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Nortel has released a web enabled version of their Energy Efficiency Calculator and a YouTube video (see the image link to right).

Tony Rybczynsk, TMCnet blog contributor and long time Nortel employee, had this to say in his article Cisco Energy Tax is Real- Just Ask The Customer, quoting Michael Firsdon, Network Engineering team lead at the University of Toledo (Ohio).

“Another factor (in our decision to go with Nortel data) included costs savings on electrical consumption alone. This, combined with ease of configuration, time tested resiliency capabilities, and absence of code security issues commonly found in other vendor products provided a compelling case for making a switch from the University’s incumbent vendor.”

He goes on to say:

In fact the savings are no small change: $1.5M over 5 years, a number referenced by Joel Hackney at his keynote at Nortel user conference.

In his article Cisco Energy Tax Architecturally Rooted, he says:

Customers have asked me: ‘Why are Cisco routers and switches such energy hogs?’

The answer lies in how Cisco has architected their products, driven by their network-centric strategy built on IOS. IOS has evolved into a Swiss army knife of functionality, with literally hundreds of features that most enterprises have little use for (I discussed this ‘Feature Creep’ in an earlier posting). Anyone still running DECnet or IPX in their networks?

To deliver on this strategy, Cisco tends to develop their own custom silicon (processors) in many/most of their product designs, with apparently little consideration of energy efficiency. In contrast, Nortel chooses to leverage off the shelf merchant silicon, without sacrificing features or performance. Merchant silicon not only has a smaller energy footprint, but is also on an accelerated price/performance curve.

There is no quick fix to Cisco’s energy woes. Expect Cisco to rev up their marketing machine, with their CEO telepresenting how energy efficient Cisco is (or would like to be!) on every occasion. .