The deal basically unified BT’s Global Video Exchange services with Orange Business Services Telepresence Community. The operators will also issue a directory for its customers so they know who and how to contact firms on the other network.

BT and Orange are the latest operators to offer inter-operator TelePresence services. Both are already interconnected to Tata’s global TelePresence portfolio, which includes enterprise users on its own network, that of partners such as Telefornica, as well as some three dozen public rooms with TelePresence systems. BT is also connected to AT&T’s TelePresence network.

The site, which houses the IT infrastructure of almost 500 major international organisations, will now purchase 100% of its energy from UK renewable energy provider, SmartestEnergy.

According to Telehouse, SmartestEnergy buys energy from independent generators from around the country and supplies it to its customers.

The move, according to Tokuji Mitsui, managing director of Telehouse and KDDI Europe, is part of the firm’s strategy to go green.

“The biggest challenge we face at Telehouse is to improve our energy efficiency and reduce our carbon footprint, and in order to support this challenge Telehouse has worked closely with industry leading partners and regulators. We are committed to our environmental responsibilities and continue to work to align our business strategy with our green ethics wherever possible,” he said.

“The majority of electricity supplied to us is utilised by our clients, therefore it is integral that we take on initiatives such as the 100 per cent green energy supply, which in turn benefits our customer’s credentials by reducing their carbon footprint. We intend to roll out this green partnership initiative with SmartestEnergy to all our European sites in the near future.”

What is unclear however is whether the decision to go with renewable energy will cost Telehouse any more than its current cost base, or whether any extra cost will be passed on to its customers.

One of the biggest obstacles to the adoption of renewable energy is the cost, since it typically costs more than conventional grid power. This, according to most industry experts, make renewable energy for large facilities like data centres economical infeasible unless government subsidies are involved – see our story on NTT America’s deployment of renewable energy systems at its California data centre.

Obviously, the press release can be interpreted in another way. Telehouse can source all its energy from SmartestEnergy for its own systems, but leave the choice to its customers to select its own source of power. In face the release makes clear that Telehouse London are awarded the Carbon Trust Standard, which certifies that organisations have measured, managed and reduced its carbon emissions across its OWN operations. It says nothing of the energy source that is used to power the equipment of its customers.

On the other hand, by connected to SmartestEnergy, Telehouse now have the ability to offer its customers access to renewables as well, if it is not doing so already. In fact, many data centre operators and managed hosting providers offer some kind of service for its customers to go greener, including more efficient equipment, renewable energy power, and so on.

As part of its “conquests 2015″ plan, Orange Business has identified cloud computing, M2M, as well as video conferencing, as “priority areas for growth.” What’s interesting is that all of these areas are part green ICT, and represent technologies that should help drive efficiencies in the enterprise, cities, and between people.

Of course, the operator didn’t mentioned the green element as such, but it is cool that a major international telco now sees much of its growth potential in green services.

Here are what Orange Business is setting out to do:

• generating 500 million euros in cloud computing by 2015 by accelerating its developments focusing on four areas: cloud-ready networks, “as a service” infrastructures, “as a service” collaborative solutions and communications, and application stores.
• selling 10 million SIM cards by 2015 on the M2M market (or Internet of Things), capitalizing on: the development of services beyond connectivity, its dedicated international expertise center in Brussels and its role as the driving force for the standardization of the market.
• becoming number 1 for videoconferencing in France and one of the top three worldwide. The guiding principles include: interoperability of terminals and networks, development of managed and hosted solutions, as well as simplification of uses through user support.

Oh, the fourth objective in the list is to generate 1 billion euros in revenues from emerging countries.

The primary driver for the clouds, according to GIA, is factors such as growing prominence of enterprise mobility, need for business continuity, and increasing adoption of cloud strategy among SMEs.

The benefits of cloud computing are earmarked as “radically lower IT costs,” allowing “even smaller companies to piece together an IT project without spending on purchasing legacy server, and storage systems,” and ease from “the burden of developing and maintaining the technological expertise required in running the network.”

“By offering a more cost-effective, less risky, and fundamentally faster alternative to on-site application developments, cloud computing is poised to transform the economics of information technology in the next few years,” GIA said in its release.

GIA continued that cloud computing adoption is being accelerated given the recent economic recession because it can potentially slash IT costs by over 35%.

“The bad economy fed the global cloud computing services market as cash, and revenue starved companies prowled for IT solutions that are cost-effective, require minimum to zero investments, and low management of computing resources. Technically, the feature of multi-tenancy, or the ability to scale up or scale down services on demand, makes fiscal sense in tough economic climate. And with cloud computing fitting the bill in every respect, the business case for the technology stands exemplified. In short, recession became the push factor, which tripped the market into the mass adoption stage.”

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/11/21/prweb8977106.DTL#ixzz1eW0e71jg

The methodology has also just been included in the ITU’s standard ITU-T L.1410 ‘Methodology for Environmental Impact Assessment of ICT Goods, Networks and Services.’

