Mahesh Bhalla
General Manager
Consumer & SMB, Dell India

Today's volatile energy costs and overall economic angst have focussed more attention on green computing strategies and techniques on the part of both vendors and their clientele.  

Businesses around the world are consuming extreme amounts of energy through their use of information technology, furthering today's energy crisis. Corporate entities are talking about reducing their carbon footprint to slow global warming, “There has been an ever-increasing awareness on climate change among corporate entities across the globe and green IT is, indeed, being seen as a means of achieving corporate sustainability,” according to Mahesh Bhalla, General Manager, Consumer & SMB, Dell India. 

Green computing is one of the latest fads in the IT domain. If it is used as a marketing tool, it has the potential to create new business opportunities for IT vendors.  

Green IT is something which involves evolving technology, methods and materials for making products and solutions in the IT space less power consuming, using less space and reducing emissions of carbon. “Green IT is gaining traction because of two key factors and they are cost savings and the growing demand from customers for green products,” says Subroto Das, COO, EMC India & SAARC.

Companies around the world are taking steps to go green not only to cut costs but also to boost their competitive advantage through green technology. “At the same time, going green also helps manage risks around legislation for carbon emissions. HP's eco responsibility starts at home. HP is not only at the forefront of defining industry best practices, but also following its own recommendations,” says Faisal M. Paul, Head, Marketing & Alliances - ESSN, HP Enterprise Business, India.  

“Green IT budgets are rising, and IT departments have emerged as a driving force in implementing green initiatives. Executives rank Green IT as important for cost savings, energy conservation, environmental responsibility, and regulatory compliance,” says Anand Naik, Director, Systems Engineering, Symantec.  

While the IT industry has not been viewed as a conventional greenhouse gas contributor, this perception too is changing with the rise in the number of data centers and the resulting rise in energy consumption.  

Today, data centers have become huge consumers of electricity. They account for bulk of the energy costs incurred by an organization with cooling and power requirements being the key components here. And, it seems that power and cooling spend in the data centers will grow eight times the rate of hardware spend. 

“The Symantec Green IT survey shows that, on an average, enterprises pay between US$21 million and US$27 million dollars a year for data center electricity. Data center energy costs are now covered in the CIO's budget, either directly or through cross-charges, for 83 per cent of enterprises,” says Anand of Symantec. 

We cannot do away with data centers and so we need to find ways and means to increase efficiencies here and other areas of IT. Reduction in network bandwidth as with EMC's De- Duplication products like Avamar and Disk Library, savings associated with real estate requirements using technologies like Virtualization, significant cost savings and manageability in data centers are all benefits of switching to Green IT. 

It is no surprise that these days we hear so much about “virtualization” - an old trick for making one computer do the work of many. “To optimize the use of IT equipment and reduce the power burden on the data center, organizations need to use virtualization as the core enabler. Virtualization enables and complements important IT initiatives such as data migration, consolidation and automation.  

“Virtualization forms the basis for broader efficiency realization across all functional aspects of IT. With virtualization at the heart of IT infrastructure, organizations can focus on building data centers that are financially efficient and environmentally safer. Virtualization technologies are gaining popularity among CIOs. Virtualization technologies have been the biggest contributor to the solutions component in the industry-wide Green IT initiative,” says Subroto.  

Hype is, indeed, rampant in “Green computing”. In the years to come, companies are likely to venture much farther in the territory of Green computing.  

Benefits

More and more companies are facing the challenge of transforming their technology infrastructure environments into agile, energy-efficient and cost-effective assets to drive business growth. 

Increased pressure is being exercised on CIOs to deliver more business services at a reduced cost, while at the same time data centers are touching the limits of their energy, cooling and space resources. About two per cent of global carbon emissions are due to the direct effects of IT usage, especially data centers. And then there are indirect effects because technology is used in every other sector as well. Carbon emissions due to computing are becoming big. 

Vendors Offerings

With technology a must-sell property, vendors have positioned themselves with various technologies and process to address the market. HP is making some significant announcements around their portfolio of environmental technological solutions. HP unveiled a series of products, tools, services and initiatives that help customers minimize their environmental impact when it comes to technology solutions. 

HP believes these Eco Solutions are industry-leading and, in many cases, represent significant improvements of its products and solutions on many environmental fronts. HP has always cared about green issues and the environment. “Developing environmentally sound products has long been a priority for HP's design and engineering teams. There are various green computing solutions adopted by HP to bring a change in the functioning of business. One of these is to change the way businesses are run by adopting energy saving measures that helps in carbon footprint reduction. HP ensures that all its products reduce carbon footprints and reduce cost of IT,” says Faisal.  

