2010

• August 24, 2010 ZD Net: NComputing X350 = classroom labs in a snap

  Christopher Dawson
  3/24/2010

  http://education.zdnet.com/?p=3748

  You know the story: times are tight, do more with less, make 1:1 happen with less money, etc., etc. At the beginning of the month, I wrote about relatively inexpensive computer sharing and desktop virtualization solutions. Since then, I’ve been putting one of the least expensive computer sharing solutions (the NComputing X350) through its paces and it would certainly be my solution of choice for a classroom-based lab.

  This picture from Microsoft (actually used to depict a use case of their Multipoint Server product) is probably my favorite example of the sort of technology-rich classroom I want to provide for kids in my district. While we actually have 3-4 computers in every room, most are aging desktops, eMacs, and iMacs. Newer machines are reserved for computer labs that see very heavy utilization. Invariably, the machines are crammed into the back of a room or a corner where we can find space and cobble together network drops and miniswitches.

  An environment that invites kids to work together and with their instructors, however, is easily achieved with 1) modern schools with plenty of space for centers and micromobility and 2) desktop sharing devices like the X350.

  I didn’t have a decent desktop sitting around waiting to be used for my own experiments, so I salvaged an old server (we’re talking Windows 2000 here) on which the RAID had died, tossed in a spare IDE hard drive, and installed Windows XP Pro, the X-350 PCI card that provides fast Ethernet connections to 3 virtual clients, and the NComputing VSpace virtualization software.

  As I noted, this was not a high-end machine, circa 2002. Dual single-core Xeons running at 1.8GHz, a gig of RAM, and a single 160MB IDE hard drive. Everything installed quickly and the VSpace software provides a very simple wizard-based setup. By far, the longest part of the process was waiting for XP to install. I could have used Linux, by the way, since NComputing supports most major distros, but I actually needed a Windows environment on my desktop for testing and AD integration and I wanted to see how some Windows-based software ran sharing the limited resources of the server.

  Guess what? It works really well. The server itself acts as a workstation and while the X350 supports (and ships with) 3 clients, I was only able to have 3 workstations functioning simultaneously with acceptable performance. By acceptable, I’m talking cheap netbook performance. Web browsing was no problem, RTI software ran fairly well, and only Office 2010 would make me wish for a higher-powered desktop.

  Watching the task manager, though, made it abundantly clear that RAM was the only issue. Hitting the page file repeatedly makes for some chugging. On a new desktop with 4GB of RAM and a decent dual core processor, Windows 7 virtualization or Ubuntu with a light desktop manager would provide very good performance for most activities.

  One thing to note is that the NComputing X-series card provides graphics capabilities in line with most integrated chipsets. The available resolutions on the server wouldn’t support my wide-screen monitor, but the graphics integrated in the card had no problems. We’re not playing Crysis here, by any means, but this is a solid setup for a learning or classroom environment.

  So why not do this for larger deployments or labs? The X550 supports 6 total stations including the host which would be an average row in a lab, after all. Because for larger deployments I want the virtual desktop images managed centrally. I don’t want to manage what amounts to 5 servers in a 30-seat lab. In a classroom, however, I can train and empower a teacher to manage his or her own “server” upon which I can impose my own layer of management via Active Directory or some other LDAP structure.

  NComputing, by the way, is sending me one of their U-series devices that supports up to 10 USB-connected stations. I’m thinking libraries for a use case. They also provided me with an L-series device that supports up to 30 clients connected to a single server via an Ethernet switch. This will need to wait for a summer head-to-head with more traditional VDI when I can pull a couple terminal servers for testing.

  The bottom line, however, is that if you aren’t running CAD or doing video editing, the X-series provides an extremely cost-effective way to build high-quality classroom and media center facilities with little knowledge of the technical details of virtualization.

  ...read more
• April 22, 2010 ComputerWorld: The green IT stars of 2010

   

  InfoWorld's 2010 Green 15 Awards: Green-tech projects coupled with innovation and collaboration yield bountiful rewards

  This year's crop of Green 15 winners demonstrates how organizations of all sizes are finding innovative ways to use information technology to achieve critical and often complementary environmental and business objectives. Increasingly, companies are moving beyond out-of-the-box products and siloed approaches to making IT itself more energy efficient. Rather, they're leveraging technology as part of a broader, holistic effort to create greener operations as a whole.

  Telecom equipment manufacturer Ericsson, for example, has adopted a complex asset management system that the company and its global partners use to deliver parts, products, and repair services to customers in the most efficient way possible. The project promotes environmental objectives such as reuse, fuel efficiency, and material conservation -- and it saves Ericsson cash while boosting customer satisfaction.

