Green IT with HP

Last Wednesday I passed a pleasant evening chatting with a number of people from HP on the subject of "Green IT". I happen to think that "Green IT" is an oxymoron as IT is never going to deliver computing power using 100% recyclable energy and components. However, IT can certainly improve its green credentials from the position it occupies now.

The HP representatives included the EMEA VP for Marketing, one of the Sales Managers in HP's Power and Cooling Solutions division, the EMEA Environmental Strategies and Sustainability Manager and the UK and Ireland head of Innovation and Sustainable Computing. As you can imagine this gave the opportunities for plenty of lively debate.

For me, there were a number of highlights; firstly HP admitted and recognises that almost all organisations are attacking the green issue not for a sense of altruism but because being green has a direct impact to the bottom line, whether that is in reducing costs or in acquiring new business.

Second, there's the degree of how complex and unstructured the whole green debate is. Is the aim to reduce carbon footprint or to recycle precious resources (like metals)? How should all of these initiatives be measured? What's a good or bad measure? I think I need more time to mull it over.

An interesting side issue of the discussions relates to how HP have selected the bloggers with which to interact. This is being achieved in conjunction with external agencies who obviously follow the market. My concern is how to HP will determine who is an influencer and who is simply spouting hot air. There's got to be a scientific (ish) basis for this; perhaps it's readership size, perhaps it is references to their blog, perhaps it's the level of comments. Perhaps it is based on keyword count and/or other semantic scanning.

However it is achieved, companies like HP will need to ensure that the tranche of their marketing spend directed at bloggers is appropriately spent. It will be really interesting to see how this develops.

HP Give It Large

Yesterday afternoon I had an opportunity to meet with HP as part of an informal session to make contact with storage bloggers. HP are obviously interested in the possible benefits keeping the blogging community well informed could bring, however my blog is not to act as a mouthpiece for the HP marketing department and I'd suggest if you want to keep abreast of their technology releases, use this XML link.

What's more interesting is where HP storage is headed. Take for example their new Extreme Storage solution. A scalable NAS product which reaches the heady heights of 820TB in a single unit. Fantastic you may think, and I guess if you have a real need for this volume of data in a single unit, then it's the one for you.

However, apart from the obvious issues like whether your raised floor can actually take the weight of a fully configured device (and how do you cool this kind of beast), what troubles me more is how much data on a system like this is actually of any use.

Although the ExDS9100 is aimed at delivering storage for high performance solutions, I think there is a risk of arrays like this being deployed to defer the hard work of actually classifying and setting sensible deletion policies, which, let's face it, for most companies has sat as a task in the "too hard box" for as long as NAS storage has been around. It may well be that some customers see this product as a way to defer the inevitable and actually start managing their data.

Anyway, fair play to HP for entering the market and making use of their Polyserve acquisition and fair play to them for wanting to talk to the blogging community too. If I get any juicy nuggets of information (like whether HP have a position on cloud storage), you can be sure I'll share it here.