Articles from Peter Judge

1. Does Greenpeace Even Get Tech? Explore TechWeekEurope UK (May 23 2012) Fossil Fuel Greenpeace is a diverse organisation that campaigns across a wide range of issues. It’s recently been weighing in on IT issues, which I initially thought was a good idea. Instead, its actions have undermined my confidence in the whole organisation. The basic idea of holding organisations to account is good. But it needs to be fair, and Greenpeace seems to be out of its depth, applying standards inconsistently, protesting in the wrong places, and sometimes just missing the point. Clouds that aren’t clear Last week, Apple announced that its data centre in Maiden North Carolina would be using 100 percent renewable energy. The news came just two days after Greenpeace blitzed Apple’s Cupertino headquarters with protesters dressed as iPhones, and critical tweets broadcast from a survival “pod” in front of the building. The protest was the culmination of a series of actions complaining that Apple’s data ... (Read Full Article)

   Comment Mentions:   Apple   Greenpeace   Peter Judge

2. Methane Power – Let’s Not Burst The Bubble Explore TechWeekEurope UK (May 2 2012) Construction , Fuel Cell Methane production seems to be gathering pace in the data centre world. No sooner had Microsoft suggested that data centres should be co-located with methane production sources, we met up with a company that is already doing just that. Infinity doesn’t actually have a working data centre yet, but it has the power on hand, and the sheds in which to put the data centre. As we learnt on a visit to Iceland, all you need for a sustainable data centre is a source of energy and a good shed and Cold War air bases have the finest sheds and hangars money could buy in the 1970s and 1980s. (Read Full Article)

   Comment Mentions:   Iceland   Peter Judge   Microsoft Corp

3. Apple Buys Bloom Fuel Cells, Promises 100% Green Data Centre Explore TechWeekEurope UK (May 2 2012) Construction , Emissions , Fuel Cell Apple is using Bloom's fuel cells in North Carolina, and says a new plant in Oregon will use 100 percent renewable power (Read Full Article)

   Comment Mentions:   Apple   Google   Peter Judge

4. Interxion Puts Data Centre Staff In Pods For Olympics Explore TechWeekEurope UK (Apr 13 2012) Construction Data centre firm Interxion has installed sleeping pods in the breakout area of its London site, so its staff can be on call 24×7 during any transport disruption due to this summer’s Olympics. While other firms such as O2 are testing out the idea of staff working from home during Olympic travel chaos, which has been predicted by the government and Transport for London, there are some jobs that need on-site staff, and managing Interxion’s networks asnd servers is one of them. Three pods in the breakout area will provide a cosy – if somewhat minimal – sleeping environment for engineering staff during the event. (Read Full Article)

   Comment Mentions:   Peter Judge

5. Green Data Centres Could Run On Pig Manure Explore TechWeekEurope UK (Apr 11 2012) Construction , Emissions People keen to reduce the emissions of their data centres are prepared to look in some unlikely places. In North Carolina, that includes pig manure. Google’s commitment to renewable energy remains strong, although it has curtailed some of its original commitment to green energy research for its own sake. In North Carolina, this led it into the use of pig manure – and it seems likely that Apple could also be diving in to join it. (Read Full Article)

   Comment Mentions:   Apple   Google   Peter Judge

6. IBM PureSystems Converge RISC and x86, Network And Storage Explore TechWeekEurope UK (Apr 11 2012) Networking , Storage IBM has leapt into the market for converged data centre hardware, but combined it with expertise encapsulated in “patterns” that should reduce installation and integration time. IBM’s PureSystems – billed as Big Blue’s biggest announcement for more than 20 years, and previously known within the company as Project Troy – combine Intel x86 servers and IBM’s own Power RISC processors with network and storage in pre-configured chassis systems for data centres, that support database and web applications, and can switch between public and private cloud. (Read Full Article)

   Comment Mentions:   Intel   IBM   Peter Judge

7. DECC Hopes To Slash Cost Of CRC Carbon Tax By 60 Percent Explore TechWeekEurope UK (Mar 28 2012) Construction , Carbon Reduction Commitment , Carbon Tax , Emissions , Cloud Computing The CRC carbon tax, which the IT industry fears will increase data centre costs, is to be simplified once again, according to proposals published yesterday which are open to consultation till June. The CRC was put under notice by the Chancellor in his budget speech as too expensive. The Department’s proposals hope to save the tax by cutting the administrative cost by around two-thirds. The CRC imposes a tax on energy use, and rates organisations in a league table of efficiency, as a way to push companies to reduce their greenhouse emissions. Criticised for its complexity, simplification of the CRC has been on the cards for some time and last week’s budget started speculation the tax might be abolished. (Read Full Article)

