Going Green is IT Inc's New Mantra
How is IT Inc. Going Green!! (http://dqindia.ciol.com/content/GreenIT/2010/110062205.asp)
Every year, June 5 is celebrated as the World Environment Day, a concept promoted by United Nations as part of their United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Interestingly, this year UNEP focused on providing solar energy to the villagers and school children apart from a funding of $85,000 for gorilla conservation.
Not to mention IT companies are also not lagging behind to put their best efforts forward to promote green and contribute to the overall green initiatives to address global warming concerns. This year saw a lot of companies coming out with certain interesting concepts on World Environment Day, which in a long run would ensure benefits for both the industry and the consumers. For example, Dell had committed to become the greenest company of the planet. It launched the Dell Go Green Challenge to raise awareness and community involvement in green initiatives in India. It is also committed to eliminate PVC and brominated flame retardants from all newly shipping products by the end of 2011, and already ships several PVC/BFR-free/reduced products. Green IT practices such as data center virtualization, better data center design and layout, and asset lifecycle management, which reduce the need for capex, are becoming increasingly important as IT budgets remain constrained.
Says Deepak Visweswaraiah, senior director, Storage Software Group (SSG), India Center of Excellence, EMC Corporation, "Our CoE is a delivery center in which engineers and other employees perform R&D, IT, support services, back-office functions, and much more. It has a large footprint, but it also has electricity reduction programs in full swing. Once, each team within a given CoE had its own equipment running on weekends. Now, they decide together, how many physical servers and arrays really must remain on after work hours. Our team designed a tool to identify which systems, lab managers can power down that weekend. Were seeing substantial electricity savings as a result of the weekend shut down of data centers."
Adds Niraj Nedwa, COO, Nucleus Software, "Building is constructed in such a manner that it is highly energy efficient. Waste water from washroom sinks is used to water the huge lawn. LED lights are used in the office as it saves electricity and have a longer life. The last employee leaving the floor makes sure that he calls the maintenance department to switch off all the lights and air conditioners. Employees are also encouraged to utilize both sides of paper for printing."
Says Sridhar Sarathy, vice president, India operations, Juniper Networks India, "Juniper is dedicated to doing its part to protect the environment, conserve energy and natural resources, and reduce pollution through the application of responsible business practices and energy efficient technologies across the companys daily operations and product designs. We have created a green group internally that takes four-five sessions a year and educates people on simple things like what to reuse and what to recycle, what are the ways for saving energy etc."
Similarly, Infosys celebrated Environment Day 2010 across its Development Centers in India through activities organized by Infosys Green Connect team and ECO Groups. The launch of Infy SmartWatt Championship, a contest that aims at encouraging Infoscions and their families to reduce their electricity consumption over the next six months was another key initiative of Infosys. The Infy SmartWatt Championship was developed with the objective to strengthen awareness and actions in building sustainable lifestyles, and aims at influencing the demand side efficiency of power consumption.
Says Visweswaraiah, "Global consulting firm Mckinsey estimates that 2% of all global carbon emissions are contributed by data centers, the lifeline of corporate IT. This figure is likely to increase to 3% by 2020not a trivial figure by any count. No wonder, theres pressure on enterprise IT leaders to adopt measures that make IT greener. However, its not just emissions or carbon footprints that are making organizations sit up and take notice. Green IT is not only an environmental prerogative but also an economic imperative given the depleting energy resources on one hand and the huge potential for cost savings by going green on the other."
Adds Sarathy, "One is to enable reuse of hardware, second is space, energy and cooling saving by having integrated solutions, and third is by having secured remote access from anywhere thus helping in reducing pollution due to commuting and save operational cost if you have to open new offices. This is basically from customer perspective. If you are not going green, no customer is going to buy from you. This in itself, should be a big driver to make sure you are doing something towards being more efficient about power, more efficient about cooling, more efficient about energy consumption."
Green is the FutureIt is evident that companies of all sizes, across geographies and verticals have considered the importance of Green IT. IT greening is about using IT more efficiently to achieve reductions in energy consumption, and therefore, considering the acquisition of energy-efficient IT solutions. IT is so pervasive that energy efficiency through the implementation of green IT has moved to center stage and captured the limelight for many companies in their pursuit of environmentally helpful practices.