The GSMA developed its methodology as part of the Mobile Energy Efficiency (MEE) Network Benchmarking service, launched a year ago at Mobile Asia Congress 2010. As a methodology, the MEE Benchmarking service provides detailed analysis of the relative performance of an operator’s network benchmarked against a dataset from anonymised sources. It also ‘normalises’ the data from any operator to a common layer for like-for-like comparison, and provides high level insights to improve energy efficiency. Participants also get to track their energy efficiency progress and get data to demonstrate their successes.

To leverage the results of the MEE Benchmarking service, the GSMA has launched a new service, MEE Optimisation, which undertakes a detailed bottom-up analysis to identify and assess the inefficiencies of a network, to then provide operators with a cost-benefit analysis of specific solutions that can be considered to improve network energy efficiency.

The MEE Optimisation service develops detailed action plans aimed at reducing operators’ energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions. To do this, the GSMA partners with third parties such as equipment vendors to deliver the MEE Optimisation service to operators. The GSMA is currently piloting the first MEE Optimisation project and is in discussions with several members about rolling out the service more widely.

Core to the improvements was the adoption of a solution from Vigilent, an intelligent energy management system firm. NTT America chose Vigilent as its energy management partner after a successful pilot project at a data centre in San Jose. Following the success of the Vigilent system during the pilot project, NTT America extended deployments at both the San Jose and Sterling data centers. The deployments at the two data centers encompassed 178 DX and chilled-water CRACs (Computer Room Air Conditioners), and in total more than 3,000 racks of servers, within 135,000 sq. ft. of floor space.

In addition to direct energy savings, NTT America identified potential indirect financial benefits totalling US$210,000 annually as a result of the Vigilent solution. These include reduced maintenance costs, increased cooling capacity, improved thermal management and deferred capital expenditures.

The system also improved the PUE performance by 10% at the Sterling site and 5% at the San Jose site, and offered a ROI period of under two years, NTT America said.

“We recognize the importance of reducing the amount of energy required to cool the data centers NTT America operates. Equally important is our enterprise customers’ interest in, and support of, energy efficiency both from the environmental and cost reduction avenues. As a key driver for the future of the data center, NTT America will continue to evaluate, support and deploy technologies that can be environmentally sound and cost effective for our customers,” said Kazuhiro Gomi, president and CEO of NTT America.

According to NTT, the Vigilent system is able to deliver cost saving benefits through dynamic, automated control of extremely complex cooling environments utilizing advanced, artificial intelligence technology. The system employs a wireless mesh network of sensors which provides real-time feedback from tens to thousands of data points throughout the data center to an artificial intelligence engine. The engine incorporates this data, along with thousands of other variables, to dynamically and continually adjust air cooling and flow equipment for maximum efficiency in alignment with changing IT loads, within pre-specified environmental parameters.

The first is on the company’s view on PUE.

While there are no surprises in terms of the company’s definition of PUE, Adil Attlassy, vice president of Technology at Digital Realty Trust points out that its importance extends beyond just an internal measurement of efficiency, but serves as a global standard that can be used to benchmark from data centre to data centre and user to user.

“We see that as being very critical part of our business, to demonstrate to our client that we have a consistent methodology” across the company’s global footprint, Attlassy said.

The second video illustrates several best practices for data centre operators inside Digital Realty Trust’s facilities.

Notable points provided by Attlassy include sealing floor gaps to minimise cool air leakage, using cold/hot aisles, and reconfiguring the fan speed of servers – which come default from the manufacturer set at maximum, which is not always required.

A pilot program conducted at Microsoft’s Seattle campus has shown that intelligent building solutions using cloud-based software can be achieved with 10% of a building’s annual energy expenditure, offering a ROI period of 18 months.

The program was implemented in 13 of Microsoft’s 118 buildings on its campus, and carried out by Microsoft, Accenture and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
According to a white paper published by the firms on the results of the pilot, the system added an analytical layer on top of existing building management systems, to improve efficiencies in fault detection, alarm management, and energy management. The system works by allowing building engineers to quickly identify problems and potential glitches instead of being reactive, while allow them to optimise performance and define usage and load parameters over time.

The result is savings in the range of several million US dollars, the white paper said.

“What we learned from the pilot program (and which is detailed in the paper) is that we at Microsoft (and by extension, many organizations with real estate portfolios) don’t need to undertake capital-intensive retrofits to cut building energy costs,” wrote Josh Henretig in the official blog from Microsoft’s Environmental Sustainability team. “Instead, we saw buildings become dramatically more efficient by introducing software to harness and utilize the building systems already in use. By integrating powerful analytics that add intelligence to existing building infrastructure, our buildings got smarter, more efficient and less costly to operate.”

Excepts from the paper:

In its initial stage, the program addresses energy consumption and cost in three specific ways:

• Fault detection and diagnosis to enable timely and targeted interventions in cases of faulty or under-performing building equipment.

• Alarm management to prioritize the many notifications generated by existing building systems and point engineers to the most impactful issues.

