[photo from syncros]

Cows play an important role in some of my most memorable web-hosting-related experiences. Everybody loves Tucows' squishy cows, but does anyone else remember the two lives cows they raffled off as a late-1990s ISPCON promo? And during EV1's 2004 birthday bash, customers lined up to have their photos taken with a longhorn steer. Then-CEO Robert Marsh also hosted a 2005 Houston Rodeo gathering, at which he placed the winning bid for the Grand Champion Steer.

I thought of Robert when I read in this Business 2.0 article that some owners of California's 1.7 million cows have installed methane digesters to turn cow poop into electricity. If he were still in the hosting business, he could build a cow-powered server farm. How Texan would that be!

But according to this fact sheet from Colorado State University, a 1,000 pound cow is only good for 26,000 BTUs of biogas per day, half of which goes back to maintaining necessary temperature within the digester. That's 9 usable BTUs per minute, or 0.16 kilowatts. As a point of reference, it'd take 75 cows to replace AISO.Net's 12 KW of solar power (I read about them in ComputerWorld). I don't think there's room on the company's 2,000 square foot rooftop for that big of a herd.

Speaking of AISO, I have a lot of respect for these folks. Based on stats in the ComputerWorld article, I'm guessing they've invested no less than $50,000 on solar powering their web hosting operations. Plenty of other technology companies, including 3PAR, Salesforce.com and Dell are going green by offsetting their CO2 emissions at a cost of $4.75 - $6.40 per ton. 3PAR, for instance, told eWeek that it plans to offset 8 million pounds - or 4,000 tons, which it can accomplish by writing TerraPass a $25,000 check. If AISO had taken the carbon credits approach, they could have offset their emissions for just $66.30.

One on hand, it's the thought that counts, but at the same time, I feel like carbon credits offer too easy of a way out. I'm particularly uncomfortable with Dell's math. It asks customers for a $6 donation to cover each desktop's CO2 emissions over 3 years of usage, but it'll take the trees planted with such funds 70 years to neutralize the emissions. That's not exactly a balanced equation.

PS - A few other AISO fun facts: They run a VMWare-powered all-virtual infrastructure. They've got water-cooled air conditioners as well as an exchanger that brings in outside air when external temperatures drop below 60 degrees. And they even use solar tubes instead of light bulbs for day time lighting.

I read about it on CNet. What you see above is Lucasfilm's data center. Its network features 300 10-gig ports and 1,500 1-gig ports. Every digital artist within the company has a desktop with gigabit connectivity.

Lucasfilm uses Verari servers with dual core, dual Opteron processors and 16 GB RAM as well as bunches of legacy machines. IT director Kevin Clark says it can take as little as 6-7 months before new equipment turns legacy. For storage, Kevin has 300 TB on a NetApp NAS. (BTW, check out this Infoworld article about NetApp's Data Ontap GX virtualization software, which allowed Lucasfilm to maintain 200 TB across 20 servers while having storage capacity appear as one single 200 TB disk. Lucasfilm has been testing the software for the past year, and will be moving to a GX cluster soon.)

As with Google, Lucasfilms says power utilization is an important factor in its data center equipment selection. The company's website also points out that its facility is LEED certified by the US Green Building Council. I've been hearing a lot about LEED these days. It's mentioned in this SearchDataCenters article, and it will be on the agenda at Data Center World. If green IT is a priority for corporate data center managers, it will likely become an increasingly important topic in your sales discussions with enterprise customers.

Todd Woody at Business 2.0 reports that Salesforce.com plans to offset greenhouse gas emissions produced by its offices and data centers. The company will help finance wind farms as well as a dairy farm methane energy project.

VP Corporate Strategy Bruce Francis says he expects environmental impact to become an increasingly important factor in customers' technology purchasing decisions. Carbon neutrality is "quickly moving from a nice-to-have to a must-have".

Salesforce's 2006 carbon emissions totaled nearly 19,700 tons, which costs $126,000 to offset. I found the amount surprisingly modest, considering that the company provides hosted software to 556,000 subscribers. The goodwill it generates by demonstrating its environmental responsibility is certainly worth more than 2 cents per user per month.

In other news, Salesforce also came out with a developer preview release of Apex, a Java-like programming language for building applications that run atop Salesforce's infrastructure. CNet's Dawn Kawamoto says Salesforce now offers 500 third party apps on its AppExchange platform; there have been over 20,000 installs by more than 7,500 customers. Later this year Salesforce will launch AppStore, an iTunes-like ecommerce operation which will provide payment processing for third party apps.

