Eco-friendly computing

IT decision makers are largely adopting eco-friendly computing that ensures significant energy conservation and thereby reduces operational costs associated with the usage of IT, writes Nivedan Prakash

As the world is looking at ways of fighting an imminent energy crisis and fixing ecological imbalances, adopting green practices has become a business imperative and is not merely a passing fad. What is reinforcing the need to go green is the association of green technology with improvements in business productivity and a significant reduction in energy costs, in addition to its contribution to a healthier environment for the entire ecosystem. 

With the rising cost of energy and its increased consumption at every level, be it within data centers or branch offices, conservation and optimization strategies are increasingly important to overall profitability. Earlier, the adoption of certain practices was considered a choice that a responsible corporate made, but one which did not directly affects its bottom-line. Today, going green has become an integral part of conducting business that influences both the bottom line and draws keen interest from a company’s stakeholders.

Technology will be a key enabler of green initiatives—the network can become a platform to transform how global environmental challenges are managed. Concepts such as alternate and renewable sources of energy, re-cycling, e-waste management, green architecture, eco-friendly computing, green data centers, virtualization, power management and reducing the corporate carbon footprint will gain priority on corporate agendas.

With rising energy costs affecting the global economy, many industries are being compelled to explore new avenues with regard to identifying and developing energy saving alternatives and eco-friendly computing is surely one of the alternatives for organizations.

If we talk about the eco-friendly computing and its adoption is considerably lower, compared to the total addressable market. Despite the various benefits, it offers, to both the organization deploying such solutions and to the environment, large-scale skepticism and a lack of information have weighed down eco-friendly computing. However, this will change in the coming years. Even developing economies have shown optimistic signs of high adoption rates, and this trend is expected to continue, especially with the global economic downturn showing no immediate signs of recovery.

In 2008, market awareness and acceptance of eco-friendly computing made a substantial transition from social responsibility and environmental consciousness to economic impact and cost avoidance. The new measurements for eco-friendly computing included reduced power consumption that can be measured in savings that can directly add to the bottom line. New hardware and virtualization technologies, maximized with emerging software that monitors activity to manage hardware can reduce power consumption greatly. Many organizations utilized virtualization technologies to optimize their data centers and discovered the ability to cash in on obsolete hardware by coordinating with local recycling companies that will pay a small reward for reusable product, parts, and materials harvested from the retired products. 

Moreover, the changing economic conditions and challenges in the latter half of 2008 have paved the way for a wave of eco-friendly computing advocates in 2009. Precise measurements of the percentage of organizations that have leveraged the hardware, software, and recycling solutions vary for this emerging trend. However, the increasing demand for energy efficient hardware, energy management software, and increased activity in recycling regulations and processes—all confirm that the level of eco-friendly computing is one of the fastest growing trends in IT.

Pallab Talukdar, Director-Enterprise Business, Dell India, said, “There is a growing awareness among Indian enterprises to recognize the need for green solutions and our own 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 will help customers decrease electricity usage and system operating cost.”

Akshay Heblikar, Director–EcoWatch, added, “There has been awareness about eco-friendly computing, but we have yet to witness its full-fledged implementation. We are still lagging behind as far as the adoption of eco-friendly computing is concerned. Right now, only 30-35% of the businesses have implemented it, but the remaining 65-70% need to respond and there lies the market opportunity.”

Awareness is catching up

Today organizations such as Cisco, Dell, Steria India, Zylog Systems, and even retail major Shoppers Stop, have largely adopted eco-friendly computing. If we talk about Cisco, the organization is committed to a high level of environmental responsibility in its culture, business operations, products, and customer solutions. Some of the activities Cisco follows include reviewing energy efficiency concepts, enhancing and standardizing recycling programs and green cleaning, exploring transportation services and landscaping/parking for sustainability opportunities as well as incorporating LEED certification.

In addition, Cisco regularly identifies green energy purchase opportunities, deploys alternative energy sources where feasible, identify GhG (greenhouse gas) offset opportunities, and educates employees on their role in the journey to sustainability.

Similarly, Dell is actively pursuing green innovations from data center efficiency to the use of eco-friendly materials for everything from chassis design to product packaging. The company is committed to helping its customers reduce costs, increase productivity and improve energy efficiency while helping them meet their environmental goals. It does this by delivering the industry’s most energy efficient products and solutions, from the desktop to the data center.

