Now that the big launch of JouleX Energy Manager (JEM) Version 3.0 is in full swing, we thought it would be a great time to touch base with Rene Seeber, CTO and Co-founder of JouleX. Rene is the driving force behind our incredible engineering team, and is “Always On!” That’s more than just a slogan for Rene, who has even been known to come into a meeting with a hand full of paper napkins covered in engineering notes because that was the only paper available during a dinner with colleagues the night before.
Describe what you do at JouleX.
Rene: My days at JouleX are always a good combination of strategic product planning and working directly on the product. I listen to customer needs and feedback, and work to find ways for JouleX to address those needs through product development. I spend a lot of time figuring out where we’re going in 1, 2, and 3 years but also ensuring that JouleX is a great platform today.
Tell me a little about the projects you’re currently working on:
Rene: Now that JEM Version 3.0 has been released, we’re working on putting concrete plans in place for the upcoming next two versions. Based on customer feedback and needs, we’re really working to make the next version even better than the great products we have today.
What in your past prepared you most for what you’re working on today?
Rene: Going through all of the ups and downs with a couple of startups before JouleX was probably the best experience I could have had for being successful with JouleX. My professional training obviously prepared me for the work we do, but I’ve been through everything in startups and that’s the best experience I’ve ever had.
Is there is any relation between how the technology you built at Cobion works and techniques used in JEM?
Rene: Absolutely. Cobion was one of the biggest influencers. Cobion processed images and data and indexed it. JouleX processes energy data and indexes it. All technology relates to others.
With Cobion, we approached “content security” as a large scale data processing problem, crawling billions of internet pages and images, doing distributed content analysis to classify web sites and created enterprise products out of the result.
With JouleX, it’s quite similar. We’re using advanced algorithms in combination with large-scale number crunching on a different kind of data source, in JouleX case it’s energy related sensor data (power, utilization, temperature, etc).
What moments stand out in your mind when thinking back over the young life of this (if we do say so ourselves!) pioneering company?
Rene: One moment that always stays with me was meeting with Tom Noonan (now JouleX president & CEO) and Tim McCormick (now JouleX vice president, sales & marketing) to present them with the idea for JouleX, and getting them excited about working together again with this new company. I will always remember that the day they said yes was one of the most perfect days.
Another was when we grew enough to start to hiring people we didn’t know and that we hadn’t worked with before. Taking that step was a huge moment for our company.
A little more than a year ago at the first company kick-off when everyone in the company was together for the first time. JouleX is unique in that our team members are all spread across the world, so it’s a big deal to have everyone together at once. It’s an incredibly precious time and it’s very exciting when we all come together.
How do want JouleX to be remembered 50 years from now?
Rene: In 48 years, I expect that JouleX as a company will be looking back on all of our accomplishments at our 50 year celebration. This company has the potential to be around for a long time. I don’t think of us as being remembered but still being very present in the world.
Finally, what kinds of hobbies fill your free time?
Rene: I don’t have free time. I only concentrate at one thing at a time and right now that’s JouleX. I have a wife and children and JouleX. Everything else is unimportant.
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Did you catch yesterday's announcement about the launch of JouleX Energy Manager Version 3.0? If not, let me introduce you to the most feature rich, intuitive, and interactive energy management platform on the market today.
JouleX recognizes that energy management challenges are a global problem, and multi-national corporations need an energy management platform that provides full functionality at both a local and centralized level. JEM 3.0 is optimized to provide for those needs locally and globally.
Some of the most popular features of JEM 3.0!
- Centralized Reporting and Scalability
- Architecture enhancements provide for single instance installations as well as for distributed deployments across multiple locations, creating a single repository of data that allows for centralized and localized reporting;
- The JEM platform now scales to support one million devices.
- Dashboard Enhancements and New Reports
- New embeddable widgets, such as Heat Maps, Energy Geo Maps, Data Center Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), Centralized Server Statistics and Health Status, and Server Resource Charts, can be used exported to external websites, corporate intranets and sustainability leaderboards to share real time progress against corporate sustainability initiatives with customers and employees;
- Improved screen layouts make viewing the dashboard and devices easier by moving from two columns to three and adding a wide-screen mode;
- Reports are now available in six languages―English, French, German, Spanish, Japanese, and Chinese―and can be scheduled to be sent automatically.
