Tag: green energy

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Hidden IT costs

Today small K12 school districts and colleges with less than 1,000 students are accustomed to accessing email around the clock. Email is habit forming at best and compulsive at worst. The digital economy proves funding in-house email services can be staggering. Hidden IT costs remain as budgets are slashed.
vintage lightbulbAnnual IT costs to run legacy back-end email servers, software licensing including (anti-spam, anti-virus, filtering and backup) must run 24/7 from multiple vendors. Annual people costs include training and technical support especially in a high turnover environment.

Some legacy email solutions actually require a dedicated server that cannibalizes the CPU. They are not virtualization friendly. Think OpenText’s WorstClass FirstClass email server.

So what is the largest overlooked annual cost forgotten by IT and financial managers? Electricity. The cost to power all enterprise servers 24/7 can be rather shocking. The first time I collaborated on a private college’s annual budget I was surprised to learn total energy costs for just three buildings on a small campus ran above $260,000/year.  Same rates apply for K12 districts with multiple buildings.

If your organization is running real industrial servers (1U or even 3U units) there are significant costs, regardless of rack, blade or tower servers. Many schools on tight budgets re-purpose legacy Pentium desktops into “servers” along with old, energy sucking CRT monitors. Not a good idea. Don’t be swayed by marketing and PR efforts for “green” servers because they run all day and still cost a surprising amount over a five year lease….you do lease your servers right?

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Latest read: Hot, Flat and Crowded

Over the long holiday I finally finished Tom Friedman’s book Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution–and How It Can Renew America. The book is a mixed blessing.  Friedman has written one of the best books to understand the emergency need for a global environmental revolution.

hot, flat and crowded

Friedman provides detailed examples of how the world has been wasting energy resources since the industrial revolution. Sadly I am convinced we are (environmentally speaking) screwed.

Friedman provides well written pages that will awaken those still asleep on the environment’s impact on the human race.  If you think “green” is a movement to replace your light bulbs with Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs your WAY off base.  Its about re-educating how we waste energy and in today’s global economy risk losing more industries to countries around the globe.

The major challenge?  This issue is no long America’s alone to fix. Thanks to globalization its now a problem for the entire world.  Mother Earth needs assistance from China and India. Both must engage in green technologies to ensure planet earth’s health for the long term.

For China and India that includes all 3.5 Billion of their citizens who are just coming out of poverty.  Their governments cannot permit new coal plants to dominate their air pollution.  China alone brings coal-fired (dirty) power plants online every two weeks and will continue to do so for the short term future.

The Beijing Olympics was a perfect example of population and industrial pollution impacting the Chinese environment … and their economy.

Why China and India are causing the price of gasoline to rise.
When I was born in 1966 the earth’s population stood at 3.4 billion.  When my son was born in 2007 the population doubled to 6.7 billion.  What does our future hold when the earth’s population reaches 9 billion in 2050?  Forget fuel costs for a moment.  How much will it cost to feed your family?

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Hot, Flat and Crowded

Finally I am pushing my way through Tom Friedman’s Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution–and How It Can Renew America. If your a fan of his The World Is Flat series you’re in for a fast, real-world update about the state of the environment.  Its safe to say our global carbon footprint is ruining the planet.

hot, flat and crowded

I was very impressed with his chapter on energy poverty was very well written.  Energy is the capacity to do work:  1 in 6 people do not have access to energy.  Even in India almost 700,000,000 citizens are not on any energy grid.  There has not been a power plant built in over 30 years anywhere across Africa … with the exception of white South Africa.  I never really considered Africa’s real problem has been an energy problem all along. Fighting AIDS, hunger and the other noble causes are quite restricted when you cannot even turn on a lamp at night.

But as Friedman outlines in the book Africa needs green energy. Coal burning solutions that would only contribute to the world’s global warming problems.  And China is bringing on new coal burning plants every other week?

For the health of the planet we need to place as much green energy as possible – Friedman acknowledges that many green solutions cannot yet scale to cover Africans, Indians, Chinese AND Americans – at the base of every country’s economic pyramid.

Looking forward to the remaining half of the book.