Little Miss Enviro Geek : Dynamics

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

Microsoft releases Dynamics Environmental Dashboard

biwirth — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 23:00:00 GMT

On 9th February Microsoft launched the Dynamics AX Environmental Dashboard. The dashboard enables mid-sized organizations to track their energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions (out of the box) in an effort to help identify opportunities to cut costs and lessen their environmental impact from within their existing ERP solution. It allows companies to seamlessly capture and measure key environmental indicators as part of their everyday business processes.

The key features include:

Feature	Description
Shared data	Increase visibility and improve collaboration across your organization with the ability to publish Environmental Sustainability Dashboard reports to any employee's Role Centre using Microsoft® SharePoint® Web parts. Motivate employees to act by increasing awareness of your organization's environmental impact, their role in reduction efforts, and how they can help. Access the Environmental Sustainability Dashboard using Enterprise Portal in Microsoft Dynamics AX.*
Custom configurations and reporting	Customize the dashboard to include information relevant to your organization, such as specific vendors, energy conservation programs, or conservation goals. Track direct and indirect energy consumption by month; identify specific contributing factors; and view the energy costs of each, such as electricity and fuel oil or heating costs.
Greenhouse gas inventory	Create and track your own greenhouse gas inventory to understand your environmental impact and how that might affect your business in a carbon market. Capture data consistently over time that is auditable, and reduce your risk of exposure to potential regulations, taxation, or increases in energy costs. View the carbon dioxide equivalent of your emissions-the dashboard automatically calculates the carbon dioxide conversions and presents the information in an easy-to-read graph.
Tracking of Environmental Performance Indicators	Automatically track the four core GRI Environmental Performance Indicators for energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, including: EN3-Direct energy consumption that is generated onsite, such as heat and power. EN4-Indirect energy consumption that is generated from another location, such as a utility. EN16-Your total direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions, which combines EN3 and EN4 and converts them into carbon dioxide equivalents. EN17-Other relevant indirect greenhouse gas emissions, such as those generated from business travel, employee commuting, and waste disposal.
Integration with Microsoft SQL Server® Reporting Services	Capture environmental sustainability data in everyday business processes by viewing data immediately and tracking it over time using the dashboard, which is powered by SQL Server Reporting Services. View detailed, integrated data, such as the quantity of energy purchased from a vendor, the associated costs, and the dates of the service period

With the Business Ready Enhancement Plan for Microsoft Dynamics, the dashboard is available at no additional charge to customers using Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 (only).

There is a good demo HERE.

I mentioned that out of the box you get two metrics (energy & greenhouse gases) however a Dynamics Developer can add in other metrics they typically need to measure, such as waste, water, hazardouse substances etc.

For more info, checkout: http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/environment.mspx

My take on TechNet Article: "10 keys to becoming an environmental leader"

biwirth — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 05:10:00 GMT

There has been a great TechNet article posted by Michael Walsh and Eliza Walsh on the top 10 focus areas to becoming a leader on environment and sustainability issues. Below is an overview of my perspective on their focus areas...

#1 - Be familiar with environmental issues and #10 - Remain Current. There are any number of great publications you can subscribe to, and lots of different events and courses you could attend and they are increasing all the time. There are plenty of places you can look including energy standards websites, environmental group websites, "Green IT" news websites, Corporate Management Associations etc etc. On my website, I usually post a number of these events and links to great websites if they are relevant to environmentally sustainable IT issues.

#2 - Objectively assess your company. As well as the suggestions from Michael and Eliza, you may want to engage a professional environment consulting business, who is well aware of the environmental standards businesses should perform to. There are international standards as well which you can baseline against, both from a pure business environmental perspective (e.g. ISO14001 – Environmental Management Systems) or from an Environmentally Sustainable IT perspective (e.g. The Green Grid develops metrics for baselining your data centre power usage).