I continue to be convinced that Salesforce will get into SaaS hosting. Wouldn't it make sense for applications that are built with Apex and sold in AppStore to run in Salesforce's data center? Even in the meantime, Salesforce's hosted apps already compete with companies like The Planet for small businesses' IT outsourcing dollars. Given a choice between leasing servers for installing their own software or running their business from the cloud, which will they prefer?

A very, very long time ago, Dmitri Eroshenko (now CEO of ClickLab) and I added something called the "Guaranteed Web Host Program" to ISPcheck, our web hosting directory. Around the same time, our arch-competitor Jonathan Caputo (now of DevShed) used his Ultimate Web Host List as a launchpad for Web Host Guild. And the folks at TopHosts started VeriHost.

All three projects were intended to help participating web hosts distinguish themselves from competitors by setting industry standards they'd agree to comply with. All three fizzled, because none of us were able to come up with differentiators that made good enough public-relations fodder. You need something that's easy to adopt from web hosts' perspective - and yet creates black and white, us versus them drama in the eyes of consumers. "24/7 support" and "superior connectivity" are important and all, but when it comes to marketing, these are tired cliches rather than attention grabbers.

8 or 9 years later, thanks to Michael Dell, I think I've finally found the right kind of differentiator. Dell was featured in eWeek, CNet, the New York Times (twice!) and Business 2.0 yesterday for his "Plant a Tree For Me" campaign, which allows customers to donate $2 for each laptop and $6 for each desktop they purchase from Dell. Proceeds will be given to the Conservation Fund and the Carbonfund for planting trees that offset each computer's carbon emission over its estimated 3-year lifespan.

Dell points out that his company will also help customers recycle 275 million pounds of old computers by 2009. Greenpeace, he says, put Dell at the top of its ranking of eco-responsible manufacturers.

By the way, a few weeks ago, California utility PG&E introduced an optional program for interested customers to calculate and offset the amount of carbon dioxide their power supply produces. And in a November 2006 interview, eBay infrastructure manager Heather Peck told SearchDataCenter.com that she expects consumers to start demanding environmental responsibility from eBay and other major data center operators.

So anyway, here's a way for ecommerce hosting providers to look good, perhaps. A few of our industry leaders could get together and implement a voluntary carbon offset program similar to PG&E's and Dell's. Much more importantly, they could jointly maintain an online directory of participating customers. At a time when even my most Republican friends are talking about Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth, I'd imagine that a good number of online retailers would be interested in projecting an environmentally conscious image?

Early adopters, I think, would be able to enjoy the black and white, us versus them PR advantage that pre-historic web hosting players failed to create in ancient times. Especially if the weather keeps getting warmer (picture spotted on Paul Kedrosky's blog).

My friend Patrick sent me a link to the Springwise idea database. According to this research service's editors and 8,000 trendspotters, the next big things for 2007 include creative destruction in the eco-ecosystem, curated consumption of snobmoddities, life caching in the experience economy... And believe it or not, some of these concepts might be applicable to web hosting.

Example #1: The Eco-ecosystem:

Springwise offers UK-based Ecoinsurance as a case study. The company sells car insurance, which is no less of a price-driven commodity than web hosting. But its packages include carbon offsets for 20% of your vehicle's CO2 emissions. Rackspace UK already offers cleaner conscience with carbon neutral web hosting. If you're an ecommerce hosting provider, you can capitalize on retailers' desire to appear eco-friendly by offering a "Green Stores" icon and a "Green Commerce" directory of participating customers.

Example #2: Experience Economy/Life Caching:

Springwise says consumers are increasing interested in purchasing not just products and services, but experiences. For instance, Dinner in the Sky differentiates itself from the crowded restaurant market by serving fancy meals 50 meters in the air.

In addition to living exotic experiences, Springwise says customers want to save and share them - hence the popularity of Flickr and YouTube. So might there be partnership opportunities for hosting providers in the travel industry? For instance, once you sign up for a safari or cruise, the tour operator could welcome you with 10 GB of space on its travel portal (and perhaps domain registering/forwarding to your profile?), where you could post cell phone photos during your trip, upload videos upon your return, and share content with other customers.

Example #3: Upgradia and Snobmoddities

Forget Ben & Jerry's; Wine Cellar Sorbet offers 7 vintages for refined dessert eaters. And goodbye Tide; the Landress sells $19 detergents in dainty bottles. Springwise says today's consumers are looking for innovative twists on everyday commodities - even web hosting. I'm not sure how one can dress up bandwidth and disk space, but what about limited edition designer site builder templates? Wired recently reported that the ancient Indian art of vastu shastra can allegedly be applied to increase website traffic. Might there be a market for pre-vastu-ed site layouts?

The bottom line is, I think hosting providers need to work harder to keep up with the level of creativity in the consumer world. Don't you?