Insights
Clear thinking on data centre decisions.
Practical pieces on server efficiency, procurement and sustainability: what to measure, what to buy, and how to make the cost and carbon case stand up. Written to help you decide with confidence.
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Research
5 min read
Understanding GPU energy and environmental impact: Part I
The embodied and operational energy footprint of GPUs, from chip-manufacturing complexity to TDP growth and idle power, and what the latest research and lifecycle assessments reveal.
Research
5 min read
Understanding GPU energy and environmental impact: Part II
GPU performance trends (FP32, FP16, FP16-tensor), energy efficiency in GFLOPs/watt, and why efficiency gains may not keep pace with AI's exponential compute demand.
Research
5 min read
To SERT or not to SERT? Interrogating SPEC benchmarking in the lab
We took SERT into the lab, measuring server energy draw at the PDU and comparing it against alternative benchmarks, to test from first principles whether the SERT methodology holds up. It does.
In the press
1 min read
How CFOs can future-proof their business with IT circularity
Our feature in CFO.nl on why CFOs who embrace IT circularity are positioning their organisations for the future, and the financial and sustainability case behind it.
Technology
3 min read
How digital twins can transform data centre operations
Momentum is building for digital twins in data centres. The opportunities, the adoption barriers, and what they mean for efficiency and sustainability, from our work co-chairing the OCP Digital Twin Working Group.
News
1 min read
Rich Kenny, Co-Chair of the GDSA Planetary Impact Working Group
Interact's Managing Director has been selected as Co-Chair of the Planetary Impact Working Group at the UK Government's GDSA, helping bring the assessment of ICT planetary impacts into government procurement.
Policy
4 min read
Navigating the EU Energy Efficiency Directive
What the updated EED means for data centres: who must report, the new 2023 targets and indicators, the EN50600-4 KPIs, and how our reports cover them.
Research
5 min read
From mines to machines: materials and rare earths footprint in servers
Servers are concentrated bundles of raw materials. Beyond carbon, the critical raw materials and rare earth elements inside them carry sustainability risks of their own, from supply concentration to new reporting rules.
Policy
4 min read
The data and the policy both miss the same lever
Two recent reviews of EU data centre energy, one on the policies, one on the data underneath them, paint the same picture: the regulations don't require IT efficiency, and the data isn't reliable enough to tell us where we stand. A combined read.
Research
3 min read
Linear carbon accounting in a circular world: a fix
The GHG Protocol disincentivises circular economy: the linear attribution of embodied carbon punishes first owners who keep hardware longer or route it to refurbishment. Our LCM 2023 paper proposes a structural fix.
Research
4 min read
Is hot IT a false economy? The data centre temperature question, measured.
Our second IEEE peer-reviewed paper tests whether the widely-given advice to raise data centre temperatures actually saves energy. The answer, on measured data: sometimes. The order that should drive every decision: location, hardware, cooling, temperature.
Sustainability
6 min read
Beyond cooling: the data centre water footprint nobody measures
The water a data centre consumes through its electricity supply usually dwarfs the water it consumes through cooling. The direct / indirect distinction, why geography determines most of the answer, and what proper measurement looks like.
Methodology
4 min read
What's in a server, and why we report it
Every server is a few kilograms of steel, aluminium, copper, iron, plastics, zinc, brass, rubber and a small but consequential collection of critical raw materials. The materials breakdown in the Interact environmental report, and why it changes procurement decisions.
Strategy
3 min read
The cloud migration question nobody asks first
Lift and shift is the default approach to cloud migration and almost always the wrong starting point. The question that should come first, the standards that already cover it, and what measurement before migration changes about the cloud bill that follows.
Methodology
4 min read
How we grade: the A+ to F scale underneath every analysis
Every Interact analysis lands on a single rating per machine, A+ at the top to F at the bottom. The methodology, the five inputs, and the per-configuration principle that distinguishes the grade from anything else on the market.
Methodology
3 min read
Why SERT? A first-principles test of the dataset foundation.
The dataset behind every Interact recommendation rests on SPEC SERT, the industry standard. Industry standard is a defensible starting point, not an argument. The lab test that confirmed it from first principles.
Sustainability
4 min read
Carbon, and the dimensions underneath it
Carbon is the headline metric for data centre sustainability. It is also incomplete. The dimensions a proper lifecycle assessment covers, the planetary boundaries framing underneath them, and what it all means for procurement.
Strategy
3 min read
When energy prices move, the efficiency case stops being optional
Every few years the energy market reminds the data centre sector that price stability is the exception. How exposure actually works, why long-term contracts only delay it, and the one variable an operator actually controls.
Policy
2 min read
Is carbon core business?
Carbon has migrated from sustainability function to finance function. The three forces pulling it there, and what the shift means for any data centre buyer signing a hardware or cloud contract today.
Research
2 min read
The circular economy in data centres, made practical
Circular economy gets used in sustainability discussions and rarely in procurement ones. The economic case, the supply-chain case, and what changed when the hardware-generation assumption began to fail.
Sustainability
3 min read
Beyond PUE: what proper sustainability measurement looks like
PUE says something useful about the building wrapped around the IT load. It does not, on its own, say anything useful about the IT load itself. What proper measurement covers, and the new disclosure gap.
Strategy
2 min read
How to execute a 5 year strategy on server efficiency.
A large managed service provider in Northern England, the 10% worst performing servers, and what the figures across cost, energy, carbon and payback looked like over a 5 year refresh strategy.
Origin
3 min read
Why Interact was built
An origin note. Interact began as a two-year Knowledge Transfer Partnership between Techbuyer and the University of East London. The research surfaced a finding the industry has been slow to absorb.
Methodology
2 min read
How machine learning helped calculate server energy consumption
INTERACT pairs an energy model with the right algorithms to estimate the energy consumption of servers based merely on their hardware configuration. How we brought it about, data capture, smart modelling, continuous improvement.
Analysis
2 min read
Results of Interact analysis of a 35 rack data centre.
November 2020. A thirty five rack data centre asked for analysis of their current estate with recommended refresh scenarios. The figures across cost, energy and carbon over a five year period.
Sustainability
1 min read
Interact Team achieve IEMA Circular Economy Award success
The team behind Interact celebrated an IEMA award for circular economy, recognising work to optimise energy efficiency using refurbished and remanufactured IT hardware.
Methodology
3 min read
What we mean when we say we have done the homework.
Most of the market never gets past the homework. They model, they estimate, they read off a spec sheet. The homework is the part that comes before any of that, and it is the part that makes the rest defensible.
Metrics
5 min read
ITEEsv: the one number that goes up when everything else is going right.
Engineers, finance, procurement and sustainability each speak a different metric, and none of them quite translates. ITEEsv gives all four the same number to move. The case for a common language at the server level.
Recognition
2 min read
Further award recognition for Interact in 2022
A strong end to 2022: the DCD Energy Impact Award, won from a shortlist including Intel, Microsoft, Google and Meta, plus innovation and sustainability wins across the year.