Not that I planned it this way, but yesterday I wrote two articles for the IT Business Edge network, each with a neat little Green IT component.

The first is about Nicira, a startup that emerged from stealth this week despite offering a product that’s been commercially available since July 2011. But let’s not get hung up on technicalities and instead focus on the neat stuff: its virtual networking tech.

The company’s subscription-based software effectively de-couples virtual machines from the underlying physical network. That not only means truly elastic IT — workloads that contract, expand and shuffle across a network — but less networking infrastructure to buy and manage.

And with less hardware to buy — and keep powered, don’t forget — the savings can quickly add up…

As for cost savings, Nicira estimates that large data center customers (1 million VMs on 40,000 servers) can save between $15 million to $30 million on server and network hardware expenditures by avoiding over-provisioning and reducing the number of ports typically required to keep its platform operational.

Nice!

EMC follows in the footsteps of flash startups

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a big fan of flash memory. Though pricey, it consumes a lot less energy than traditional hard drive-based storage and offers screaming fast performance to boot.

A common method of employing flash memory in data centers is to outfit computer servers with SSDs. A startup called Fusion-io takes things one step further by packing flash chips onto a PCIe card and slotting it into a server’s the motherboard to act as a caching system for frequently accessed data.

EMC seems so enamored by the idea that its “Project Lightning” product, now officially called VFCache, employs the same basic design. Hey, why re-invent the wheel? But EMC’s not done looking to flash startups for inspiration.

Rumor has it that “Project Thunder” is similarly inspired by Violin Memory.

This is an interesting turn of events.

Lately, startups like Calxeda and SeaMicro have been making waves by enticing data center operators with the promise of potent yet power-sipping servers using low-watt processors that are decidedly non-standard on servers. Namely, ARM- and Intel Atom-based chips, respectively.

Now it turns out that SeaMicro sees some value, or at least expanded market opportunities, in that old server stand-by, the Xeon. Hence the SM10000-XE, a server containing 64, quad-core Sandy Bridge-based Xeons at 2.4 GHz.

The point, according to this HPCwire piece, is to make quick work of mainstream enterprise workloads.

With the addition of low-wattage but more performant Xeons into the mix, SeaMicro is looking to expand the microserver business into what it calls “brawny applications.” That includes more traditional enterprise workloads like Java, PHP, MemCacheD, and NoSQL, as well as web-based database processing. SeaMicro CEO Andrew Feldman characterized the new Xeon-powered SM10000-XE as the “the mainstreaming of the microserver.”

And keeping with the company’s energy- and space-saving roots, the server takes up a third of the space and uses half the power — 3.5 KW on average — of a comparable system comprised of volume rack servers, according to SeaMicro.

All good stuff, but what does it mean for the company’s Atom-based hardware? While SeaMicro’s CEO, Andrew Feldman, expects bigger sales from its Xeon hardware, the tech that put it on the map is doing alright…

Even without the SM10000-XE though, the company has been doing “phenomenal,” according to Feldman.  Although he didn’t offer how much revenue his company collected during their first year of business (2011), Feldman says it was more than the combined sales of Riverbed, 3PAR, Aruba Networks and Data Domain combined during their first year. “It looks pretty bright out there right now,” he says.

A little vague, but good to know.

This is awesome.

NYT Bits Blog has a story today on Silicon Valley startup DrChrono and how it raised $2.8 million from Yuri Milner, in addition to the $1.3 million funded by Y-Combinator and 500 Startups, among others. DrChrono is an electronic medical record (EMR) platform that’s taking advantage of the growing popularity of iPads in medical offices.

…DrChrono is steadily gaining traction among doctors and patients since it was founded in April 2010. The company says that more than 50,000 doctors and 400,000 patients have registered with the service.

Impressive for such a young startup, particularly in such a field fraught with regulatory oversight (HIPAA) and other high barriers to entry. The Bits piece nonetheless cautions against too much exuberance. Remember Google Health?

It’s great to see a startup combine the white-hot iPad with the paper-reducing, efficiency-enhancing and money-saving potential of EMR. And if it can snag a juicy portion of the $5.4 billion that the North American EMR market that expected to grow to, all the better.

Image credit: DrChrono

[via Hacker News]

New Year’s resolutions can be hard to keep, but lowering your personal computing’s carbon footprint is super easy.

