HP got the industry buzzing this week when it announced plans to build server hardware based on low-power ARM processors. And while it will be a while before Project Moonshot’s tech hits data centers, that’s not stopping folks from dreaming up some big data implications.

Better yet, some enterprising souls are already demonstrating what its ‘cloudy’ future could look like.

Over at CNXSoft,  Noritsuna Imamur of the Open Embedded Software Foundation, shows off Google App Engine running on a Pandaboard cloud cluster.

Norisuna had a comparison table that showed the Pandaboard cloud (OMAP4 @ 1GHz – 12 Cores) uses 4x times [less] space and 5x less power (50W vs. 257 W) than a Xeon 1.8GHz Quad Core server with about the same amount of processing power and memory (6GB vs. 8GB).

Neat!

Check out the video below to see it in action. Favorite part: When the camera pans over to the Kill-a-Watt.

What does the cloud look like in 2011? What’s it made of?

Thanks to a survey conducted by BitNami, Cloud.com and cloud management firm Zenoss, we have a fascinating new snapshot of the cloud market. With the help of 500 IT professionals, the companies were able to get a bead on some of the factors that are driving cloud adoption, and what technologies (and vendors) that adoption favors.

For instance, here are some interesting stats that shed light into corporate priorities at the moment:

According to the survey results, the top factor influencing the use of cloud computing is scalability (61%), followed by overall cost savings (54%) and easier management (53%). However, of the Chief Technical Officers surveyed, scalability (71%) was the most popular driver of cloud adoption, followed by elasticity or the need to adjust to fluctuations in resource demands (61%).

So companies are moving to the cloud for growth, pure and simple. CTOs in particular seem to be feeling the pressure to keep pace with the explosion of data and the many ways businesses derive value from that data. It sure explains why data centers are constantly cropping up lately.

One unsurprising revelation is that VMware dominates when it comes to virtualization. One curious thing to note is that Hyper-V is running neck-and-neck with some open source hypervisors, suggesting that Microsoft’s efforts in this arena are starting to paying off. This comes even as a majority of those polled reporting that they employ open source solutions whenever possible. When it comes to virtualization, it seems, a lot of them don’t stick to this mindset.

I hope your scrollwheel is up to the task because the full infographic awaits below.

[via ReadWriteWeb]

Today, Steve Jobs is expected to take the stage at WWDC 2011 and finally pull the curtain open on its cloud offering (and a little thing called iOS 5, and for Mac lovers, OS X “Lion”). Here’s what some top online IT publications are saying…

Steve Jobs and the iCloud announcement: What his public appearance signals – The Washington Post
A huge deal or does Jobs’ shadow already loom large?

Can Apple Make the Cloud Work for Consumers? – GigaOM
Only if Apple lets its i-devices break orbit from the Mac, according to enStratus Co-Founder and CTO George Reese.

What will Apple announce at WWDC 2011? We round up rumors in the wild – VentureBeat
How many of those rumblings will come true?

WWDC 2011: Keynote Preview – PCWorld

Amazon’s and Google’s Cloud Services Compared – NYT Gadgetwise
Now, it’s on!

WWDC 2011: What to expect (and not expect) from Steve Jobs – The Guardian

The next big problem Apple wants to tackle: Your data – ZDNet
Can Apple escape its scattered cloud past?

Apple’s WWDC: What to Expect – The Street

Report: Apple’s Time Capsule to work as iCloud drive – CNET News

Apple to Unveil ICloud to Deflect Google Android – Bloomberg

Cloud computing is taking the IT industry by storm but behind the technology are massive data centers that consume a lot of energy. How much?

According to some of the opening stats in an infographic cooked up by ABB, a utility and industrial automation firm, the energy requirements of the world’s data centers are large enough power New York City one and a half times. The average data center sucks up enough juice to power 25,000 homes.

Sure, a cloudy future is a potentially greener future for IT. But the worry is that as the cloud grows in the near term, so will its share of the global energy consumption pie. Worse is that inefficiency will creep in and exacerbate the issue. Considering that 10 percent of the 5.75 million servers that are installed each year to grow web services go unused, it’s a well-founded concern.

