Organizations of all sizes struggle to keep pace with balancing business requirements for storage with the corresponding cost of power and space.While accommodating this rapid growth of data, environmental issues need to be on top of mind and in order to meet the growing sustainability needs, a lot of companies have started implementing green IT and sustainability solutions and incorporating them into their day to day business operations. From Desktop to datacenter virtualization, datacenter power to cooling, printing to video conferencing and collaboration tools, corporates are investing in every new technology and business practices that they deem will or has revolutionized the IT landscape, improved communication efficiency and environmental sustainability
In its report, “Hype Cycle for Green IT and Sustainability in India, 2013,” Gartner states that India's spending on green IT and sustainability initiatives will reach $70 billion (about Rs 4.7 lakh crore) in 2015 from that of $24.8 billion in 2012. “Green IT” today, is thus a new wave of awareness towards the commitment to take action in terms of 'green' best practices and policies to create a sustainable environment.
Committed to ‘Green’…
Green IT/Computing is a concept that is being given more importance in recent years vis-à-vis the emergence of technologies like Cloud, virtualization, analytics. Any green IT project started by a corporate, yields more than just green benefits. Corporates that are slowly realizing the importance of a sustainable environment have started yielding products and solutions that provide energy conscious alternatives which not only reduce energy expenditures, but also help reduce greenhouse gas emissions into the environment, thus delivering the promise of being both environmentally responsible and cost-effective. From environmental design to responsible waste management, the programs and initiatives of corporates reflect their commitment to the highest standards of compliance and environmental policy.
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Yogesh Sawant, Director, Partner Sales and Field Alliance Organization, Hitachi India–“Today’s cloud and virtualization technology can go a long way towards driving energy efficiency. Cloud has become mainstream and we recently launched our continuous cloud infrastructure solution which is aimed at helping organizations maximize the benefits of cloud. It consists of our storage Virtualization Operating System (SVOS), along with our Virtual Storage Platform G1000, bringing the benefits of virtualization to enterprises. By adopting the right technology and virtualization strategy, customers will be able to achieve their green IT objectives more easily”
For Juniper,Green IT is an important concept. It involves producing environmentally friendly products and encouraging customers and IT departments to consider options like proper recycling habits, power management, virtualization and so on. “Juniper Networks is committed to environmentally responsible behavior. As part of this commitment our products monitor compliance with local and international laws in all of our locations worldwide. We work with governments, industry partners and consortia in order to harmonize regulations with innovation and collaborate with them to develop and implement energy metrics that measure the efficiency of networks,” says Sajan Paul, Director, Systems Engineering - India & SAARC, Juniper Networks.
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K Bhaskhar, Senior Director, Office Imaging Solutions, CanonIndia - “Don’t make Green IT just a word in Board Rooms and books. Implement Green IT religiously because this is our environment and we have to look at preserving this environment for future. However, Green IT does come with a little bit extra cost. Be ready to shed thisextra cost as this will be an investment for the future.”
Juniper's greatest impact on the environment is through its products. It is reducing its carbon footprint with products that are environmentally responsible in all phases of their life cycles, thusdemonstratingits commitment to protecting the environment.
Environmental protection and energy conservation has been a long-standing mission at Delta. Being the world leader in power management solution, Delta not only designs the most energy-efficient and environment-friendly products but also practicesand educates on putting the principles of green design into practice. The switching power supplies designed and made by Delta are a good example to testify this point. Asserting that Green technologies are important to the economy, Suhas Joshi, Vice President, Delta Power Solutions says, “Delta understands the importance of green technology and successfully adopts them in Delta’s new product portfolio.We are dedicated to raising power conversion rates and improving the efficiency of the majority of our products to higher than 90%.”
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Toru Hasegawa, Divisional Managing Director, Solutions Division, Panasonic India – “We expect companies to come together and frame their strategy for e-waste handling in line with the government regulations, thus leading to mainstream adoption in the next five to 10 years. Also, our message to all consumers is to adopt recycling of e-waste as it is the best method to protect the global ecosystem and human health. Proper disposal of batteries, thermostats, electronics, oil, and other potentially hazardous wastes is very essential since they can harm public health and the environment.For an environmentally sustainable future, India needs to value its natural resources, and ecosystem services to better inform policy and decision-making.”
For Avaya, a Green IT infrastructure is not only an environmentally friendly structure but also one which is fiscally responsible. “A green solution should support an organization’s current as well as future needs,” agrees Hrishi Parthasarthy, Director, Channels and Strategic Alliances, Avaya.“At Avaya, we believe that video conferencing is the ideal “green” technology which allows organizations to mitigate energy use by dramatically reducing the need to travel. By communicating over video, organizations can substantially reduce their carbon footprint and help ensure a basis for regulatory compliance.”
