Head to head challenge: Nortel targets Cisco “energy tax”
A war of words is brewing between Nortel and Cisco on the energy efficiency front as the two companies head towards a direct confrontation on the energy consumption characteristics of their respective product portfolios.
In an unprecedented marketing move, Nortel is targeting Cisco specifically in a focused campaign that claims its rival’s equipment consumes more energy than comparable Nortel gear, hence representing an “energy tax” on its customers.
Nortel went as far as to create the Nortel Energy Efficiency Calculator, which will not only calculate the energy consumption of deployments using Nortel gear, but also tells users how much energy those deployments save compared to similar deployments using Cisco equipment.
The calculator, which was introduced at Interop in May, has its origins in a Nortel-commissioned report by third party testing house, The Tolly Group. The Tolly report compared the energy consumption characteristics of its products against “comparable” Cisco gear and found that “Nortel ERS switches and routers consistently consume less energy than Cisco devices tested.”
The Tolly report compared Nortel’s 8800, 8300, 5520-48T-PWR, 4548GT-PWR switches and Nortel Secure Router 4134 with Cisco’s Catalyst 6506-E, 4506-E, 3750-E PoE-48, 3560-E PoE-48 switches and Cisco 3845 Integrated Services Router. The report found that Nortel’s equipment offers power savings ranging from 3.97% to 42.77% over their Cisco peers depending on the model.
The results of the reports and the corresponding energy consumption figures were then used to create the calculator, which allows users to input six parameters, such as number of employees, location and industry, to determine the energy savings for Nortel deployment vs a deployment using Cisco equipment.
Nortel has been leveraging the results of the report and the subsequent results of its calculator as a major marketing push, primarily on its Web site and through blogs by Nortel executives, with one post going as far as to suggest that one educational institution (unnamed) decided to put a Cisco order on hold after using the calculator at Interop.
CISCO RESPONDS
Cisco meanwhile responded on its own blog with data centre switching solutions manager, Omar Sultan, pointing out inconsistencies in Nortel’s claims, mainly on the fact that the Tolly figures were arrived at when the equipment were simply plugged in and not carrying any traffic.
“The salient point is that these power values are for two switches plugged-in and idling with no connections–the assertion is that if there is such a discrepancy at idle, imagine what happens when we actually forward packets,” Sultan wrote on Cisco’s blog. After an extensive list of “if this, then it should be that” assumptions, Sultan concludes: “I think it is reasonable to deduce that the Nortel 45xxT is in the same neighbourhood as the Cisco Catalyst 3750G when used to actually forward packets.”
A POINT FOR DEBATE
The battle has extended beyond the voice of the two companies, with “independent” bloggers and commentators posting their views on the claims.
What is clear is that the situation is far from clear. One oft quoted blog post comes from Tom Raftery, a co-founder of a so-called, “hyper energy-efficient data centre” in Cork, Ireland, who posted on 5 May on the blog, Lower Footprint, his regret for selecting Cisco equipment after reading about Nortel’s calculator. What few people picked up on is that fact that the same Tom Raftery posted a follow up on another blog, Greenmonk, 10 days later that criticises the same calculator.
“This calculator is supposed to take inputs based on the industry sector you are in, the number of employees or your location and report your potential energy or $ savings were you to choose Nortel equipment over Cisco,” Raftery wrote. “However the number of possible inputs is way too limited (only 6 options for each). I’m a director of CIX, a data center based in Cork, Ireland. An ideal target for this kind of campaign, you would have thought. But the lowest number of employees I can select in the calculator is 500!!!, the industry sectors are limited to public sector, financial services or retail, and the location is limited to North America.
“Worse there are only six possible outcomes no matter what input you choose! Guys, come on, you are doing yourselves no favours with this ‘calculator’.”
THE NEED FOR STANDARDS
Of course, the story doesn’t end there. Bo Gowan from Nortel comments on Raftery’s post by explaining that the example cited was NOT the Nortel Energy Efficiency Calculator, but a dumb-down version for marketing purposes.
