Leveraging IT for green business

Kothandaraman Karunagaran lists the ways and means by which an organization can go green

Environmental protection issues are increasingly gaining visibility in the enterprise today with more business managers losing sleep over this. Corporations are made responsible for the environmental effects of the products they are producing.

Concerns over global warming, raising energy costs, and social responsibility are leading to an increasing interest in the corporate world about ‘Green Business’. Governments are responding to the growing concerns over climate changes and its effects, and are coming with stringent standards for the companies.

Research shows that the Arctic ice cap is melting three times faster than was predicted few years ago. This fact reveals that the danger is much closer than what we think it is. Energy demands are increasing exponentially and as a result, energy costs are increasing beyond expectations. Hence, energy conservation is not just an environmental imperative, but is also an economic necessity.

Leveraging green IT to support green business

Wall Street is beginning to consider carbon footprint as a key indicator of the future of companies. A Company’s brand image, market share and soon its very existence will depend up on how green it is.

Today, Green IT tops the analysts’ Top 10 technologies and trends. What is important to understand is that Green IT is not just about the environment, but also about leveraging IT to the financial advantage of the enterprise. A leading publishing software company in North America spent $1.4 million on Green IT and contributed significantly to save the environment. The impact of this strategic move to go green has not just had a positive impact on the environment, but they have cut operating costs by $1.2 million annually and boosted building value by $18 million. They experienced a 121% return on investment with just a 10.5 month pay back period.

Over 100 billion kilowatts hour of energy is used by data centers and IT equipment alone. We can save up to 55% of energy usage depending up on how much focus we give to Green IT. There are three major things we can do to save energy at varying levels by using green technologies.

Improving data centre efficiency

It is estimated that nearly 70% of energy is wasted during production and transmission. Another 70% is wasted by producing excess heat by inefficient IT or power equipment, only to consume more energy to provide cooling for the equipment.

Data Centre designs are often inefficient. Consider this:

• Heat produced in data center is directly proportional to power consumed
• Hot/cold aisles are often not set up properly inside the data center
• Heat dissipation is more expensive than power

Because of the efforts involved in increasing the capacity of data centers, they are often built for much higher capacity than what is required and run at less than half of their capacity. At the lower workload, the efficiency is much lower and hence more heat dissipated.

Proper design of data center with hot and cold isles and efficient server power supplies can make a big difference to efficient energy utilization.

There is a need reduce the demand for the energy as well. Virtualization and consolidation are gaining momentum very quickly. Besides giving operational efficiency and flexibility, virtualization reduces the energy demand significantly.

While there is excellent scope for the companies to reduce energy used for IT infrastructure, it is, however, only about 2% of total energy requirements of the world. Hence, we need to think beyond IT and see how one can make the business go Green.

Beginning the green journey

We need to take climatic changes very seriously and approach greening initiatives in a systematic manner. There are some basic things as individuals and companies can adapt which would help us and our future generations live in safe environments.

For example India alone contributes to about 500,000 tones of e-waste every year, with less than 40% getting recycled. Consumers should force companies to go recycling policies by buying products from companies who have good recycling policy.

Help business to go Green. If a cell phone company selling about 1 billion phones a year and assume it reduces their packing by 50%, they will help to take about 25,000 trucks off the road in one year. IT can improve the supply chain efficiency, introduce safe online trading to avoid showrooms, etc. which will further help to reduce the energy demand.

Increase the awareness on the green business and start measuring environmental friendliness of the business. It is also good to go for certifications such as ISO 14001 and LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) to sustain our efforts.

Governments all over the world are introducing regulations to disclose the carbon footprint of the companies. It is important that we implement real-time measurements so that we can not only monitor, but also take some actions in real-time to improve the energy efficiency.

Green business is not just about corporate social responsibility or to save the planet anymore. There are significant financial benefits and opportunities to improve the brand image and market value of your company. However, as IT represents only 2% of energy consumption with the remaining 98% used by buildings, transport and industrial usage, and so Green IT should:

Collaborate with business to see how you can find more Green Gold in your business [standard by LEED]

Participate in study tours with your service providers. Track what groups such as The GreenGrid, Climate Savers Computing Initiative and OpenECO are doing.

Green business is expected to be the next big global business transformation and it is going to require tons of software, programming and back-room management to measure each company’s carbon footprint and then monitor the various emissions-reductions and offsetting measures on an ongoing basis. Apart from IT, there could be lot of opportunities in terms of designing and building green facilities, managing them and e-waste management. India has a great potential to pick-up lot of this work and help corporations achieve their Green targets. This is great opportunity waiting for Indians around the corner and we should capitalize and convert this as next IT boom for the country. Let’s gear up.

The author is Director, Infrastructure Services, CSC India.