#3 - Envision where you want to be and when and # 4 - Develop a vision and strategy. One of the areas that is lightly touched on in this section of the article is the importance of feedback. However for a business’ environmental strategy I would strongly recommend more than just feedback after a strategy has been laid out. Involving your employees directly in both planning and execution is crucial to their acceptance of any potential changes. As an example, when Microsoft Australia embarked on their environmental program, they set in place a leadership team who became the core sponsors, including the Microsoft Australia GM, Tracey Fellows. Then they called for anyone willing to put their hand up to become part of the various action teams. These teams would be brainstorming ideas and developing the high level strategy and action plans. And this approach meant people across our business, from many different departments, were directly influencing the program’s goals and outcomes. Our Environment and Sustainability Director was put in charge of all the teams and she and the executive sponsor team assigned team leaders, from the volunteer pool. The team leaders then ran sessions over the course of the program to gather, summarise and present the strategy back to the executive sponsor team. It was an approach that worked really well and generated fantastic discussion and many different but valuable views on our environmental strategy.

#5 – Evangelise the business imperative. Having setup these great teams of passionate and knowledgeable people, Microsoft Australia not only had 1 person evangelising environmental responsibility, but whole teams of people distributed throughout the company. As the saying goes, two heads are better than one. The environmental evangelism continues at MS Australia.

#6 – Manage your messaging. I think Microsoft may sometimes be perceived as not doing as much in the environmental space as some of the other technology companies. I know that’s what I thought when I first joined MS last year. And I was pleasantly surprised to find we do a tonne of stuff that never gets recognised – like how MCS recently developed a crucial environmental management application for one of our government customers. They used Microsoft Dynamics CRM to provide a single customer view and Microsoft SQL Server to provide comprehensive reporting. And the impressive user interface and service oriented architecture was built on the newest .NET technologies of the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF). I think those quiet achievements are sometimes so much better than the ones shouted from the rooftops. J

#7 – Enable management through measurement and #8 – Analyze and report environment impact. If there is something that Microsoft technologies can enable then it’s this. I personally think this is one of the best areas where technology can play a role to environmental sustainability. Rock on reporting! One of the coolest solutions I have seen in this space from Microsoft is our Dynamics Environment Dashboard.

#9 – Be a thought leader. The best thing I could recommend here is to look at Michael and Eliza’s roles and think about which one you want to be. Then get out there and talk to people, join groups, volunteer your time with environmental organisations, RSS everything on “Green IT” and write your own stuff. Since I first got involved in environmental science two of the best things I have done were to develop my own website and become an advisory board member for a non-profit organisation. They both push me to keep learning new things and help me consolidate my knowledge about how IT and the environment can work better together. I can’t know everything and neither can you, but reading and writing about the environment and technology will help you develop your own theories and standards on what works and what doesn’t for your company.

It's Earth Day, and Microsoft have a great new website so you can love it up with the trees...

biwirth — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 07:25:00 GMT

So its Earth Day today - what does this mean and what is Microsoft doing to celebrate?

Quite simply, Wikipedia says Earth Day is "...intended to inspire awareness of and appreciation for the Earth's environment". The earth is affected by everything we do and we are affected by everything on earth in some way - so a day to recognise this justified I think! :)

Microsoft launched a new website today to celebrate: http://www.microsoft.com/environment/ it looks fantastic. Find out here things like:

How is Microsoft committed to the environment;
What are the business solutions from Microsoft that you can implement - quite cool here is the Dynamics Dashboard for tracking energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions http://www.microsoft.com/environment/business_solutions/articles/dynamics_ax.aspx - LOVE IT!
Find out ways to help the environment, through PC energy savings and cool tools;
Watch a video on best practices for Data Centre management;
Check Microsoft Environmental news;
Research the latest Software Showcase from Microsoft Partners.

This is excellent information to help you, my fellow geeks, develop strategies around 'green' or environmentally sustainable IT - think about including environmental information as part of your next business case to help get it up to executive management sign-off - they are all thinking about Corporate Social Responsibility (environment being just one area under CSR) and this might be the tipping point you need to get your dream Unified Communications infrastructure or Windows 2008 Hypervisor environment! ;-)