ISO/IEC 23544:2021

INTERNATIONAL ISO/IEC
STANDARD 23544
First edition
2021-06
Information Technology — Data
centres — Application Platform
Energy Effectiveness (APEE)
Technologies de l'information — Centres de traitement de données —
Efficacité énergétique des plateformes d'applications (APEE)
Reference number
©
ISO/IEC 2021
© ISO/IEC 2021
All rights reserved. Unless otherwise specified, or required in the context of its implementation, no part of this publication may
be reproduced or utilized otherwise in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, or posting
on the internet or an intranet, without prior written permission. Permission can be requested from either ISO at the address
below or ISO’s member body in the country of the requester.
ISO copyright office
CP 401 • Ch. de Blandonnet 8
CH-1214 Vernier, Geneva
Phone: +41 22 749 01 11
Email: copyright@iso.org
Website: www.iso.org
Published in Switzerland
ii © ISO/IEC 2021 – All rights reserved

Contents Page
Foreword .iv
Introduction .v
1 Scope . 1
2 Normative references . 1
3 Terms, definitions and abbreviated terms . 1
3.1 Terms and definitions . 1
3.2 Abbreviated terms . 3
4 Relevance of APEE . 3
5 Determination of APEE . 4
6 Determination of application outcome and energy consumption of the application
platform for APEE . 4
6.1 Prerequisites for the benchmark and application platform . 4
6.2 Determination of application outcome . 5
6.3 Determination of energy consumption of the application platform. 5
6.3.1 Requirements for obtaining energy consumption of the application platform. 5
6.3.2 Requirements for the measurement method for obtaining energy consumption . 6
7 Reporting of APEE . 6
7.1 Requirements . 6
7.2 Recommendations . 7
Annex A (informative) Use cases of APEE . 8
Annex B (informative) Example of APEE calculation .10
Annex C (informative) Example of an APEE report .11
Annex D (informative) Examples of acceptable benchmarks .21
Bibliography .23
© ISO/IEC 2021 – All rights reserved iii

Foreword
ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) and IEC (the International Electrotechnical
Commission) form the specialized system for worldwide standardization. National bodies that are
members of ISO or IEC participate in the development of International Standards through technical
committees established by the respective organization to deal with particular fields of technical
activity. ISO and IEC technical committees collaborate in fields of mutual interest. Other international
organizations, governmental and non-governmental, in liaison with ISO and IEC, also take part in the
work.
The procedures used to develop this document and those intended for its further maintenance are
described in the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 1. In particular, the different approval criteria needed for
the different types of document should be noted. This document was drafted in accordance with the
editorial rules of the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 2 (see www .iso .org/ directives or www .iec .ch/ members
_experts/ refdocs).
Attention is drawn to the possibility that some of the elements of this document may be the subject
of patent rights. ISO and IEC shall not be held responsible for identifying any or all such patent
rights. Details of any patent rights identified during the development of the document will be in the
Introduction and/or on the ISO list of patent declarations received (see www .iso .org/ patents) or the IEC
list of patent declarations received (see patents.iec.ch).
Any trade name used in this document is information given for the convenience of users and does not
constitute an endorsement.
For an explanation of the voluntary nature of standards, the meaning of ISO specific terms and
expressions related to conformity assessment, as well as information about ISO's adherence to the
World Trade Organization (WTO) principles in the Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) see www .iso .org/
iso/ foreword .html. In the IEC, see www .iec .ch/ understanding -standards.
This document was prepared by Joint Technical Committee ISO/IEC JTC 1, Information technology,
Subcommittee SC 39, Sustainability, IT & Data Centres.
Any feedback or questions on this document should be directed to the user’s national standards body. A
complete listing of these bodies can be found at www .iso .org/ members .html and www .iec .ch/ national
-committees.
iv © ISO/IEC 2021 – All rights reserved

Introduction
The growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) has resulted in the storage of increasingly large amounts
of data in data centres and the increased utilization of this data by technologies such as artificial
intelligence (AI). As a result, energy consumption of data centres is also increasing. In this recent
utilization of large amounts of data by technologies such as AI, various kinds of data are combined and
analysed, and processing requests for such combinations and analysis are also increasing. Middleware,
such as a database management system (DBMS), is also becoming more important for this data
utilization. The energy effectiveness of application platforms can be greatly improved through the
selection of middleware.
In addition to improving the energy effectiveness of target IT equipment itself, it is necessary to improve
application platform energy effectiveness by choosing an optimally energy-effective combination of
target IT equipment, operating systems and middleware.
Although there are several KPIs for the energy effectiveness of target IT equipment itself (for example,
ISO/IEC 30134-4, ISO/IEC 21836), there have previously been no KPIs for energy effectiveness to
calculate the energy effectiveness of a combination of target IT equipment, operating systems and
middleware. This document, therefore, introduces a KPI for the energy effectiveness of an entire
application platform. A typical use case of application platform energy effectiveness (APEE) is a
criterion for procuring an energy efficient application platform for an IT service.
This KPI provides assistance in selecting an optimal application platform for energy effectiveness.
This KPI does not apply to the energy effectiveness of an entire data centre. The colloquial term of
"efficiency" is commonly used in regional programmes and "effectiveness" can be referenced as
"efficiency" in those programmes.
© ISO/IEC 2021 – All rights reserved v

