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SDA spoke to Sun Microsystem's VP and Worldwide Head Of Field Marketing for Sun Microsystems, Mike Douglas, on his recent trip to India. Mike began his career with Sun in Canada where, in 1990, he joined as Marketing and Sales Operations Director for the Canadian subsidiary. In 1994, he moved to California to manage go-to-market programs for the North American operation, expanding this to a global role within two years. Since that time, he has held a variety of executive positions across marketing. Currently, Mike oversees the operation of Sun's nearly 400-person Field Marketing organization. A frequent traveller, he is focused on understanding the environment in which Sun's customers operate worldwide, and adapting Sun's market offerings to address the requirements that uniquely exist within each market.

SDA: Virtualisation is now at the tip of the iceberg. How much of role will virtualisation play in making data centers more efficient? Are today’s virtualisation technologies as advanced as they’ll get, or is there still room for improvement?

Mike Douglas: Virtualization is one of many strategies companies are employing to improve datacenter efficiency. We're just beginning to see a shift in the way organizations are approaching virtualization.

Previously, companies were hamstrung by the management complexity that virtualization software added to an already complex datacenter. With the advent of virtualization 2.0 -- the intersection of virtualization and systems management -- organizations will finally be able to move beyond simple server consolidation to also include systems management. Sun is rolling out its own xVM virtualization roadmap that is with support from key partners such and MYSQL, Quest Software and AMD.

The systems management piece will make virtualizing the datacenter and improving efficiency much easier. In turn, we expect to see a huge increase in the number of organizations deploying virtualization technologies over the next couple of years.

SDA: Sun Microsystems Eco Innovation Initiative is an extension of Sun’s Eco Responsibility Initiative. Can you tell us more on the new initiative and its benefits?

Mike Douglas: On August 21, 2007, Sun launched its Eco Innovation Initiative to unite tech innovation with eco leadership. The initiative includes a comprehensive suite of programs and solutions that help customers improve datacenter efficiency and utilization while helping to reduce the environmental impact of computing. This suite was also designed to help customers tune their cooling air distribution and other infrastructure systems that can impact both operational costs and service levels.

Sun also publicly unveiled three state-of-the-art energy efficient datacenters in Santa Clara, Calif., Blackwater, UK, and Bangalore, India. By using best practices in datacenter design and hardware consolidation, Sun was able to cut its utility bill by over 60% and earn over in rebates.

SDA: Gartner predicts a 50% rise in power demanded by high availability data centers in the next 5-8 years. How relevant is this according to you?

Mike Douglas: There is no question that the network is growing at a staggering pace, and that will mean more power and more CO2 emissions if we don't act. In fact, the world's datacenters are emitting as much CO2 as all the cars in China.

Sun's goal is to grow computing and our business responsibly. We've been incredibly pleased to see our SunFire T1000/T2000 servers flying off the shelves. The SunFire T1000/T2000 is the most energy efficient on the market today and has also been one of the most successful new products in our history.

SDA: Sun’s latest contribution to the green arms race is not too different to what HP & IBM are offering in the way of assessment services and assistance in implementing corrective actions. How does Sun help a company who wants to go green assess and prioritize its goals?

Mike Douglas: By providing customers with access to an open, comprehensive portfolio of the most energy efficient eco products on the market, proven expertise, as well as partners and communities, Sun's offering help customers immediately improve economic and energy efficiency by as much as 60%, pack the same compute power in as little as 1/4 the space, and increase utilization by as much as 85% -- without requiring an army of consultants.

Sun offers Eco Ready Kits-- Sun Eco Assessment Kit, Sun Eco Optimization Kit, Sun Eco Virtualization Kit -- help customers get their energy and economy savings started with an easy way to get needed hardware, software and services. Our comprehensive virtualization portfolio - desktop, server, disk, tape - will help increase system utilization and ROI, and bypass power and space limitations, while improving performance, security and cost savings into the annually. Virtualization is free with Solaris - The free and open Solaris OS has built-in virtualization and Predictive Self-Healing features that dramatically improve system utilization and drive increased uptime for even greater efficiency.

On top of these ready to deploy products, Sun offers customers consolidated Eco expertise and a robust partner community to help our customers find simple ways to get started, and get results. But perhaps most unique, Sun shares its knowledge freely, by making information and technology available to others so that we can all move forward and participate in an increasingly sustainable way.

In September '07, Sun founded OpenEco.org, the first-ever open web community where companies can calculate, compare and reduce their CO2 emissions free of charge. In the age MySpace and Facebook, OpenEco.org allows organizations of all kind to address climate change through a social network devoted to CO2 reduction.

Sun posts monthly energy usage and CO2 emissions for all its major U.S. campuses online at http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/environment/green/carbon.jsp to help other company’s benchmark and reduce their footprint.

SDA: Greening is among the most critical factors impacting the current growth of data centres in tandem with power and cooling and presenting significant challenges as user transaction demand is accelerating in Asia. How are you getting CIOs and CFOs to work together to direct their efforts to successfully squeezing "green" into--and out of--the data center?

