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Small Businesses look to Green Tech

Rajesh Saha describes how small and medium businesses benefit from Green IT

Going green has become de rigueur in business and small to mid-sized companies are no exception. In a recent study commissioned by IBM, of 1,400 small and mid-sized businesses worldwide, 58% of SMBs expressed concern about the environment and 44% have put environmental policies in place. The survey also revealed that energy costs have been the ‘biggest cost-increase’ for SMBs over the past two years, surpassing healthcare, payroll, rent and equipment. As the demand for energy continues to grow, so will the cost burden to SMBs. In fact, IT energy demand is expected to double every nine to 24 months. Today, reducing energy consumption is good for the bottom line and for the environment.

Many small businesses are taking basic steps to reduce energy costs, but one larger-scale initiative that businesses should not ignore is reducing IT energy consumption. Recent research from IDC estimates that for every dollar spent on IT, companies spend 50 cents on related energy costs. By 2011, experts predict that businesses will spend as much on energy as they do on hardware. This suggests that businesses have a substantial opportunity to align business and environmental interests by making energy efficiency a priority in their technology management strategy.

The good news for all businesses is that adopting energy saving, environmentally friendly IT practices can be both financially attractive and easy to implement. Taking the following basic steps can put a company on the green path to improving the energy efficiency of its IT systems:

• Make energy efficiency a priority while purchasing new IT systems.
• Consolidate IT systems. Technologies like virtualization help create a smaller IT footprint by pooling resources from multiple systems.
• Have a plan for how to dispose off IT equipment in a secure and sustainable manner. One billion computers are expected to become potential scrap by 2010, but certified recycling services will ensure data is wiped clean and the systems are reused, resold or recycled, keeping harmful materials out of landfills.

One example of a small business looking at technology management as a means of reducing energy costs is Oceanic Worldwide, a supplier of SCUBA diving equipment based in San Leandro, Calif. The company recently consolidated its IT environment to improve efficiency and reduce the energy costs associated with running the technology. According to Paul Elsinga, Chief Financial Officer for Oceanic, “The nature of our business gives us a first-hand look at the impact of society on the environment. The fact that we could make changes in our IT environment that reduced costs while also doing something good for the environment was very important to us.”

Mid-sized businesses that operate data centers should consider a more rigorous approach that transforms technology infrastructure into green data centers. These businesses can sharply reduce energy consumption in the data center and realize energy savings of up to 42% for an average data center by following a five-step approach to energy efficiency:

• Diagnose: Businesses should conduct an energy efficiency evaluation that looks at current data center IT equipment and facility infrastructure power demand, efficiency, and capacity. Another key evaluation is a thermal analysis, which analyzes existing or future data center thermal capacity using tools such as Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling.
• Build: Whether they operate a small server room or a large data center, mid-sized companies can make IT expansion more energy efficient by using a modular model for data center design. The design model should include a plan for asset recovery that outlines how the company will divest of excess hardware. Companies should look for IT vendors that will provide either credit towards future purchases or complete disk wiping services based on US Department of Defense overwrite standards.
• Virtualize: Consolidating workloads onto less equipment can increase utilization, while reducing energy and maintenance costs. Consolidation plans should use proven successful server consolidations for similar data center environments as a benchmark for consolidation outcomes. Another optimization strategy is to implement energy-efficient blade servers to decrease power consumption, and reduce server count.
• Manage: Actively managing energy consumption can help companies maximize price performance per watt for every square foot of computing space. Web-based power management dashboards enable a business to see its power needs more clearly, removing the guesswork in budgeting electricity costs. These power management tools can be integrated into a centralized monitoring system, allowing IT staff to manage bottlenecks, performance impacts, energy consumption and outages from a single dashboard.
• Cool: Adopting cost-effective techniques to cool server rooms or data centers enable greater server densities without adding AC units. One such technique is a rear door heat exchanger that utilizes chilled water to reduce server room heat loads by up to 60%.

Green technology strategies can make a difference in terms of resource conservation, while supporting business growth and profitability. Whether a business takes initial, basic steps or develops and executes a comprehensive plan, the most important thing is to take action. Going green is good for business, and there is no better time than now to get started.

The author is VP—Enterprise Systems, Systems & Technology Group, IBM India/South Asia