Once in a while, we wish that we would wake up a little later, not rush to shower and get dressed, have a decent breakfast and avoid jumping into the car and dealing with traffic. This may happen most often than not. Considering the amount of time a Kenyan worker wastes on the roads, he or she would be more productive working from home, within a cozy ambience and a relaxed mood; this is known as teleworking or telecommuting; than in traffic and later in a closed office. In the modern workspace, the daily commuting to a central place of work is replaced by telecommunication links. Employees work from home, while others, occasionally also referred to as nomad workers or web commuters, utilize mobile telecommunications technology to work from coffee shops or other locations. A common phrase frequently repeated in telecommuting is that "work is something you do, not somewhere you travel to".
Another aspect of the modern workspace is globalization, which means an employee could cover multiple territories. There is a need to reduce travel costs by allowing the employee to work away from the office as much as he or she is virtually in it. Telecommuting thus protects our environment by reducing carbon emissions. Working from home also means the employee can save money in other ways in addition to cutting down on commuting such as less money is spent on lunch , no longer have to buy formal office attire and so on. The changing work practices and increased mobility have produced a new breed of telecommuter, a more sophisticated consumer with demand for rich-media technologies, devices and applications.
CIOs are faced with a challenge which requires them to provide a solution which connects any mobile device to your corporate resources over any mobile network for the telecommuters. In other words, to provide secure access to the office network from remote PCs, laptops, tablets, mobile phones and web browsers. There is also a need to use social tools, for instance blogs, wikis and social network sites, to increase productivity, improve access to subject matter experts, and connect co-workers across functional and geographic boundaries. Business intelligence on the market trends can be gathered by linking the use of social software to the enterprise network.
In the current market, various enterprise solutions available such that a telecommuter has access to business information on the mobile phone when he or she is on the go – email, calendars, documents, tasks. Instances include enterprise solutions like MS Exchange, SharePoint and BlackBerry Enterprise Server. For more collaborative experiences, HyperOffice enables you to push and keep in sync with corporate email, calendars, contacts, tasks; share documents and calendars; irrespective of mobile device – iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, many Nokia and Android phones, Java and SyncML phones, and more. Web conferencing lets you connect with anyone, anywhere, in real time. For instance, WebEx combines desktop sharing through a web browser with phone conferencing and video, so everyone sees the same thing while you talk.
Telecommuting has been facing a couple of challenges though. For a start, mobile devices present a more constrained computing environment compared to desktop computers. In terms of battery life and form factor, mobile devices tend to have less powerful CPUs, less memory, less storage, restricted power consumption, smaller displays, missing or restricted input devices. Secondly, collaboration applications require dedicated servers and technical staff leading to a high cost of ownership. In fact, some applications, such as the Blackberry Server Enterprise, will only work with particular devices; compelling an organization to replace all the devices. Mobile devices also present a security risk since users carry sensitive information wherever they go. It is prudent to install on-board encryption software or a mechanism to wipe sensitive in case the device is lost. Because monitoring performance is more difficult for those working at home, managers often do not recognize the contributions made by telecommuters by way of good performance reviews and promotions.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Data Centers Going Green
Recently, Kenya Data Networks (KDN) launched their new data center at the Nairobi based Sameer Business Park. The Tier 3 data centre will cut gas emissions and energy use through an improved architectural design and partial use of renewal energy. It will be among the first data centers to use of latest solar-power technology to provide the energy requirements of the facility. The data centre is poised to offer services such as hosting data and software applications to serve international and local businesses. It is expected that the centre will relieve the region from having to seek data back-up services in Europe and America, and reduce on the business operations expenditure.
Looking at the East African region, the Rwandan government has commenced on the construction of a data center. The World Bank has provided US$24 million to facilitate Rwanda's construction of its center and the country's plan to connect to the regional undersea cables running under the Indian Ocean, including Seacom, TEAMs and the EaSSY project, in order to address connectivity problems. On the other hand, Vodacom is seeking to cement its presence in East Africa's data business. In Rwanda, the construction of Vodacom’s data center is being carried out by a Swedish company, Coromatic, at a cost of more than US$5 million. All of these data centers are designed to utilize power efficiently and produce less emission.
Similarly, Google is preparing to open its newest data center, a large facility in a former paper mill in Hamina, Finland. The facility uses the sea to replace the chiller in its cooling system, collecting cool water from an inlet pipe located about 7.5 meters beneath the surface of the Baltic Sea. The technique, known as "Free Cooling", achieves cooling by removing heat from your facility without using the chiller. This is done by using low temperature ambient air, evaporating water, or using a large thermal reservoir. Minimizing the use of chillers is typically the largest opportunity for savings for large organizations with huge data centers.