Mike Douglas: While many see the roles of CIO and CFO as unrelated--the former focused on adding value to business operations through technology investments, and the latter ensuring fiscal responsibly--they are increasingly joining forces to address energy efficiency.

One way we're addressing this at Sun is by aligning incentives internally. In fact, our CIO Bob Worrall, is actually accountable for energy use. His organization has an FY 08 goal of reducing IT energy use by 20%. Some other ways Sun suggests bridging the gap between organizations when you're looking at energy use include:
Use eco-friendly technologies whenever possible when upgrading your server and data center hardware. Even if your department does not directly bear the brunt of high electricity or facilities fees, be sure to calculate the full cost of ownership, including space, power and cooling costs into your purchases, and take full advantage of any applicable utility company rebates. Sun saved nearly a million dollars in rebates alone during recent upgrades.

Take advantage of the opportunity to realistically evaluate your space needs. Today's energy-efficient technology takes up significantly less floor space than previous generations of hardware. On top of that, virtualization makes location nearly irrelevant.

Work together. Understand the financial impact of technology on operating expenses and create a plan together. Talk with your facilities organization to identify consolidation opportunities. The technology is readily available, so by incorporating best practices in data center design, you can both save your company money and reduce its environmental impact.

Make sure those who run IT and who manage space have standard efficiency metrics to arrive at a complete cost picture.

SDA: Sun talks a lot about budget challenges and cost savings. How much can one save by transferring to an efficient data center?

Mike Douglas: At Sun, we like to say that Eco stands for both Economics and Ecology. We've uncovered significant financial savings through our energy projects. For example, phase one of our Santa Clara Datacenter build out began with a hardware consolidation and refresh project that took three months, increased compute power by more than 450% and is expected to save .1 million in energy costs a year. Phase two involved designing the Santa Clara space and installing the new hardware with an estimated additional 30% savings in energy costs.

Silicon Valley Power, a local utility company, has recognized the breakthrough efficiencies and design of Sun's Santa Clara datacenter by giving Sun nearly million in rebates and awards in addition to the savings already realized.

SDA: According to a survey, only 15% of the IT professionals said they have a high level of awareness of vendor green initiatives. What will Sun be doing to create awareness for the various initiatives it has been coming up with?

Mike Douglas: Today, according to industry sources, 41% of Fortune 500 IT executives cite power/cooling as a major problem. Companies are waking up to this crisis and are currently looking at the environmental impact of their electricity use and are taking action to reduce their global impact and environmental footprint. However, there is still scope for more awareness and improved efficiency. That said, customers approach us to help them solve their datacenter issues of energy and power.

At Sun, our Eco-Responsibility initiative is based on a philosophy of Innovate, Act, and Share. As Eco leaders, we have a comprehensive portfolio of efficient Eco Products, proven expertise, and various assessment tools to assess a customer’s requirement. Sun innovates by making products and services that are both good for the environment and good for business. Sun acts by operating in an open, eco-conscious way. We share by making information and technology available to others so that we can all move forward and participate in an increasingly sustainable way.

Additionally, we have undertaken various initiatives at a local level to create awareness. To begin, we showcase our Bangalore datacenter where we have consolidated 10,400 sq.ft. down to 5,096 sq.ft., reducing power consumption by 17%, space by 51% and increasing compute capacity by 154%.

We also believe in building Eco communities which reaches out to a larger audience. We have collaborated with six industry leaders to form a community who have come together with best practices, tools and expertise that can help improve energy and economic efficiency of the customer. Each partner of the alliance brings their subject expertise through this collaboration to the customer.

SDA: What kind of heterogeneous support does this initiative have across different platforms and what could be the hurdles that Indian companies are facing in adopting green data center solutions?

Mike Douglas: The concern of energy efficient datacenters is not restricted to Indian companies alone. Today companies across the globe are striving to make their business and technology infrastructure energy efficient and eco friendly. The first step must be to make the workforce of a company aware of eco issues, and edify them that doing even simple consolidation projects can make a big difference and significantly impact revenue.

One of the biggest differentiators Sun offers to customers is innovation. Innovation is in our DNA. Every platform is based on innovation be it products, tools or assessment metrics. Sun has a long track record leading the industry with inventive technologies – for Eco Innovation, Sun is leveraging our leadership with product innovation (CMT/CoolThreads, storage VTLs, Sun Ray, etc.), Solaris 10 OS, that features Solaris Containers for built-in virtualization solutions (as well as LDoms, unmatched reliability and scalability across the enterprise), and a host of new offers and services to support better efficiency across the datacenter.

We offer complete end-to-end energy efficient solutions combining products, solutions, and services, to recycling and disposal. By taking a comprehensive approach to combine all the economic efficiencies provided with innovative technologies, Sun delivers energy saving computing. Sun designs efficiency oriented IP into its products and solutions up-front, rather than retrofitting products to meet regulatory guidelines or growing energy efficiency needs.

Sun has been taking an active role in driving change and enabling sustainable prosperity through its own comprehensive energy-efficiency strategy of global datacenter consolidation.

