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At the Top of Their Game • 203

with the potential to reduce energy costs as much as 90%. Their Windows
Vista and Windows 7 have built-in power management systems that can
be used to reduce power consumption. In Windows 7, power manage-
ment is on by default. Microsoft Dynamics AX is a powerful comprehen-
sive business management solution software package that now includes
an “Environmental Sustainability Dashboard” to help customers track
their carbon footprint (energy usage and GHGE). By having that data,
companies can better monitoring and controlling their capabilities. For
more information on this, you can read “Microsoft Dynamics AX Helps
Businesses Track Their ‘Green’ Performance—Today and Tomorrow” at
http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/f/c/1fc5528b-70cc-4b74-aff0-
582af019c9d2/EMA and Dashboard Article.docx.

What they are doing for themselves (and us)

That’s what they can do for us. What are they doing to green themselves?
One of their major initiatives is to reduce waste on their campus in
Redmond, Washington. One of the innovations was to move to use com-
postable materials as much as possible. Doing that, according to Francois
Ajenstat, environmental sustainability manager, “reduced our waste on
campus by 50%.” The prime ingredients for their compostable materials
are corn and potatoes. Microsoft was the first corporate account in North
America to receive the Green Restaurant Certification (http://www.dine-
green.com). Additionally, they are recycling their kitchen grease for use as
biodiesel for their on-campus vehicles. One of the unique ways Microsoft
is reducing their carbon footprint is by using what they call “connector
buses.” The connector buses pick up employees from their neighborhoods
and deliver them to a transportation center where hybrid cars take them to
their buildings, thus eliminating the need to use individual cars and also
reducing the need to cover over large areas of green space for parking lots.
And the buildings that the employees are delivered to are LEED Certified
and use approximately “20% of the energy of traditional building,” says
Rob Bernard, chief environmental strategist.
As mentioned before, data centers are both huge power drains and
areas for the largest improvement in energy savings through consolida-
tion and virtualization. Just to give you some perspective on usage, Arne
Josefsberg, general manager of infrastructure services, says “half a bil-
lion unique customers access our data centers every month.” In Ireland,
for example, Microsoft’s data center is using what Michael Manos, senior