Data Center Best Practices – Microsoft, Google, or Uptime Institute, Don’t Forget Sun, HP, Dell, and IBM

TechHermit has a post base on Uptime’s latest conference.

Uptime Institute to IT, Microsoft and Google are your enemy

October 31, 2008

At the Uptime conference this last week in Dallas, Ken Brill shocked many of the attendees by throwing out some amazing statements that can only be classified as fear mongering. Perhaps the rhetoric was a first salvo in an inflammatory exchange between industry giants.

The comments in question came up in a meeting of Uptime members assembled for the event.  His comments to the audience centered around how Microsoft and Google were a direct threat to everyone in attendance.  Perhaps this was a result of the Microsoft Azure release last week and the existence of Google Apps. In addition many of the comments were directed towards the PUE metric.  Specifically that Microsoft and Google were highlighting low PUE results of 1.2x which were unrealistic and flawed.

Now I admit to being biased as I have many more conversations with Microsoft and Google Engineers than Uptime Institute Engineers.  Oh wait,  I’ve talked to Uptime Sales people though.

Microsoft has its Power of Software blog, the Microsoft data center team presenting at conferences and even Microsoft Research giving away data center knowledge for no charge.

Google has its data center site.

Sun has both a Blog and data center site.

HP, Dell, and IBM all have data center offerings as well.

The one guy who doesn’t say anything about its data centers is Amazon, but they have a huge presence with Amazon Web Services.  So, don’t expect Ken Brill/Uptime throwing any criticism at Amazon.

Unfortunately, for Ken Brill and Uptime Institute they are making enemies faster than friends.

How long can Uptime Institute survive?

I know most of your out there don’t care, but a few of you do, and this is an interesting study of sharing information vs. charging for information to improve the efficiency of your data center.

Right now market perception is Microsoft and Google are the leaders in data center innovation and all of these companies are battling to be at the top which is good for the whole industry.

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Office in the Cloud, Avoiding Demo Hell

Nicholas Carr has a post on Microsoft’s Office in the Cloud.

Microsoft to offer Office-in-the-cloud

October 28, 2008

Microsoft's long awaited push into cloud computing continues today, as the company announces plans to offer fully functional, if "lightweight," versions of its popular Office applications as web services that will run in people's browsers. The move signals Microsoft's intention to defend its massive Office business against incursions from Google Apps, Zoho, and other online competitors. Versions of the apps will be available in both ad-supported and subscription models, according to Microsoft's Chris Capossela:

We will deliver Office Web applications to consumers through Office Live, which is a consumer service with both ad-funded and subscription offerings. For business customers, we will offer Office Web applications as a hosted subscription service and through existing volume licensing agreements. We will show a private technology preview of the Office Web applications later this year.

I’ve worked with Chris Caposella, and Chris is infamous for a demo with Bill Gates when he was Bill’s speech writer.

 

Chris has passed on the demo duties for Office in the Cloud to Takeshi Numoto.  The good thing is Takeshi’s demo didn’t have the blue screen of death.  Which maybe is the good thing about cloud computing demos with built in redundancy.  Here is a post on his demo.

Microsoft Office 14 To Include Web Apps

The software maker has yet to set a release date, but industry watchers say the online suite could be available next year.

By Paul McDougall
InformationWeek
October 29, 2008 12:59 PM

Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)'s plan to offer a Web-based version of its Office productivity suite will debut with the release of Office 14, the successor to Microsoft Office 2007, a company executive said Tuesday.

Office Web, as the online version is called, is part of Microsoft's "vision for delivering great user experiences across the PC, phone, and the Web in Office 14," said Microsoft Office general manager Takeshi Numoto, speaking Tuesday at the company's Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles.

Numoto did not specify a release date for Office 14. Bloggers at some tech sites, however, have said the suite is likely due out in 2009. Office 2007 debuted in January 2007.

Numoto said that the Web-based versions of Office applications like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote would allow users to collaborate with others and across multiple devices more efficiently. "This is a great example of Office enabling dynamic collaboration across the PC, phone, and the Web," said Numoto.

Numoto did not offer insight into pricing details, such as whether users who purchase the boxed version of Office 14 will get free access to the Web version.

In launching the suite, Microsoft is looking to protect its flank from Google -- which last year launched a host of free and low-cost office productivity applications under a brand called Google Apps. For a single monthly fee per user, enterprises can roll out Google Apps to as many employees as they like.

Takeshi is a great guy, and I watched his demo at http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/KYN02/ minute 134.

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Takeshi doesn’t look a day older than when I met him his first day on the job which is over 10 years ago. It is a small world. I also used to work with Takeshi’s wife when she was at Sony.  

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Wal-Mart’s Greening the Supply Chain, Why?

There was a lot of news a week ago based on Wal-Mart’s announcement of Global Responsible Sourcing.  Here is Wal-Mart’s press release.