  Meanwhile, accounting company KPMG is finding ways to use IT to ingrain sustainable practices in day-to-day operations. For example, the company added a Green Travel Advisor to its internal portal that urges employees to use telepresence over air travel whenever practical. When it's not, the advisor directs them to environmentally responsible hotels.

  Companies are also continuing to devise ways to enhance traditional green tech projects. In the past, data center greening projects tended to rely heavily on rolling out server virtualization, creating hot and cold aisles, and adjusting temperature and airflow. Green 15 winners including Dell and Intel have taken green data center initiatives a step further, employing homegrown techniques to drill down into how efficiently, or inefficiently, resources are being used and whether they're required at all.

  Out of necessity or optimism, more organizations are thinking different in the name of thinking green. Syracuse University, for example, has done what few traditional data centers are willing to try: employing DC power in its new data center. The government of Andrha Pradesh in India embraced virtual desktops at 5,000 schools because it lacked the infrastructure for PCs. And a consortium of universities in Canada transformed a circular cement silo that formerly housed a particle accelerator into an innovatively designed cooling enclosure for a new supercomputer.

  Since InfoWorld launched the Green 15 in 2008, project leaders have reiterated a shared sentiment time and again: Technology goes only so far in helping an organization achieve environmental objectives. Organizations in which executives work to promote green practices, engage employees, and drive collaboration and knowledge sharing among departments and business units will enjoy the greatest return on their green IT investments.

  InfoWorld's 2010 Green 15 Award winners, in alphabetical order:

  • Aflac pushes for paperless practices, yields productivity gains
  • Andhra Pradesh overcomes resource limitations with virtual desktops
  • CLUMEQ transforms rundown particle accelerator into high-efficiency cooling enclosure
  • Dell spurs efficiency by pulling the plug on unnecessary apps
  • EPA's Energy Star for servers and data centers illuminates sustainable paths
  • Ericsson drives a greener supply chain
  • Intel pinpoints thousands of unproductive servers
  • Iron Mountain finds limestone a natural fit for data center efficiency
  • KPMG scores sky-high savings with telepresence
  • Palo Alto takes a unified approach to shattering carbon-cutting goals
  • Provider Enterprises steers fleet toward fuel savings
  • Raytheon's companywide green efforts reach Antarctica
  • Standard Bank enlists thin clients to avoid costly AC upgrade
  • State Street banks on sustainability
  • Syracuse University turns to DC power in constructing its Green Data Center

  Aflac pushes for paperless practices, yields productivity gainsEmbracing electronic documents and print-management technology, the insurer sees faster policy processing and lower bills

  Stacks of unclaimed printouts are a common site at organizations across the globe. At best, those pages get tossed into the nearest recycling bin, but even so, they represent a significant waste of natural resources and hard-earned company cash. As part of a companywide greening effort, insurance company Aflac instituted various technologies and policies to put the kibosh on print waste, resulting in a smaller environmental footprint, commendable cost reductions, and a surge in efficiency.

  Starting last year, Aflac opted to invest only in energy-efficient network printers and has reduced printer count by 34 percent. Further, the IT department has set machines to default to two-sided printing, and the company embraced print management technology from Secureprint that requires users to confirm a print job at the printer before it will execute. Print jobs not retrieved within 24 hours are purged from the queue.

  Aflac's paper-reduction efforts didn't end at the printer, either. The company's IT department has developed an online system called Smart App Next Generation (SNG) for enrolling and accessing policies electronically. "From a business perspective, this has helped Aflac reduce the need to handle the large amounts of paperwork usually associated with writing insurance policies. We are able to process the applications faster because there is no shuffling of paper between the agents and Aflac," said Pat Rayl, 2nd vice president of technology services at Aflac.

  Agents have an added incentive to employ the environmentally friendlier approach to handling policies, Rayl noted: "Applications are approved faster through SNG. Therefore, the agents' commissions are paid faster."

  The electronic delivery of policies, coupled with the electronic delivery of agents' statements, billing invoices, and corporate reports, has enabled Aflac to achieve an average of only 1.84 printed sheets of paper per active policy. There's also the ripple effect of fewer stacks of papers being sent to and fro via time consuming, eco-taxing snail mail.

  Aflac's paper-reduction initiatives are a fraction of the company's overall sustainability initiatives. Other endeavors have included a data center makeover, such as server reduction through virtualization and improving cooling efficiency and air flow with techniques such as blanking panels, hot and cold aisles, and Koldlok around open floor areas. Additionally, the IT department has developed and promoted Aflac's Meeting Place, which features a suite of collaboration tools, including discussion groups, blogs, wikis, shared-document management, videoconferencing, and instant messaging. By promoting this approach to collaboration among offices spread out among its various offices and corporate campuses, the company saw a 43 percent increase in online meetings in 2009.

