Links List 01.15.10

January 15th, 2010 by Valerie Barber

While we all like to “do the right thing”, we can take comfort in knowing that the added benefit of saving greenbacks is still a strong motivator – even in making decisions about going green. In its quarterly report on Green IT, Forrester has found that saving money is the motivating factor for implementing Green IT solutions. Respondents said they are interested in driving down energy costs (66%) and reducing other IT-related expenses (42%). Just 16% said regulatory compliance was the driver. The report indicates a renewed focus on green technologies as the recession begins to ease.

With data centers accounting for about 3% of all energy consumed in the U.S., it’s no wonder the Department of Energy has granted $47 million in stimulus money (that will be matched by $70 million in private industry donations) to find ways to make data centers more green. The money will be distributed among 14 projects whose goal is to improve data center efficiency through innovative components, better power supplies and improved cooling technologies. Award winners include Yahoo, HP and SeaMicro.

“Our goal is to double the energy efficiency in data centers within five years,” Brad Wurtz, President and CEO of Power Assure that was awarded $5 million in DOE grant money

Greenpeace awarded HP its “Best in Show” at last week’s CES for its 8000f Elite Ultra Slim Desktop PC that has a host of environmentally friendly features. HP has come a long way since Greenpeace staged a protest last year that included painting “Hazardous Products” on the roof of the headquarters building and William Shatner’s voicemail to employees asking about HP’s promise of a toxic-free computer by 2009. Now Greenpeace is on Samsung, who they say is tailing leaders like Apple and Sony in phasing out toxic chemicals in its products.

Just as data centers are becoming more complex and harder to manage, a Symantec survey finds a large number of IT executives report that their data centers are understaffed. With 31% reporting a reduction in headcount in 2009, 16% of respondents said they are extremely understaffed and 34% said somewhat understaffed. Most companies reported having trouble finding enough money and enough qualified applicants to maintain healthy IT staff levels. Some of the cost-saving strategies include cross-training IT staff, automating routine tasks, server virtualization and consolidation, data center consolidation, chargeback, cloud computing and outsourcing. View the report here.

On January 28, 2010, the Federal Trade Commission is hosting a public roundtable discussion, “Exploring Privacy”, on the privacy challenges of cloud computing and other 21^st century technologies. You can listen to the webcast as they discuss protecting consumer privacy while supporting beneficial uses of the information and technological innovation.

Mark your calendars now so you won’t forget to celebrate some notable 25^th anniversaries in 2010. In addition to the Cray-2, registration of the first domain name (symbolics.com), free software and the MIT Media Lab, other notables that hit the quarter-century milestone include:

• AOL
• “Back to the Future”
• Blockbuster stores
• New Coke
• Discovery Channel
• Windows 1.0

Popularity: 1% [?]

Related Posts

• No Related Post

Add comment