Hal Stern's thoughts on the economy, software, services, technology, and snowmen. Hal Stern: The Morning Snowman

Much of this week has been spent in a variety of VP-level meetings discussing Sun's FY08 strategies and initiatives. The top of the list is growth, in terms of new application areas and infrastructure wins as well as design patterns for the "next" data center. Top of that list is power, cooling, and virtualization, creating a denser and more flexible computing fabric. It's possible to grow our business (through new data center designs) while also being eco-friendly (through more efficient servers, better systems design, and macro-level packaging like Project BlackBox).

One of my favorite "tell it like it is" customers put it rather succinctly for me: He virtualized two dozen servers down to four. With site licenses for all of the software needed, his software costs didn't change. He's running the same number of OS instances, so systems administration, networking and other per-image costs remained flat. But the four new servers are consuming more power than the twenty old ones, and he's wondering where the savings went (aside from a smaller physical footprint). Eco-computing involves looking at the whole stack, from the processor up to the administrator, because each of those levels contribute to the operational cost.

So this is my first new blog category since splitting off the hockey ramblings into a world of their own. I expect eco-friendly, eco-computing, eco-logical, eco-nomic and if I'm truly random, Umberto Eco to make appearances.