  Rayl attributed the success of Aflac's multiple green endeavors to two key factors: sponsorship, promotion, and communication from upper management, as well as making the processes easy for employees to embrace. In terms of communication, Aflac's IT department maintains a Green IT page on Aflac Workplace that keeps company employees up to date on key metrics such as paper usage and server efficiency. "Probably the biggest lesson we have learned is that simply implementing green initiatives is not enough. Employees must be continually educated on the benefits of these programs and how they can contribute to making an environmental impact at work and at home," Rayl said.

  Andhra Pradesh overcomes resource limitations with virtual desktops Watt-sipping virtual PCs give students in India 5,000 school computer labs and a new start

  For some organizations, embracing sustainability is something of a luxury. They have an ample supply of electricity, for example, and plenty of cash on hand, so they can gradually deploy waste-reducing projects that pay for themselves over time. For other organizations, however, sustainable efforts are driven by real, immediate needs.

  Such was the case for the government of Andhra Pradesh in India, which needed to supply 1.8 million students across 5,000 public schools with access to state-of-the-art computing facilities. Standard desktop PCs wouldn't cut it, due to limited funding and limited electricity resources -- but virtual PCs proved a perfect alternative.

  The school district chose a virtual desktop solution from NComputing. Students are equipped with their own monitor, keyboard, mouse, and NComputing X-series devices. (The devices come in kits that also include vSpace virtualization software and a PCI card.) The devices are connected to individual desktop computers, at a ratio of around 4 to 1, which perform the bulk of the processing work for the connected systems. In all, 40,000 NComputing devices were deployed, along with 10,000 full PCs provided by various OEMs, including HP and Acer.

  The eco-magic of the NComputing access devices is that they require just a single watt of power to run, compared to a typical desktop that draws between 65 and 250 watts. Thus, the Andhra Pradesh government uses 90 percent less electricity than it would to power labs running traditional PCs. The virtual machines' watt-sipping nature was particularly significant given the limited infrastructure in the region.

  "Certain locations where the installations occurred had very weak or no electricity infrastructure. For example, certain areas only received a few hours of electricity in the day. With a project of this scale, big generators would have been needed to support the setup of each lab in all of the 5,000 schools," said Stephen Dukker, CEO at NComputing. "However, because of the low electricity consumption, the Andhra Pradesh government purchased smaller generators that are generally used in homes."

  In terms of cost, the government estimates that taking the virtual desktop route conserved a whopping $20 million when factoring in savings on larger generators, fuel, electricity, and the like. From a green perspective, the virtual devices are also eco-friendlier than traditional PCs in that they last longer and contain fewer materials.

  Thanks to the power of green technology, the students of Andhra Pradesh will be far better prepared for the future. "Earlier students did not even have an idea of how to switch on and off the computer," said Bhavani, a teacher at Zila Parishad School at Medak, India. "After four months, they are operating [the machines] themselves."

  CLUMEQ transforms rundown particle accelerator into high-efficiency cooling enclosure HPC consortium discovers circular shape of concrete structure yields significant cooling efficiencies

  The Université Laval in Quebec, Canada, had two problems. First, its campus was home to a run-down particle accelerator, constructed in the 1960s, that needed to be decommissioned. Second, the university and 11 of its fellow institutions, members of an HPC consortium, needed a place to construct a state-of-the-art supercomputer. With a little ingenuity -- and a devotion to embracing sustainable practices -- the group was able to transform the 36-foot-wide, 65-foot-high circular concrete silo into an effective cooling enclosure for its supercomputer.

  Transforming the silo into a home for a new data center presented some unusual challenges for CLUMEQ (Consortium Laval, Université du Québec, McGill and Eastern Quebec). The final design concept comprised a topology where three levels of server racks are arranged along a circle, creating an inner hot-air cylindrical core and an outer ring-shaped cold-air plenum. The large floor cross-section of the cold-side plenum results in very low air velocity, almost no turbulence (thanks to the absence of corners), and thus uniform temperature and pressure, according to Marc Parizeau, professor at Université Laval and deputy director of CLUMEQ.

  "Having a single annular-shaped cold aisle with a large cross-section and thus very low air velocity is probably close to ideal if one wants to air cool today's high-power density racks without using rear-door heat exchangers or other technologies that require bringing water near the servers," Parizeau said.

  The main cooling system, located in the basement, pulls the hot air down from the center using energy-efficient variable drive fans. The hot air is cooled by forcing it through highly efficient, custom-designed walls of coils connected to the campus chilled water loop. Designers considered employing liquid cooling, but "simulations demonstrated that [benefits would be] marginal compared with our 120,000 CFM blowing capacity, and not worth the risk -- and costs -- of putting water above the servers."