   Comment Mentions:   Department of Energy   Carbon Reduction Commitment   Peter Judge

8. Amazon Queries Facebook And Apple’s Solar Plans Explore TechWeekEurope UK (Mar 27 2012) Construction , Solar E-commerce and web company Amazon has sparked a controversy by saying its rival’s solar power implementations are “somewhere between a bad idea and pure marketing.” Facebook has solar panels at its Oregon site, and Apple is planning a large solar farm at its iDataCenter in North Carolina, but Amazon’s web services efficiency specialist has examined their likely contributions in a blog post and dismissed their contribution to the data centres they serve. (Read Full Article)

   Comment Mentions:   Amazon.com   James Hamilton   Facebook

9. Budget 2012: Goodbye To the CRC Green Tax? Explore TechWeekEurope UK (Mar 21 2012) Carbon Reduction Commitment In the last few years, the main tech news story in the annual budget has been the question, how much will the Chancellor do for broadband? As usual, this year’s answer seems to be – for those who see Internet access as this country’s best hope for the future at least – not enough. But alongside Osborne’s re-announcement of super-connected tech cities (with the list filled out by a few more names), the Budget included a big hint of a major change that will affect large parts of the IT industry. In amongst the tax-cuts and the changed thresholds, George Osborne dropped a big hint that he could do away with the controversial CRC green tax. End of the green line? “The Carbon Reduction Commitment is cumbersome, bureaucratic and imposes unnecessary costs on business,” Osborne said. That’s a pretty unambiguous statement. Anything that gets damned that way by ... (Read Full Article)

   Comment Mentions:   Carbon Reduction Commitment   Peter Judge   CRC

10. Liquid Cooling – It All Comes Flooding Back Explore TechWeekEurope UK (Mar 7 2012) Servers When launching its new Xeon E5 range of processors this week, Intel made a lot of how efficient they are, saying that they cut the energy demands of servers by as much as 50 percent. The server makers in the room all had plenty of tweaks and tips to cut energy use at the system level, including fans which are individually controlled. Cooling at full blast, a fan can use 75W, but can be cut down to 1W stand by if they are not needed. Why not stop blowing air? But what are those fans doing there? As 451 Research memorably described it, running a data centre and cooling it by air is like having a room full of electric heaters cooled by a battery of electric fans. Air is not great for cooling. It takes energy to move it around and it is so thin, that it can’t ... (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Intel   IBM   Peter Judge

11. Infinity To Open Data Centre In Stockley Park Explore TechWeekEurope UK (Mar 2 2012) Construction Despite other operators claiming real estate near London is impossible tofind, Infinity has announced it is to build a data centre at Stockley Park. The 60,00 square foot facility, located near a major business park, will be on-stream in Autumn of this year, and the first part of it is already 50 percent let, Infinity said at the Data Centre World (DCW) event in London this week. We’ve got the power When Computacenter opened a 100,000 square foot Tier IV data centre in Romford in 2009, it predicted this would be the last major data centre within London’s M25 orbital motorway. Infinity is proud to have overcome the main obstacle to building new data centres – the availability of electrical power. “We pride ourselves on our ability fo find power where no one else can,” Infinity marketing manager Chris Baldry told TechWeekEurope, at DCW. The Stockley Park ... (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Peter Judge   Infinity   Martin Lynch

12. Hotter Data Centres Need To Find Tougher Kit Explore TechWeekEurope UK (Feb 29 2012) Construction , Servers Data centres will get hotter. There is no doubt about that. It’s the best way to reduce the energy they burn. That sounds wrong of course. But servers and other IT equipment inevitably make heat, and the majority of existing data centres still use more energy trying to bring the temperature back down. Hot server action Turning off the cooling systems, and allowing the temperature to go up is the best way to save energy… as long as the equipment can take it. I expect to see plenty of hot, throbbing servers at the Data Centre World event in London, which starts today (Wednesday). (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   ASHRAE   Peter Judge

13. Dell Launches New Servers, Upgrades Networking Explore TechWeekEurope UK (Feb 27 2012) Networking , Servers Dell has announced new PowerEdge servers based on Intel’s shortly-to-be-launched Xeon E5 processor, which are optimised to run at higher temperatures, saving customers money on cooling. The announcement, made in Twickenham, London and San Francisco, with an appearance by Dell CEO Michael Dell, also upgraded the networking in Dell’s PowerEdge servers to 10 Gigabit Ethernet, using Dell’s Force10 acquisition for data centre switches, and displacing Brocade’s (formerly Foundry) Ethernet switches. (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Intel   ASHRAE   Brocade