“The actual NEEC has 30+ inputs to it, making it a very real-world analysis tool,” he said. “The page you link to is an overly simplified mock-up to support an advertising campaign (since we all know the average reader has a 2 minute attention span).”
With energy efficiency at the top of the agenda for most corporate IT departments, the debate is unlikely to go away any time soon. Vendors who manage to outdo their rivals in energy efficiency will surely gain a competitive advantage over its peers. The problem is that measuring energy efficiency is a complicated task, with many more than 30 parameters that probably go far beyond the actual hardware itself.
“We ultimately need a set of standardized test and testing protocols that we, as manufacturers, can run, so that customers can make informed decisions,” Cisco’s Sultan wrote.
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Category: Applications, Data centres, Featured articles, Green corporations
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- Nortel steps up ‘Cisco Energy Tax’ campaign with cash discounts : | August 7, 2008
Hey Tony – most of the debate you outline happened a month or two ago. Since then, Nortel has created a more full-featured online version of our energy efficiency calculator, which you can see here: http://www33.nortel.com/energycalculator/
As we review the Nortel Energy Efficiency Calculator with leading network analysts, we get clear confirmation that Cisco draws more energy for core and edge switches and IP phones. The web based calculator from Nortel is a 1st step engagement process to help people begin getting the facts.
We can work with customers to create a very granular model to be built for not only of Nortel to Cisco comparisons, but “any to any” energy modeling scenarios using standard energy measurement formulas, current global kWh rates and CO2 measures.
As far as Cisco’s call for standards is concerned — while that is a nice end goal, Cisco is using it as a stall tactic.
We have tested in our own labs (and with 3rd parties) switches under various load, in idle mode and under full POE. Nortel continues innovating energy consumption and HVAC analysis across the strands of IT and we are not committing ourselves to mere approximations.
Instead of countering with their own detailed test results (or those of independent tests), Cisco insists only an industry standard will do. That standard could be years away…is it any wonder why Cisco’s taking this position?
Hi Bo, thanks for your feedback and yes.. I did realise that the whole debate was dated a month or two ago but thought it was worth a summary.
Regarding the energy efficiency of network equipment, I hesitate to take sides as I’m not an engineer and not an expert in power systems, and have not used the equipment first hand. As a journalist, I feel I should tell both sides of the story – I hope that I represented Nortel’s side correctly and fairly.
At the same time, I do feel very strongly that standards are lacking, especially when it comes to issues like energy efficiency, emissions reporting and so on.
There seems to be so many claims out there without any kind of context. Take a completely arbitrary example – a company claims that it’ll reduce emissions by 50% by year 2012. Reducing carbon levels is a completely understandable subject, but does that 50% figure related to anything. If it is overall emissions, then what will be the revenue in 2012? A company can probably reduce their emissions by 50% by simple shutting down half of its operations. If that is not the case, and the company does plan to continue to grow, how does that 50% translate? I’d like to see any company reduce their emissions by 50% when their revenue doubles? Can any company reliably project their growth out four years?
At the same time, if the figure means emissions per Mbps of traffic, then 50% doesn’t sound like much as equipment advances (i.e. 2G to 3G to LTE) and the corresponding efficiencies gained will easily surpass 50%.
Getting back to the topic of network equipment: I am totally in support of Nortel’s efforts in driving energy efficiency across the network, and that Cisco (and the rest of the industry) will feel the pressure to do more of the same.
Hey Tony, agreed that right now the various conflicting claims and figures make for a confusing mess for businesses trying to make sense of it. Since that’s exactly the environment where analyst firms can help the most, I would expect to see a rush of information and studies from analyst firms as they attempt to help their customers weed through the claims. That should help bridge the gap until a more industry-standard measure of energy efficiency is agreed on.
Thanks Bo.. I look forward to hearing more about Nortel’s success in this area..
BTW.. Nortel will be participating in our Melbourne Congress (30 sept – 1 oct), which will feature a day covering green telecoms practices. Eric Lauzon, Nortel’s CTO for Asia has signed on as a speaker.