  Heat waste generated by the supercomputer is put to good reuse. During eight months of the year, it's transferred from the chilled water return to the campus hot-water loop to provide heating for the school, thus reducing energy bills.

  The supercomputer itself was built by Sun using the company's Constellation blade system. It's composed of 7,680 Intel Nehalem cores with 24TB of RAM and 1 petabyte of high-performance, high-availability parallel storage. The server hardware itself is "quite energy efficient, but not significantly more than the competition," Parizeau said.

  Beyond enjoying the benefits of using an existing structure to house its supercomputer, the Université Laval and CLUMEQ estimate the silo design results in annual savings of more than 1.5 million kWh, compared with a traditional data center. Transforming the silo into a data center likely costs more than going the conventional square-build, raised-floor route, Parizeau said, "but this does not take into account the higher efficiency of the silo design, nor the fact that we recycled a building that was almost impossible to reuse for anything else. It may have cost a little more, but we got more for the money -- and there were no budget overruns."

  Dell spurs efficiency by pulling the plug on unnecessary apps Retiring 7,000 useless or redundant apps contributes to huge efficiency gains in Dell's data centers

  Dell has taken its efficiency initiative a step beyond those of most other data center operators: Beyond consolidating hundreds of physical servers, it's pulled the plug on hundreds of others.

  One of the key strategies in Dell's efforts to slash energy waste in its data center was to identify precisely which of the 10,000 support applications were necessary. "Our first real 'aha' moment was to challenge the assumption of the phrase 'keeping the lights on' itself, which by definition implies an untouchable set of applications that you must keep running at all costs," said Robin Johnson, CIO at Dell. "We decided instead to look at that part of the business as an opportunity to turn the lights off. Rather than viewing it as the 'must run' portion of IT, we instead became maniacally focused on what could be eliminated from the fixed-cost side of IT."

  The first step was to change the way IT billed departments for computer resources. Previously, departments paid a proportionate share of the total IT budget based on their percentage of overall company revenue. Under the model, there was no incentive for departments to give much thought to whether they were running more applications than they needed. Under the new model, departments were charged for their actual usage "but with a twist," said Johnson. "Rather than charging for actual usage using some complex formula of compute capacity consumed, we simply took the entire cost of the data centers and application infrastructure and divided by the total number of applications."

  This step helped prepare company leaders for the next stage of the project. Dell's IT department conducted a thorough analysis of the various apps it was supporting and discovered thousands that had no identified owner or appeared to have little or no utilization. Those servers were simply unplugged from the network in controlled batches. Then IT waited for trouble tickets to arrive. "Not surprisingly, for each group of 500 servers that was taken off the network, at most two or three trouble tickets were raised," Johnson said.

  This entire process helped Dell eliminate around 60 percent of the 7,000 total apps it ended up removing. The remainder came from identifying niche apps that could be replaced by an enterprise-level solution, as well as weeding out and eliminating duplicate apps.

  When these efforts were all done, Dell managed to reduce its number of supported apps from 10,000 to 3,000, which freed up a significant amount of data center resources. These efforts coupled with virtualization have allowed the company to remove 4,000 servers over the past year. Meanwhile, server utilization levels have doubled to 40 percent -- a number Dell is continuing to improve.

  Moreover, the company has reaped even more energy savings by upgrading to high-efficiency servers and reorganizing the way it does power and cooling -- including using outside air 150 days of the year in sweltering Austin, Texas. All in all, Dell reports that through its array of data center efficiency efforts, it has increased overall computing capacity by 270 percent, reduced energy consumption by 30 percent, and saved over $50 million in assorted costs. Retiring and consolidating thousands of servers and apps has also simplified IT administration tasks, including management, accounting, and licensing.

  EPA's Energy Star for servers and data centers illuminates sustainable paths New specifications set a much-needed bar for energy efficiency in the products or operations

  Over the past couple of years, an increasing number of data center operators and hardware manufacturers have proudly proclaimed that the respective facilities they run or the hardware they produce are oh so greener than the competition's. But such proclamations can leave observers wondering what that really means, given that standards for weighing such claims have been lacking.

  That's changed in the past year as the Environmental Protection Agency rolled out not one but two brand-new Energy Star specifications, one for servers and one for data centers, that set a bar for assessing and comparing the energy efficiency of individual machines or entire facilities. While not perfect, these two specs reflect some heavy-duty data gathering and feedback solicitation from stakeholders. More important, these specs mark a couple of critical steps forward for IT sustainability in the United States and beyond.

