Archive for April, 2008

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/supermicro-sets-performance-per-watt-milestones,354621.shtml

SAN JOSE, Calif., April 16 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Super Micro Computer, Inc. , a leader in application-optimized, high performance server solutions, today announced unprecedented performance-per-watt benchmarks using its latest SuperBlade(TM) and 1U Twin(TM) servers. Until recently, a metric of 200 GFLOPS/kW was considered impossible to achieve with conventional x86 technology. However, the Supermicro DatacenterBlade(TM), with its measured 290 GFLOPS/kW*, along with the Supermicro 1U Twin, with 240 GFLOPS/kW*, both easily surpass previous standards of excellence for x86-based servers.

A great article illustrating the concept of performance per watt, in this case it’s highlighting this solution based on Super Micro blade technology using Intel processor.

Taking this to the next level might mean talking about the business benefit, the revenue generated per watt used, though this might be difficult to quantify easily, who quantifies business benefit, and how would we ensure that this benefit was representative of the business and not the business unit.

What is very important to the IT teams might not be seen as important to the end user.

Creating the balance therefore, establishing, what the server/solution is, what tier of application/function it is to the business line and then examining the benefit per watt is the way forward - let me give you an example of how I’d go about this. Let’s say we’ve got a Compaq Proliant 5000R with an attached array shelf of 10×9GB drives running as a file server. By all accounts it’s serving files, it’s operating to the end user, it’s meeting it’s service level agreement requirements, it’s fine. But it is doing so at a relatively high cost if we consider what device, what system could provide 81GB of storage to an end user. A DL360 with 2×146gb drives perhaps? 1/16th of a DL585 with SAN storage? A NetApps filer might use similar power and space but provide far more storage - therefore we’re not talking so much on an individual server power utilization basis, we’re looking at the role it has to perform and assigning it an artificial value which we are prepared to expend on that task. I’ll ‘pay’ 300w to provide 90GB of storage for an isolated business unit where NAS or the equivalent wont do?

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a7MPhSn8.Q0Y&refer=home

April 20 (Bloomberg) — Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc will announce writedowns of between 5 billion pounds ($10 billion) and 7 billion pounds this week as it prepares a share sale, the Sunday Times reported, without saying where it got the information.

The U.K.’s second-biggest lender, whose board meets today, also plans to announce a stock offering of between 10 billion and 12 billion pounds, and is looking to raise as much as 5 billion pounds by the end of this financial year through asset disposals, the newspaper said.

Led by Chief Executive Officer Fred Goodwin, Edinburgh- based Royal Bank is the most indebted of the biggest U.K. banks after paying about 72 billion euros with Banco Santander SA and Fortis for ABN Amro Holding NV, mostly in cash.

Some interesting news developments for RBS, I wonder if any of this is related to the acquisition of the ABN Amro business. We’ll have to see, that RBS continues to earn revenue and generate value for the shareholders is all that matters.

http://hardware.silicon.com/servers/0,39024647,39183832,00.htm

Despite their best intentions, many organisations are overlooking the real environmental impact of IT operations. That’s down to a major break-down in communications between the board and IT management, argues Dennis Szubert.

The aviation industry is public enemy number one for many environmentalists. Aircrafts pump out more than 600 million tons of carbon dioxide every year - nearly as much as the whole of Africa.

Pressured by the environmentalists, the aircraft manufacturers and operators are pursuing new technologies and approaches to improve fuel consumption.

Check out this article which is talking about the impact of IT on an organizations’ environmental impact, an interesting read and raises some important issues.

Is the issue not one of corporate and business alignment? That the needs of the business need to be linked to the ability of IT to deliver? That at the same time IT can take the initiative to make the changes it needs to improve service delivery, to reduce operation costs? That by applying that rule to virtualize the server estate we might reduce our energy consumption, abstract the end user/the business activity from the underlying hardware, get the benefit of a virtualized infrastructure? There might be a cost of doing this, but the benefits should be greater than the costs, not only might I reduce the hardware support contract, I might reduce the ‘time to live’, the time it takes to increase capacity, to allocate capacity/performance between applications or business units, that I might with the right investment, business buy in and configuration have a fluid type infrastructure - where the workload moves around the business need. During 9-5 business hours the virtualization infrastructure is at 100% capacity, as the business day ends, we might have automated processes to reduce this capacity, the number of physical assets to what’s needed to provide the infrastructure overnight - the overnight batch runs/reports etc.

http://www.finextra.com/fullstory.asp?id=18356

Information technology budgets at Citigroup are set to be slashed under a massive cost-reduction programme ordered by new CEO Vikram Pandit.

Pandit, who took over the helm of the listing US financial conglomerate in December, is preparing to cut up to 25,000 jobs and undertake a major re-alignment of the firm’s information technology and operations with the objective of excising 20% of the group’s cost base.

“It is clearly feasible for us to take 10, 15, 20 per cent off our cost base, especially in information technology and operations,” Pandit told the Financial Times.

We have to be careful with these kind of announcements in the respect of what is actually being cut, is it investment in new technologies? A reduction in operational costs? We’ll have to see, managing costs and maintaining service delivery can be a time consuming activity, an interesting read, do check it out.

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/newstex/AFX-0013-24582093.htm

AMSTERDAM, Apr. 17, 2008 (Thomson Financial delivered by Newstex) — Dutch shareholders association VEB called on Thursday for a takeover code to be introduced in the Netherlands after an Amsterdam commercial court rejected its request for an inquiry into ABN Amro (NYSE:ABN) Holding NV’s management.

The VEB said takeover situations should be made more transparent, more predictable and fairer, adding it will unveil concrete proposals for a takeover code next week.

The association was responding after the Enterprise Chamber of the Amsterdam Court of Appeals rejected on Thursday a request from the VEB and Dutch unions to conduct an investigation into ABN Amro’s management and its actions last year in the takeover battle for the Dutch bank.

In a separate statement after the Amsterdam court’s ruling, trade union FNV Bondgenoten said it will consider lodging an appeal against the ruling.

An article with updates relating to a request for an invesitgation relating to the merger/acquistion of ABN Amro. It’s an interesting read, do check it out.