Microsoft crunches numbers on energy, carbon

The first step for a businesses and household to reduce energy use is getting a handle on the data.

Microsoft on Monday will make available an add-on to its Dynamics AX business applications that allows midsize companies to collect and analyze their energy usage and translate that into the environmental impact.

It's part of a broader effort around environmental sustainability at the company, headed by Robert Bernard, Microsoft's chief environmental strategist, who started at that position about a year ago.

With the Environmental Dashboard, people input utility bill information and the software generates a read-out of historical trends and a calculation of how much greenhouse gases a company produces.

"The impetus behind this is that we continue to see a greater intersection between energy efficiency and environmental stewardship," said Bernard. "We're creating software tools and services that help customers save resources--energy, money--and to reduce their greenhouse gases."

An update to Microsoft's Dynamics applications allows a manager to view energy use and the impact of energy-efficiency programs.

(Credit: Microsoft)

The Dynamics AX applications are designed for midsize companies which typically can't afford to have an audit of their environmental profile. Customers who have the 2009 version of the application can download the energy and environment add-on for free on Monday.

In this version, people need to manually enter usage information. In the next edition, Microsoft expects it can get that data automatically from so-called advanced meters and, in the future, directly from utilities.

There's a budding business to bring more clarity to energy usage and carbon emissions, for both businesses and consumers. A handful of start-ups, too, are developing applications specific to carbon emissions, either through managing carbon offset programs or business energy-efficiency efforts.

Microsoft gets its green on
Bernard said that the energy and environment snap-on to the Dynamics applications is one facet of the programs he's been tapped to run.

The environmental sustainability group works within Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing division. That organizational structure was deliberate because, like security and privacy, Microsoft intends to prioritize energy efficiency across its products, Bernard said.

"There are literally hundreds of people working on this issue," he said, when you include engineers in different software groups and Microsoft's work with utilities. "It's not a marketing campaign, it's not a product. It's embedded in everything we do."

It doesn't appear that Microsoft will be getting directly into the clean-energy generation business, as some of its rivals have done. IBM is looking to license solar energy-related technologies. Google's philanthropic arm has invested in a few renewable energy start-ups. Intel, meanwhile, spun out solar manufacturer SpectraWatt last year.

Instead, Bernard's responsibility covers corporate environmental sustainability; software to enhance energy efficiency; and partnering with outside organizations like The Clinton Foundation's Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) to provide cities software to track greenhouse gases.

Rob Bernard, Microsoft's chief environmental strategist.

(Credit: Microsoft)

On the software, Bernard said that Microsoft is automating data gathering on data center equipment to show energy usage and carbon impact. Microsoft engineers are also looking at ways to make different software platforms--for mobile devices, PCs, and servers--more energy efficient.

Software plays a potentially big role in modernizing the electricity grid to run more efficiently. There are dozens of smart-grid companies which collect and present energy usage data in real time so consumers can see what appliances consume the most energy. Energy-efficiency programs, run by demand-response software, allow utilities to do things like turn down thermostats selectively during times of peak demand.

"There's going to be massive amounts of software optimization developed over the next decade," Bernard predicts. "Start with the consumer or the building manager. What's going to be the breakthrough in user interface so that it becomes very simple to manage the energy in your home? It'll be like going from your old VCR versus Tivo."

Outside of software, Bernard's group played a role in reducing waste at Microsoft's main Redmond, Washington campus. By switching to compostable dishware in its dining facilities, Microsoft has cut its waste in half in the last twelve months.

[r5416]

Aye! It's about time Microsoft moved on this, Ive been waiting to see this for years!

http://tech4000.blogspot.com

[Penguinisto]

So, err, you get to set up two additional servers (one for AX/Axtapa and one for MS SQL Server) if you expect it to run halfway smoothly.... just to measure energy resource usage.

(Not sure how much AX eats but if it's anything like NAV, it's a mofo for resource consumption as well. SQL Server is a hog anyway).

Anyone else not seeing the irony here?

Also, why would I want to spend $$$$$ in hardware and licensing when existing datacenter monitoring solutions + SNMP can already do this? IOW, what does this thing really bring to the table that would justify its cost and resource consumption?

[rapier1]

Thats a fine question - but I think its a little narrow. It seems to me that this software is aimed at a much broader group of companies than just data centers. The article mentioned that they were automating collection from data centers - likely through SNMP (of course, if the MIB doesn't already exist then you need to write new ones which is not an easy task) - but it did not say that this was software only for data centers. However, lets say you are running a data center and you can collect the data through SNMP. What do you do with it then? Just pump everything in to an RRD graph? That doesn't help you all that much you need some sort of reporting and forecasting to make it really useful. So you need to build those components... and a UI... and an alarm system... and test and support and maintain and add on every doodad upper management thinks of. It may make more sense to just buy a pre-existing software solution and use that rather than rolling your own.

And really - I don't think anyone would buy AX just to run this plug in. It would be like buying a new car just so you can use the cigarette lighter.

[ppgreat]

This is just like years ago when the government enacted the Paperwork Reduction Act and set out all the notices to its agencies in triplicate.

Monitor consumption by increasing it. The bloated software mentality carried over to hardware.

[Penguinisto]

RRD is a partial answer... but the rest of it is simply exporting to CSV or into a DB of your choosing. In either case, the consumption and licensing costs are going to be a whole lot lower. Also, it's not just RRD - There are a ton of existing solutions out there already (e.g. Orion) that do the job anyway.

But yeah, I agree perfectly that this alone is no justification for buying and installing AX.

[rapier1]

The problem is that internally developed system are sometimes a bit lacking (especially wrt flexibility and UI) which can impact the real usefulness of the application. More importantly, the development expense might end up outweighing any licensing costs. This isn't to say that people shouldn't do internal development but you have actually think about the TCO and make a decision based on that. Of course, how that decision is made often depends on the context. Here in academia we love re-inventing the wheel and sometimes it actually produces some really good results other times... not so much.

But yes, this is mostly geared for people who actually need enterprise resource management tools. As such, no one will get AX just because it has this little widget on it.

[rmartens7]

This is great to see in accounting systems. We do this manually at Rally (http://www.rallydev.com/by_the_numbers/) and it is a real pain. It is also hard to "push" into accounting without some automation.

You can't change what you can't measure - is top of my mind.

At Rally, we focus on five major flows of energy use and carbon. (Electric and Gas at buildings, airline miles, commuting miles, energy from hosted operations circuits.) In 2008, we just collected the carbon, now we are adding back the dollars. (Too bad Softrax does not do this:(

[Vegaman_Dan]

I wonder at times how much of this is done simply to generate data to justify someone's job title and has very little real world benefit. Much like the emission / green house gasses credits being floated about.

[gdmaclew]

What an absolute and total waste of money!

[afterhours]

What a joke. Hey Microsoft -- here's an idea: patch your XP package in SP4 with a real energy saver control panel that would allow the user to select a proper shutdown time scheduler. The best way to save power is to turn off a device when it isn't needed. Hell, Apple has had that since OS 9 more than a dozen years ago. To not have that as part of a standard OS build is beyond pathetic. The vast majority of computers don't need to run 24/7 -- they just trickle away power. What a waste.

[Vegaman_Dan]

Win7 has this ability, as does Vista. Unfortunately most devices have their own power supplies and don't rely on USB power for their energy. Those devices have to have their own power management. All those wall warts and bricks are very much in energy demanding and don't get shut down.