Following the same lines, Steria accords very high importance to eco-friendly computing. A ‘Green Committee’ has been set-up at the group level. Each country has a representative in this committee to lead the work in the respective country.

Zylog Systems has been using eco-friendly computing since its operations began in 2006. Eco-friendly systems and controls were installed at its new headquarters, facility in Chennai, to maximize efficiency, utilization, and power consumption. Shiv Kumar, Executive Vice President, Zylog Systems, said, “These same principles are applied in the solutions designed for clients using our ‘Greenware Computing Framework’ customized applications to manage client systems and performance, and the platform created for the recycling industry. Our solutions help clients reduce costs, improve efficiency, and minimize hazardous electronic waste. The implementation of data deduplication and thin provisioning helped us to achieve significant ‘eco-friendliness’ with our clients’ computing environment.”

Additionally even retail giants such as Shoppers Stop have adopted many of the technologies associated with eco-friendly computing and built governance processes around the management lifecycle from procurement to disposal. For example, the company implemented storage virtualization around two years back, while server consolidation and virtualization gained momentum in 2007-08. Arun Gupta, Group CTO, Shoppers Stop, asserted, “Eco-friendly computing has gained awareness and momentum since 2008 and going into 2009 we see the positive impact being felt by organizations. It’s a journey, which continuously improves on the past. By end 2009, we will virtualize almost all our computing server infrastructure wherever possible. We have also implemented policies on end-user computing devices for efficient power management which helps us in reducing power consumption.”

Business factors driving change

Eco-friendly computing is all about minimizing environmental impact and getting the most out of technology—be it through enhanced efficiency, improved power management or better thermal management. It is also about using materials that have reduced environmental impact and are environment friendly. Hence, Green IT not only addresses the need to protect the environment but also has a significant business benefit.

Many organizations have also recognized the merit of publicly proclaiming corporate social responsibility with environmental protection policies.

However, the most substantial reason for the recent rise in demand for eco-friendly hardware, software, and recycling solutions is awareness of the measurable impact to the bottom line. Money saved from energy to power or cool systems goes directly to the bottom line. Recurring savings are the primary driving force for Green IT, and the ability to generate cash for trash is the incentive for participation in recycling initiatives for many companies.

Sumit Mukhija, National Sales Manager-Data Center, Cisco India and SAARC, pointed out, “Companies realize that ‘green’ business practices in additional to being environment friendly also makes good business sense. Customers want their vendor companies sell green clean technologies. The advantages of going green include improved business productivity in addition to cost savings for the company, its customers, partners and employees; and contribution to a healthier environment for the entire ecosystem.”

Meanwhile, the principal drivers behind the adoption of eco-friendly computing are what are referred as PCFE issues—Power, Cooling, Floor space and Environmental issues. The data center is one of the biggest energy consuming components of a business involving IT operations. Rising energy costs for powering and cooling the computing equipment and increasing cost of floor space for housing them is predominantly driving the adoption of energy-efficient computing hardware. The resulting energy conservation is not only beneficial to the organization adopting green IT solutions, but also cuts down on their carbon footprint and is therefore beneficial to the environment.

PCFE issues had little or no bearing on the purchase decisions regarding IT hardware until a couple of years ago but today, it is a very significant factor and its influence is growing. Besides, eco-friendly computing offers a competitive advantage by acting as a tie-breaking factor, even if it not a deal breaking factor yet, especially for organizations looking to improve their green credibility factor.

Rajdeep Sahrawat, Vice President, NASSCOM, said, “It is not surprising that the focus of most of the Green IT initiatives today is IT infrastructure cost management and will perhaps continue to be in the short-term. We expect a wider availability of solutions in the areas of Green data centers, energy efficient real estate, virtualization and energy efficient computing devices. We also foresee an increase in the entrepreneurial activity in the areas of e-wastage management. We also expect firms to increasingly focus on application portfolio rationalization and increasing the productivity of their investments in IT infrastructure—getting more bang for the buck.”

Diptarup Chakraborti, Principal Research Analyst, Gartner, said, “The awareness for eco-friendly computing is pretty high and one of the main factors that are driving its adoption is lower power consumption, which leads to cost savings that further results in better productivity and this finally leading to bigger profits for the organizations.”