Check out the rest of ABB’s infographic below. (Visit ABB for the full-sized version.)

Image credit: ABB

[via ReadWriteWeb]

Can electronic medical records (EMR) help hospitals, clinics and doctor’s offices go green? Yes, but not right away.

Kaiser Permanente, a health care giant, used itself as a test case and the results are encouraging. Transitioning to electronic medical records can cut CO2 emissions by up to 1.7 million tons a year. The New York Times Bits blog reports:

In the Kaiser system, the researchers conclude, electronic health records have been decidedly green. Their use, the article says, has eliminated 1,000 tons of paper, 68 tons of X-ray film, and lowered gasoline consumption by patients by 3 million gallons a year. That more than offsets the 250 tons of plastic waste a year, mostly from tossing out old computers (all of Kaiser’s machines are recycled).

The downside? Only about a quarter of the nation’s doctors use electronic health records and research indicates that transitioning to a digital system would increase CO2 emissions by 653,000 tons.

Getting cloudy

Scary, but the shift toward electronic health records in many ways mirrors the IT’s industry’s drive toward cloud computing. In the short term, building huge data centers, outfitting them with servers and powering those facilities can negatively impact the environment. The energy efficiency gains and emissions cuts start kicking in as businesses shift their IT usage to newer, greener and leaner-running data centers and older installations and inefficient server closets are retired.

According to Microsoft, moving to the cloud can slash IT energy consumption and carbon emissions by up to 30 percent. The savings are more pronounced for mid-sized and small firms — up to 90 percent. Essentially, it’s great news for health facilities both big and small, and already one hospital in North Carolina is enjoying the benefits.

Early, encouraging days of EMR on the cloud

In December, eWeek’s healthcare IT expert, Brian Horowitz, spotlighted an EMC/VMware private cloud installation that’s helping Northern Hospital of Surry County’s handle the growth of its EMR infrastructure. He wrote:

Using EMC’s hardware, Northern Hospital has saved hundred of thousands of dollars by eliminating 20 servers and minimizing the maintenance of existing servers, EMC reports.

The hospital has also been able to lower power usage and network congestion. Northern Hospital plans to achieve 70–80 percent server virtualization within the next 12 months, according to EMC.

GE, too, is jumping in on cloud to power its Centricity Advance EMR platform. This growing market is a good opportunity for cloud startups that can handle huge data stores in a variety of formats (everything from electronic forms to medical imaging); update and deliver that data fast, securely and reliably; and navigate tough regulatory waters. Easier said than done, perhaps, but the potential is huge as doctors increasingly and inevitably trade their clipboards for tablets.

Even the job outlook for IT professionals with a penchant for medical tech looks good. So while everyone is rushing to fill every niche in the white hot social media landscape — and cash out, let’s not forget — the relatively un-sexier field of EMR could prove lucrative for entrepreneurs too.

Image credit: Flickr user Paulssons – Creative Commons

GE is venturing into the green data center energy space by acquiring Plano, Texas-based Lineage Power for just over a cool half-billion dollars.

Citing growth in cloud and mobile computing — thanks, in part, to the 1.1 billion new smartphones the company expects to hop on wireless networks this year — GE’s Energy Services president and CEO, Dan Heintzelman, makes the case for its latest buy. “Every new mobile device plugs into an infrastructure that requires an ever increasing amount of high-quality power. The growth in high-bandwidth mobile internet applications and cloud computing is accelerating that demand,” he states in a company release.

IDC predicts that cloud growth, especially surrounding the burgeoning private cloud market, will fuel brisk server sales for the foreseeable future. By IDC’s estimation, yearly private cloud server sales will reach $5.7 billion in 2014, more than double the $2.6 billion that server vendors banked in 2009. That’s a lot of new servers, and in this age of energy- and cost-awareness, data center operators have reason to turn their attention to their facilities’ ability to handle the crushing load — efficiently, of course.