- All-new reports for:
- Sustainable procurement include Model Analysis and Model Replacement;
- Data centers include PUE, Under-utilized Servers, Idle Analysis, Hourly Consumption Analysis, Cost Analysis and Summary Reports;
- Distributed offices include Business Hours/Non-business Hours Comparison, Consumption Analysis, On/Off Analysis and Devices On At Night/During Weekends.
- Threshold Alerting and Auto Response
- Users can define thresholds based on power, utilization, temperature and other indicators, and JEM can automatically send notifications or carry out automated actions;
- New notification architecture triggers notifications based on policies or with the Alerts Application.
These are just some of the highlights. Contact our Sales Department for a full demonstration of what JouleX Energy Manager Version 3.0 can do for your enterprise!
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We were excited to be afforded the opportunity for JouleX Energy Manager to monitor and report on the energy use of the entire Cisco network at Cisco Live London 2012. Attendees were able to see the real time energy usage of the entire network on large screens located in the Cisco Network Operations Center, the Cisco EnergyWise booth, and displayed in our own booth.
Having this visibility into the network of the Cisco Live London show gave many attendees their first real look into how energy is actually used in their own IT operations.
The image below shows the real time power consumption change as people arrived at the show in the morning. Applied to the enterprise, this capability would show you within a matter of weeks what your company’s day to day energy usage patterns are. If your energy usage isn’t changing when your employees get started every day, you’re wasting a LOT of energy during non-business hours.
JouleX Solutions Architect, David Prantl, was able to implement the JouleX Energy Manager for the Cisco network in less than two hours, which gave him plenty of time to visit with prospects and customers at the show.
Thanks again to everyone who stopped by our booth to visit. For those who missed the London show, visit us at Cisco Live in San Diego in June.
Thank you for taking the time to visit the JouleX IT Blog. We hope you'll join us on Facebook or Twitter and subscribe to our RSS Feed! We look forward to joining you in the Green IT conversation!
This week's round up is a collaborative effort with several of our team members. We hope you enjoy the reads, and another fabulous Dilbert strip.
- How EnergyStar is working on the Green Data Center of the Future- "Rolling out this year ... are two new certifications and a long-awaited updated to the servers spec, and to find out more about how they're progressing, I talked to R.J. Meyers, Energy Star's Data Center Products Lead, about how the EPA is working to green the data center from within."
- 7 Smart Grid Projects that are Turning Heads- "We’re at a juncture in the smart grid market where utilities are moving beyond the expected and taking next step with advanced technologies – from the flywheel systems protecting Austin Energy’s new control center to SAIC’s “Smart Grid as a Service” that supports critical energy management systems in remote Alaskan villages."
- Coca Cola: Reasons to Believe- "In the company’s effort to increase transparency across its sustainability platform, this year’s report was created using stakeholder feedback and, for the first time, follows the disclosure and reporting requirements of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) to achieve a self-declared grade level “B+.” "
- Why Invest in Your Employees for a Sustainable Business Culture?- What is the correlation between employee investment and a sustainable business culture?
- How the Military Uses Green Tech To Save Soldiers' Lives- "On the battlefield–”in theater” in military parlance–reducing energy consumption isn’t about saving money or the planet, and it’s got zero to do with anyone’s political beliefs."
- Energy Department and Department of Commerce Announce $1.3 Million for Clean Energy Workforce- "As part of the President’s blueprint for an American economy built to last, the Energy Department and the Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Manufacturing Extension Partnership Program have announced up to $1.3 million for training programs to provide commercial building professionals with critical skills needed to optimize building efficiency, reduce waste, and save money"
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This is the second in our series of articles surrounding Energy Following the Productive User. See the first here:How Energy Efficient Is Your Video Conferencing?