Every year, June 5 is celebrated as the World Environment Day, a concept promoted by United Nations as part of their United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Interestingly, this year UNEP focused on providing solar energy to the villagers and school children apart from a funding of $85,000 for gorilla conservation.
Not to mention IT companies are also not lagging behind to put their best efforts forward to promote green and contribute to the overall green initiatives to address global warming concerns. This year saw a lot of companies coming out with certain interesting concepts on World Environment Day, which in a long run would ensure benefits for both the industry and the consumers. For example, Dell had committed to become the greenest company of the planet. It launched the Dell Go Green Challenge to raise awareness and community involvement in green initiatives in India. It is also committed to eliminate PVC and brominated flame retardants from all newly shipping products by the end of 2011, and already ships several PVC/BFR-free/reduced products. Green IT practices such as data center virtualization, better data center design and layout, and asset lifecycle management, which reduce the need for capex, are becoming increasingly important as IT budgets remain constrained.
Says Deepak Visweswaraiah, senior director, Storage Software Group (SSG), India Center of Excellence, EMC Corporation, "Our CoE is a delivery center in which engineers and other employees perform R&D, IT, support services, back-office functions, and much more. It has a large footprint, but it also has electricity reduction programs in full swing. Once, each team within a given CoE had its own equipment running on weekends. Now, they decide together, how many physical servers and arrays really must remain on after work hours. Our team designed a tool to identify which systems, lab managers can power down that weekend. Were seeing substantial electricity savings as a result of the weekend shut down of data centers."
Adds Niraj Nedwa, COO, Nucleus Software, "Building is constructed in such a manner that it is highly energy efficient. Waste water from washroom sinks is used to water the huge lawn. LED lights are used in the office as it saves electricity and have a longer life. The last employee leaving the floor makes sure that he calls the maintenance department to switch off all the lights and air conditioners. Employees are also encouraged to utilize both sides of paper for printing."
Says Sridhar Sarathy, vice president, India operations, Juniper Networks India, "Juniper is dedicated to doing its part to protect the environment, conserve energy and natural resources, and reduce pollution through the application of responsible business practices and energy efficient technologies across the companys daily operations and product designs. We have created a green group internally that takes four-five sessions a year and educates people on simple things like what to reuse and what to recycle, what are the ways for saving energy etc."
Similarly, Infosys celebrated Environment Day 2010 across its Development Centers in India through activities organized by Infosys Green Connect team and ECO Groups. The launch of Infy SmartWatt Championship, a contest that aims at encouraging Infoscions and their families to reduce their electricity consumption over the next six months was another key initiative of Infosys. The Infy SmartWatt Championship was developed with the objective to strengthen awareness and actions in building sustainable lifestyles, and aims at influencing the demand side efficiency of power consumption.
Says Visweswaraiah, "Global consulting firm Mckinsey estimates that 2% of all global carbon emissions are contributed by data centers, the lifeline of corporate IT. This figure is likely to increase to 3% by 2020not a trivial figure by any count. No wonder, theres pressure on enterprise IT leaders to adopt measures that make IT greener. However, its not just emissions or carbon footprints that are making organizations sit up and take notice. Green IT is not only an environmental prerogative but also an economic imperative given the depleting energy resources on one hand and the huge potential for cost savings by going green on the other."
Adds Sarathy, "One is to enable reuse of hardware, second is space, energy and cooling saving by having integrated solutions, and third is by having secured remote access from anywhere thus helping in reducing pollution due to commuting and save operational cost if you have to open new offices. This is basically from customer perspective. If you are not going green, no customer is going to buy from you. This in itself, should be a big driver to make sure you are doing something towards being more efficient about power, more efficient about cooling, more efficient about energy consumption."
Green is the FutureIt is evident that companies of all sizes, across geographies and verticals have considered the importance of Green IT. IT greening is about using IT more efficiently to achieve reductions in energy consumption, and therefore, considering the acquisition of energy-efficient IT solutions. IT is so pervasive that energy efficiency through the implementation of green IT has moved to center stage and captured the limelight for many companies in their pursuit of environmentally helpful practices.
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