It is becoming increasingly necessary to have an answer to the Green Computing question in order to do business in certain markets. For example, the UK Government is demanding stringent social responsibility commitments from its vendors in order to achieve its goal of being carbon neutral.
Reducing energy consumption is the single biggest improvement that can be implemented in the IT industry. I have spoken on this blog about the benefits of server, storage and desktop virtualisation in the past. It is important, however, to ensure you virtualise your environment on technologies that actually reduce energy - technologies that require less energy or generate less heat. For example, low voltage processors, low energy fans and high efficiency/low heat components.
As IT professionals we are all working towards becoming "experts" at delivering energy efficient virtualised solutions to our clients. We all know that if we fail to deliver a green solution we will most likely lose the sale. However, I have yet to see a groundswell of IT companies practicing what they preach.
How many IT companies have serious policies around:-
- Recycling
- Reuse
- Carbon Offsetting
I have to admit that I was completely unaware of the power that US Department of Homeland Security has to seize and search your laptop, mobile phone, or hard drive without reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing. Last April, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals confirmed that digital equipment passing into the US is legally the same as a suitcase or bag and therefore subject to random searches. A quick scan of Google shows that the Department of Homeland Security operates outside the Fourth Amendment's requirement of probable cause and a warrant is not needed before invasive search and seizure of persons, houses, papers, and effects is allowed. The recent announcement that Congress is seeking to provide guidelines for US Laptop searches through the introduction of the Border Security Search Accountability Act of 2008 does nothing to protect the individual.
The bill makes no attempt to limit when search and seizure of electronic devices passing through US borders are permissible. It simply requires data that is determined to be commercial trade secrets or privileged information isn't shared with federal, state, local, or foreign authorities unless it can be demonstrated that the receiving agency complies with laws and regulations protecting such information. If there is no way to hide behind the "it's a matter of National Security" façade the owner of the device will receive a receipt for the device and written notification that the data has been copied or distributed. Oh yes, they also get a pamphlet on how to report abuses or concerns about the DHS's actions... I'm not sure just how much use that's going to be!
So, are the US Authorities helping you build a case for installing that video conferencing or Telepresence Suite? If our business is anything to go by, we are seeing more and more enquiries about video conferencing.
But, I hear you say, there are times when travelling is the only option! If that's the case, maybe you should be looking at desktop virtualisation.
VMworld is fast approaching so expect a slew of announcements from the major virtualisation vendors like the announcement made yesterday by VMware regarding their vStorage API set. The vStorage API set provides an interface between VMware's virtual Data Centre Operating System and storage products. It includes APIs for Site Recovery Manager, Consolidated Backup, multi-pathing/load balancing and management of integrated storage hardware platforms.
Since the key storage players, BMC, CA, EMC, HP, IBM Tivoli, NetIQ, nworks, Quest, Symantec and Tripwire are all either certified "VMware Ready" or have stated that they are working towards certification I wonder how the "our products work better than yours" competition between the storage vendors will pan out over the next few months and how Openview and Tivoli storage management products will fit vStorage into their strategies.