Priority for IT decision-makers

In the past, IT decision-makers often faced the challenge of keeping pace with technology, speed, performance, and integration. In the current environment, they also have enormous responsibility to make contributions that can be measured with financial results.

Anirudh S Srinivasan, Research Analyst–ICT Practice, Technical Insights, Frost & Sullivan, said, “Eco-friendly computing is definitely emerging as a key priority for IT decision-makers, following increasing awareness on the need for environmentally friendly business practices as well as the need for novel solutions to overcome rising energy costs. The benefits of energy conservation notwithstanding, organizations would also have to be prepared for stricter governmental regulations on green practices that are likely to be enforced in the near future.”

“With paucity of power across the country and tariffs going up, there is a crying need to address these across the board and IT contributions are also measured within the company. As responsible citizens and corporate we all have to pitch in and make a difference,” added Gupta.

Satish Pendse, CIO, Hindustan Construction Company, sees things from a different perspective, “I don’t think it has become a priority for IT decision-makers as yet. IT decision-makers in India have higher priority issues to consider. Possibly in BPO industry or in data centre business, this may be a priority issue; may not be at other places. I see it more at a hype stage; a hype created by IT vendors for business gains.”

Apparently, many CIOs have started factoring performance per watt as a key metric while determining their IT investments for the data center, as this parameter will help in bringing focus to energy efficient data centers or even computing as a whole.

John Mehrmann, Vice President-Business Development, Zylog Systems, said, “Measuring energy usage as a key metric demonstrates fiscal responsibility—as the cost savings for fuel and power during the life of the equipment have dramatic impact and contributions to the IT investments in the data center. This is tantamount to comparing MPG (miles per gallon) or KPL (kilometer per liter) fuel efficiency before purchasing a new vehicle. It is important to measure the projected savings over the life of the product, especially with increasing fuel and energy costs. The Green IT movement is fueling the growth of the Cloud Computing Model which is based on pay per computing hour.”

Incurring good results

Eco-friendly computing is not just about being environmental friendly, but effectively managing costs. Energy efficient products, technology trends such as smart virtualization and a planned approach to data center practices are all about eco friendly computing. Eco-friendly computing not only help in delivering significant cost savings and increased flexibility in managing IT resources, but also compliance with environmental regulations for any organization.

Daman Dev Sood, Vice President-BCM and Green Activities, Steria India, said, “Server consolidation or virtualization, using newer energy-efficient computing equipment helps in reducing direct costs as well energy costs in running them. Smaller data centers with reduced number of equipment need lesser human resources also to manage them. The results are definable and measurable and will help in claiming compliance to related regulations.”

Sahrawat added, “Green IT is not only about making existing computing infrastructure energy-efficient. IT has a far more important role in making businesses Green. Through increasing their adoption of IT, firms can deconstruct their entire value chains and create new and environment-friendly ways of doing business. Intelligent transport systems, efficient logistic chains, smart buildings, virtual offices etc are some of the typical examples of how IT can help transform any firm into a Green business.”

Eco-friendly management controls can monitor cooling requirements, reducing power consumption associated with air conditioning, especially in large data centers. You can use software to route activities and maximize hardware utilization. This is especially important with sprawling infrastructure footprints that may previously have relied on multiple distributed racks of hardware running similar processes or patiently consuming energy while idling. Software can be used to direct the flow of activity much like a constable directs traffic, and can maximize the use of running equipment while allowing the support hardware time to rest at lower energy consumption levels. Such advances in technology can be applied to numerous devices, using the principles of eco-friendly computing to manage thermostats, lighting, and other energy starved devices.

B K Soni, Chairman, Eco Recycling, added, “Eco-friendly computing certainly help in reducing electricity costs meets the requirements of RoHS Guidelines of European Union which has been prepared keeping environmental benefits in forefront.”

Gupta concluded, “We have saved about 30% of the total power used in our data center by adoption of virtualization. The TCO calculations earlier did not take into consideration power costs as they were outside the purview of IT. Now they definitely make a strong business case for adoption of eco-friendly computing.”

Perhaps the best way look at the eco-friendly computing issue to do a thermal assessment of your existing IT infrastructure and data center and look at the technologies that can help you to reduce power and cooling costs.

nivedan.prakash@expressindia.com