Thursday, May 29, 2008

Eco Computing – Public Sector Perspective

I made a presentation this afternoon for Sun Microsystems' Education Executive Forum, a small-group gathering of IT executives from education institutions in Hong Kong. It is always a special pleasure for me to do such for Sun, because I worked for SunSoft (one of the then “planets” of Sun) in 1993-1994.

The topic of my presentation was “Eco Computing – Public Sector Perspective.” Here is the presentation:

Mark Stanton, Sun's AP Director of Eco Computing, also made a presentation about developing eco-datacenters. Today, for each 1 watt of power spent on computing, possibly about 2 watts of power would be spent on cooling and other related supporting needs. On average, no more than 30% of electricity consumed would be actually spent on computing itself. Some estimates point out that for most corporate users, the cost of power will exceed hardware cost between 2010 and 2015.


On the scale of environmental concerns by businesses, most are probably still stuck at the bottom of the ladder -- the pragmatic level where the only concerns are about merely running out of space, power or other forms of facilities. Some at a higher level would be “eco-aware,” where the user would attempt to reduce the power bill. But becoming “eco-responsible” would be where one needs to strive at, where the user would try to reduce its actual carbon consumption.


It is disappointing that in Hong Kong, our Government has no published statistics or knowledge and its own carbon footprint. This is unacceptable, as we should expect that having such measurements ready is imperative for Hong Kong, as one would expect that some sort of global deal will be expected in the not-too-distant future, and we better be prepared!


I encourage more IT companies – vendors and users alike – and professionals to find out more about Green IT. Let's make a difference together, for our world and for our future generations – if at all we would see future generations to have a world to live in.

Sun Eco Computing
An e-Government Truth: Potential CO2 Efficiencies From Online Provision of Local Government Services (UK Communities and Local Government)
IDC's Green IT Survey
Computerworld's Green IT Quiz

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