SDA: Could you let our readers know on the costs incurred by Sun for this initiative and what would be the next wave of technology in the storage space?

Mike Douglas: It is not about cost, it’s about building a community that possesses the expertise to help the customers with their datacenter issues and provide an end-to-end solution. Sun offers a complete storage management strategy that includes data protection, archive and storage optimization linked to and driven by the enterprise business strategy; not simply putting data on multiple tiers of storage.

There have been a lot of changes over a period of time, today enterprises are looking for storage that is not only secure, but also has high availability, besides being cost effective. Organizations are seeking to move away from application dependency to data independence. In order for this to happen, storage must become either application-transparent or accessible by any application according to hierarchical requirements. To help achieve this, two basic areas must be added into the network storage presentation - virtualization and data mobility.

In India, the concept of storage virtualization is gaining importance with the proliferation of SANs. Internationally, storage virtualization has taken off, but in India companies are slowly showing increasing interest owing to the benefits of lower costs associated with the various storage resources within the mixed and shared hardware and media pool.

The demand for and the size of the storage market in India will keep rising by virtue of the fact that almost all enterprises and SMEs are making efforts to run their businesses efficiently and in real-time. Increasing awareness of the need for disaster recovery and planning for business continuity are also driving this market.

Lastly, since most organizations in India have geographically distributed infrastructure, with the increase in data, we also expect that there will be increased requirement by the organizations for storage management solutions like Storage Resource Management (SRM) solutions, which can help in managing distributed storage infrastructure more efficiently and help in reducing both the capital and operations cost.

What’s new in storage? Software-based data-duplication is an emerging technology that offers the potential for 20x or greater effective data compression, which would allow greatly reduced back-end storage infrastructure to protect the same amount of data held in primary storage. Eco Responsibility will also drive a resurgence in the value of a tiered storage architecture that uses primary storage, virtual tape and real tape to optimize and reduce physical storage assets and the power they consume.

SDA: Sun introduced its Eco Innovation Initiative in US in August, how has the response been so far and what kind of response do you expect from India?

Mike Douglas: Having said that, we believe that India holds a lot of potential for our eco initiatives. Datacenters are becoming a sore point for Indian CIOs, like their global counterparts, in terms of operating efficiency and the kind of investments they require. According to Bureau of Energy Efficiency, India will have an energy demand for 20,000 megawatts of electricity by 2015 and going by the present state where there is a deficit of 10-11% in peak load, there is a huge power problem and that has to be addressed immediately. Large enterprises have woken up to the large problem of energy consumption looming in front of them and have started realizing the importance of energy efficient processors. Hence, we have seen a great demand for our UltraSPARC T1 systems from organizations in India.

SDA: What are the target growth areas for Sun in India and Asia Pacific regions? Any announcements you have specifically for India?

Mike Douglas: Given our highly integrate-able solution offerings through our channel partners that address the requirements of the end-users, we see not just one growth market but many. In each one of these segments, technology is playing a very important role. Technology, which is network centric, where the network is the computer -- that is why we believe that Sun will have a prominent role in being the most sought after technology infrastructure company in India.

Traditionally our growth and leadership in India has come from the BFSI, Telecom, manufacturing & Government segments. However, while we will continue a strong focus on these verticals, we look forward to tapping new emerging segments which are currently at the nascent stage of investments in IT infrastructure.

Another area that we have identified for growth is our developer base. We currently have the largest developer base for Sun in India at 530,000. What we will continue to do is fuel the academic program in the universities as well as in the developer population to ensure this community knows how to build a resilient infrastructure on which they can build global businesses. As more Indian businesses come online, that drives opportunity not only for business in India but for Sun, and for the global community of the Internet users. We will also continue to provide this community access to new technologies and tools from Sun and thus equip them.

While I would not be able to comment on the announcements that are in the pipeline for India, here are a few recent announcements that we have made in India.

1. We recently extended our successful Start up Essentials Program into India and China. The program will help the startup community to stay ahead of competition and get to market quickly by offering them a range of Sun's industry-leading technologies and services. This program has met with a lot of success in the US with close to 700 startup companies signing up for this program. We hope to replicate this success in India as well given that India has become a nurturing ground for start up organizations. Since the launch in August this year, we already have close to 60 companies who have signed up for this program.

2. Sun also set up its first network-operating center for the APAC region in Chennai last year. The facility, one of the key components of Sun’ Managed Services is a 24/7 centralized operations center for managing and monitoring customers' IT infrastructure & processes.

SDA: Sun introduced the SEED Consortium for Eco Initiatives in India along with other companies like APC, Hitachi, AMD and others. What are the current projects of this consortium and what are its plans for the near future?

Mike Douglas: Today most customers are facing increased power usage, sky rocketing energy costs in their data centers. This is a community of like-minded companies who have come together with best practices, tools and expertise that can help improve the energy and economic efficiency of the customer. Each partner brings their expertise to this alliance, and the customer can benefit at a single platform instead of approaching each of the vendors separately. The alliance will approach the customer’s datacenter issues holistically. Our objective is clear - we want to provide an end to end solution to provide energy efficient datacenters solution to Indian companies.