Chicago-based Lillian Ostojich is committed to sustainability. Her company, Zoetica, is the first USDA "certified organic" wellness and health facility in the U.S. But she didn’t stop with the products for sale; Ostojich decided to create a green building that would qualify for the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) LEED certification for sustainable architecture at the Gold or Silver level.
"She kept mentioning green, sustainable, organic," says Rick Simpson, CTO of 3G Applied Technologies in Chicago, a consultant who initially offered Zoetica a computer networking package and eventually became closely affiliated with the company. "I never knew all this green stuff was that serious." But Simpson understood Ostojich's goals, and since 2006 has led an Earth-friendly advocate's dream project to minimize the company's carbon footprint.
Zoetica aims to be paperless, cashless, and completely automated: As a member of the facility, you walk in and out without cards or paperwork; the computer knows what your last treatment was. "Everything is completely driven by software and machines," Simpson explains. The music is digitized and streamed across the building and into individual treatment rooms to speakers using Internet protocols.
The control system platform -- enabled for remote support to minimize travel requirements -- can make eco-friendly decisions for the facility; if it's a sunny day, the network automatically lowers the shades. An RFID solution will automatically process patrons, conduct financial transactions, and correlate with a customer database to identify requirements: This client likes the shades down, the room cool, and Kenny Z music playing. Electronic billing eliminates paper receipts, with confirmations sent through SIP and cellular.
"You'll find the green in our practices and custom solutions," Simpson says. "In Zoetica's solutions, it's not the things that make it green; it's how the things work that make them green."
Most green IT projects aren't quite so extreme, but the Zoetica example demonstrates how far your company can go with the technology. For most organizations, the green IT payoff is far less dramatic, far easier to deploy, and -- happily -- an easy sell to people with budget control (as long as you talk about numbers, not carbon footprint).
I agree, mathemagician. How much the maintenance cost is key - which is the point of the green IT is changing the behavior of the users the reduce the demand.
That is also Alan's point. What is the value of reduction of we use that to increase the capacity and keep a status quo?
The key, I believe, is to establish factors that we can live with that make the overall reductions sustainable and reduce the overall energy required for us to operate in business.
I'm getting impressed with how buildings are now going green and conserving energy. But I wonder how the long-term maintenance costs will work out?
I'm quite familiar with using flourescent tube lights in buildings, but businesses have found it cost-effective to replace those lights in large batches periodically. I wonder if that is environmentally-friendly? I doubt it.
The compact flourescent lights have a much longer lifespan, but they may have a similar end-of-life issue.
But, let's keep in mind that this is the start of a new era in looking at a building from a cradle-to-grave perspective (or a total cost of ownership perspective, for the business types).
I'd be interested in other people's thoughts on this aspect of going green.
Great overview on Green IT, Esther, but I'm always curious when I see impressive numbers like the 75 percent power savings the Royal Botanic Gardens says it's getting from virtualization.
Given the widespread adoption of this technology over the last few years you'd think that the power demands of data centers would be next to nothing by now. Unfortunately, the opposite is true--data centers are guzzling more electricity than ever. In the U.S. alone, they draw about 120 billion kilowatt hours a year, or about 3 percent of the country's total electricity consumption, according to the Department of Energy. And data-center demand is continuing to grow so fast two new large power plants need to be built each year just to keep pace, DOE adds.
So if virtualization is reducing the number of power-hungry boxes out there, why aren't data centers marvels of sustainability? Part of the reason is the densely packed blade servers that are replacing standalone servers. Blades yield a welcome increase in hardware utilization rates, but they're notoriously power hungry. One CIO I spoke with is building a data center capable of supplying 200 watts per sq. ft. to support blade racks. His existing facility supplies just 40 watts per sq. ft.
Another factor is that servers themselves represent only about 30 percent of a data center's electricity draw, says Chuck Powers, IT strategist at the National Renewable Energy Lab, which is now building a data center designed to surpass LEED Platnium certification. Forty percent of electricity demand goes to cooling systems--significant because blade server efficiency translates into higher heat--and another 30 percent supports power distribution gear, such as UPSs, Powers says.
Finally, some analysts are also seeing a headcount paradox with virtualization. While it initially may reduce the number of physical servers and their power demands, once organizations see how easy it is to provision new virtual servers those numbers may rise dramatically, causing a ripple effect on power and cooling loads.
Call it the Entenmann's Effect. At first the commercial bakery's low-fat cakes and cookies seemed like a god send to weight watchers--have your cake and diet, too. But when lower calories per serving induced people to consume more and bigger servings. their problems just got worse.
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Reports on some aspect or other of cybercrime are highlighted in the press and in dozens of blogs on a daily basis. Whether it is phishing, botnets, or ID theft, what is the truth behind the numbers? Where are the real figures?
Unemployment is stubbornly hovering just shy of 10 percent. So why are states killing jobs, by continuing to pass laws to collect sales tax from out-of-state online retailers?
Lots of big brands are in hot water right now -- witness the many rapid-fire hits Toyota's taken in recent weeks. Now it turns out the beloved Energizer Bunny may himself be a malicious hacker.
The United States Treasury Department this week announced that, after receiving direction from the Obama Administration, it has amended sanctions on Cuba, Sudan, and Iran, allowing for the exportation of US-based "services and software related to the exchange of personal communications over the Internet, including web browsing, blogging, email, instant messaging, and chat; social networking; and photo and movie sharing."
In today's SXSW Interactive session on Enterprise 2.0, Andrew McAfee, principle research scientist with MIT's Center for Digital Business, explained that Web 2.0, along with what we've come to call the social media, is all about everything that enterprise companies are often not.
Smarter Collaboration: How to Thrive in a Challenging Business Environment Market conditions are changing faster than ever, and organizations need to improve their agility and adaptability in order to provide better service and improve processes. The ability to work with customers, business partners, and employees as effectively as possible - while at the same time holding down costs - is a key to success. READ THIS eBOOK
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Why does everyone claim their products are transformative? Cisco said its announcement of March 9th would transform the Internet. But it was just a big box. Apple transformed the Internet with a little box, the iPhone, and didn't say they were doing it. Now it's up to Verizon to bring it all together with LTE and broadband mobility.
A top Google executive says desktop computers will be irrelevant in three years. Alan Reiter suspects it won't be desktops that will be irrelevant (snicker).
Apple doesn't want you to get adult entertainment in a WiFi hotspot – at least not with an iPhone. Its adult apps are banned, and now it’s also nixed some hotspot-locating applications. The reasons are different, and they tell us something important about smartphone app stores.
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