Not only will you save on energy costs, but you’ll save money and you’ll be more nimble and flexible in how technology is incorporated into your life. And if one of your resolutions this year was to take full advantage of what your life and career throws at you, you’ll find that a couple tips will help in that regard too.

Here’s how to green your PC:

Bounce on a cloud

If you’ve been synching via USB cables, transferring files over your home network or emailing yourself important documents, 2012 is the year for a cloud-based solution. If security’s a concern, learn to love encryption.

For starters, services like Dropbox are pretty inexpensive (outright free if you just need to keep a few gigabytes worth of files handy). It sure is cheaper than buying and operating a NAS for your home or keeping your PC running so that you can remote into it.

If you want to experience how easy it is, get your feet wet with Dropbox. Enter your info, download the widget for your PC, Mac or smartphone, and enjoy the splendors of having your data close at hand wherever you go. Impress your boss or that soon-to-be special someone (Maybe one and the same!) by instantly retrieving and acting upon said data while your peers are still fumbling around in their analog ways.

Want an alternative to Dropbox? Check out this Lifehacker post.

Banish those dust bunnies

Dust off that DataVac — no more canned air, please — pry open your computer’s side panel and go to town.

Over time, dust collects on your PC, creating a film that traps heat on your chips and components, clogs up vents and gums up fans making them work harder. Give your PC several healthy bursts of cleansing air to remove that dust.

Not only will you extend the life of your PC, but you’ll be amazed at how much quieter it operates since the fans don’t have to spin as furiously.

While you’re at it, you may want to do a little maintenance on the software side to perk things up and make sure that you’re not running energy-sapping code.

Then again, you could just…

Ditch the desktop

If you’re just responding to emails, checking Facebook and running an assortment of business applications, it’s time to ditch the desktop CPU. (Just make sure you dispose of your electronics responsibly.)

Laptops are far and away more efficient at that sort of thing. Anyway, have you laid eyes on the the latest batch of Ultrabooks? Sexy!

As a bonus, your computing goes where you do. It’s a double-edged sword, though — theft, loss that sort of thing…  So protect your data by locking down your computer (Mac general, Mac advanced, Windows general) and backing up your data to the cloud.

If you just can’t live without an expansive monitor and ergonomic keyboard, get a dock, but don’t be shocked if it goes unused.

Bench the printer

This year, resolve to touch as little paper as possible. Try to abide by this simple rule:

If it doesn’t need to get mailed or be redeemed in paper form — airline tickets, coupons, that sort of thing — don’t print it out.

Or pretend paper carries cooties, whatever works for you. The point is to reduce paper consumption as much as possible.

If you need to distribute non-editable, printer-ready copies of a document, save or print to PDF and email them. Back them up to the cloud (see the first tip) instead of interring them in a file cabinet for all eternity. You’ll save tons of paper, space and printer ink.

And what about those articles you print out for the commute home? That’s what your iPad’s for.

Makeover your mouse

So you’ve discovered how awesome a wireless keyboard and mouse setup can be. What’s not so awesome are all those AA and AAA batteries you keep tossing out in the trash along with the money you spent on them.

Try working rechargeables into your rotation. Keep a little inventory going for your battery-powered remotes, thermostats and other household gadgets that need to get swapped out periodically. Sanyo’s eneloop Rechargeable Batteries have a strong following. Spendy? Yes, but worth it in the long run.

If you want to stop buying batteries entirely, for your keyboard at least, check out Logitech’s solar keyboard.

Now it’s your turn

What are your tips for keeping a PC running green? Sound off in the comments below or on our Facebook or Google+ pages.

Image Credits – Dusty PC: Flickr user nilabee – cc; Samsung Ultrabook: Samsung; No Printouts: Flickr user Sir Adavis – cc

Later this year, solid-state drives (SSDs) are expected to drop beneath that magical barrier that really spurs adoption: $1 per gigabyte (GB) from a relatively lofty $1.56 in 2011. According to IDC, SSDs will reach this milestone in the second half of 2012. (Pro tip: hold off on that upgrade ’til then.)

