Monday, May 25, 2009

BSI Green IT Conference 19th May



I attended BSI's first and maybe only Green IT conference last week on 19th May at the CBI conference centre at Centre Point, off Oxford Street London.

The speakers were excellent but the attendance was very poor, whether it was scheduled too close to Green IT 09 a few weeks ago, the world recession or just poor marketing of the event I just don't know.

The number of delegates excluding speakers and BSI employees numbered 15 including myself which was cosy.

If BSI wants to run this event again I would suggest making it a free event or a virtual Green IT event where presentations are streamed to people's desks.

That said there were some good presentations and good points made to the select small audience.

Mile Gilmore, Managing Director of E-Ready who chaired the BSI Green IT conference started his introduction by stating "The very term 'Green' has as many interpretations as the number of people asked" he went on to say "I would venture that 'Green IT' is actually "Energy Efficient IT"

Ian Osborne from Intellect was the next speaker to talk about Grid computing Now! and how it is aimed championing Green IT through Grid Computing.

http://www.gridcomputingnow.org.uk

During his presentation Ian claimed "Powering processors consumes 6-10% of the data centre budget" said "It is important to get good value for carbon!"

The next presentation was David Fatscher from BSI is talking about ISO14001, PAS2050 and BS16001 standards. He said BSI was looking for users to get involved in Green IT standards he said anyone could join a committee or comment on draft standards by visiting http://www.bsigroup.com/getinvolved

David from BSI also called for IT vendors to provide "proof of greenness" after 80% of users said they had been misled by "Green wash" in a recent survey.

David Fatscher,BSI, Liam Newcombe,BCS Data Centre Specialist Group and Bob Croks,Defra then discussed what role BSI can play in shaping Green IT agenda in a discussion panel.

Next up was Liam Newcombe from the BCS DCSG on the European Commission Code of Conduct for data centres.

He started by saying "European Data centres are forecasted to use 104 TWh of energy by 2020" and quoted Paolo Bertoldi DG of European Commission JRC saying "The aim is to inform and stimulate data centre operators to reduce energy consumption in a cost effective manner"

Liam said "there was no coherent set of expert Green IT strategy" and "most information is not vendor neutral" when talking about the Green data centre.

Liam Westley, Managing Director from Tiger Computer Services AKA @westleyl on twitter spoke about the role of virtualization in Green IT. His presentation can be found on his blog at http://bit.ly/DraNI

On a lighter moment Liam showed how to Fry an egg on your PC to demonstrate how much power you are wasting http://bit.ly/6OvlD via @westleyl

Next up was Mark Taylor from Microsoft who said Microsoft wants to "help customers embrace sustainability as a way to save money as well as reducing their environmental impact" Mark said that Microsoft have signed the European Commission’s code of conduct for data centres just last week.

Following Mark's presentation was a panel including Liam Newcombe BCS, Patrick Fogarty Norman Disney & Young and Ian Osborne, Intellect to discuss data centres for the future. Cloud computing was a common theme and the McKinsey report on Cloud Computing Costs http://bit.ly/zsiIy was referenced.

Mark Cavill from Royal Mail did a presentation on their carbon emissions.

Some of his statistics included that their "CO2 emissions would fill 99 billion party balloons" "their energy consumption would power 43,731 UK homes" and
"Their landfill waste is equivalent to 11,157 fully laden Ford Transits"

He claimed Royal Mail's CO2 emissions are 993,879 tonnes per year and they will look to reduce this by 80% by 2050

His finishing quote was "The stone age did not end because the world ran out of stones and the oil age will not end because the world runs out of oil" Amory Lovins

Anja Frrench from Computer Aid International spoke about the re-use of PC's

She said 12 million PC's bought in UK in 2008 and 12.5 Million Pc's were sent to landfill over the past 5 years in the UK.

She claimed that each PC uses 240Kg of Fossil fuel, 22Kg of chemicals and 1500 litres of water to make and that 75% of the environmental cost of a PC is expended before the PC is switched on.

The day finished with Bob Croks from Defra saying what Defra were doing in regards to government Green IT strategy.

I tweeted the highlights on twitter from @geekygreen http://www.twitter.com/geekygreen You can still search on the hash tag of #BSIGreenIT

My last small complain to BSI is they printed all the presentations on recycled paper for each delegate> I would of preferred an electronic version after the event on paper.

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