With solutions that provide a powerful way to enable conferences and other video content to be streamed live or on demand around the world, employees, customers, partners, and students can use video to communicate, engage and interact with others across distance at any time, from wherever they are. Avaya solutions provide customers and employees with the ability to lower their carbon footprint significant
ly by reducing the need for travel while at the same time enhancing real-time communication and collaboration. Video communications has become its default communication option at Avaya and has enabled it to cut carbon emission by 46 percent in less than two years.
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Sunil Sharma, VP Sales & Operations, India & SAARC, Cyberoam - “As it turns out, the true spirit of innovation now remains incomplete if it fails to reckon environmental responsibility. If an organization or product lacks energy efficiency or environment friendly aspect, then it can never facilitate real operational efficiency. There’s need to drive and strive enhanced efforts to strengthen the cause of green computing, for it will make application of IT more holistic as a socio-economic intervention.”
For Fujitsu again, it is its first priority and commitment to the society to offer the best possible green solution. “In today’s world we may have product becoming cheaper, solution becoming more affordable, but the only cost which is constantly touching the roof is Power. As a fact, Fujitsu is one of the first organizations to realize the importance of growing cost of power and has started using a power supply known as ‘Platinum Grade’ in our products,” says Mehul Doshi, Country Manager Servers, Storage & Datacenter Solution, Fujitsu India.
Cyberoam has ensured committed efforts to bring innovation in its network security products with a holistic approach. Besides developing next-generation security solutions, it also took into account need for high-performance, optimized energy consumption and environment-friendly product development.
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Sajan Paul, Director, Systems Engineering - India & SAARC, Juniper Networks – “Sustainable and efficient operations are critical to the success of businesses today. With continued resource depletion and the rising of greenhouse gas emissions, we can drive improved economics and quality of life by using resources more productively. With the amount of information available anytime and anywhere, we want to ensure that economic and social opportunities are within everyone’s reach. It is not enough for just us alone to adopt and implement green initiatives. It is imperative that every single one of us make the change and join this movement.”
Cyberoam security appliances offer integrated security over a single platform /appliance, eliminating the need for multiple security appliances for customers and hence saving energy/costs. Sincevirtualization results in far more efficient use of resources, including energy, we also offer virtual security appliances to avoid having multiple hardware appliances and devices that consume extreme power / energy at various businesses and organizations,” explains Sunil Sharma, VP Sales & Operations, India & SAARC, Cyberoam.
As an IT solutions provider, Eurotech ensures that the Green Technology and resources it deploys and uses is environmentally responsible. “We ensure that our product line and its implementation follow the industry best practices and make it extremely energy efficient thereby ensuring reduced resource consumption and less carbon footprint,” commentsAnuj Jain, MD, Eurotech Technologies.
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S. Rajendran, Chief Marketing Officer, Acer India – “We are deeply committed to the cause of green IT adoption and aim to make a difference to our environment by lowering the environmental impact of our own value chain, guiding the supply chain partners towards ecological harmony and increasing awareness towards environmental conservation. We can lower our carbon footprint and build a healthier planet, through sustainable carbon-focused innovation and long-term pragmatic investment. All that is required is holistic efficiency for making an environmentally sustainable transformation.”
As an environment conscious company, Panasonic takes stock of how it can minimize its environmental impact, while maximizingits productivity, and benefit the society through its business activities. This means not only developing energy-efficient, state-of-the-art products, but also looking internally at its operations. “To achieve these goals, we have put the environment at the centre of our business decisions. We try and deliver innovations through our products and solutions that will not only be of service to individuals, but will also help in making new contributions to the Indian society and businesses across India,” recalls Toru Hasegawa, Divisional Managing Director, Solutions Division, Panasonic India.
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Anuj Jain, MD, Eurotech Technologies – “Our idea is to convey, how to make Green IT growth sustainable. This can be done through, better product designs, energy efficient hardware, a better power management system and reduced energy use in Datacenters and Computing Infrastructure. Through energy saving solutions we can save up to 50% in energy costs.”
Acer has been consistent in its efforts to address the issues of energy efficiency, carbon reduction, and is working towards a sustainable plan. This reflects Acer's long-standing commitment towards going green. “Our focus also lies in constantly raising the bar in terms of product transport efficiency and responsible supply chain management. We have an environmental management system in place that helps us conserve energy and ensure appropriate waste disposal in all our offices, also heightening the environmental awareness of our employees in the process,” accepts S. Rajendran, Chief Marketing Officer, Acer India.
