Next week is Uptime Symposium. Rich Miller will be there as well for Data Center Knowledge, and we are both on the same panel.

The Uptime Institute’s four-day Symposium 2009 runs next Monday through Thursday (April 13-16) at the Hilton New York. Day passes are available. In a late addition, Google’s Chris Malone will be on hand to discuss the company’s data center innovation and energy efficiency. “Google is using industry-proven concepts in radically different ways, which has led to millions of dollars in savings for the company,” said Kenneth G. Brill, executive director of the Uptime Institute. “By making appropriate business tradeoffs that optimize reliability, performance, and capital and operational expenditures, the Institute estimates that Google has saved at least $500 million in capital expenditures alone. The point here is that any company with a similar business case, application portfolio and appetite for risk can accomplish equally striking results.” Malone will present on Tuesday at noon. NOTE: I’ll be participating in a panel Tuesday at 3:30 pm on “Sustainable Computing in the News.” If you’re at the conference, stop by to say hello.

Last year, I blogged on Mike Manos’s opening keynote and it was a good one to set the tone for following year.

Microsoft's Mike Manos Opening Keynote Uptime Institute, Green Enterprise Computing

The opening of the Uptime Institute Symposium started with Pitt Turner, saying "what are we doing here?" Green Enterprise Computing is a timely topic for the industry event. I've seen Mike present before, and here is what I got out of Mike's latest presentation as new information to digest.

Mike's call to action for all was to stop being information hogs, and to share with the industry. He gave numerous example, and here are a few Mike shared.

Mike emphasized that in spite of a focus on technology. Microsoft has found having the right people and processes makes bigger impact than technology . Mike states over 50% of data center outages are caused by human error. This contrasts a common method to invest in multiple layers of infrastructure redundancy to achieve uptime.Mike was proud of Microsoft's ability to have a 100% facilities uptime over 7 years by implementing strong and disciplined maintenance programs. Also, redundant infrastructure creates more energy waste.

Technology is not the only answer to energy efficiency. People are the opportunity. Microsoft achieved a PUE improvement from 2.2 to 1.8 with no new technology just by people making changes to existing systems in one of their older facilities.

Mike didn't say this, but bottom line he emphasizes an Amazon.com approach in getting data on everything, and they'll figure out what to do with it after by giving people the information to do the right thing.