Green (data center) initiatives are not a fad, it is a corporate responsibility

If you believe some people’s statements achieving LEED certification, a sub 1.2 PUE, and carbon neutral are the definition of a Green Data Center.  But, within this same data center you could have huge wastes that impact the environment.  Being green requires a constant monitoring and asking the question “what could I do better?”

FieldView Solutions has a press release on its being one of 200 companies being selected for GoingGreen Global 200.

FieldView Solutions Named GoingGreen Global 200 Winner
Company Recognized for Creating New Opportunities in Green Technology

EDISON, NJ, Sep 20, 2011 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) -- FieldView Solutions, a provider of industry-leading Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software -- and recent recipient of venture-led funding -- today announced that it has been chosen by AlwaysOn as one of the GoingGreen Global 200 winners. This year's winners were selected from among thousands of domestic and international greentech technology companies nominated by investors, bankers, journalists, and greentech industry insiders. The AlwaysOn editorial team conducted a rigorous three-month selection process to finalize the 2011 list.

I like David Schirmacher’s quote.

"Instituting green initiatives is not a fad, it is a corporate responsibility for every organization -- specifically within the data center industry, notorious for energy inefficiency," said David Schirmacher, CSO, FieldView Solutions. "FieldView Solutions works with some of the largest global data center managers to help them optimize and maintain energy efficient facilities via a real-time view into their operations. We are honored that investors, bankers, journalists, and greentech industry insiders selected FieldView as a GoingGreen Global 200 company."

The list of 200 winners is long with many data center related areas.