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Suhas Joshi, Vice President, Delta Power Solutions – “Green technologies are important to the economy. Delta understands the importance of green technology and successfully adopted them in Delta’s new product portfolio. Being the world leader in power management solution, we not only design the most energy-efficient and environment-friendly products but also practice & educate on putting the principles of green design into practice.”
“In AOC, we perceive Green IT as the optimum practice of using IT and communication technologies in elevating the competence of the organization’s operations, supply chain, products as well as the services and resources throughout their life cycles. We look forward to creating more efficient and advanced policies not only for our Products but a 360 degree approach which includes internal operations, smart usage of resources and channels, as well as our customers. They not only provide a greener and sustainable environment in the organization but also save costs up to 30-40%,” explains Shalini Pandey, Head, AOC Monitor Business.
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Shalini Pandey, Head, AOC Monitor Business – “Digitization, Telecommunication, Virtualization, Business automating processes, selecting energy-efficient software and hardware enable energy efficiencies in processes be it business or home. Our request to all our customers to be very wise in selecting the range of IT solutions considering their green efficiency and optimizing their usage for a greener world ahead. Global Warming has already reached an alarming level and it is our responsibility to be the fore runners to bring the change in order to protect our world.”
Hitachi Data Systems has the expertise to help organizations implement environmentally efficient IT solutions for more sustainable data centers through technologies and services.The HDS strategy to achieving these goals includes designing, manufacturing, and supporting sustainable storage throughout its entire life cycle. “Our current focus at HDS is on Business Defined IT wherein technology spending is driven by business priorities. Although many consider transforming the data center from an IT-focused business model to one that’s business-driven to be a costly endeavor, the fact is that when green and business-sustainable solutions are used, the transformation of the data center can pay for itself,” says Yogesh Sawant,Director, Partner Sales and Field Alliance Organization, Hitachi India.
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Sunil Grewal, Director – Sales & MarCom, GIGABYTE Technology (India) Pvt. Ltd. – “GIGABYTE Technology has been one of the earliest adopters of ‘green computing’ initiatives in the global IT industry. All its motherboards, both high-end and entry-level models, come with unique technologies and features designed and proven to decrease the carbon footprint, improve energy efficiencies, lower power consumption, reduce electrical waste, and rationalize system temperature. GIGABYTE continues to monitor international developments in environmental regulations such as REACH and China RoHS and remove hazardous substances restricted by laws.”
Agrees K Bhaskhar, Senior Director, Office Imaging Solutions, Canon India, “One should also consider the environment while providing any products, solutions or services. Green IT is an important phenomenon in Canon, whether it isduring the procurement of the raw material, designing ofthe product, or during marketing of that particular product. Every stage revolves around Green IT. From a technology per se, this is one of our key decision that we make while conceptualizing a product.”
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Hrishi Parthasarthy, Director, Channels and Strategic Alliances, Avaya– “Reducing pollution and taking steps to help reduce global warming is of everyone’s concern. It is important for organizations to keep in mind that increasing the efficiency and control by delivering benefits like energy saving and lower maintenance costs, while providing a central point of control will help in maintaining comfort, security and safety to the organization.At Avaya we focus on The Power of We - and that certainly applies here. Each and every employee and partner can actively make a difference, particularly through the reduction of short and long-distance travel. When Earth Day first began 44 years ago, pollution was one of the biggest issues facing the planet. Today, that issue is often dwarfed by ominous news on climate change. Although this is a sweeping global issue, we should acknowledge that every individual can take steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
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Mehul Doshi, Country Manager Servers, Storage & Datacenter Solution - Fujitsu India – “Energy saved is energy produced. So please do not look upon the cheaper power solution offered as they turn out to be 3 times expensive at the end of product/solution tenure. Product once bought gets depreciated giving organization benefits, space consumed may remain more or less constant, although the denser solution should be given a preference, but most import is the rising cost of power, which the product consume and the air conditioning needs for them to run at set environment”
To sum up…
Environmental issues are receiving unprecedented attention from not only corporates but also governments. As concern for sustainability and environment conservation grows, businesses are feeling the pressure from both customers and stakeholders and they are ramping up activities and beginning to score better in their environmental performance, failing which can have a negative impact on their profits. Many businesses have discovered that Green IT initiatives offer costs saving benefits and easily make up for their tightened budgets and profit margins, while still complying with regulations and laws and without compromising business value.