• Energy management through systematic tracking and optimization of building energy consumption and performance over time, while changing the behavior of building occupants with visual dashboards and benchmarks.

How can others replicate this:

Microsoft’s pilot program demonstrates how corporate real estate organizations can collaborate successfully with IT, putting smart building technology to use in cutting costs and securing environmental benefits. Its experience has helped define a set of key design principles that can be used in any such rollout. These are outlined in more detail in this report, in summary they include:

• Identify, collect and aggregate relevant data: This involves setting up automated aggregation of building, weather, utility and organizational data from building systems and other sources to feed into the smart building solution. Cloud computing, combined with on-site building management technology, can provide a powerful platform to gather, store, exchange, and process diverse datasets in a secure and scalable way.

• Employ industry-leading analytics to identify savings: The core of the smart building solution is the analytics engine consisting of rules and algorithms that identify and prioritize interventions to maximize savings. Vendors differ in their approaches
and capabilities and should thus be evaluated thoroughly.

• Present results in a consumable and actionable form: The user experience needs to strike the right balance between ease of use and flexibility. Solutions need to improve
an engineer’s day-to-day productivity with better real-time information and access to data, while also providing a strong toolset for deeper analysis.

• Centralize monitoring operations: A centralized operations center can effectively monitor building conditions across a campus or multi-site portfolio and communicate directly with building engineers.

• Engage the organization: Greater awareness of energy use and benchmarks, displayed via dashboards on the intranet or in hallways, can encourage employees and business leaders to save energy, reducing overall demand.

• Avoid disruptive change: Existing building management systems do not need to be replaced. By deploying an analytics layer on top of these systems, prior investments can be significantly enhanced with minimal capital expenditure. Engineers can adopt new tools while still working directly with more familiar systems. Strong cross- organizational project management and a tailored change management approach are key to success.

Services are available from the company’s 18-hectacre campus in Kelfavik, Iceland, a location with key operating advantages that providers well over 50% cost savings over traditional data centres in Europe or New York, the company said.

The company also announced its first customer, Datapipe and its principle supplier, Colt Data Centre Services, a producer of modular data centres.

Verne Global’s commercial launch marks the first realisation of what has become a key marketing pitch for the Icelandic government – green data centres.

According to Verne Global, its facility is 100% carbon neutral, drawing power from Iceland’s dual-sourced renewable energy power grid and utilising Iceland’s ambient temperatures to provide free cooling.

“The demand for high capacity, flexible and scalable data centre campuses has increased in parallel with the growing concern of rising cost and environmental impact of traditional data centres,” said Jeff Monroe, CEO of Verne Global. “We have designed a flexible, dynamic solution that answers the need for both high capacity computing and cost management.”

Another benefit of being in Iceland is that Verne Global not only has access to power and space, but plenty of it. The company says that the new facility will basically be able to support “almost any data centre power requirement, from racks to megawatts.”

The abundance of power available on the Verne Global campus, combined with it being 100% renewable is unique to the colocation industry.

Verne Global says it has selected Colt’s modular data centre solution, which is customised to offer chillerless cooling. The design allows Verne Global to gain rapid entry into the colocation business.

“Power remains one of the primary concerns for corporate IT managers as they evaluate their data centre needs and options going forward in terms of availability, cost and environmental impact,” said Katie Broderick, Senior Research Analyst, Servers and Datacenters, IDC. “Renewable power will continue to play an important role and, as the market evolves, Verne Global’s ability to source an abundant supply, coupled with the added benefit of free cooling, will present a compelling availability, cost and environmental advantage in the marketplace for companies looking to expand their data centre operations.”

The facility will be fitted out with a solution from Colt Data Centre Services (unrelated to Colt Telecom), which makes modular data centre equipment. According to Colt, it is shipping 500 square metres of capacity to Verne Global.

Datapipe is first customer

Verne Global also announced that managed services and infrastructure provider, Datapipe, has signed on as one of its first customers.

Datapipe says that Iceland’s location between the two largest financial markets in the world, London and New York, allows it to offer strategic services, such as disaster recovery, business continuity and cloud computing solutions.

“Verne Global has engineered an environmentally sustainable data centre that will enable Datapipe to expand into a new market while continuing our environmental leadership,” said Robb Allen, CEO of Datapipe. “Power and cooling efficiencies combined with the strategic geographic location will provide our clients with an option for carbon neutral, enterprise ready IT services and a 100% green cloud.”

The interview is from May, at the eGovAsia conference here in Hong Kong, but it’s still very much relevant today.

There are no obvious surprises in what Lee says, but he does summarise very clearly the advantages of Hong Kong in Part 1, including reliable and relatively cheap power, low or no, tax for equipment imports, availability of skill workers, a reliable rule of law, and the fact that we are located far from the earthquake zones.

He also highlights the challenges for data centre operators in Hong Kong in Part 2, namely the availability of land. According to Lee, the solution is to rezone land and establish dedicated areas for data centres, which would lowered the cost of bringing in and developing the support infrastructure, such as the power utilities, fibre infrastructure and so on.