If any of you have had the chance to see Sun’s Jonathan Schwartz present in, say, the last 12 or 18 months, the chances are pretty good that you’ve heard him relate an anecdote about a conversation he had with a CIO about the real costs of his datacenter. As opposed to what you might be used to hearing from those that traditionally sell into that market, the problem isn’t the high cost of the hardware, the difficulty in managing it, or the complexity that inevitably follows heterogeneity. The real costs, according to this particular CIO, are in powering the machines, keeping them cool, and the space to house them.
Now some would contend that I buy this argument because Sun’s a client of ours, others might argue that I’m not the best person to comment on this given that 100% of the power to my home is derived from renewable wind (at a total extra cost of 97 cents a month, incidentally) and everything from my dishwashing detergent to my shaving cream is biodegradable, but even I wouldn’t argue the point that selling on the basis of power consumption or other ‘green’ concerns was historically a waste of time. This is a simple consequence of the fact that performance matters. Despite my environmental leanings, when I go to buy my next car, it’s not likely to be a hybrid (diesel maybe, if the manufacturers get on it) because I want something with a little bit more under the hood. I grew up driving a ’73 Mustang, and my Dad’s supercharged Thunderbird when I was lucky, so it’d be tough for me to adjust to a vehicle that was dramatically less performant.
But what if you could have both? Or what if the cost of gasoline became so onerous that you simply couldn’t afford to drive the cars you used to (my Mustang got about 9 miles per gallon)? While it was a bit before I had my driver’s license, the gas crisis of the 70’s should be very educational in that regard – buying priorities can change, and change swiftly if the underlying economics are altered as we’ve seen with the rising cost of oil. Even Nicholas Carr agrees. This is obvious today when I talk to people who commute less than they used to – with the full approval of their employer – because gas is absurdly expensive.
Given that context, I’m glad to see Sun take the initiative and brand themselves more actively as a ‘green’ company. More powerful, less consumptive hardware is obviously a good thing even for a software guy like me. If I took one thing away from their NC event in NYC back in September, it’s that Sun is pushing a lower power, higher horsepower message with their new tin. And if GE can brand themselves as environmentally friendly, why not Sun?
In any event, I’m really not concerned who pushes the green agenda into the data center as long as someone does. If it’s one of our clients, great. If it’s not one of our clients, the part of me that loves wind power will be cheering them all the same. But either way, let’s drive more such efforts because sooner or later, the oil’s going to run out.