Mind you, SSDs are still way more expensive than traditional hard drives and will likely remain that way for a while – average HDD prices hovered round 7.5 cents per GB in 2011. But SSD prices are falling faster, an encouraging sign for PC users that want to take advantage of the performance perks and energy savings that the storage tech offers.

IDC pegs 2011 worldwide solid state storage industry revenue at $5 billion in 2011, a 105 percent increase over 2010′s $2.4 billion haul.  The research firm also forecasts a 51.5 percent compound annual growth rate for worldwide SSD shipments from 2010 to 2015.

HDD manufacturing hit hard by Thailand floods

Part of the reason prices will fall in the near term are the floods in Thailand, which have drastically reduced  hard drive manufacturing output. Analysts expect shipments in Q1 2012 to fall short of Q4 2011′s 95 million unit mark by roughly 11 percent.

The expected shortages will nudge PC makers into the direction of SSDs. Judging by the slew of Ultrabooks announced at CES — a form factor that practically requires SDD storage — that’s already happening. Microsoft’s SSD-friendly Windows 8 OS also gets a shout-out as a driver for increased SSD sales in 2012.

Enterprises dig SSDs

Enterprise-wise, SSDs have been enjoying increased popularity thanks to web-facing companies that value the performance edge and thriftier power requirements that SSDs offer.

Startups like Fusion-io, Violin Memory and SolidFire have been turning big companies on to SSDs in the data center. For instance, Fusion-io counts Facebook among its customers and signed Dell as an OEM. Meanwhile, Violin nabbed some rack space at Microsoft, AOL and HP.

SSD maker OCZ Technology is watching its fortunes improve due to interest from enterprises. CEO Ryan Peterson had this to say during yesterday’s earnings call:

“Taking a look at revenue by product classification, the largest sequential revenue gains this quarter were generated from our enterprise and high-performance server products. Enterprise-class SSD revenue increased approximately 50% sequentially and was about 21% of SSD sales. This is our third consecutive quarter of 50%-plus sequential growth within our enterprise products.”

It all adds up to a good year for SSD companies, according to IDC’s data storage guru Jeff Janukowicz Janukowicz. He writes, “The increasing use of flash in enterprise solutions, explosive growth of mobile client devices, and lower SSD pricing is creating a perfect storm for increased SSD shipments and revenue over our forecast.”

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is nearly upon us and this year there are plenty of gadgets to warm the hearts of green geeks…

If they know where to look.

CES is where electronics makers debut their cool new gear with the hopes that they will end up in your living room, or more recently, in your laptop bag and even jeans pockets. It’s that push toward mobility, in part, that’s helping to usher in an era of thin, light and energy-saving electronics. Just don’t expect companies to advertise those attributes as heavily as other, more marketable whiz-bang specifications.

Nonetheless, here are some of the green gadgets to get excited about this year.

Ultrabooks Everywhere

Apple’s Macbook Air is about to face some stiff competition this year from Intel’s Ultrabook reference spec. And it bodes well for Windows users that crave portability and all-day battery power. Look for companies like Toshiba and Acer to intro super-slim Ultrabooks.

SSDs Hiding in Plain Sight

Nestled in many of those ultrabooks will be SSDs drives. Flash memory — the type of memory chips in SSDs — will also make an appearance in the avalanche of tablets that are also set to debut.

Of the SSDs that you can see, OCZ is targeting that pro video/audio markets with its Thunderbolt SSD called Lightfoot (right), which it showed off at the Storage Visions show on the eve of CES.

(Image Credit: PC Perspective)

LG’s 55-inch OLED TV

As Sony pulls out of the OLED business, LG promises to commercialize the tech for couch surfing. Get ready for stunning screens that virtually disappear when they’re viewed from the side. Lower electric bills too, that is if LG keeps its promise.

SolarFocus’ Solar Kindle Cover

An accessory that combines solar power and e-ink?  An innovation that’s doubly green!

This surprise from SolarFocus could mean that your Kindle never gets plugged into its charger. Speaking of e-readers…

Kyobo’s Mirasol-based e-reader

Color and video without the eyestrain? Yes, please!

Kyobo’s expected to demo their e-reader featuring Qualcomm’s Mirasol tech, a color, e-ink-like screen that can handle video at up to 30 fps. Sadly, early demos have been a touch underwhelming. Hopefully it will wow at CES.

iPads are everywhere, at least around these parts. And they’re starting to pop up in a lot of offices, too, with a good share of SMBs willing to take the plunge.

