ – which is essentially opting to have your Microsoft software downloadable via the central licensing site rather than sent out via CD/DVD, once your purchase order is processed by your LAR. This is pretty efficient as you can give access to those that require access to the software, and restrict it from those that don’t, and you get the software faster!

This program is available for any customer on a volume licensing program but for the meantime is limited to a set of pilot countries until 22nd August: US, Canada, UK, Norway, Sweden, Singapore and Australia. However for those of you outside these countries the program will be available from September - not too long to wait. Today there are very few Australian’s on this program (c’mon Aussies!).

To enable the program you just need to click on the 'Digital By Choice' icon in your Volume Licensing website:

Step 1...Click on the 'Digital By Choice' logo

Step 2... Click the link 'Join Digital by Choice NOW' to email your details to the licensing team

And if you ever want to disable the program, you can opt out at any time and start receiving CD/DVDs again.

Green IT Video: Interview with Microsoft IT Manager Australia

biwirth — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 03:25:31 GMT

In May I interviewed Jonathan Lewis, Microsoft Field IT Manager in Australia on his views of Environmentally Sustainable IT and what Microsoft Australia is doing in this space.

LMEG interviews Jonathan Lewis, Field IT Manager, Microsoft Australia, May 2008

Comprehensive list of Vista Power Management resources...

biwirth — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 03:58:00 GMT

There is a tonne of information available on Vista power management, from whitepapers to videos to blog posts. I’ve tried to document a list of the best here:

· Optimising Windows Vista for power efficiency - this white paper details the various scenarios and configurations you can enable, including detailed INF configurations for building SOEs. Focuses a bit on system builders but any SOE specialist will find this valuable.

· Windows Vista Energy Conservation – a good broad overview of the features in Windows Vista that help conserve energy use. Includes some test figures for how much power a PC consumes and formulas for how you can calculate energy savings, and the subsequent impact on carbon emissions.

· Application Power Management Best Practices in Windows Vista – details application event management and best practices on how application developers on handling low power states and designing for extending battery life.

· ACPI / Power Management – Architecture and Driver support – a great website that lists a number of resources to help you better understand and develop on a Windows platform for greater energy efficiency.

· Power Management with Windows Vista Best Practices PowerPoint slides – a great 2 page slide deck from Microsoft IT that could be used to educate internal users at your organisation.

· Power Management in Windows Vista – a slide deck from WinHEC 2006 by Pat Stemen in the Windows Platform Architecture Group, outlining the goals of Vista power management, and providing an overview of reliable sleep transitions, modes, power configuration using powercfg, and broad best practices.

· Processor Power Management in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 – concepts, policies and tools to use for power management.

· Active State Power Management in Windows Vista – a brief whitepaper covering the effect of bus architecture on power consumption, as well as specifications.

· New Categories in Power Management – a 1 paragraph overview of the new Vista power management policies.

Plus there are some great blog entries out there providing advice in this space:

· Power Management in Windows Vista video - http://blogs.technet.com/tnspot/archive/2007/06/28/spotlight-video-on-demand-pat-stemen-power-management-in-windows-vista.aspx

· Vista Power Savings Case Study link - http://blogs.technet.com/james/archive/2008/04/28/vista-power-saving-stats.aspx

· Screencast: Vista Power Management - http://blogs.technet.com/chrisavis/archive/2007/06/19/screencast-vista-power-management-power-plans.aspx

· Vista Power Management using Group Policy (part 1 & 2) - http://blogs.technet.com/grouppolicy/archive/2006/08/30/452916.aspx and http://blogs.technet.com/grouppolicy/archive/2006/09/06/vista-has-the-power-part-two-of-two.aspx

· Windows Vista Virtual Labs links - http://blogs.technet.com/curiousgeorge/archive/2008/05/13/windows-vista-virtual-lab-improve-your-pc-s-power-management.aspx

· Writing a custom power management script - http://blogs.technet.com/fdcc/archive/2008/01/30/script-a-custom-power-management-policy.aspx

· What variations of sleep does my computer support - http://blogs.technet.com/brad_rutkowski/archive/2007/04/18/what-variations-of-sleep-does-my-computer-support-and-why-did-it-wake-up.aspx

· Managing Power with Group Policy - http://blogs.technet.com/askds/archive/2008/03/17/managing-power-with-group-policy-part-1-of-3.aspx

· Video – how much power does your PC consume? - http://edge.technet.com/Media/How-much-power-does-your-PC-consume/

· Power Management and CPU Frequency - http://blogs.msdn.com/richardt/archive/2007/07/11/vista-power-management-cpu-frequency.aspx

To save energy, send your PCs to sleep, then shake them (nicely) awake with Wake on Lan (WoL)

biwirth — Thu, 22 May 2008 04:49:00 GMT

The team at The Manageability Team Blog have posted a very comprehensive article on how to setup Wake on LAN (WoL) capabilities using System Centre Configuration Manager 2007. WoL enables you do things like implement security patches on PCs that have been sleeping (i.e. saving energy when not being used)...excerpt here:

"Wake-on-LAN (WoL) allows properly configured (BIOS, Operating System, Network Interface Card) machines to resume operation from various sleep modes in response to a network request. The network request comes in the form of a magic packet which is a special formatted network packet. Sleep refers to the low power states of Windows XP and Vista: Standby (S3), Hibernate (S4), and hybrid sleep. Hybrid sleep is a feature of Windows Vista that combines the features of S3 and S4; when entering sleep a hibernate file is saved to the hard disk but the computer resumes from memory unless power is lost. This can create problems if systems like Configuration Manager need to distribute software to a collection of hardware devices. An example would be a Security Patch that needs to be implemented as quickly as possible for a set of vulnerable machines. By combining all the pieces to create a WoL ready infrastructure, you'll end up with an environment that allows networked PCs to be both responsive 24x7 and efficient from a power consumption perspective."

