Peter Coffee

VP / Head of Platform Research

salesforce.com inc.

Redefining “Clean IT” Rejecting Incremental Improvement

CleanTech Future Conference II

San Francisco, November 2013

ICT Wattage: the Globe-Warming Numbers

• Global information/communication technology (ICT) “uses

1,500 terawatt-hours of power per year. That’s about 10% of

the world’s total electricity generation or roughly the

combined power production of Germany and Japan.” - science.time.com/2013/08/14/power-drain-the-digital-cloud-is-using-more-energy-than-you-think

• “Data centers can waste 90% or more of the electricity they

pull off the grid… they further rely on banks of generators…

In Silicon Valley, many data centers appear on the state

government’s Toxic Air Contaminant Inventory, a roster of

the area’s top stationary diesel polluters.” - www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/technology/data-centers-waste-vast-amounts-of-energy-belying-industry-image.html

Measuring the Wrong Thing…Precisely

• “Power usage effectiveness (PUE) is a measure of how

efficiently a computer data center uses energy;

specifically, how much energy is used by the computing

equipment (in contrast to cooling and other overhead).” - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_usage_effectiveness

• PUE is easy to determine, but is absolutely the wrong

way to define ICT ‘greenness’

• Treats every watt-hour burned by computers as equal-value

• Ignores utter redundancy of running multiple, identical instances

of operating system; database engine; & other foundationware

Peter Drucker (as usual) Nails It:

• “There is nothing so

useless as doing

efficiently that which

should not be done at all.”

• “Efficiency is doing the

thing right. Effectiveness

is doing the right thing.”

• “What's measured, improves” - www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/12008.Peter_F_Drucker

So, What Should We Do? And Measure?

• Putting thousands of software

stacks in one big place, and

calling it a cloud, is like putting

wings on the QE2 and calling it an A380

• Don’t preserve complexity, and compound with more

complexity, to minimize adaptation to new environment

• Massive economies arise from massive scale:

Not this… but this:

Multi-Tenancy Transforms Sustainability

• Each app has its own dedicated software stack • Each stack needs duplicative maintenance • Every app and its stack are individual

opportunities for error or misconfiguration • Pace of innovation is slowed by need for

cumbersome regression test / re-implementation

Our infrastructure

Other apps

Server

OS

Database

App Server

Storage

Network

App 1

Server

OS

Database

App Server

Storage

Network

App 2

Server

OS

Database

App Server

Storage

Network

App 3

• Applications share an “instance” of the platform • Platform updates apply to all at once

• Massive economies of talent,

energy and cost

Legacy IT Model

(on-prem or off)

Multi-Tenant Cloud

Coherent Code Base and Managed Infrastructure

Your Clicks

Your Code

User Interface

Logic

Database

Selectively shared data, logic and customizations

Architecture for Ecosystems:

Designed to Connect Salesforce to

Salesforce Sharing

Multi-Tenant Cloud Computing:

Most Sustainable IT Model in the World

Carbon Footprint (g. CO2 / transaction)

95% lower carbon intensity

Energy Efficiency Comparison:

CO2/Transaction, not /Cycle or /Server

On-Premise

64% lower carbon intensity

‘Private Cloud’

Estimated avoided carbon emissions from salesforce.com customers running applications on the multi-tenant

cloud as opposed to running on-premise servers. Actual carbon emissions savings could vary. Based on WSP

comparison model and research commissioned by salesforce.com, March 2011.

Where to Learn More: green.salesforce.com

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