The road to green IT

You have to find the intersection between going green and adopting the right business values to get on the road to Green IT. By Vinita Gupta

The pressure is on businesses worldwide to be more environmentally conscious and reduce their carbon footprints. Today, manufacturing and services operations have to be eco-friendly and be green with regard to their usage of information technology as well. With eco-friendly demands coming in the form of economic issues, government directives and public pressure, organizations that fail to adapt their operations to address environmental issues face the prospects of incurring additional costs, losing business, and damaging their corporate reputation.

Green IT is all about minimizing the environmental impact of IT systems and getting the most out of technology and it can be achieve through enhanced efficiency as well as improved power and thermal management. It is also about using materials that reduce environmental impact. Therefore, green IT not only addresses the need to protect the environment but also has significant business benefits.

Spreading awareness

Green IT and going green is not just about technology—it is a philosophy by itself that transcends infrastructure and smart purchases. You have to approach it with a vision that comes only with self-awareness. A company must understand its own functioning and it [greening of IT infrastructure] can be executed only after an unbiased audit conducted by experienced professionals.

Green IT starts with manufacturers producing environmentally friendly products and encouraging IT departments to consider more friendly options such as the virtualization of application, storage or server resources, power management and recycling to retire products. The government has also recently proposed new regulations, which would work towards certifying data centers as green. Some criteria include using low-emission building materials, recycling, using alternative energy technologies, and other green technologies.

Vijay Sethi, Vice President IS and CIO, Hero Honda Motors, pointed out, “Green IT is not just an IT manager’s job. The entire organization has to play a role. The role of the IT manager is more of a catalyst or a change agent. Ensuring organization-wide participation is essential. Building awareness plays a key role in ensuring the easy enablement of Green IT.”

“The IT manager has traditionally been focused on scalability and performance when making his purchasing decision, leaving the facilities manager to worry about space and energy requirements. Organizations need to take a holistic approach and carefully examine how every facet of their data center can play a role in improving their environmental impact—and containing escalating power consumption levels,” added Prashanth G J, Regional Director, South India, Hitachi Data Systems.

Anirudh Patni, SVP and Head of Strategy and Corporate Development at Patni Computer felt that Indian companies were aware of green IT technologies and were taking steps to implement these to a significant extent. Most leading companies are proactively looking at server consolidation, virtualization as well as improved cabling in order to build a green architecture into their daily functioning.

“There is a growing awareness among Indian enterprises to recognize the need for green solutions and our responsibility towards the planet. The issue is one of sustainability rather than costs, though our energy-efficient products help customers lower the cost of ownership and help meet the broader goal of protecting the environment. The focus on product energy efficiency is designed to help customers decrease electricity usage and system operating cost which is the long-term approach,” said Pallab Talukdar, Director–Enterprise Business, Dell India.

Jayesh H Kotak, Vice President–Product Management, D-Link India, said, “In the near future, the green strategy might not be a choice but a necessity for every organization. While converting the entire network to a green network might be a CIO’s choice, the running cost advantage clubbed with the intelligent features that these products include will make the networks go completely green. The effort worldwide is to develop greener technology, but no current technology in any sphere is completely green.” 

Looking at the benefits

Going green confers many advantages. Apart from reducing a company’s carbon footprint and helping in energy conservation, it also helps in minimizing waste, cutting operational costs and raising employee productivity. Green buildings, for instance, save anything from 35-50% of electricity and consume 20-30% less water than regular buildings.

Studies from institutes such as IGBC (Indian Green Building Council) have shown that there is almost a 15% increase in employee productivity if a company uses green initiatives. Indian companies have slowly woken up to this trend and now have another reason for going green, besides doing their bit for the environment and tremendous cost savings for the company.

Green IT has no major disadvantage, but if one were to call it that, the cost of developing green buildings is higher by 5-7%. For instance, the Patni Knowledge Center found its initial cost to be 4% more than that of an ordinary building, but they expect that this extra cost would be easily recoverable within 36-42 months. Other benefits that they have seen include reduction in operational costs, enhanced asset value, enhanced occupants’ health and safety benefits.

Muralikrishna K, Vice President and Head-Computers and Communication Division at Infosys Technologies mentioned that the most obvious advantage of green IT is of course the aspect of being eco-friendly. Apart from that, it is also of great value to the bottom line. Each of Infosys’ initiatives has helped saved a tremendous amount of money through energy and operational efficiencies.