With these sleek, connected tablets in hand, you’d think you would no longer need to lug around printouts of spreadsheets, memos and other documents. The printer’s days have to be numbered, right?

Wrong.

Office workers still pile into conference rooms clutching file folders, notepads and rumpled printouts. Here are three reasons why, in no particular order.

Low-resolution screen

Rumor has it that the iPad 3 will boast a Retina-like display. Awesome! But for now, the iPad makes do with its 1024×768 screen. (To be fair, so do a lot of other tablets.)

It’s certainly serviceable for web browsing, replying to emails and watching videos. But for intricate design and technical work — where layouts demand per-pixel perfection — it falls short. Even mundane office docs would benefit from crisper text and graphs.

The iPad’s not doodler-friendly

Before you roll your eyes at doodling, watch this TED talk by Sunni Brown. Then come back.

With that out of the way…

Yes, there are doodling apps and you can buy a stylus for the iPad, but drawing on its screen is not a baked-in experience for iOS.

What do I do with paper handouts and memos? I doodle big fat arrows that point to salient sections. You might see cartoonish missiles aimed at crappy ideas while inky lassos encircle breakthrough concepts, raising a protective forcefield.

The point is that the iPad does a poor job of helping doodlers organize and remix data. It’s time for Apple to fully embrace the stylus. Touch is great, but it’s a blunt instrument for folks that like to doodle in the margins.

Microsoft’s Courier concept hinted at this quasi-analog approach of interacting with data and digital media. Alas, it was unceremoniously scrapped.

No Flipboard for business

You know what I rarely do anymore? Buy paper magazines and newspapers. That’s because Flipboard (plus Longform) collects my favorite content and displays it beautifully for effortless consumption and sharing.

It’s a pity more businesses don’t adopt this model for their internal communications. It would sure help breathe new life into those sad intranets and company blogs that have sprouted up like weeds at many companies.

Do you want to know why your employees are disengaged; don’t know when flu shot day is; or one division doesn’t know what the other’s doing? It’s because they’re already drowning in emails. Then you’re shocked when they ignore yours or didn’t check your company’s portal. So someone fires up the printers and distributes — or worse, physically mails — that “important” memo that ends up tacked to the cubicle partition.

Efficient? Nope. Social? Definitely not.

So why not push that content to them on their iPads with a dedicated app? Let them quickly get caught up on what’s pressing and then explore and share their thoughts about the parts of your business that appeal to them. It’s an elegant way of building momentum for the latest initiatives and great new ideas that are brewing at your company.

Who knows, folks in another department or clear across the country might have some awesome ideas of their own to contribute. It could also spark some better collaboration and expose talent that you didn’t even know you had on your payroll.

I smell a business opportunity for the app developer that can pull this off. Someone find me a coder…

Intel’s taking an interesting direction in marketing its latest Atom N2600 and N2800 processors, a.k.a. “Cedar Trail.”

Sure, the company is talking up all the whiz-bang stuff its low-power, 32nm chips can do for consumers, like pump out 1080 video and stretch battery life for to up to 10 hours. But Intel’s also betting that healthcare professionals also want some of that goodness in their gear.

Here’s what the company’s press release has to say.

In health care settings, the improved battery life and enhanced graphics means medical professionals can enhance patient care and bring infotainment services to a patient’s bedside. ARBOR technology will release a new patient infotainment bedside terminal, based on the Intel Atom processor N2800 that helps clinicians improve workflow management and work efficiency, reduce human error, and enhance healthcare quality.

Um, OK.

Same old, new threats: iPad and ARM

No offense, but that’s not a very exciting implementation. And it’s unlikely one that will restore Atom as the go-to, low-power mobile processor. Netbook sales continue to wither in the face of tablets powered by ARM chips. And guess what? Tablets are starting to make medical computing inroads.

Yet Intel remains undeterred in the pursuit of powerful yet energy-sipping portables — press materials that stress netbooks notwithstanding.

Recently, the Intel revealed its Atom-powered (“Medfield”) Android smartphone reference design. And it’s been showing some pluck in the consumer space by taking on Apple’s MacBook Air with its own Ultrabook spec (though not Atom-based). Some promising Ultrabooks are already hitting the market.