IBM teamed with New York State and Syracuse University to open the Green Data Center at Syracuse University provides a showcase for a number of state-of-the-art technologies designed to reduce power consumption and emissions. Built at a cost of $12.4 million, the 12,000 square-foot facility generates its own power on site, for electrical, heating, and cooling systems. It houses energy efficient IBM Blade Center, Power 575, and z10 servers and is expected to use 50% less energy than a comparably sized data center using traditional power sources and hardware. IBM contributed $5 million in design services and equipment to the project, while the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority kicked in about $2 million.
In 2009, Hitachi Data Systems Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd, opened its green data center in Yokohama, Japan. The Yokohama Third Center occupies 10,000 square meters of total floor space. A rooftop garden at the HDS data center provides the building with shade that contributes to the lowering of summertime indoor temperature by as much as three degrees Celsius. Nitrogen gas fire extinguishers and cooling systems using outdoor air, both of which have zero ozone depletion and global warming potentials, are installed as measures contributing to the improvement of regional and global environments. The opened green facility incorporates power-efficient data center technology designed to achieve a benchmarking rating of 1.6 Power Usage Effectiveness.
What about small and midsize companies? They are unable to spend thousands of shillings for sea water systems, solar panels or wind generators. How do they make their data centers environmentally friendly? Direct energy consumption in the data center, is significant and small and midsize companies have the need to pursue greater energy efficiency along with performance. There are cheap and simple ways of minimizing energy consumption and improve efficiency in the data center. For instance, try not to cool parts of the data center where there is no equipment.
About 10 to 30 percent of the servers in most data centers are usually underutilized. Conduct an inventory on which of these servers can be virtualized onto another new server and turn those older servers off. Also, turn the lights off in your data center. Servers are not afraid of the dark and can easily be managed remotely. It is also important to use scalable or modular systems so you use only the needed energy capacity. So, big or small organization, you can have your data center going green!
Looking at the East African region, the Rwandan government has commenced on the construction of a data center. The World Bank has provided US$24 million to facilitate Rwanda's construction of its center and the country's plan to connect to the regional undersea cables running under the Indian Ocean, including Seacom, TEAMs and the EaSSY project, in order to address connectivity problems. On the other hand, Vodacom is seeking to cement its presence in East Africa's data business. In Rwanda, the construction of Vodacom’s data center is being carried out by a Swedish company, Coromatic, at a cost of more than US$5 million. All of these data centers are designed to utilize power efficiently and produce less emission.
Similarly, Google is preparing to open its newest data center, a large facility in a former paper mill in Hamina, Finland. The facility uses the sea to replace the chiller in its cooling system, collecting cool water from an inlet pipe located about 7.5 meters beneath the surface of the Baltic Sea. The technique, known as "Free Cooling", achieves cooling by removing heat from your facility without using the chiller. This is done by using low temperature ambient air, evaporating water, or using a large thermal reservoir. Minimizing the use of chillers is typically the largest opportunity for savings for large organizations with huge data centers.
IBM teamed with New York State and Syracuse University to open the Green Data Center at Syracuse University provides a showcase for a number of state-of-the-art technologies designed to reduce power consumption and emissions. Built at a cost of $12.4 million, the 12,000 square-foot facility generates its own power on site, for electrical, heating, and cooling systems. It houses energy efficient IBM Blade Center, Power 575, and z10 servers and is expected to use 50% less energy than a comparably sized data center using traditional power sources and hardware. IBM contributed $5 million in design services and equipment to the project, while the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority kicked in about $2 million.
In 2009, Hitachi Data Systems Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd, opened its green data center in Yokohama, Japan. The Yokohama Third Center occupies 10,000 square meters of total floor space. A rooftop garden at the HDS data center provides the building with shade that contributes to the lowering of summertime indoor temperature by as much as three degrees Celsius. Nitrogen gas fire extinguishers and cooling systems using outdoor air, both of which have zero ozone depletion and global warming potentials, are installed as measures contributing to the improvement of regional and global environments. The opened green facility incorporates power-efficient data center technology designed to achieve a benchmarking rating of 1.6 Power Usage Effectiveness.
What about small and midsize companies? They are unable to spend thousands of shillings for sea water systems, solar panels or wind generators. How do they make their data centers environmentally friendly? Direct energy consumption in the data center, is significant and small and midsize companies have the need to pursue greater energy efficiency along with performance. There are cheap and simple ways of minimizing energy consumption and improve efficiency in the data center. For instance, try not to cool parts of the data center where there is no equipment.
About 10 to 30 percent of the servers in most data centers are usually underutilized. Conduct an inventory on which of these servers can be virtualized onto another new server and turn those older servers off. Also, turn the lights off in your data center. Servers are not afraid of the dark and can easily be managed remotely. It is also important to use scalable or modular systems so you use only the needed energy capacity. So, big or small organization, you can have your data center going green!
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