Data Center Efficiency

Aquion Energy
www.aquionenergy.com
Pittsburgh, PA

SeaMicro
www.seamicro.com
Sunnyvale, CA

Sentilla
www.sentilla.com
Redwood City, CA

SynapSense
www.synapsense.com
Folsom, CA

Xtreme Power
www.xtremepower.com
Kyle, TX

Energy Management, Smart Grid, and Energy Efficiency

Adura Technologies
www.aduratech.com
San Francisco, CA

Array Converter
www.arrayconverter.com
Cupertino, CA

BPL Global
www.bplglobal.net
Cranberry Township, PA

Bridgelux
www.bridgelux.com
Sunnyvale, CA

C3
www.c3-e.com
San Mateo, CA

Daintree Networks
www.daintree.net
Mountain View, CA

Digital Lumens
www.digitallumens.com
Boston, MA

eMeter
www.emeter.com
San Mateo, CA

EnergyHub
www.energyhub.com
Brooklyn, NY

enLighted
www.enlightedinc.com
Sunnyvale, CA

Enverv
www.enverv.com
San Diego, CA

ENXSuite
www.enxsuite.com
San Bruno, CA

FieldView Solutions
www.fieldviewsolutions.com
Edison, NJ

GreenPlug
www.greenplug.us
San Ramon, CA

Greenvity Communications
www.greenvity.com
Milpitas, CA

Grid Net
www.grid-net.com
San Francisco, CA

Hara Software
www.hara.com
Redwood City, CA

Illumitex
www.illumitex.com
Austin, TX

Intematix
www.intematix.com
Fremont, CA

Light Engine
www.lightengine-tech.com
Shatin, Hong Kong

MC10
www.mc10inc.com
Cambridge, MA

MokaFive
www.moka5.com
Redwood City, CA

nlyte
www.nlyte.com
Menlo Park, CA

Noveda Technologies
www.noveda.com
Branchburg, NJ

Nuventix
www.nuventix.com
Austin, TX

OnChip Power
www.onchippower.com
Boston, MA

Opower
www.opower.com
Arlington, VA

Power Assure
www.powerassure.com
Santa Clara, CA

Powerhouse Dynamics
www.powerhousedynamics.com
Newton, MA

Powergetics
www.powergetics.com
San Francisco, CA

Recurve
www.recurve.com
San Francisco, CA

Redwood Systems
www.redwoodsystems.com
Fremont, CA

Renewable Funding
www.renewfund.com
Oakland, CA

Scientific Conservation
www.scientificconservation.com
San Francisco, CA

Silver Spring Networks
www.silverspringnetworks.com
Redwood City, CA

SmartSynch
www.smartsynch.com
Jackson, MS

Soraa
www.soraa.com
Fremont, CA

Tendril Networks
www.tendrilinc.com
Boulder, CO

Trilliant
www.trilliantinc.com
Redwood City, CA

Vigilent
www.vigilent.com
El Cerrito, CA

Viridity Energy
www.viridityenergy.com
Conshohocken, PA

WaterSmart
www.watersmartsoftware.com
Tiburon, CA

WiTricity
www.witricity.com
Watertown, MA

Xicato
www.xicato.com
San Jose, CA

GreenM3 Traffic 2.5x 6 months ago on TypePad, now on SquareSpace

Part of the fun running the Green (Low Carbon) Data Center Blog is I get data on what topics are interesting.  One of things I check is what the overall site traffic is.  When I switched to SquareSpace from TypePad  six months ago, I was hoping for more traffic.  2.5 times more than six months ago is a pleasant surprise.  Feb 2011 about 20,000.  Aug 2011 about 50,000.  (Note Sept is only 20 of 30 days in the below metrics.)

Below is a dashboard snapshot.

Thanks for reading GreenM3.

-Dave Ohara

High Temperatures in Amazon.com Warehouse send employees to hospital, when will this happen in a data center?

Everyone is excited about raising temperatures in the data center to reduce cooling requirements.  Well not everyone.  The people who work in the data center can't be too thrilled.  Don't think this is a problem.  KomoNews reports on amazon.com warehouse employees going to the hospital for heat-stress.

Report: Amazon.com warehouse heat sent several to hospital

By Associated Press Published: Sep 20, 2011 at 2:53 PM PM

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) - A newspaper says sweltering conditions inside an Amazon.com warehouse in eastern Pennsylvania over the summer sent several employees to hospitals and led to a federal inspection.

The (Allentown) Morning Call reports that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued no fines but made recommendations on how the company could improve its heat-stress management plan at the Breinigsville warehouse.

If you think you can hide information like this.  Consider the newspaper received the information as part of the Freedom of Information Act.

The newspaper cited documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request in reporting that an emergency room doctor at Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest called an OSHA hotline in June after seeing several workers. A company official later said 15 employees had heat-related symptoms, and six were treated at a hospital.

How many data center problems are caused by knowledge holes? Address the Swiss Cheese gaps in education-Salman Khan & Bill Gates

The top cause of data center outages are related to human action.  Part of the problem is caused by how our education system works which gives people the framework to think in the future.  What happens when you think differently of how education works? Salman Khan is reinventing education.  Bill Gates’s focus education has connected Bill to Salman.  Here is a video with Salman presenting at TED and Bill Gates discussing the Khan Academy.

Bill Gates: I've seen some things you're doing in the system that have to do with with motivation and feedback -- energy points, merit badges. Tell me what you're thinking there?

SK: Oh yeah. No, we have an awesome team working on it. And I have to make it clear, it's not just me anymore. I'm still doing all the videos, but we have a rockstar team doing the software. Yeah, we've put a bunch of game mechanics in there where you get these badges, we're going to start having leader boards by area, and you get points.It's actually been pretty interesting. Just the wording of the badging or how many points you get for doing something, we see on a system-wide basis, like tens of thousands of fifth graders or sixth graders going one direction or another, depending what badge you give them.

One of the things that caught my attention in Salman’s presentation is pointing out the swiss cheese problem in education.

In a traditional classroom, you have a couple of homework, homework, lecture, homework, lecture,and then you have a snapshot exam. And that exam, whether you get a 70 percent, an 80 percent,a 90 percent, or a 95 percent, the class moves on to the next topic. And even that 95 percent student,what was the five percent they didn't know? Maybe they didn't know what happens when you raise something to the zero power. And then you go build on that in the next concept. That's analogous to imagine learning to ride a bicycle, and maybe I give you a lecture ahead of time, and I give you that bicycle for two weeks. And then I come back after two weeks, and I say, "Well, let's see. You're having trouble taking left turns. You can't quite stop. You're an 80 percent bicyclist." So I put a big C stamp on your forehead and then I say, "Here's a unicycle."But as ridiculous as that sounds, that's exactly what's happening in our classrooms right now. And the idea is you fast forward and good students start failing algebra all of a sudden and start failing calculus all of a sudden, despite being smart, despite having good teachers. And it's usually because they have these Swiss cheese gaps that kept building throughout their foundation. So our model is learn math the way you'd learn anything,like the way you would learn a bicycle. Stay on that bicycle. Fall off that bicycle. Do it as long as necessary until you have mastery. The traditional model, it penalizes you for experimentation and failure, but it does not expect mastery. We encourage you to experiment. We encourage you to failure. But we do expect mastery.