14. Nordics Launch A United Cold Front On Data Centres Explore TechWeekEurope UK (Feb 22 2012) Construction Energy use in data centres is a serious issue. It’s thought that their energy demands account for around 1.5 percent of the world’s electricity, a figure that’s set to increase and one that a lot of people are looking to reign in. Today we heard that the EU’s Cool Em All project intends to create better ways to reduce the energy in data centres, which appears to have some overlap with Facebook’s Open Compute project as both aim to produce open sourced “best practice” hardware designs. So we assume that the EU effort will communicate and share with the Facebook-backed one, as well as other existing movements such as the Green Grid and the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres. (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Facebook   Peter Judge

15. The Renewable Energy Behind Iceland’s Data Centre Bid: In Pictures Explore TechWeekEurope UK (Feb 20 2012) Construction , Geothermal , Hydro Iceland’s bid to be a data hub is all about energy. It generates surplus electricity from renewable sources, allowing its utilities to offer very competitive prices. Geothermal and hydroelectric power provide a steady baseload, giving data centres guaranteed power, and long-term pricing agreements. TechWeekEurope‘s visit to Iceland included two sustainable power plants, shown here in pictures. Iceland has used hydroelectricity for many years, and the state power utility, Landsvirkjun, apologised for taking us round one of the oldest – Irafoss on the Sog river.  (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Iceland   Europe   Peter Judge

16. Iceland’s Thor Data Centre: In Pictures Explore TechWeekEurope UK (Feb 17 2012) Geothermal This month saw the launch of Iceland’s bid to become an international data hub.  The new Verne Global data centre was the main feature of the event, but there is already a shared data centre in Iceland – Thor. Launched in 2010, Thor originally used standard shipping containers, from AST Modular, but has moved towards a “modular” approach, which based on a shell that can contain a space that mimics the look and feel of a conventional data centre. Thor is on the road from Reykjavik to the airport, and TechWeekEurope knows its people well, so we paid a visit there on our way home from the trip organised by Verne. Although technically rivals, the two data centres are not at daggers drawn. The two actually share some customers (GreenQloud is in both) and definitely share a mission. They think organisations in Europe and America should ship their data to ... (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Iceland   Europe   Oracle

17. Cisco Live: In Pictures Explore TechWeekEurope UK (Feb 1 2012) This week’s Cisco Live event in London was not just about the networking and data centre technology. IT people visiting the show let their hair down as well. Admittedly the lighter moments were about things like ludicrously fast cars. The Bloodhound CCS on display is a British bid to push the world land speed record above 1000mph, while other members of the Cisco ecosystem got to play Cisco pinball. The leading product announcement was about a fast Wi-Fi access point, designed to cope with the hordes of mobile devices which workers are bringing into their offices. Other announcements from Cisco’s ecosystem included efficient green Power over Ethernet products and a network company beating the distance record for 100 Gigabit Ethernet. (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Cisco   Peter Judge

18. UK Data Centres Won’t Cut Energy In 2012 Explore TechWeekEurope UK (Jan 11 2012) Construction , Carbon Footprint , Servers Most data centres in the UK will not be cutting their energy use in 2012. In fact, three-quarters will be using more electricity, despite pressure from energy costs and green taxes. Rising energy costs are supposed to be making data centres more energy-conscious, and energy taxes such as the CRC energy efficiency scheme are designed have the same effect, but still 76 percent of the UK’s data centres expect to use more energy this year, according to a survey by Data Centre World. The cloud is an energy hog It is not just a small increase either. More than one fifth (21 percent) expect to expand their energy use by more than 25 percent this year, according to the survey. While some of the increase may be down to growth and increased levels of business, it is also being produced by inefficient use of energy, despite the existence of ... (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Peter Judge   CRC

19. The Cloud And The Client: Apple’s Green Dilemma Explore da.feedsportal.com (Dec 14 2011) Fossil Fuel Last week’s story that Apple may be planning a data centre in Oregon, near Facebook’s controversial location, may turn out to be a rumour, or may be reality. Either way, it was a timely reminder that consumerisation and the cloud are changing the way tech companies are judged on environmental issues. Apple has had a poor rating from environmental campaigners in recent years, largely because of a lack of transparency about the environmental impact of its consumer products. This has been changing somewhat as it opens up slightly, and Apple sits somewhere in the middle of Greenpeace’s latest consumer IT rankings A cloud hanging over all green IT? However the arrival of the cloud changes things. When Apple first launched its iPad, Greenpeace was quick to respond that more client devices with higher expectations of data and connectivity, use more energy and create more emissions. It is ... (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Apple   Greenpeace   Facebook

