Rackspace's new carbon calculator

This week Rackspace Hosting unveiled a free online tool, which helps businesses estimate their carbon footprint. The carbon calculator takes into account all aspects of operation--commute, shipping, number of servers, etc. Developed in copperation with Native Energy--an international provider of carbon offsets and emission reductions, the service is the latest addition to Rackspace's Greenspace initiative, which promotes green technology in the data center and energy efficiency.

We discuss Greenspace and the carbon calculator with Rackspace CTO John Engates.

HostReview: During our last interview in June last year, we briefly discussed the GreenSpace initiative. What has been happening at Rackspace since then, and how is your continued commitment to efficiency and green technology in the datacenter progressing?

John Engates:Since 2007, Rackspace has been consistent in its commitment to the green movement. As the green movement continues to mature, we are always looking for new ways to spread our green message beyond the walls of Rackspace and our datacenters. To that end, we’ve recently added an awareness element to our GreenSpace program. We want to be an educator on green issues because we feel it’s a truly effective way to help our customers lower their environmental impact and this carbon calculator is a great example. This tool will educate customers or, whoever visits rackspace.com, on how to lower their company’s carbon footprint.This calculator is just the latest tool in our arsenal, but we continue to focus on driving energy efficiency in our datacenters. A big development in this arena is the introduction of several new cloud computing services. Cloud computing by natures is inherently more energy efficient than traditional IT infrastructure and Rackspace has committed in a big way to deploying more in cloud-based infrastructure over time.

The carbon calculator is a free online service.

Please tell our readers about Rackspace's carbon calculator, and how the new service can help SMBs estimate their carbon footprint. Why did you decide to offer this new tool?

This new carbon calculator was created by our friends at NativeEnergy, a trusted name for the purchase of carbon offsets. This tool allows for users to input the many different factors that make up their overall carbon footprint. From power usage in their offices, to travel, to technology usage – the calculator is very comprehensive and takes into account the entire spectrum of energy consumption. In addition, as you navigate through the tool, the calculator provides energy saving tips along the way. Rackspace is committed to being green and we pride ourselves on being a trusted partner. Many of our customers look to us for guidance on ways to become more energy efficient and environmentally responsible in their IT infrastructure decisions. We are making this calculator available to help all SMBs, not just our customers, become more environmentally responsible.

How can SMBs save money by opting for an energy-efficient, environmentally friendly hosting solution? Going green can often equate to lower costs, especially when it comes to power usage within IT. Rackspace’s greenest infrastructure solutions are also very cost effective. If a customer can utilize low power processor architectures or use virtualization or cloud within their infrastructure, there is definitely savings to be had. These technologies lead directly to lower power consumption and better use of data center resources and that is reflected in the bottom line costs for their IT needs.

Can you tell briefly what is new about Mosso, Rackspace's cloud division? Does cloud computing has the potential to offer environmental advantages over traditional hosting offerings?

Mosso is a cloud hosting platform. We developed Mosso as a way to host many thousands of websites and applications that needed scalable infrastructure on demand. It’s a very cost effective, and green, way to host because it utilizes shared infrastructure and makes better use of that infrastructure than traditional dedicated servers. It also gives customers access to an essentially infinite amount of capacity in case their application or website requires it to accommodate a spike in traffic. We’ve recently announced that we’re renaming Mosso to Cloud Sites and we’re adding a couple of new cloud capabilities. Cloud Sites is being joined by Cloud Files and Cloud Servers to round out our cloud hosting offerings to accommodate even more customers with varying requirements for their applications. Cloud Files gives customers infinite storage in the cloud and Cloud Servers is a raw computing capability that can be used for almost any traditional server computing requirement.

Can we expect more green initiatives from Rackspace in the coming months?

We are always looking for new and innovative ways to be more environmentally friendly. We know that being a greener company is much like being in a marathon and we are making deliberate and sustainable changes that, over time, will add up in a big way.