Enter Lineage Power, which employs 2,300 workers and booked $450 million in revenue last year. The company specializes in DC power conversion equipment for data centers and telecommunications facilities. The field has been witnessing new levels of attention in recent years as IT companies set their sights on exploiting (and accounting for) every watt that enters the data center. And so, firms like IBM building next-gen data centers are looking beyond server efficiency and targeting other sources of inefficiency like power conversion and distribution systems.

Did GE make the smart move in acquiring Lineage? As the data center industry advances efficient data center power infrastructures — and countless other providers of web services follow suit — GE’s latest venture looks like a sure bet. Plus with Lineage, GE gets to enjoy the spoils of the white-hot cloud computing market while staying true to its strengths (power generation and distribution) and boosting its green cred to boot. A good fit, indeed.

An Industry Voices Post:

Cloud computing is emerging as a way to trim IT costs and achieve both energy savings and carbon reductions. A win-win-win, right? Essentially, yes, but as any techie can tell you, any change in IT strategy merits a good, nuanced examination about how it affects your business.

I’m thrilled to have Hunter Richards, an Accounting Market Analyst for Software Advice, break down what Microsoft’s eventual “cloudification” of Dynamics means to organizations that depend on the enterprise resource planning (ERP) suite — not to mention the very future of the product itself. Here are his insights, reprinted with permission.

Microsoft is “All In” for the Cloud, but What About Dynamics?
by Hunter Richards

Over the past couple years, Microsoft has made a dramatic – and welcome – about face on cloud computing. Steve Ballmer says, “We’re all in!” Meanwhile, the Office 365 announcement demonstrates Microsoft’s commitment to the cloud, even at the risk of cannibalizing the company’s on-premise alternatives.

We continue to wonder, however, what this all means for the Microsoft Dynamics product line. Migrating desktop apps to the cloud is one thing – no customization or integration. It’s quite another challenge to move four enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to the cloud and migrate hundreds of thousands of customers.

Here are some of the challenges we see:

• Architecture - The current Microsoft Dynamics ERP products are built on a single-tenant, hybrid client/server and web-enabled architecture. This architecture works just fine, but it’s not cloud-ready. Sure, these solutions can be hosted to offload IT burdens. But they don’t have the pure web, multi-tenant architecture required to take full advantage of the cloud’s economies of scale. Getting there will require a major re-write of the Dynamics architecture.

• Multiple products - Cloud migration is daunting enough, but the challenge is further complicated by the existence of four different architectures – AX, GP, NAV and SL. While they’re all built on Microsoft platform technologies, their data models and application logic are each unique. Microsoft faces the challenge of converging all four products onto a single cloud architecture. The company has already abandoned Project Green, the prior plan to converge the Dynamics products.

• Partner channel - Microsoft’s channel partners will need to change their business strategies for the cloud. For years, channel partners have made their money from reselling Dynamics, implementation services, hardware sales and upgrade cycles. There will certainly be a need for customization and integration of cloud-based Dynamics products, but major resale opportunities will fade. Microsoft risks upsetting its tried and true VAR channel as it moves to the cloud.

• Market readiness - Most importantly, if Microsoft did commit to moving Dynamics to the cloud, would the market be ready? Sure, there’s plenty of hype over the cloud – and we think the benefits of cloud computing are very real. But is Microsoft’s market – the early and late majorities – really demanding a cloud solution? Not yet. So Microsoft would ideally want to time such a major product cycle with its customer base’s appetite. It will happen; we’re just not sure when.

So what might Microsoft do in this situation? We see a few alternatives.

• Build a new solution similar to Dynamics CRM, which offers a hybrid of cloud and on-premise. Their best bet is probably to leverage the Dynamics CRM platform.
• Acquire an ERP cloud computing player like Intacct or NetSuite. We see this as less likely since there’s no single player with meaningful market share and .Net technology.
• Move all four Dynamics products to a cloud computing architecture, essentially replicating four products’ functionality on four evolving platforms.
• Market around the issue, offering hosted options through partners, but never fully embracing true cloud-based ERP. Risk missing the transition to cloud computing.

What’s your prediction for the Dynamics ERP cloud strategy? Vote on this poll, or share your opinion in the comments.