20. Could Solar Power Be More Than Window Dressing? Explore Home - eWeekEurope.co.uk (Dec 7 2011) Fossil Fuel , Geothermal , Solar , Wind , Servers Solar power has been only capable of producing a small part of data centre energy needs, but this may change, says Peter Judge Solar power has always seemed a good long term bet for renewable energy. After all, pretty much every single Joule of energy we use on the planet comes from the sun originally The sun’s energy is caught by plants, which make fuels, either through the long process of fossilisation producing oil and gas, or by directly producing wood, or man-made ethanol to burn. Animals’ energy comes from plants, and the sun drives the water cycle which produces hydro-electric energy. Nuclear power uses energy stored from older suns where the heavier elements are made. Geothermal energy does include energy originating on earth – it is the heat of the earth’s core, but it is maintained at that temperature by radioactive decay inside the earth. (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Peter Judge

21. Flywheel Power Looks For A New Spin Explore Home - eWeekEurope.co.uk (Nov 30 2011) Batteries only last a few years and contain noxious chemicals, says Active Power Green considerations will prompt more data centres to adopt mechanical flywheel-based uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs) to replace environmentally damaging batteries, a London conference heard. Mechanical flywheels can store enough energy to keep data centres running in the event of a power cut, and they compare well with batteries on most measures, Active Power said, and showed a containerised flywheel power supply at the Data Center Dynamics event in London. (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Europe   Peter Judge

22. Modular Data Centres: Nerdy But Cool Explore Home - eWeekEurope.co.uk (Nov 16 2011) Construction , Servers Containers got backing this week from Swedish designers and data centre nerds, says Peter Judge. How can they fail? Modular data centres, once seen as inefficient compared compared with bespoke buildings, have been rapidaly gaining acceptance. In fact, they now have endorsement from two sources almost the exact opposite of each other – hipsters and geeks. They have been simultenously adopted by a “cool” Swedish designer and been given the thumbs-up by that engaging bunch of anoraks and train-spotters, the Green Grid. A data centre fit for Mars? Modular Data Centres Stockholm is the brainchild of Jon Karlung, who designed the Bahnhof facility in Stockholm known as the “James Bond” data centre as it is designed to look like a spy’s lair. That was very much a bespoke system but Karlung has now been converted to the idea of modular. (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   The Green Grid   Facebook   Peter Judge

23. Are You Operating A Legal Cloud? Explore da.feedsportal.com (Nov 14 2011) Cloud Computing Cloud computing did not exist when data protection regulation came into force. John Roberts of Redstone explains how to keep within the law The UK Data Protection Act (DPA) is often regarded as the world’s leading law on protecting personal data. But many UK companies now adopting cloud services are not only putting data at risk, but also themselves, by breaching data protection laws. How do you comply with the DPA, whilst maintaining a cloud presence? When the UK government passed the DPA in 1998 it was heralded as the definitive way to guarantee personal data was protected. Over the following decade, refinements to the act ensured that personal data was not just secure, but more specifically, it was secure online. This worked well when data was held on-premise, within a company’s own data centre, but the advent of cloud technology has changed all that. (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Amazon.com   Google   Peter Judge

24. Green Data Centres Will Be Measured On Money Explore Home - eWeekEurope.co.uk (Oct 12 2011) PUE and other efficiency measures are useful, but data centre owners are chasing money now, says Peter Judge Efficient data centres have always made an effort to meet commercial needs – but I think the economic side of the movement may soon eclipse the “green” side. The move to the cloud is driving this, I think. “Cloud-based services [like Facebook and Google], have the ability to build efficient data centres in locations where there is cheap power, and to highly utilise the IT equipment,” said Mark Monroe, executive director of the The Green Grid. “Their primary function is to drive the cost of a transaction down as low as it can be.” The Green Grid has just had its annual European conference, over two days in Paris and London, and is reacting to this world, where it is all about the lowest cost for transactions. “Amazon can deliver a CPU-hour, for ... (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Amazon.com   Sun Microsystems   Google

25. Green Grid Plans Online Data Centre Efficiency Tool Explore Home - eWeekEurope.co.uk (Oct 12 2011) Users will be able to compare data centre efficiency using an online tool from the Green Grid (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Sun Microsystems   The Green Grid   Peter Judge

1-25 of 63 // 1 2 3 »