"The CIOs are the key to make green initiatives successful with their vast reach and understanding of user demand vis-à-vis equipment deliverables."

Green-IT

Green-IT covers the whole of IT infrastructure deployed in data centers, switch rooms, telecom rooms, work floors, etc. Apart from operations, it also covers planning and designing of all the above facilities in order to obtain the maximum efficiency. Some organizations have even gone further and adopted the Go-Green approach as their prime agenda. Under Go Green, they have identified all energy consuming equipment and power conservation measures across the building and different business functions.

Green-IT is not limited to data centers, which is one of the many areas where energy saving options can be deployed. Even addressing power consuming utilities as small as a phone instrument plays a significant role in saving energy in the long run. The scope is unlimited if one wishes to address all mechanical, lighting, electrical, and computer systems installed across the building floors, rooms, and data centers that are designed for maximum energy efficiency and minimum environmental impact. Due to the threat of negative environmental impact, even potential customers, suppliers, and regulators have started associating with companies that have structured themselves around environment conservation.

Overall, green initiatives produce long term tangible and intangible benefits across industries. As part of the green agenda, companies have started Go Green awareness programs for their employees, which are driven by their CEOs, CFOs, and CIOs. The partners who are associated with these companies too have started looking at the green initiatives. Hardware suppliers have come out with energy efficient equipment without compromising on their processing capabilities. All IT equipment like desktops, servers, switches, laptops, and other devices are rated against their power consumption. The challenge to make more optimized power consuming assets will be on top of the agenda for the OEMs.

The CIOs are the key to make green initiatives successful with their vast reach and understanding of user demand vis-à-vis equipment deliverables. CIOs have taken multifold initiatives to make the green agenda more effective. These are:

• A holistic approach to concretize the Green-IT agenda and objectives
• Energy cost reduction through controlled usage by means of efficient operational benefits from the equipment
• Working with suppliers and customers to evaluate the energy efficiency of equipment
• Exploring options of remote working/home working to optimize the system's usage, increase the cooling impact due to less heat dissipation, and improve power efficiency

Green-IT steps taken at Quatrro

• Quatrro educates users through mass mailers, welcome programs, discussion forums etc. on Green-IT benefits
• Efforts are on to minimize the carbon foot print of the building, work areas, data centers, etc., as well as to maximize cooling efficiency with frequent checks to ensure maintenance of appropriate cooling requirements across floors, switching off all AC devices during off hours, creating segments across floors to effectively match the cooling needs, etc. We have separate facilities/work areas for UPS, electrical panels, precision controlled AC and thus minimizing the temperature level and ensuring effective cooling.
• We use low emission building materials, carpets, and paints to maximize cooling effect. We have also installed sensors across the floors and training rooms for turning off lights automatically when not in use besides installing catalytic converters on backup generators.
• Defining hot aisle and cold aisle in the data center for effective hot air and cold air circulation is another measure being implemented. Cooling air direction to the servers is optimized.
• Effective distribution of power across racks, a maximum of 10-15 percent variance per rack compared to the power requirement, optimization of rack space, and ideal placement of servers for optimized cooling are other effective measures.
• Strategic location planning for the data center and isolating it from external environmental negative effects is also ensured.
• We have implanted environmental control systems to measure and alert for high temperature, humidity, and power management.
• We use of VOIP to reduce cabling infrastructure resulting in reduced heat dissipation and effective air flow.
• Use of fiber glass/glass insulators across the building.

Future plans to optimize Green-IT solutions

We intend to use roof top for solar panels besides looking at liquid cooling as a viable option. Blade servers and blade desktops implementation along with introduction of SAN and NAS devices to optimize storage solutions and reduce number of hard disks across servers is also being planned. Centralized storage for desktops and file sharing and use of online storage in the web for non-critical data is also being considered. Introduction of solutions to optimize desktop/mail/file server storage by having centralized single copy store is also on the anvil. There are also trends to increase thickness of all the walls of the closed areas where most of the IT assets are populated. Many companies follow double wall strategy with an air gap in between the two walls to minimize the heat loss.

Benefits from Green-IT initiatives

Quatrro is among the leaders to implement Green-IT features and a trend setter in demonstrating the benefits of Green-IT implementation. The building plan and the subsequent procurement process at Quatrro have always prioritized the selection of Green-IT solutions and valued the partners who have come out with equipment and solutions with a positive approach toward energy saving concepts. An increasing number of organizations have deployed Green-IT initiatives and the rest are seriously considering this while planning for the future.

While the corporate sector has certainly taken the lead toward Green-IT implementation in their facilities, the government sector is also not far behind. Most of the government sector enterprises in India realize the potential savings that the Green-IT steps can bring in. Thus, due to the overall approach of the industry segments, India is recognized as one of the leaders in the world for the potential it has for Green-IT.

While most of the organizations consider the Green-IT project after looking at both short term and long term ROI, the interesting fact is that we are more serious about our environment than ever before, which is one of the leading factors for considering Green-IT initiatives across all Industry segments. The Industry has certainly seen the benefits, in terms of ROI, of moving toward green projects; however, long terms benefits for the environment and savings are immense.

Everyone prefers technology with efficient power consumption, recyclable/reusable packaging, recycling offers for older equipment, use of non-toxic materials, or making investments in future green concepts such as alternative materials. Due to the overall benefits of the whole concept of the Green-IT model, most of the CIOs are ready to pay a higher cost for greener technology. Simple steps like virtualization and infrastructure consolidation have a significant impact on the ROI and have contributed 30 percent or more savings in tangible and intangible activities. In addition to this, companies that have further invested in efficient power management, effective cooling, and use of solar panels for power generation, effective energy saving measures, etc., have gained heavily on the ROI.

Conclusion

While the term Green-IT sounds like it is an IT project, it isn't so. It is the organization-wide approach and planning that makes the Green-IT initiatives successful. As part of the Green-IT agenda, it is preferred for organizations to set apart an ìenergy budgetî as part of their annual budgetary plan.

Proper communication to the users about gradually changing their behavior toward using IT assets while making them follow the dos and don'ts is a huge challenge. However, user co-operation in this initiative certainly plays a critical role toward ensuring efficient deployment of green initiatives. Basic steps like switching off all unused power consuming equipment helps significantly in energy savings. However, these are hard to achieve without committed user-participation in this noble cause.