  Energy Star for Servers took well over a year to develop, with the EPA collecting comments from vendors, environmental groups, and other concerned parties. The end result was a standard applicable to machines with between one and four sockets and at least one hard drive. Servers that manage to burn the fewest watts while idling are eligible for the Energy Star designation. Power wasted in idle mode is indeed significant, particularly given that servers are notoriously underutilized. Additionally, compliant servers must be capable of measuring their own real-time power use, processor utilization, and air temperature -- all critical data for helping operators assess the overall efficiency of their facilities.

  Devising the first edition of the Energy Star for Data Centers spec entailed gathering and analyzing a wealth of data center measurements, amassed over extended periods of time from an array of facilities. Through careful statistical analysis, and again drawing on feedback from stakeholders, the EPA determined what criteria do and do not account for differences in energy efficiency among data centers. The end result was an Energy Star standard based on PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness), which is the ratio of overall data center power consumption to the power consumption of IT equipment.

   

  Energy Star for Data Centers compares a facility's actual PUE against their predicted PUE, which is effectively what the average PUE would be among similar facilities. Data centers that achieve a PUE well below the predicted level (once verified by the third party) can claim Energy Star status. A finalized version of the spec will be released in Portfolio Manager, the EPA's online benchmarking tool, later this year.

  Both sets of specs need fine-tuning. Energy Star for Servers, for example, doesn't consider a server's efficiency when it's doing actual work, nor does it take into account cores per processor. Energy Star for Data Centers is based heavily on PUE, which, though useful, hardly paints a complete picture of power usage. Further, the standard doesn't consider differences that can affect overall PUE, such as tier level or what sort of work a data center is doing. The EPA, however, readily recognizes that these standards (like other Energy Star standards) are a work in progress. The organization is already in the process of developing Version 2.0 of Energy Star for Servers and is seeking feedback from stakeholders.

  In the meantime, server vendors and data center operators now have useful maps to guide them down the uncertain path toward sustainability.

  Ericsson drives a greener supply chain Web-based asset management system promotes increases in efficiency and reuse

  Telecom equipment company Ericsson faced a problem not uncommon among manufacturing companies: Its supply chain was fraught with inefficiencies. The company had limited visibility into its own far-reaching inventory of products and parts, and for competitive reasons, repair providers were reluctant to share their inventory data. Thus, in order to ensure it could keep up with customer demands, the company had to maintain excess stock, which can prove both costly and wasteful. Moreover, the company determined that it was spending more time and resources than necessary to get inventory to customers -- not to mention the waste that came from disposing of excess wares that had become obsolete.

  In an effort to make its supply chain more efficient and environmentally sound, Ericsson last year deployed a network asset management system from Trade Wings called Re:source Visibility. Among its feats, the system provides Ericsson and its 2,000 global partners with a consolidated, up-to-date view of the inventories at repair centers and service channel operation centers, as well as from new material order teams.

  The greater visibility into inventory lets Ericsson and partners determine whether the products or parts a customer needs are available at a nearby repair shop, thus saving the time and expense of ordering and shipping the goods from afar. "An important piece in the success of our initiative is the ability to look beyond the normal boundaries of internal stock levels to first consider equipment that's part of our reuse and WEEE [the European Community's Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment directive] material flows, and then if necessary, search the secondary market," said Mikael Thoren, global planning manager at Ericsson.

  Additionally, Ericsson can better foresee potential shortages of in-demand wares, thus helping to reduce costlier small-production runs to fulfill customer requirements.

  From a logistics perspective, Ericsson can use the system to devise efficient transportation routes, taking into account distance, fuel, and emissions when, for example, moving inventory from one location to another. "The system provides both availability of equipment and the distances from point of need, which has provided us with the ability to factor fuel consumption into the decision-making process," said Thoren. "As this initiative continues to evolve, we're working to broaden the number of variables (e.g., weight, transport type, CO2 emissions) available to us in order to maximize the environmental benefits of our reuse optimization strategy."

  According to Thoren, the program also supports the company's material take-back service, a legal requirement under the WEEE directive, where customers can request that Ericsson pick up retired goods for end-of-life management. "In 2009, we received approximately 500 requests globally for WEEE collection, which amounted to about 7,045 tons," Thoren said. "Our recovery rate for treated equipment is more than 95 percent; the WEEE directive's requirement is 75 percent."

  All of these benefits add up to faster, more efficient customer service, lower operating and energy costs, less electronic waste, and fewer carbon emissions. All told, the company has saved approximately $10 million and seen more than a 20 percent decrease in equipment purchases. Also, repair volumes in some repair centers have dropped by nearly 80 percent.