In the future, environmental responsibility will become a norm with every corporate as pressure from governments and corporates are going to scale up. IT departments will be the most burdened lots as they will feel this pressure of doing their part in reducing the organization’s overall footprint. But then this will be for a cause…a cause for saving the Mother Earth from further erosion.
samrita@varindia.com
Corporates Going ‘Green’
Fujitsu – To address the escalating cost of power, Fujitsu uses a power supply in its products which is called ‘Platinum Grade’. Also it actively promotes ‘Zero Watt’ power
supply in its servers thereby making a huge saving on overall power situation
Avaya – Avaya has a comprehensive Sustainability Program and through it the company works actively with customers in India and around the world to help them reap the benefits of lower costs, reduced travel, and faster, richer collaboration. Having adopted a video communication approach as a default communication option, Avaya has helped in reducing the total CO2 emissions by 8,678 metric tons which essentially can be compared to taking 1,827 passenger vehicles off the road or stopping 9, 76,483 gallons of gasoline from being consumed
Delta –In its commitment to environmental protection, Delta has implemented green, lead-free production and recycling and waste management programs. As a part of its other green initiatives, Delta has a Green Factory at Rudrapur and Gurgaon each, where UPS are manufactured locally for Indian customers.Apart from this,its 11 global green factories & donated buildings have received 5 LEED and 8 EEWH certifications.
Delta’s corporate office in Gurgaon is the first Green manufacturing facility in India and has a capacity of manufacturing UPS up to 4000kVA to provide an end to end power backup solution. Itpresently has 44 R&D centers across the globe
Juniper -Its product designers and suppliers identify and recommend environmental improvements through a Design for the Environment (DfE) program based on the New Product Introduction process. The priorities of the DfE initiative are energy efficiency, materials innovation, and recyclability, including reduced CO2 footprint, reduced ozone-depleting materials and substances, compliance with legislated restrictions of hazardous substances and reduced fossil fuel consumption
Cyberoam - All of its products are RoHS (Restriction of Use of Hazardous Substances) compliant, which means several underlying components adding to processing needs such as the PCB and others are kept free from naturally hazardous elements like lead, cadmium, polybrominated biphenyl (PBB), mercury, hexavalent chromium, and polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) flame retardants, thereby meeting green computing and clean tech guidelines. Moreover, all of its modules are also recyclable. I.e. PCB, metal chassis etc.
Acer – Examples of Acer’s Green products are The B6 Series monitors and Aspire S7 Ultrabook. While the B6 Series monitorsare made with post-consumer recycled (PCR) plastic, and feature a mercury- and arsenic-free panel, the S7 features an Acer-patented structural design where the cover, made of white Gorilla Glass 2 requires minimal Aluminum and uses 94% less raw material than conventional unibody designs.
To promote green living amongst its consumers, Acer recently organized its first annual Incredible Green Contest 2012-2013. The Acer Incredible Green Contest was managed on a global level, and encouraged students at all levels to create applications focused on generating innovative and ecological sustainable solutions.
Eurotech -It consciously works on the concept of Green Computing and Green Technology. While deploying its products it also proactively convey to its End users and IT Managers, how green technology can help them in operational benefits and cost reduction. Its initiatives are aimed at reducing the environmental impact of large computing environments by offering energy efficient products.
AOC -AOC products are economically produced and packed to contribute to reduced environmental impact. AOC fits all displays with LED backlights, which significantly decrease energy consumption and enable mercury-free production to eliminate toxic waste. AOC displays satisfy the requirements of established international environmental standards such as ENERGY STAR, TCO and EPEAT. Intelligent energy management automatically reduces power consumption, and users can set further energy savings options individually.
Hitachi - Hitachi solutions are designed to optimize sustainability. The Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform for instance helps realize better capacity per square foot and lower power consumption per terabyte. The Hitachi NAS Platform helps organizations gain more capacity, save on rack space, save power and cooling costs
Panasonic–Panasonic has initiated the genuine refill toner program where it offers its customers an option to refill the cartridge with toner powder. In this case the customer saves on the toner cartridge cost and cost per page is drastically low too, as the plastic case of cartridge is not required.
Canon - As a part of its green initiative, Canon picks up the used multi-function devices from the customers and discard these machines in an eco-friendly manner, after which it issues a certificate stating that the machine has been destroyed in an eco-friendly manner. For large corporate customers, Canon picks up the used empty toner bottles, as they too are very hazardous to the environment and destroy them similarly without causing any harm to the surrounding. In addition, Canon does a lot of educational programs and workshops with the customers on how to conserve the environment like for example how to save paper by switching to duplex printing.
GIGABYTE - GIGABYTE motherboards emphasize long service life to save energy. The motherboards are equipped with dynamic energy saving technology and 24-phase energy-saving design all help to reduce temperature and power consumption, extend product service life and optimize resource usage. To comply with the EU RoHS regulations and provide safe computer equipment to users, it has already implemented lead-free production process and introduced a Green Components Management System to establish a green supply chain. All company products including motherboards conform to RoHS requirements.