EMC views Green IT as one of the key cornerstones of a more efficient IT infrastructure. The company advises its customers and partners to view the business as a whole and implement policy-driven initiatives to achieve energy efficiency. “We cannot do away with data centers and so we need to find ways to increase efficiencies here and other areas of IT. Reduction in network bandwidth as with EMC's De- Duplication products like Avamar and Disk Library, savings associated with real estate requirements using technologies like virtualization, significant cost savings and manageability in data centers are all benefits of switching to Green IT,” says Subroto. 

Ashwini Aggarwal, Executive Director, MAIT, says, “Actually, the cost difference between an energy-efficient product and a non-standard model may not be much. And, as the industry ramps volumes on energy-efficient power supplies, the costs will actually crash and difference will eventually be marginal. Yet, the savings can be significant. There are MAIT members offering thin clients - the power savings on such clients are themselves paying for the capital cost of the thin-client.  

While most customers agree for a need to have green initiative in the organization, the partners need to show the actual benefits in terms of cost effectiveness. It is important to know that the bottom line to watch is the OPEX - and not the CAPEX. In the case of data centers, as an example, the OPEX is contributed by huge power and cooling requirements. Customers need to focus on how to cut down on OPEX. This is where the channel partners have a challenge in educating the customers. 

“Awareness and user habits are the biggest inhibitors to the green initiatives. Change is a gradual process for human nature - and not all targeted users will adopt to change at the same pace. Therefore, the challenge is to identify early adopters to the concept, working with them on co-developing the green agenda - and enabling their success. Once we have enough critical mass of successful reference points, we will be ready to build a mainstream movement,” says Ashwini of MAIT.   

Market Perspective

It is the SMBs which are actually looking at Green IT in a big way and the business avenues for channel partners are as far as they can take it. According to a research, SMBs are taking measures to reduce energy cost and understand that Green is good for business. Green is something that businesses have started to demand and is a strong business focus area for all vendors. 

Green data centers will be a niche for some time to come. The cost factor attached to building Green data center is few times more than the normal ones. The customers in India would like to see a scientific way of arriving at the cost benefit of building such data centers before they plunge into it. 

Finally...

It is for sure that Green IT is the need of the hour, but there seems to be awareness about this. At the channel level, the awareness in increasing education is the first step. In India, the focus should be on the smaller cities as these products are more beneficial in regions where there is a shortage of power. Creating awareness, education, building skill sets and infrastructure, cost of acquisition and lack of scientific way of arriving at TCO have always been some of the major areas of concern. But the responses from the customers have been overwhelming. Many clients are of the opinion that by going green and conserving energy, businesses can improve their operational efficiencies, striking a more optimal balance between what technologies can do and what people can do. This often results in greater productivity internally, and enhanced business services for customers. Apart from this, there has to be governmental legislations in this area to make the task easier.

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Green Computing and Virtualization

To optimize the use of IT equipment and reduce the power burden on the data center, organizations need to use virtualization as the core enabler. Virtualization enables and complements important IT initiatives such as data migration, consolidation and automation. According to Subroto, efficiency technologies such as deduplication, compression, FAST, spindown and converged IT infrastructure solutions such as Vblock  by VCE (industry's first completely integrated IT offering that combines best-in-class virtualization, networking, computing, storage, security, and management technologies) are increasingly being adopted by organizations in India. These technologies play a major role in reducing the carbon footprint, reducing power and cooling costs and data center space. 

Similarly, Mahesh has his thoughts on virtualization as part of Green Computing. He says, “Technologies such as virtualization and video conferencing, and practices such as e-waste recycling have enabled companies significantly reduce carbon footprint in more ways than one. As awareness towards these convenient and secure options increases, we see mainstream adoption across industries and geographies. Organizations - large and small - are turning to optimizing the virtualization footprint and exploring scaled-out models like the cloud, for greater efficiency.” 

Today, Green computing comprises a complicated mix of people, networks, software and hardware. In such a scenario, Green IT can assure IT decision-makers that their IT systems are aligned to preserving the environment. Elements of such a solution may comprise items such as end-user satisfaction, management restructuring, regulatory compliance, disposal of electronic waste, telecommuting, and virtualization of server resources, energy usage, thin client solutions and return on investment. By adopting Green computing practices, business leaders can contribute positively to environmental stewardship and protect the environment while also reducing energy and paper costs.

For more contact: Deepak Singh
edit@varindia.com