Jitendra Gupta, Country Manager, India & SAARCExtreme Networks

Need for Green Initiatives

Most of the business houses and media groups are advocating the importance of global warming and as a result, all IT equipment manufacturers are trying to solve these challenges with their innovative thoughts and visions. Also they are trying to figure out how to reduce carbon foot prints and conserve energy means to go green. As we all know, the information technology products also consume good amount of energy within our office environment, be it in the enterprise networks or datacenters. The big question is how do we reduce energy bills.

In our view there are few ways to achieve this goal. These are: Deploying energy efficient products; reducing number of networking equipment with two tier architecture/design; using products which are easy to use and fully automated.

Environment Conservation Trends in Networking Industry

The adoption of environmental conservation trends in the networking industry is a high priority. Lower power consumption and energy efficiency is a strategic concern for all IT heads. This is a twin powered decisive factor that reduces OPEX and helps resonate with the go-green motto. Similarly, automation Framework is a key requirement starting to be acknowledged by companies.

Green initiatives at Extreme Networks

Extreme Networks recently joined the Green Grid. As a member of this consortium, Extreme Networks will help promote the adoption of energy efficient standards, processes, measurements, and technologies within data centers. The Green Grid is a global consortium dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems. The consortium's scope includes collaboration with other industry groups and government organizations worldwide to ensure that each organizational goal is aligned with both developers and users of data center technology.

Extreme Networks' Universal Port framework feature, available on BlackDiamond series and some Summit series products, automatically reduce the power consumed by non-essential endpoints during off hours to save 60 percent or more of the energy consumed by PoE-powered IP phones and other devices. Extreme Networks manufactures and designs products which consume less power. Their efficiency has been verified by Tolly group, which confirms Extreme Networks' BlackDiamond 8810 switch consumes roughly half the energy used by competing switches from Cisco.

Essential Benefits Obtained from Extreme Networks' Green Initiatives

• Energy efficiency
• Easier to manage
• Easier to reuse and recycle
• Better for the environment
• Better on budget

Cost Savings through Adoption of Green Solutions

At Extreme Networks there is no extra cost attached to customers, companies can simply gain and save money by choosing the energy efficient products. For example, for a typical company with 200 non-essential IP phones that are powered down outside of normal office hours by the Go Green solution, there can be a 75 percent reduction in costs associated with running network connected IP phones. Our solutions do not pose any challenges in deployment.

Future of Green IT

The concept of green in the IT industry is growing at a fast pace. Most companies are now joining the green brigade to help conserve the environment. The future of green IT includes green buildings, green computing infrastructure (energy-efficient data centers, power-efficient computers), sharing infrastructure (shared data centers), and addressing issues like e-waste management etc. The future looks at deploying IT solutions, which help firms and businesses become green including cloud computing, video-conferencing, intelligent transport systems, and web-conferencing.

It is estimated that over 2 million employees of the IT-BPO industry will adopt a green lifestyle and thereby become change agents to create a sustainable impact in the society around themselves. Major research projects on Green IT in the context of India will be undertaken and a series of activities to raise awareness on it within and outside the IT industry will take forward the green initiatives.