  Intel pinpoints thousands of unproductive servers Using a homegrown application for measuring server utilization, chipmaker is able to reassign or retire 5,000 machines

  Imagine running a company with a staff of 2,000 full-time employees who spent around 80 percent of their time doing nothing beyond waiting for some work to do. Odds are, you'd make some staffing changes pretty darn quickly to address such egregious waste. Yet in data centers around the world, servers are permitted to run 24/7, wasting power and adding to organizations' carbon footprints while operating at average utilization levels of 20 percent, 10 percent, or even less.

  There are several reasons data center operators tolerate this level of waste. One is that companies lack the necessary tools to gain full visibility into the hardware they're running, such as how much work a machine is doing or whether it's powering a business-critical application. Thus, it's generally easier (and safer) to simply add new racks of servers when computing demands increase, rather than performing a time-consuming inventory of all the machines and pulling the plug on systems that appear to be performing unnecessary work.

  Intel last year developed an innovative application for determining which servers were earning their keep and which ones were slacking off. Called iSHARP (Interactive System Health and Resource Productivity), the application is capable of accurately measuring and tracking utilization on the company's large distributed pools of computers. These particular machines are part of an interactive environment, used to process design and development simulations and related tasks for microprocessors.

  "This was in effect an effort to drive down the cost of capital expenditures within the batch and interactive services and the evergrowing operational expenses, including data center power, cooling, and space," said Richard Meneely, Interactive Computing Product Owner for Intel's Engineering Computing group. "We would prefer to not add the expense of building and operating any additional data centers."

  In developing iSHARP, Intel first had to define algorithms to correctly identify underutilized machines. Specifically, the app measures CPU and memory utilization on a frequent basis for each system within the interactive computing environment. Those measurements are written to a back-end database for reporting and analysis. The algorithms take into account the individual system's architecture, hardware configuration, and category of application when determining thresholds for identifying underutilization.

  Beyond the challenge of developing this application itself, Intel's engineers also had to convince end-users that they could relinquish their computing resources without fear. "Design teams were often initially reluctant to give up resources they already had and believed doing so would impact their productivity. iSHARP allowed us to communicate the same information our IT engineers saw directly with the customer," said Meneely.

  "We often offered to keep the targeted systems available offline for a period of time in case the customer determined they really did need it. After a period of time, confidence grew with our customers that we could accurately measure and remove systems without impacting their productivity," Meneely concluded.

  The effort proved remarkably successful. In the span of about 12 months, Intel reduced the size of its targeted server pools from 14,000 machines to under 9,000, a reduction of 35 percent. Another 2,700 servers were reallocated to more productive purposes, and 2,300 were removed entirely. The removal of those machines helped Intel shed over 8 million kWh and save $645,000 on energy costs. From a business perspective, the project helped Intel boost the efficiency and capacity of its IT environment -- without hurting productivity.

  Meneely said he is now involved in an effort called LEAF, which will build on the lessons learned from iSHARP to provide detailed data for each application within Intel's interactive environment. That, in turn, will help Intel further optimize its resource allocation.

  ...read more
• February 07, 2010 Financial Chronicle: NComputing bets big on Indian market

  01-07-2010
  By Thanuja BM
  http://www.mydigitalfc.com/education/ncomputing-bets-big-indian-market-347

  NComputing, known for its low-cost computing solutions in the education space, is betting big on India. Recent customer wins like Employee State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) along with state government contracts in education have made the country its second biggest market after the US and the company's co-chairman Will Poole says he expects to see more growth in 2010.

  "Youth and education are focus areas in a developing country like India and in terms of fulfilling the need, we are barely scratching the surface. Both Centre and state governments are putting in technology in schools, so the opportunity for growth is tremendous," he told FC.

  NComputing is a desktop virtualisation company that manufactures hardware and software to create virtual desktops, which enable multiple users to simultaneously share one computer. About 75 per cent of its sales come from the education segment. It forayed into India a little over two years ago and has already deployed 2 lakh seats.

  Poole declined details on the pipeline in India. However, officials said a project with Wipro in the process and the firm is in discussions with 15 states.

  "We have the right technology for the needs of India at this time. The country expects high degree of value for low cost," Poole said.

  With the downturn forcing enterprises to look at cost saving measures, the former Microsoft executive expects NComputing's desktop virtualisation solutions to do well in 2010. "If people see advantages of the technology through project examples like the ESIC with Wipro, we expect other companies to follow," he added.

   

  ...read more
• February 03, 2010 Students Sound Off on School Tech Use

  By Katie Ash and Michelle R. Davis
  01-28-2010
  Education Week -http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2010/02/03/02kids.h03.html
  Published in Print: February 3, 2010, as What Do They Think?, Vol. 03, Issue 02, Pages 28-31

  Discussions of technology in education typically center on what policymakers, academic experts, and educators would like to see happen in the classroom. Rarely heard are the voices of those who are actively test-driving new forms of technology: the students.

