Problem slayer!

Green IT can be used to save substantial power cost, and to stay prepared for compliance requirements when they kick in

EDITOR'S NOTE
One of the tasks of Hercules, in ancient Greek mythology, was to kill the 9-headed serpent-like beast Lernaean Hydra. The Greek hero apparently was stumped by the fact that every time he chopped one of its head two more grew back in place. Finally, he devised a workaround to slay the Hydra.

Todays IT manager has to deal with a many-headed serpent of a different genreinefficient use of IT resources that has come to plague organisations in a monstrous way. Concerns range from low server utilisation to HVAC issues in the data centre, and even the cumulative power consumed by desktops, that often remain switched on for days in a row.

In fact, if one were to list down the most used buzzwords in tech circles today, green IT will surely find a prominent place. Moreover, after the onset of the economic crisis, greens role and relevance has expanded beyond environmental and ecological concerns of organisations.

The slowdown has made more and more organisations wake up to the financial benefits of deploying green IT. Greens return on investment is not only substantial, it is measureable too, something that CFOs like very well.

The pre-slowdown resistance to green IT is melting away fast.

Green is soon going to be the norm rather than an exception.

An organisations journey to green will ideally begin with evaluating how brown it is. While the data centres and assembly-line systems are the known devils when it comes to gobbling power, the seemingly innocuous desktops are no saints either.

It is important to put a mechanism in place to measure power consumption by functional departments or by IT sub-systems, or even better by both. Power-spend patterns for these can then be ascertained for monthly cycles, and subsequently for quarterly cycles.

In other words, the idea is to prepare energy profiles of various IT components and systems in the organisation.
This way of profiling will also help in creating a green policy, which can then be shared with the employees as their involvement is sought to make a green strategy successful in the organisation.

Green is mainstream
While vendors had already started promoting green IT before the economic crisis took the world by surprise, the cost of deploying it was then considerably high. The crisis therefore derailed much of the green initiatives across enterprises.

A good market development is that the cost of deploying green IT has come down significantly from the earlier levels, as IT vendors now ship green IT more in the mainstream than in a niche.

IT managers can use the opportunity to achieve green-readiness, perhaps before compliance requirements make it mandatory to have a certain level of green IT in the enterprise.

Yes, sooner than later, environmental standards will be defined which will lead to making deployment of green IT mandatory in the enterprise, at least partially. In such a scenario, a green enterprise will surely have some instant competitive advantage.

There are already live examples where companies in India, merely by realigning their systems have started drawing measurable benefits under their Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) initiatives. Some of the well-known companies who have implemented projects as per CDM guidelines include Gujarat Ambuja Cement, Jindal Vijayanagar Steel, and Indian Rayon & Industries.

Taking the initial steps
Good deeds begin in small packets, they say. Likewise, when it comes to the implementation of a green policy, PCs are ideal candidates for initiation. A simple step of activating the power management on a PC will make a big difference. Further, users should be encouraged to switch off their PCs when leaving from work. This will help create awareness at the user level across the organisation.

The next stop can be the data centre, where interestingly, the bulk of the expenses are not on processing of the information but on cooling of the equipment deployed. Cooling is about 60% of the power costs in a data centre because of generally high inefficiency levels.

A way to go green here is to carry out virtualisation and consolidation, which will not only save power costs directly but also through reduced usage. Improving ventilation and air flow across the data centre will also help bring down the cooling requirements and costs considerably.

Building a case for green
One of the challenges faced by IT managers is to convince top management about the benefits of going green. Just talking about return on investment doesnt cut much ice here. It important to list down the foreseeable cost savings, the measures that will be used to calculate the benefits, and the timeframe in which the cost of green IT will be recovered. If benefits are listed by way of comparison with the brown IT, it will facilitate quicker decision making and approval of green IT budgets.

Excepting greenfield scenarios, a phased approach to green IT deployment is recommended. Its neither advisable nor required to deploy green IT by ripping off existing systems that have not completed their usual lifecycles, as that will lead to a sudden peak in e-waste generation and will defeat the very purpose of going green.

It is also recommended that IT managers identify pockets where green IT will lead to quick and measurable returns, and use those as success studies to pitch for wider-scale deployments. These smaller projects will also serve as pilots that provide the insight and experience for larger green projects.

Beware of browns
Another major challenge faced by IT managers lies in a confusing plenitude of vendors and products, as there are a number of companies eager to sell their wares under the garb of green. Right from servers to networking cable, everything is painted green these days. In such a scenario, it is mighty difficult for an IT manager to make a choice, let alone make a right choice.

A way out of this jumble is to pay attention to the details and to stay informed about the developments in the area of green IT. This will help IT managers identify the right set of green IT requirements suited to their organisations so that they can float an effective request for proposal that specifies the green specifications clearly and firmly. This will rule out the possibility of vendors trying to push products that have a green marketing exterior basis just a few parameters but fall short on a green standards set of parameters.

The biggest nightmare for any IT manager, however, is to figure out what to do with the equipments that were not designed with Green IT in mind. While the pace of information dissemination for a greener planet has gained ground of late, the IT equipments were not designed to meet the green planet initiative standards. So, what does an IT manager do with these equipments? A bigger task at hand is to convince the management to junk these equipments and ask for fresh IT investments.

It is also important for the IT manager to sensitise the management on the economic benefits of phasing out these equipments that are most often power guzzlers. IT managers also need to identify vendors who are designing green products, and need to work towards framing policies for managing enterprise eWaste. Keeping abreast with best Green IT practice is another challenge they face.

Managing enterprise e-waste
India faces a mounting problem of e-waste with only 5% of it being managed by authorised recycling agencies. The rest is treated by the informal sector. According to MAIT, over 94% of organisations in the country do not have a policy on how to dispose obsolete IT products and e-waste. Here is what you can do to deal with the problem

Extend hardware life: Another way managing e-waste is to extend the life of IT hardware. This reduces the demand for new hardware and amortizes the environmental impact of manufacturing over a longer period.
Donate IT: Charity and re-marketing could prove an effective strategy for reducing the volume of e-waste getting into the informal recycling sector. However, make sure that the products and equipments that you plan to donate are in good working condition. Do not donate junk.
Work with authorised recyclers: Lot of vendors these days offer buy back recycling facility. So, be sure to check the same before you sign on any new hardware procurement deal. For the existing IT assets, deal only with authorised recycling agencies.

Editorial Panel