Wal-Mart Announces Global Responsible Sourcing Initiative at China Summit

Company sets new goals and greater expectations for environmental and social compliance, transparency and accountability

Beijing, China – Oct. 22, 2008 – Today, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) took the next step in its sustainability journey by hosting an unprecedented gathering of more than 1,000 leading suppliers, Chinese officials and NGOs in Beijing, China. The company outlined a series of aggressive goals and expectations to build a more environmentally and socially responsible global supply chain.

"Sustainability is about building a better business. We think it is essential to our future success as a retailer -- and to meeting the expectations of customers," said Lee Scott, president and CEO of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. "Maintaining the trust of our customers -- today and in the future -- is tied hand-in-hand with improving the quality of our supplier factories and their products."

The company will focus on areas aimed at meeting or exceeding social and environmental standards, driving innovation and efficiency and building stronger partnerships with suppliers, government and NGOs.

Wal-Mart makes a point of labor and ethics.

Scott continued, "I firmly believe that a company that cheats on overtime and on the age of its labor, that dumps its scraps and chemicals in our rivers, that does not pay its taxes or honor its contracts -- will ultimately cheat on the quality of its products. And cheating on the quality of products is the same as cheating on customers. We will not tolerate that at Wal-Mart."

And discusses the Green aspect.

Wal-Mart also announced a major effort to make Wal-Mart China a leader in sustainability in China by committing to make its stores more sustainable. The company will design and open a new store prototype that uses 40 percent less energy and will reduce energy use at existing stores by 30 percent by 2010. In addition, during the next two years, Wal-Mart China will aim to cut water use in all of its stores in half by investing in new hardware and systems and developing best practices that will help its associates and stores use water more efficiently.

The company also pledged to bring more environmentally sustainable products to its store shelves.

Outlining the steps Wal-Mart will take to become the most environmentally responsible retailer in China, Wal-Mart China President and CEO Ed Chan addressed the need for collaboration between Wal-Mart, the company’s suppliers and the Chinese government. "Few challenges in our world today are more pressing than protecting the environment and, in China, Wal-Mart has a unique opportunity to lead," said Chan. "With the world’s largest population, and a robust manufacturing industry, no market presents a greater opportunity for environmental sustainability to take hold than China."

Newsweek covers with a blog post.

Wal-Mart's New Push to Green China

Mary Hennock

As the world economy sags, the world's largest retailer is looking for new ways of reducing both costs and environmental impact—and arguing that the two can go hand-in-hand. At its "Sustainability Summit" in Beijing Wednesday, Wal-Mart announced the launch of a new set of stringent environmental standards, energy reduction targets and ethical compliance procedures that will apply initially to its thousands of suppliers in China and eventually to all suppliers. The company kicked off the day-long summit, attended by more than 600 of its suppliers, by spelling out ambitious targets that, if implemented, have the potential to make a significant impact. The goal is to set new standards for responsible sourcing in its global supply chain and create a model of best practice in China. The main points:
Environmental efficiency: The top 200 factories that supply Wal-Mart must improve energy efficiency by 20 percent by 2012, while China's 113 Wal-Mart stores must cut energy use by 30 percent and halve water use in all stores by 2010, and get suppliers to reduce packaging by five percent by 2013.
Stricter enforcement of ethical standards: All new suppliers must pledge to comply with local labor and environmental laws (existing suppliers already face an audit that checks such things). By 2012 direct suppliers must source 95 percent of their production from factories with high social and environmental audit scores.

But why?

Is it all financial as WSJ says?

“Some people’s primary concern will be what will this do to cost?” Mr. Scott said. “But when we rolled out our sustainability initiative at Wal-Mart we found that eliminating waste, downsizing packaging and improving transportation fuel efficiency led to a whole lot of savings.”

Then a friend who works with ISO, mentioned ISO 26000. I know most of your are not familiar with ISO 26000 as it is in working draft, but I believe this is going to be big, and so does ISO management.  Here is executive summary.

Sustainable business for organizations means not only providing products and services that satisfy the customer, and doing so without jeopardizing the environment, but also operating in a socially responsible manner. Pressure to do so comes from customers, consumers, governments, associations and the public at large. At the same time, far-sighted organizational leaders recognize that lasting success must be built on credible business practices and the prevention of such activities as fraudulent accounting and labour exploitation.

ISO 26000 is targeted at Wal-Mart’s past, but if Wal-Mart can change fast enough to be a Socially Responsible Retailer it has a competitive advantage. And, it has the purchasing power to drive a standard like ISO 26000.  ISO 26000 principles have a lot in common with Wal-Mart’s press announcement.

Why is this important for a Green Data Center? Because ISO 26000 will help set a standard of what is a Green/Socially Responsible Data Center around the world.

You can count on Wal-Mart changing their data centers to be socially responsible abiding by ISO 26000 guidelines. They are changing their stores, physical and on-line.

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