During the course of our customer interactions, we’ve run across a few IT professionals who still adamantly subscribe to the theory that you shouldn’t power your computers down when they aren’t in use. They claim that computers that are left on at all times last longer than those powered down.
According to User Guide to Power Management for PCs and Monitors", Bruce Nordman, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, January, 1997, LBNL-39466
"The belief that frequent shutdowns are harmful persists from the days when hard disks did not automatically park their heads when shut off; frequent on-off cycling could damage such hard disks. Conventional wisdom, however, has not kept pace with the rapid technological change in the computer industry. Modern hard disks are not significantly affected by frequent shutdowns."
Though this may have been a problem in the early days of computers, it has long since ceased to be a realistic concern. In fact, According to the United States Department of Energy, there are no computers on the market today that last long enough to be negatively impacted by turning your computer on and off.
The following is a quote from Rocky Mountain Institute Home Energy Brief #7 Computers and Peripherals:
“Modern computers are designed to handle 40,000 on-off cycles before failure, and you're not likely to approach that number during the average computer's five- to seven-year life span. In fact, IBM and Hewlett Packard encourage their own employees to turn off idle computers, and some studies indicate it would require on-off cycling every five minutes to harm a hard drive."
To put this in perspective, if your computer is used every day for 5 years before you upgrade or retire that computer, you would have to turn it off and back on 21 TIMES PER DAY to reach 40,000 on-off cycles.
What It's Really Costing You
Turn it Off from Nigel Upchurch on Vimeo.
Now that you know that powering your computers off when they aren’t needed isn’t going to harm your equipment, let’s look at what leaving them on is costing your enterprise.
Each computer and monitor that is powered down when not in use (nights, weekends, vacations, and holidays) will save your company money. The chart below shows you just how much, based on an estimated power cost of $.12 kWh, your company could be saving in energy costs EVERY YEAR. In most parts of the world, the cost per kWh is much higher than $.12.
|
Number of PCs and Monitors - Assuming One Year at $.12 kWh
|
|
1
|
1,000
|
5,000
|
10,000
|
15,000
|
20,000
|
|
$ 34.09
|
$ 34,090.00
|
$170,450.00
|
$340,900.00
|
$511,350.00
|
$681,800.00
|
This doesn't include the amount of money that it is costing to leave on other office equipment, such as: printers, copiers, VoIP phones, video conferencing, thin clients, wireless access points, network switches, and distributed office servers.
Thank you for taking the time to visit the JouleX IT Blog. We hope you'll join us on Facebook or Twitter and subscribe to our RSS Feed! We look forward to joining you in the Green IT conversation!
We hope you're enjoying the weekend! Enjoy a little Dilbert and check out the links we thought you'd like.
Data Center Articles:
In the upcoming week, we'll have a new poll and talk about the debate around whether or not you should power down PCs.
Thank you for taking the time to visit the JouleX IT Blog. We hope you'll join us on Facebook or Twitter and subscribe to our RSS Feed! We look forward to joining you in the Green IT conversation!
If you were not able to attend Cisco Live London last week, you missed a great conference. The place was abuzz with demos, conference sessions, and conversations around Cisco EnergyWise and energy management.
Josef Brunner, JouleX co-founder and chief architect, gave a Gold Theatre Presentation on Reducing Energy Consumption from the Core to the Edge and it was a huge hit. With seating for 40, Josef's presentation drew more than 200 attendees! For those of you who missed it, here's the presentation below. (To fully experience Josef's energy, charisma, and daft analogies you should catch his next live presentation. Those who saw his presentation will tell you, the powerpoint alone doesn't do it justice.)
To those we met at the conference, thank you again for your interest in JouleX, thank you for sharing the success stories you have had from using the JouleX Energy Manager products. We look forward to seeing you again soon.
Reducing Energy Consumption from the Core to the Edge: The JouleX and Cisco EnergyWise Solution
Want to learn more?
Thank you for taking the time to visit the JouleX IT Blog. We hope you'll join us on Facebook or Twitter and subscribe to our RSS Feed! We look forward to joining you in the Green IT conversation!