Sentilla Blog

What do 15,000 Java developers have in common? Besides a love of object-oriented programming languages and an oddly-shaped mascot named Duke, Java developers act en masse. How do we know? Sentilla was commissioned by Sun Microsystems to instrument the Moscone Center in San Francisco with over 200 pervasive computers during the 2008 JavaOne conference. Sun wanted to have greater insight into the behavior of attendees during the conference so that organizers could adjust energy-usage in real-time and better plan for future events. Each morning, John Gage presented Sentilla's findings.

Hello, I'm Spence Murray, a member of the Sentilla Server Engineering team. My responsibilities include design and development of core networking and data management technologies for Sentilla Energy Manager. Having been involved in the project since its inception, I've had the pleasure of seeing it evolve into a very useful tool for both energy and network management.

First off, I'd like to congratulate our CTO, Joe Polastre, on his recent selection as a one of BusinessWeek's Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs of 2009. This award is indicative of the growing buzz Sentilla Energy Manager is generating.

When it comes to management, one of the things I ask customers is what management tools they use.  There's always a laundry list, some open-source (like Nagios) and some from large software vendors (like Tivoli).  These IT management tools are used to get a handle on computing, storage, networking, and applications -- 4 of the primary assets in a data center.  But when I ask what they use for energy management, there's usually a blank stare.  Energy, as you may have guessed, is the fifth major asset.  As with any of these assets, if you run out of capacity, your applications go down.  If you don't manage them proactively, your performance suffers.  Energy is no different.  And with pressure to reduce cost, improve performance, plan for increased or decreased capacity, or mitigate potential risks, management tools are the key to accomplishing these tasks. 

Awareness of the importance of energy in the data center has grown dramatically in the last few years.  And due to the importance of energy in business continutity and contribution to data center operating costs, it is logical that it is time to get a handle on energy in 2010.

Today, Sentilla announced version 3.0 of Sentilla Energy Manager.  My role at Sentilla is varied, but one of my responsibilities is creating and managing the product roadmap.  With version 3.0, I'm really excited about how much we've added into this release.  SEM 3.0 is truly revolutionary, providing a ton of features and functionality that no other vendor provides.  It is built on our Sentilla Software Platform, which is in its 4th generation, is very robust, and has served as the basis of all of our products since 2006.