But lets face it, what doctors want are portables with enough oomph to tear through medical records, images and references at blistering speeds, all while keeping them un-tethered for hours on end. The iPad’s not quite there yet, but that’s not stopping some medical professionals from trying.

What Intel needs to halt iPad’s encroachment into healthcare IT – and hence ARM’s – are awesome devices that play seamlessly and securely with hospital administration and records systems that are firmly rooted in Windows and x86 systems. (Atom is an x86 chip like the ones found in the vast majority of servers, desktop PCs and notebooks.) Technology Review’s warm reception of the Medfield smartphone and tablet reference designs are a good start.

This much is clear: the greening of healthcare IT is already underway. Atom’s role in the transition will hinge on how quickly and successfully it can shed its netbook roots.

Image credit: jfcherry – Flickr – CC

Update, Dec. 1, 2011: False alarm! Well, at least in the Illinios water pump case. Read this Wired | Threat Level article for the real story. Still, no reason to let your guard down…

This weekend, hackers made news for not only breaking into computer systems, but literally breaking a pump at a water plant in Illinois.  Hackers were able to damage a pump at the Curran-Gardner Township Public Water District in Illinois by cycling it on and off remotely. Thanks to redundancies, service was unaffected.

While the FBI and DHS look into the matter, computer security experts are sounding the alarm and stressing the need to harden the SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems that operate the nation’s infrastructure.

Stuxnet casts an imposing shadow

One of the more troubling aspects of this attack is how it’s believed to have been carried out. Initially, Stuxnet — or malware like it, such as Duqu — was suspected. Stuxnet is responsible for interfering with Iranian nuclear power sites and fouling things up at utilities in other parts of the world. Since last year, the worry was that this could become a template for crippling critical infrastructure here in the United States. Needless to say, it’s also a huge warning sign as the next generation of IT-rich smart power grids are brought online.

Alas, as scary as Stuxnet is, the attack may have been more ‘basic’ according to pr0f, a hacker that accessed a separate water treatment facility in South Houston.

Countering an underwhelming response to the Illinois incident from the DHS, pr0f details how lax security practices and connecting critical systems to the Internet with weak protections can be the undoing of utility control systems in this Pastebin entry.

…No damage was done to any of the machinery; I don’t really like mindless vandalism. It’s stupid and silly.

On the other hand, so is connecting interfaces to your SCADA machinery to the Internet. I wouldn’t even call this a hack, either, just to say. This required almost no skill and could be reproduced by a two year old with a basic knowledge of Simatic.

As proof, the post contains several SCADA screen captures from a water facilities in South Houston one of which is pictured at the top of this post. Now imagine an image of your desktop posted online by a hacker. Chilling, right?

Thwarting basic hacks with basic security

This is a wake-up call. While malware like Stuxnet and Duqu are scary, it’s more scary to think that utilities and their SCADA providers aren’t subscribing to the same standards that govern computer security in most businesses, government agencies and organizations. And it’s not that they ever get hacked, right?

While it might be eye-rollingly obvious to techies in the trenches of corporate IT, Dave Marcus, Director of Security Research for McAfee Labs, dispenses some great advice for SCADA admins. Stuff like setting up extensive penetration testing and counter-social engineering training.

Again, it’s basic stuff. But given how trivially pr0f penetrated that water plant, the basics are a big improvement at this stage.

Image credit: pr0f

24 hours worth, actually. Which makes the photo above that much more impressive. (Click through for more views, that picture only scratches the surface.)

What you’re looking at is an installation by Erik Kessels currently at Foam in Amsterdam. It depicts 24 hours of pics uploaded to Flickr but in hard copy. “By printing all the images uploaded in a 24-hour period, I visualise the feeling of drowning in representations of other peoples’ experiences,” says Kessels.

While not explicitly his aim, his art is also a potent reminder of the impact of digitization, the Internet and the advent of cloud services, in particular how they combine to dematerialize a lot of media these days. Like the Yellow Pages, that packet of prints you used to pick up at the drug store is becoming an increasingly rare sight.

As to whether it’s a good thing, I imagine there are plenty of trees breathing a sigh of relief.

Source: Creative Review

[via Flowing Data, Lewis PR | Facebook]