About month and a half ago, buzz began to surround Eden Prairie, Minnesota-based Compellent Technologies based on reports that Dell was interested in acquiring the storage startup. Rumor became reality today when it was revealed that Dell is acquiring Compellent for $960 million.  The firm specializes in storage technologies that improve energy efficiency in data centers, including thin provisioning, automatic tiering, and storage virtualization.

In a press statement, Brad Anderson, senior vice president of Dell’s Enterprise Product Group said, “Compellent is a natural complement to Dell’s expanding enterprise storage portfolio. The Compellent storage platform will enable Dell to provide customers additional mid- and high-end network storage solutions that simplify and reduce the cost of data management.”

More importantly, the deal marks a victory for Dell, particularly as competition grows for tech like Compellent’s that has — pardon the pun — a compelling value proposition for businesses that are increasingly finding themselves with ballooning storage infrastructures and energy costs to match. Earlier this year HP outbid Dell for 3PAR, which specializes in cloud storage, storage virtualization and thin provisioning. Last year, EMC beat out NetApp for DataDomain in a spectacular bidding war. And as 2010 comes to a close, the pool of potential acquisition targets for storage innovators is drying up, placing the spotlight on CommVault, Pillar Data Systems and DataDirect Networks.

Now, who’s next?

A new forecast from Pike Research points not only to the accelerated growth of cloud services, but also huge energy savings in the coming decade.

According to the research firm’s “Cloud Computing Energy Efficiency” report, cloud computing is projected to cut worldwide data center energy costs by 38 percent, from $23.3 billion in 2010 to $16.0 billion in 2020. By its estimation, “Pike Research forecasts that data centers will consume 139.8 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity in 2020, a reduction of 31% from 201.8 TWh in 2010.”

And, you’ll be able to breathe easier too. Data center greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) drop as a result of the cloud’s growth, falling 28% from today’s levels.

The latest data falls in line with several recent reports heralding the cloud’s eco-advantages. Last week, Nucleus Research released data showcasing how cloud-based apps can result in up to 91 percent in energy savings. And last month, Microsoft, Accenture and WSP Environment and Energy released a report showing that companies can cut emissions and reduce power consumption by up to 30 percent by embracing the cloud.

This bodes well to the cloud’s image of a greener, budget-friendly technology. In a company statement, Pike senior analyst Eric Woods, states, “Few, if any, clean technologies have the capability to reduce energy expenditures and GHG production with so little business disruption. Software as a service, infrastructure as a service, and platform as a service are all inherently more efficient models than conventional alternatives, and their adoption will be one of the largest contributing factors to the greening of enterprise IT.”

Image credit: IBM

Cloud-based apps can save businesses a bundle on energy costs versus on-site hosting according to new data from Nucleus Research. After comparing the energy consumption of Salesforce.com apps to their in-house equivalents, the research firm found that Salesforce.com beat out non-cloud app infrastructures with up to 91 percent in energy savings. And it saves money too.

Another interesting stat: “Salesforce.com customers saved the energy equivalent of 11 barrels of oil every hour.”

Nucleus’ findings somewhat mirror those of a study conducted by Accenture and WSP Environment for Microsoft. During their research, they found that mid-sized businesses could achieve energy and carbon savings of 60 to 90 percent.

How? In general, cloud infrastructures achieve high server utilization rates instead of traditional data centers and server closets where an app typically has a server to itself — many times with a lot of overhead that translates into wasted energy. Companies like Saleforce.com also load-balance in a way that they bring computing power to bear as user demand dictates instead of keeping servers fully powered up on indefinite standby. For its part, Salesforce.com has been making it easier for companies to get their feet wet when it comes to cloud computing. Last year, it began offering a free edition of its Force.com web app platform.

There is a catch to cloud-ifying apps, however. Nucleus warns that the cloud works best for standardized app suites. Apps that require deep customization don’t make the best candidates for the cloud, unfortunately. Nonetheless, that leaves a huge swath of applications that are primed for the cloud — and the energy and cost savings it offers — right now.