Here are some of the key learning from Salman that gets you appreciate the different approach.  The worse question to ask when teaching “do you understand this?”

And as soon as I put those first YouTube videos up,something interesting happened -- actually a bunch of interesting things happened. The first was the feedback from my cousins. They told me that they preferred me on YouTube than in person.(Laughter) And once you get over the backhanded nature of that, there was actually something very profound there. They were saying that they preferred the automated version of their cousin to their cousin. At first, it's very unintuitive, but when you actually think about it from their point of view, it makes a ton of sense. You have this situation where now they can pause and repeat their cousin,without feeling like they're wasting my time. If they have to review something that they should have learned a couple of weeks ago, or maybe a couple of years ago, they don't have to be embarrassed and ask their cousin. They can just watch those videos. If they're bored they can go ahead. They can watch it at their own time, at their own pace.And probably the least appreciated aspect of this is the notion that the very first time, the very first time that you're trying to get your brain around a new concept, the very last thing you need is another human being saying, "Do you understand this?"And that's what was happening with the interaction with my cousins before. And now they can just do it in the intimacy of their own room.

What would happen if you apply Salman’s ideas to data center education and training?  Would data center outages decrease?  Would more projects happen on budget and on time?  I vote yes.

How much do you want to follow Netflix’s data center strategy given CEO says "I messed up"?

I’ve always wondered whether Netflix’s strategy of getting out of the data center business and moving to Amazon Web Services would make sense long term.  Netflix 2 months ago was considered invincible before they announced their price increase and separation of DVD and streaming business.

2 months ago Netflix stock was approaching 300, now it is close to 150.

One interesting perspective on why Netflix made this move is

So why is the company raising its rates?

Mr. DANIEL ERNST (Research Analyst, Hudson Square Research): The simple reason is because they can.

GREGORY: That's Daniel Ernst. He's an analyst at Hudson Square Research.

Mr. ERNST: They don't really have competition. They have some competition at the margin but the reality is, there is no one offering a full slate of movies and television shows that's digital and in DVD.

If you assume you have no competition what is the big deal where your data center is and whether you have one?

Netflix is offering an apology, but is adding more confusion by substituting the Qwikster brand for Netflix DVD.

An Explanation and Some Reflections

I messed up. I owe everyone an explanation.

It is clear from the feedback over the past two months that many members felt we lacked respect and humility in the way we announced the separation of DVD and streaming, and the price changes. That was certainly not our intent, and I offer my sincere apology. I’ll try to explain how this happened.

…

So we realized that streaming and DVD by mail are becoming two quite different businesses, with very different cost structures, different benefits that need to be marketed differently, and we need to let each grow and operate independently. It’s hard for me to write this after over 10 years of mailing DVDs with pride, but we think it is necessary and best: In a few weeks, we will rename our DVD by mail service to “Qwikster”.

We chose the name Qwikster because it refers to quick delivery. We will keep the name “Netflix” for streaming.

One of the things I have learned working at big brand companies – HP, Apple, and Microsoft is managing your brand is not something that should be taken lightly.  Netflix’s moves to introduce a new brand “Qwikster” seems really expensive and confusing.  Out of the millions of Netflix users how do you think will easily understand “Netflix DVD” = “Qwikster”

Amazon, Vudu, Hulu, and Redbox must be doing high fives as the watch Netflix decrease the value of their brand.

When you watch all of this does it make you question whether Netflix’s logic for getting out of the data center business and moving to Amazon Web Services may later be a mistake “I messed up.”