Check out the full article here: http://blogs.technet.com/smsandmom/archive/2008/03/04/configmgr-2007-implementing-wake-on-lan-wol.aspx

"Thin is in" for green computing, but you need to consider the flexibility factor baby...

biwirth — Fri, 09 May 2008 11:20:00 GMT

There is always a big argument over whether “thin” environments are more energy efficient than traditional ‘rich client’ environments. There is lots of research and speculation out there, but having designed and consulted on thin solutions, I think there is more to the discussion than just client power usage.

Thin clients use less energy?

There is quite a lot of debate over whether thin clients use less energy. And if you believe they do, then you would be right – according to Forrester (2008), thin clients use about 25% less power than a traditional desktop.

However if you are in the market for a thin solution, be careful of claims higher than 25%. Last week one ISV/hardware company was quoted as saying their thin client solution delivered a “75% energy saving over the average PC”. Cool – that’s nice but what they didn’t say is that they aren’t comparing what we in Oz call "apples for apples". As far as I can gather their study only compares direct rich (aka fat) client to thin client. Not what energy the SERVER expends to compensate for thin client computing. Remember that when you change to a thin client model, the SERVER takes over the client processing role. Hence the majority of the energy is spent at the server, not the client. And once you place servers in a data centre, you need to add cooling into the mix. For a fair comparison then, you need to include server energy expenditure AND cooling costs associated with the server farm in the data centre. The aforementioned Forrester study, at a 25% energy (and subsequent carbon) saving, includes the compensation for the server energy and cooling requirements.

Keep flexibility at the top of the requirements list in a desktop client strategy!

This whole Green IT push originally comes from Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), which has been around for more than 20 years. CSR is not about giving away your entire business profits to green initiatives. It’s about BALANCE. Balance is achieved between three core areas:

Economic
Environmental
Social

The value of each to your business can be determined by some basic analysis. One of these analysis types is called a multi-criteria analysis using a qualitative index, similar to the below example. This is pretty simple, and fairly subjective, but effective for a baseline. Essentially you apply a weighting to each element (economic, environmental and social) adding up to 100. Then for everything except most of the economic metrics (which are calculated by hard financial figures like Net Present Value (NPV)), you assign a rating based on considerations for your specific business:

"--" = 0
"-" = 0.25
"0" = 0.5
"+" = 0.75 (and so on)

As I said, the assignment of ratings is fairly subjective so if you want statistically real results, be objective. Preferably gather multiple opinions and knowledge across your business. When you assign the rating write good notes on why you have given each rating. Biased ratings don't do anyone favours in the long term.

Then on top of this type of business analysis, consider what is best practice from an IT architecture perspective. There is a tonne of material out there on best practice in a Microsoft world - check out the TechNet Library for per-product information: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-au/library/default.aspx.

When comparing rich and thin client strategies, this means considering desktop flexibility. I have seen too many companies commit to a particular long term desktop strategy, only to find their business model changes (e.g. through acquisition) and subsequently the defined desktop strategy is no longer viable.

Before you decide that thin client is the saviour to all your problems, one key question to ask is: What is your business user profile?

To provide two common examples:

If you have lots of CAD or GIS users, then thin client is not generally suitable for them. Graphic intensive applications, even after years of thin technology improvement, typically still don’t do well on thin environments. The exception to this rule, in the future, may be Microsoft's recent purchase of Calista (http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2008/jan08/01-21VirtualizationAdoptionPR.mspx) which provides presentation virtualisation (terminal services) for graphic intensive apps.
If you have employees that are frequently disconnected from the network, then thin is not suitable. In Microsoft I look after NSW Government agencies who frequently need to operate in an emergency situation, e.g.a flood-ravaged area where there may be no network connectivity for days to weeks on end. Instead look at technologies like Microsoft Application Virtualisation (aka SoftGrid - http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/enterprise/features/tools.mspx). MAV can provide offline application virtualisation (at the same time solving a bevy of application compatibility & packaging issues) while still providing a good measure of centralised application deployment and control. This can be achieved through MAV natively, or System Centre Configuration Manager (SCCM) 2007 to promote a consistent management infrastructure internally.

So if we look at the three CSR factors (economic, environment & social) combined with IT best practice when developing an environmentally sustainable IT strategy, the best recommendation I could make is to consider a balance between each element, suitable for your specific business type.

Something for nothing - Rush; Making Memories - Rush; Starman - David Bowie; All my love - Pink Floyd