Green IT solutions at Infosys are along five tracks—energy, water, emission, biodiversity and waste and its goal is to take leadership in each one of them. All of the company’s newer development centers incorporate green technologies for effective utilization of energy and water. This year, Infosys began measuring the carbon footprint of its business and has targeted to reduce per capita consumption of power and water, as well as carbon emissions by 5%.

“The growing cost of energy is painfully evident for IT managers, who, in turn, are insisting that vendors put as much emphasis on product design for greenness in comparison to more traditional features such as performance and reliability. With the right approach and appropriate technology and solutions, one can address key concerns around data center power, cooling, and space requirements. With increasing costs and supply becoming increasingly scarce, companies need to attain operational efficiencies while reducing power consumption and enable green computing,” said Jim Simon, Director of Marketing, APAC, Quantum.

George Thomas, Managing Director-India and SAARC, NetApp pointed out, “There are many advantages such as a significant reduction in power and cooling, which is becoming more important today as companies try to drive down costs. Apart from this, there is the contribution to reducing the carbon footprint and all, so there is a social cost as well as an economic cost and power is the key issue.” Data center space is another important factor. Therefore, it makes economic sense apart from serving ecological and social needs. The challenge is the initial step to make the move towards an energy efficient data center.

Thomas added, “We saved 50% of energy in our organization.” NetApp is recognized for its continued environmental initiatives to improve its energy efficiency, conserve resources, and reduce waste. The company has also been awarded Green Business certification as part of the Green Business Program in the County of Santa Clara, California. He added, “In the US, if your organization saves energy, then you get a rebate on your power bill. We have been granted a rebate of $1,427,477 under Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E)’s Non-Residential New Construction Program.”

Deepak Jain, Vice President Professional Services Division, Wipro Infotech, felt that in the short term, non-green IT decisions are probably simpler and cheaper. However, doing the right thing always has long-term advantages. In the long term, Green IT is better than non-green IT. “Linking green IT to business results, especially those around efficiency gains, reducing costs, decreasing risks and minimizing waste, does bring about good short-term traction that helps pursue these goals.”

Jain added, “The West has been guzzling energy and natural resources much longer than India has. They also have better regulatory frameworks in place (e.g. Europe). However, in terms of opportunities ahead, today the playing field is probably level. If you do not look at green from an opportunities perspective (and only let regulatory frameworks drive the agenda) then the West is certainly going to have an edge in the next three to five years. The key is to look for the opportunities, rather than compliance.”

Arun Gupta, Group CTO, Shoppers Stop said, “If one starts afresh, green IT can be easily implemented. With a legacy of hardware and technologies, the change will be incremental and not dramatic. We need to accept this and then plan green initiatives. Green has to be a part of the standard way of working and not a separate initiative driven by a team. The institutionalization of the green philosophy is important and it needs to be passed on to every person in the organization.

He added, “Information availability and vendor push to sell something has started putting a lot of pressure on the corporate. The confusion is not universal but it does exist in situations wherein there is no formally announced and understood green initiative or policy within a company. The key challenge is balancing the short-term to the long-term. A related challenge is in factoring hidden costs of inaction over the long term.”

Rajesh Janey, Vice President, Enterprise Business, EMC India and SAARC, asserted, “While most customers agree about the need to have a green initiative in their organization, the partners need to show the actual benefits in terms of cost effectiveness. It is important to know that the bottom line—watch the OPEX and not the CAPEX costs more closely. In the case of data centers, as an example, the OPEX is contributed by huge power and cooling requirements. Customers need to focus on how to cut down on OPEX.”

In this manner, green IT is a combination of many small initiatives that deliver the end objective—preserving the environment. On the power side, these include virtualization, consolidation, energy-efficient managed servers, cooling management and desktop/laptop power management.

The road to green IT is about finding the intersection between green and business value. In today’s (recessionary) context, the road to green IT can be found by looking for waste reduction and cost reduction, especially where it pertains to the use of energy and natural resources by looking at managing risks and uncertainties around energy and natural resources. The regulatory environment will probably define the busiest route to Green IT in the coming few years.

vinita.gupta@expressindia.com