INTERNATIONAL STANDARD ISO/IEC 23544:2021(E)
Information Technology — Data centres — Application
Platform Energy Effectiveness (APEE)
1 Scope
This document specifies application platform energy effectiveness (APEE) as a Key Performance
Indicator (KPI) which quantifies the energy effectiveness of an application platform for an IT service in
data centres. This KPI evaluates the energy consumption of an application platform prior to deployment.
The purpose of this KPI is to measure the energy effectiveness of a set of target IT equipment, operating
systems and middleware, to enable the selection of an energy effective IT stack.
This document specifies a formula for calculating APEE and definitions of components of the formula.
This document specifies a measurement method for assessing and reporting the energy effectiveness of
an application platform.
This document also specifies requirements for benchmarks to be used for APEE and requirements for
reporting.
The following topics are outside of the scope of this document:
1) KPIs intended to solely evaluate the energy effectiveness of target IT equipment hardware,
2) energy effectiveness of data centre facilities.
2 Normative references
The following documents are referred to in the text in such a way that some or all of their content
constitutes requirements of this document. For dated references, only the edition cited applies. For
undated references, the latest edition of the referenced document (including any amendments) applies.
ISO/IEC 21836:2020, Information technology — Data centres — Server energy effectiveness metric
ISO/IEC 21878, Information technology — Security techniques — Security guidelines for design and
implementation of virtualized servers
3 Terms, definitions and abbreviated terms
3.1 Terms and definitions
For the purposes of this document, the terms and definitions given in ISO/IEC 21878 and the following
apply.
ISO and IEC maintain terminological databases for use in standardization at the following addresses:
— ISO Online browsing platform: available at https:// www .iso .org/ obp
— IEC Electropedia: available at http:// www .electropedia .org/
© ISO/IEC 2021 – All rights reserved 1

3.1.1
application platform
platform composed of target IT equipment (3.1.4), operating systems, and middleware (3.1.3) with the
purpose of providing an IT service (3.1.5)
Note 1 to entry: An application platform is an environment for executing software applications (3.1.2) such as
ERP and CRM software. Therefore, a software application itself is not included as part of an application platform.
3.1.2
software application
computer program for implementing an IT service (3.1.5)
Note 1 to entry: A software application is usually developed independently for each IT service.
3.1.3
middleware
software layer between an operating system and the software applications (3.1.2)
Note 1 to entry: Examples of middleware include DBMS, web server software, application server software,
transaction monitor.
Note 2 to entry: An operating system is the software directly managing the hardware, e.g. conventional operating
system, hypervisor, etc.
[SOURCE: ISO/IEC/IEEE 24765:2017, 3.2459, modified – Notes 1 and 2 to entry have been added.]
3.1.4
target IT equipment
server, storage and network equipment that are components of an application platform (3.1.1)
3.1.5
IT service
service that provides an outcome to its users via information technology
3.1.6
application outcome
information provided by an IT service (3.1.5) to its users
Note 1 to entry: An example of an application outcome is a set of reports to support decision-making at retail
outlets (such as sales analysis reports, and stock status reports).
3.1.7
measurement period
duration in which the benchmark performs the intended data processing
Note 1 to entry: Typically, the measurement period(s) is/are the only portion of the benchmark execution which
is/are used to calculate the benchmark score.
Note 2 to entry: The intended data processing routine is a routine including the benchmark calculation.
1)
Note 3 to entry: In the case of using TPC-H , the measurement target of TPC-H is a performance for executing
SQL queries, so a period of executing SQL queries is a measurement period. Other periods, such as a data loading,
are not a measurement period.
3.1.8
benchmark identifier
string which identifies a specific benchmark, which consists of the name and the major version (3.1.9),
when applicable
1) TPC-H, TPC-E, and TPCx-IoT are trademarks of the Transaction Processing Performance Council. This
information is given for the convenience of users of this document and does
...