More and more businesses these days are taking steps to reduce their carbon emissions.  (Cisco is one of them, as the company met a 25% greenhouse gas reduction goal last year and subsequently upped it to 40%.)

There are several compelling reasons for doing so – some philosophical and others pragmatic.  Here are a few:

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Tags: carbon dioxide, carbon emissions, carbon footprint, carbon usage effectiveness, Cisco, coc-data-center, CUE, data center, datacenterdeconstructed, Green, metrics, PUE

Saturday morning wasn’t complete for me as a kid if it didn’t include a bowl of pre-sweetened cereal and time watching cartoons.  Challenge of the Super Friends was my favorite, thanks to its unforgettable opening sequence and the chance to see Superman, Batman and other heroes overcome the latest scheme by the Legion of Doom to take over the world.

One of the Legion’s intriguing villains was Bizarro – the imperfect duplicate of Superman with the blocky white face and backwards S on his chest.  Although the writers didn’t give poor Bizarro much personality beyond bad grammar – “Me have plan destroy Super Friends!” – my friends and I enjoyed debating how his backwards, bad-means-good perspective would express itself in everyday activities. Read More »

Tags: Bizarro, Cisco, coc-data-center, data center, Data Center infrastructure efficiency, datacenterdeconstructed, DCIE, metrics, power usage effectiveness, PUE

Power Usage Effectiveness or PUE, is the most commonly used metric in Data Centers today.  Data Center industry organizations tout it, major companies brag about their scores, and energy efficiency certifications use it in their ratings.

Despite how thoroughly it has been embraced, though, it’s not without flaws.  In my opinion, they mostly stem from the fact that PUE is more complicated than it looks.  Although calculating the metric is a relatively straightforward exercise, the resulting score doesn’t tell you anything about the factors that influenced it.  Hence why it’s a bad idea to compare PUE among Data Centers.

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Tags: Cisco, coc-data-center, data center, datacenterdeconstructed, Green, metrics, power usage effectiveness, PUE, show your work

How well is your Data Center performing?

How do you know?

I went shopping for a car last year and was pleased to see several models equipped with real-time displays of their miles per gallon performance.  That’s a great feature, in my opinion, because it offers drivers up-to-the-moment insight into how efficiently their cars are operating.

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Tags: availability, Cisco, coc-data-center, data center, datacenterdeconstructed, metrics, mpg

Collaboration is again on my mind as I prepare to board a giant Airbus A380—the largest passenger jet in service today—for the long flight from San Francisco to India via Frankfurt.

I think about the various problems reported about the A380 program. The plane was essentially built in France and finished in Germany. The two locations used different versions of engineering software to design the aircraft’s incredibly complex wiring and electronics. Needless to say, the designs were not compatible, leading to an enormous amount of rework and production delays. This resulted in higher production costs, canceled orders, and billions of euros in lost revenue. It is doubtful that the A380 program will ever be a commercial success for Airbus.

Could more effective collaboration and communications capabilities have prevented this scenario? I think so. In fact, the business case for improved collaboration has never been clearer. Read More »

Tags: benefits, business case, Cisco, collaboration, culture, IBSG, metrics, visuality