1. European Entrepreneurship & Innovation (ME421) Eiríkur S. Hrafnsson
Stanford Engineering School
February 27 2012 CEO & Co-founder
greenqloud

2. About me... greenqloud
• 34 years old - married and 3 kids
• 2nd software company
4th overall (2 incorporated)
• Developer since I was 15
• Singer - classical and jazz
• Engineering drop-out...
• Hardware hacker wannabe
• Twitter: @EirikurH Why am I always cast as a bad guy?

3. The Cloud Computing “Stack” greenqloud
Value Adding IaaS Services
Public Cloud Computing
Scalr, Rightscale, Enstratus...
SaaS = Software as a Service
DropBox, SalesForce, ZenDesk, Google Apps
PaaS = Platform as a Service
Cloud Foundry , Google AppEngine, Azure,
IaaS = Infrastructure as a Service
GreenQloud, Amazon AWS, Rackspace

4. What’s an IaaS cloud? greenqloud
• A metered self-service buffet of:
Public Cloud
• Computing power e.g.VM’s
Sharing of IT
• Storage resources and
•
best practices
Bandwidth
• Additional services based on Cloud Types
shared resources in data centers
Hybrid
• Pay for what you use
Private
• Scalable and controllable via API’s
• Data centers ≠ Cloud Public
• Virtualization ≠ Cloud

5. 2008 Iceland’s economy first to crash greenqloud

6. OMX Iceland greenqloud

7. 2009 We protested greenqloud

8. We got a new government and then this happened
greenqloud
...that no one remembers...right? So 2010...

9. Fun fact...
greenqloud
All active volcanoes
emit only 0,6%
of human made
CO2 emissions
GreenQloud’s DCs

10. Climate Change greenqloud
Worst ever carbon emissions leave climate on the
brink (Guardian May 2011)

11. What’s IT got to do with it? greenqloud
• IT is responsible for at least 2% of global
CO2 emissions (Gartner 2007) CO2
CO2 CO2
• Clouds drive future need for data centers CO2
CO2
• Public Clouds are growing 5X faster than
any other sector of IT (IDC)
• World storage 2010 ~1 Zettabyte
35x more in 2020 (IDC)
• The rapid growth could double IT
emissions by 2020 (McKinsey)

12. “Fun fact” greenqloud
• Every video watched on YouTube causes
aprox. 0.2g CO2 to be released
• More than 2 billion videos are played each
day on YouTube, average 10 seconds long
• That’s at least 4.000 tons of CO2 a day
(just for Rebecca Black videos;)

13. greenqloud
But public compute clouds are
green, right?

14. Compute clouds are green, right? greenqloud
• Wrong...
• Only reduce energy use for existing infrastructure
migrations and shift the problem to the cloud
• Virtually all data processing and storage heading for clouds
• Explosive growth - Users increase the energy need despite
better efficiency : Jevon’s Paradox.

15. Compute clouds are green, right? greenqloud
• The average use of renewable energy in clouds and data
centers is less then 15%
• Eureka! We need to run public compute clouds on
renewable energy...but where to get it?

16. Who needs coalgreenqloud
when you have fire?

17. greenqloud

18. Who needs coal greenqloud
If we only had a place that’s a network hub to save money...

19. GreenQloud’s timeline greenqloud
• Prototype in late 2008 and public demo mid 2009
• Angel investment and incorporation in Feb 2010
• 3rd place in MIT’s global pitch competition in 2010
• Top 10 hottest startups in cloud computing ’10 - GigaOm
• Seed round with Icelandic VC’s in July 2011
• Paid Beta opens July 2011
• Awarded “Cool Vendor” in GreenIT - Gartner 2011
• Second data center location announced in Feb 2012

20. Greenqloud is truly green® greenqloud
• Carbon Neutral - 100% powered by renewable
GeoThermal and Hydro power energy 7913 tKG
• Amazon cloud APIs compatible CO2 Emission
avoided
• Priced to compete - No Green Price Premium No Tax to Pay
• Built like a super computer for High
Performance Computing (HPC) but with the Cloud Stack
automation of a cloud
SaaS
• Super easy to use!
PaaS 2012
• Automatic energy statistics and carbon footprint
calculated for each client for carbon accounting IaaS
• Big IT cost savings by performance, location and Greenqloud
technology and potentially best data protection

21. greenqloud

22. greenqloud

23. greenqloud
Carbon savings

24. GreenQloud’s beta customers greenqloud
• Customers from 27 countries - most from the US
• Startups!
• SaaS video streaming platforms
• HPC and Big data startups
• University networks
• SMB’s
• Gaming communities
• EU government research agencies

25. greenqloud
Back to Iceland’s story...
Remember we got a new
government?

26. then we rebuilt 2.0 style greenqloud

27. First out of the recession! greenqloud
• Being a progressive nation with clean resources helped
• We let the banks default
• 100% renewable energy grid
• Sustainable fishing
• Healthy exports
• 99% literacy and 7 universities
• 93%+ have high speed internet to the home
• Fun fact 1 : First female president
• Fun fact 2 : First lesbian prime minister
...and we just found oil fields.
Let’s leave’m there for change?

28. Creative industries are the future of Iceland greenqloud
• 20%+ of Iceland’s exports today and growing
• Post crash there was finally a real startup community:
• Innovit (@andriheidar is doing his MBA at Stanford)
• Klak (entrepreneur studies at Reykjavik University)
• The Innovation house - RU and the University of
Arts
RU’s dean is Ari K. Jónsson Stanford Alumni
• The Federation of Industries startups division

29. greenqloud
Iceland is now a “startup”
We have the stuff...

30. greenqloud
Iceland is now a “startup”
We have the stuff...
But we need investors
...and more people. I’m working on that

31. Startup Iceland, 28-30th of May
greenqloud
Building Sustainable Startup Ecosystems
International 3 day conference in awesome Reykjavik
• Hackathon competition
• Lectures
• Workshops on Lean startups and business model design
Confirmed speakers include:
• Brad Feld of Foundry Group, Tech Stars
• Fred Wilson of avc.com, Union Square Ventures
• Dr. Ted Zoller, Senior Fellow from the Kauffman Foundation
• Rebeca Hwang, CEO of YouNoodle
• And yours truly!
http://signup.startupiceland.com/

32. greenqloud
Perhaps cloud computing and the
new data center industry will
become Iceland’s biggest export?

33. greenqloud
The Truly Green Compute Cloud
http://greenqloud.com
twitter: @GreenQloud
Eiríkur S. Hrafnsson
CEO & Co-founder