  Yet the decisions schools make about technology access and use have a major impact on student engagement and learning. A 2008 survey, for instance, suggests there is growing frustration among students that they have to "power down" their use of technology when they enter school buildings. They are concerned that this reality is slowing the development of skills they’ll need to compete in a technology-driven global economy.

  That's why many ed-tech advocates say it's important to consider student perspectives when making decisions about technology policy and how digital tools should be used in classrooms. This article serves as a starting point for an online discussion about the role of students in decisions about the use of technology in schools.

  Joe Occhipinti, 17, for one, says ease of use is very important.

  In his physics class, when "the suitcase" comes out, there's a buzz of excitement among students, despite the fact that it usually means a test or quiz is imminent. The "suitcase" contains a student-response system that students use to answer physics questions.

  Each student uses a remote, hand-held device, which Occhipinti says looks and operates a lot like a television "clicker," and students in his class at New Hampshire's Londonderry High School prefer it over paper and pencil.

  "You don’t have to write anything down, and it's easier for the teacher," says Occhipinti, a senior. "It instantly calculates your grade and saves all the grades to the teacher’s computer. I had definitely never seen anything like it. But using it wasn’t awkward. It was like changing the channel on TV."

  Students like Occhipinti are increasingly demanding more technology-rich learning environments and would like the opportunity to use more Web 2.0 tools and mobile devices in school, suggest the results of the 2008 Speak Up survey, conducted by the Irvine, Calif.-based Project Tomorrow. The nonprofit education group supports science, math, and technology programs in schools.

  Outside of school, about half the 140,000 middle and high school students who participated in the survey reported using e-mail, instant-messaging tools, and text messages to communicate with classmates about homework, and the same number said they used social-networking Web sites to collaborate with their peers on school projects.

  The same group of students reported being inhibited from effectively using technology tools in school, however, by not having enough time to use such technology, having their Internet searches impeded by school online filters or firewalls, and being limited in their technology use by both teachers and school rules.

  'Money Is Always an Issue'

  Mike Urbach, a senior in the 33,000-student Poway school district in California, says he mostly uses his cellphone to stay in touch with friends outside of school, "but among my peers, traditional [cellphone] calls are dwindling, and texting is on the rise as a legitimate means of communication."

  But when he’s at school, cellphones and other mobile devices must remain turned off, says Urbach. "If a cellphone is out, it gets taken away for the day."

  Despite the prohibition, he believes it is a necessary and effective policy because it prevents the devices from becoming classroom distractions.

  "It may not be distracting for the students necessarily, but anytime the teacher has to stop what they're doing [to enforce the policy]—that's what slows the class down,” he says.

  Jordan Fernandez, a 10th grader in the Poway district, doesn’t share Urbach's view. "I think it would be better if we were able to use our iPods during class," he says, "but only at the teacher’s request."

  Fernandez says listening to classical music on his iPod, for instance, helps him concentrate.

  Half the teachers responding to the Speak Up survey agreed that mobile learning devices—such as iPods, smartphones, cellphones, and laptop computers—can increase student engagement, but were concerned about the challenge of providing equal access to such devices for all students, the amount of professional development needed to use the tools effectively, and the ability of schools to provide ongoing technical support.

  Eleanor Bray, a senior at Cleveland High School in Portland, Ore., says those concerns are justified. She’d like for her school to upgrade to wireless Internet service so that students could bring in their computers and work during free periods. But "I know that we obviously can’t ask every student to have a laptop in class to take notes because that would be a lot of money," she says, "and, of course, money is always an issue."

  At J.L. Mann Academy in the 68,800-student Greenville, S.C.,school district, every teacher has a classroom whiteboard, says Jake Riggs, a 9th grader. Teachers use laptops connected to the whiteboards to enhance their lessons. That technology, Riggs says, definitely makes classroom learning more engaging. "There's so many functions you can do with it," he says.

  But Cristi Gill, a senior at J.L. Mann, notes that not all technology is welcome at school, where officials have banned the use of cellphones. Yet she concedes that having cellphones ringing in class would be disruptive to learning, and that students might try to use them to cheat by text-messaging friends during tests.

  "It might be troublesome" for teenagers to have to deal with the cellphone ban, she says, but "I do see the reasoning."

  'It's Mind-Blowing'

  Morgan Joyner, a junior at Cleveland High School, says that although her school has a handful of SmartBoards, she’s never seen one used in any of her classes.

  "I would really like to have that opportunity to have more [SmartBoards] at our school," she says.

  Occhipinti, from Londonderry High School in New Hampshire, says while there are many high-quality computers available at school, he recently visited a nearby high school that has a one-to-one computing initiative. "Each student had a Macbook Pro, and they all have top-of-the-line SmartBoards," he says. "That stuff is crazy. It's a completely new concept."

