Entries tagged with green computing - Channel 9

ARCast.TV - The Green Datacenter Panel Discussion

Bob Familiar — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:31:00 GMT

With the increase in regulations and high energy prices, green and environmental initiatives in the IT world have evolved from hype buzzword to strategic metrics for organizations this year. This panel discusses environmentally sustainable changes in the IT industry as well as best practices for architectural leaders. With George Cerbone, Michael Manos, Beth Humphreys, Kathy Malone, Lewis Curtis, and David Platt.

It’s Not Easy Bein’ Green

Ben Riga — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 03:30:00 GMT

I couldn’t help but think about the old Kermit the frog tune while chatting with Jennifer Pollard (Product Manager) and Neil Huizenga (Software Developer) last week about the new Environmental Sustainability Dashboard for Dynamics AX. While many organizations are doing everything possible to reduce their carbon footprint and improve the efficiency of the resources that they do use, it is often difficult to measure progress. With the recent economic downturn and pressures to report emission, the environmental sustainability dashboard helps organizations to run their business more efficiently as well as fund ongoing green efforts.

Jennifer talks about Microsoft’s commitment to the environment including making ourselves greener by reducing our carbon footprint and partnering with governmental and non-governmental (NGOs) organizations to to address larger global environmental issues. At the heart of this is technology.

The Environment Sustainability Dashboard is a part of that commitment. The Dynamics AX team has heard from our clients that they are feeling the pressure to report whether that’s for regulatory reasons or for reasons related to the greening of supply chains.

Jennifer shows us a great demo of how this dashboard built into Dynamics AX as a role center takes advantage of SQL Server Analysis and Reporting Services within SharePoint Web Parts. Out of the box the product provides 4 web parts showing energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, actual energy costs and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). The KPIs are based on Global Reporting Initiative's (GRI) Sustainability Reporting Guidelines v3.0 (aka G3 Indicators); the de facto standards in this area. With this product a process as simple as paying an energy bill becomes an opportunity to capture information about energy consumption and as a result the ability to calculate the related greenhouse gas emissions.

Jennifer makes the point that “if you can measure it, you can manage it” and shows a couple of scenarios where being able to monitor energy consumption puts organizations in control of that consumption in order to reduce energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions.

There’s a huge demand right now for partners and developers with knowledge in both environmental and ERP systems. The dashboard comes with just a few web parts leaving open the opportunity for developers to build this out much further (for example with water and waste consumption). Neil shows us how simple it is for a developer to dive into the Dynamics AX Application Object Tree (AOT) and modify the metadata in order to customize the system in just about any direction.

So yeah, I guess we did just make it a bit easier to be more green. Sorry about that, Kermit.

Related Resources:

Environmental Sustainability Dashboard product page
- Download (requires PartnerSource login)
Microsoft’s Environment home page

ESRI: Green Computing

Charles — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 17:34:00 GMT

ESRI, a Global ISV partner, is pushing the envelope on technology adoption and environmental issues. In this interview, I talk with Senior Product Managers Rob Elkins and John Baleja about technology advancements, development needs and what the Microsoft partnership means to ESRI. Through personal experiences, customer examples and a unique environmental perspective, Rob and John give us a look into the world of geospatial analysis and the importance of Microsoft technologies in their customer’s applications. SQL Server 2008 (new spatial types), Windows Server and Client, Visual Studio 2008 (AJAX), WPF/Silverlight and Virtual Earth are highlighted in this discussion. As is the importance of the balance between managed and native code.

ESRI (Environmental Systems Research Institute) is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner dedicated to helping people to make better decisions that affect the world around us. In “an age of Software plus Services”, ESRI and Microsoft give application developers, analysts and consumers a platform that adapts to varying needs. Many examples are cited, including land use planning, home site selection, police in-vehicle crime statistics and drive time analysis.

More information
www.microsoft.com/isv/esri
www.microsoft.com/environment

Tom Raftery: On Blogging, Green Computing and other interesting topics

Charles — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 20:12:43 GMT

Tom Raftery is blogger, podcaster and social media consultant.

Tom consults to companies on social media (blogs, podcasts, wikis, etc) and how to use them for knowledge management, brand management, communications, etc. Tom is a director of a startup data centre in Cork - Cork Internet eXchange (cix.ie). CIX will open doors for business in January 08. Tom is also involved in an energy management startup called Synergy Module (synergymodule.com).

Here we talk about green computing, blogging and other interesting topics. Enjoy.