  Bryan Merrill, 17, a junior at Londonderry High, says his American Heritage class is an NComputing lab. That Redwood City, Calif.-based company’s technology allows one PC to be split or cloned to enable several others to run off it, as if each station were its own distinct unit. In Merrill's class, that means each student has his or her own computer to use.

  "It’s extremely easy to access resources, and we don’t have to waste time taking notes because everything is downloadable," he says. "Anything we do in class can be uploaded and used at home. It's mind-blowing for me."

  Merrill says he recently moved to Londonderry High from another school, which used very little new technology. He says the greater use of technology at Londonderry has helped him be more organized, since he has bad handwriting, and he uses the computer to do a better job organizing his school files.

  In addition, he says, he uses a large, high-quality projector with surround sound in the music room to review his marching-band performances and help improve them.

  The greater access to and use of technology at Londonderry High, he says, "improves the flow from school to home."

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• January 06, 2010 NComputing receives the 2009 Frost & Sullivan Market Share Leadership Award in Desktop Virtualization

  Bangalore, India, December 20, 2009 – NComputing received the 2009 Frost & Sullivan Market Share Leadership Award for Desktop Virtualization in India for the financial year 2009 at the recently held "Frost & Sullivan's IT and Telecom Excellence Awards" in New Delhi.

  The Frost & Sullivan market share leadership award recognizes companies for their outstanding contribution in the respective industries and achieving a competitive or customer-based leading position in the market. Through this award, Frost & Sullivan's team of industry experts, recognizes the diligence and innovation required to implement a successful business plan and excel in the global marketplace. Through interviews with all market participants and extensive secondary research of proprietary data, Frost & Sullivan analysts track competitor revenue and market share within the industry. The competitors are then compared and ranked. Specific criteria are used to ascertain the final competitor ranking in each industry.

  Mr. Girish Trivedi, Deputy Director, South Asia Middle East, Information and Communication Technology Practice, Frost & Sullivan said, "Desktop virtualization is being preferred by a variety of sectors such as the education, government, manufacturing, and healthcare. In addition, strong engagement with system integrators and resellers has propelled NComputing to the leadership position in this space."

  NComputing was chosen as the market leader because its virtual desktop computing solutions are preferred by the enterprise, education, SME and public sectors segments in the country to cut purchase and energy costs. The NComputing solution includes both the virtualization software (vSpace) that creates the "virtual" sessions inside a PC or Server, and the thin-client devices that connect the users monitor, keyboard, and mouse to the shared computer. The NComputing thin-clients are the greenest computers on earth as they use just 1 to 5 watts of electricity – a major benefit in India where electricity is unreliable and require expensive UPS and back up generators.

  "We are delighted to receive this prestigious award from Frost and Sullivan," said Stephen Dukker, Chairman and CEO of NComputing. "In the past three years, we have deployed over 2 million virtual desktops around the world and our growth continues to accelerate as organizations look to cut their computing and obsolescence costs by 70% or more." Last month, NComputing and Wipro announced that 31,000 NComputing systems will be deployed for a massive computerization initiative for ESIC (Employee State Insurance Company). This is the largest Cloud computing project in India and will benefit 12 million employees around the country.

  About Frost & Sullivan - "We Accelerate Growth"
  Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, partners with clients to accelerate their growth. The company's TEAM Research, Growth Consulting and Growth Team Membership empower clients to create a growth-focused culture that generates, evaluates and implements effective growth strategies. Frost & Sullivan employs over 45 years of experience in partnering with Global 1000 companies, emerging businesses and the investment community from 40 offices on six continents. For more information about Frost & Sullivan's Growth Partnerships, visit http://www.frost.com

  About NComputing
  NComputing, Inc. is the fastest growing desktop virtualization company in the world with millions of users in 140 countries. The company's award-winning, patented technology lowers desktop computing costs, improves manageability, and reduces both energy consumption and e-waste. It is the perfect solution for leveraging the power and potential of PCs and cloud computing. To learn more about NComputing, visit http://www.ncomputing.com.

  NComputing Contact
  Monali Handa
  Marketing Manager – South Asia
  P: +91.98.1020 9800
  E: mhanda@ncomputing.com

  Frost & Sullivan Contact
  Amrita Nandi
  Corporate Communications – South Asia
  P: +91.22.4001 3424
  F: +91.22.2832 4713
  E: amritan@frost.com

  Nimisha Iyer
  Corporate Communications – South Asia and Middle East
  P: +91.98200 50519
  F: +91. 22 2832 4713
  E: niyer@frost.com

  http://www.frost.com

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