IT plugs into the green agenda

Being green may once have been considered a luxury, but times have changed, and there are clear financial benefits and corporate advantage to be gained.

Simon Mingay, research vice principal at analyst Gartner, says IT is central to many green innovations. “Operating in a low-carbon economy is not about doing the same things with less energy and lower carbon dioxide emissions, but about doing different things and thinking differently about how things can be done,” he says.

There is a big opportunity for IT to contribute towards the reduction of greenhouse gases and the energy integrity of organisations. But how many really understand where the first easy hits are to be found and how to measure the real savings?

The good news is that recent research by DMW Group has revealed that 82 per cent of businesses do have a generic green policy, including areas such as recycling and using low-energy light bulbs. However, respondents also admitted that the area of technology largely remains untouched.

Given that IT can be responsible for up to 40 per cent of a typical firm’s carbon footprint, it is a good place to start ­ – and many organisations are already recognising that significant efficiencies can be made in the datacentre.

Professor Andy Hopper, head of the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory, says computers need not have a negative effect on the environment. “Datacentres and server farms play an important role in the modern information infrastructure,” he says.

“They provide highly available web sites for users, support day-to-day business processes, and execute offline jobs such as indexing and backup. However, ever-increasing amounts of energy are being consumed to keep them running, and researchers have found that there is only a minor energy reduction when reading the news online as opposed to buying a newspaper.”

The need for faster processing and smaller systems, combined with increased energy costs and heightened global awareness regarding greenhouse gas emissions, have made managing power, cooling, space and carbon dioxide a major priority for organisations running their own datacentres.

Cardiff University has recently invested £3m in an advanced datacentre environment to support one of the UK’s most powerful new supercomputers within strict energy efficiency parameters. Hugh Beedie, chief technology officer for the university, says the infrastructure operates in line with an overall commitment to environmental sustainability.

To achieve this, the tender process specified that the supporting datacentre environment takes full advantage of available technologies and techniques to minimise energy consumption.

“We have energy-efficient quad-core processors, larger common power supplies, the first of a new generation of UPS with 98 per cent efficiency and very expensive cooling systems that cool the hot air straight out of the servers,” says Beedie.

In addition, the university has specified power metering everywhere in the new datacentre to identify excess use. “Our old datacentre is currently being retrofitted with power meters, so I should be able to prove from the first month the economies achieved by the new one,” says Beedie.

With energy costs on his older datacentre running at about £300,000 a year, of which cooling accounts for a third, there are plenty of potential savings to be made. Virtualisation is another key word in the green IT vocabulary, with a recent report to the US Congress claiming five-fold savings can be made in energy terms.

Graham Elliot, infrastructure services manager at Allied Irish Bank, has recently been involved in a project to migrate its datacentre out of the bank headquarters to a new location to the north of Dublin.

“Moving into the new datacentre was an opportunity to remove all the legacy hardware,” says Elliot. “We looked at virtualisation as a smarter way of doing things, plus there were improvements in availability, disaster recovery and business continuity.”

The bank has virtualised 220 servers, decommissioned 200 production servers, removed the need for another 200 business continuity servers and calculates the strategy will save 3,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year, the equivalent of 665 1.8 litre diesel engine cars.

The adoption of virtualisation can dramatically reduce power consumption, simply by decreasing the number of physical machines and their associated cooling requirements. And while virtual machines tend to use bigger servers with more memory, disks and power consumption, the overall savings can be significant.

“Taking into account staff time, energy differences and licensing costs, we calculate that the potential savings for consolidating 36 of our servers into virtual systems will be in the region of £53,000 a year,” says UWCC’s Beedie. “That’s a saving of almost £1,500 per server.”

Virtualisation takes server utilisation up from about 20 per cent to more than 80 per cent and, even taking into account the added power and cooling requirements, it still offers better value than using smaller dedicated servers.

While intelligent buildings, unified communications and remote working can all add to the energy efficiency of an organisation, one of the easiest ways to save money is to turn off all redundant IT equipment.

Jim Houghton, former vice president of corporate investment bank Wachovia and chief technology officer of consultancy Adaptivity, says an understanding of what you have ­ – and how much of it is being used ­ – is really important. “Most companies have thousands of physical infrastructure boxes and they have lost track of what is actually on the floor and plugged in,” he says.

“A typical datacentre costs about $1.5m (£762,000) a year to run, and good design may drop 20 per cent off the bottom line. However, finding 200 obsolete servers and turning them off could save a good deal more.”

When Wachovia consolidated and optimised its IT resources as part of a wider corporate effectiveness initiative, one of the first tasks the firm undertook was an audit of its technology, and a measurement of its use.

“We thought we had already removed a lot of the wastage and unused systems,” says Houghton. “Quite late in the project we employed Tideway’s dependency mapping software, and on its initial scan of 3,000 servers we found another 90 redundant machines.”

Energy costs, climate change and social responsibility are now big strategic drivers within organisations, with IT being viewed as the enabler for conducting business in an environmentally-friendly manner.

The good news is that there are environmental and strategic, as well as commercial, advantages to adopting a green approach.

“The big message is that there is money to be saved,” says Beedie.

“Going green actually saves money. However, to win you have to take a holistic approach and if you can’t buy kit with a contractual commitment to levels of efficiency then you have to start measuring it yourself. Measuring gives you the confidence that you really do know what you are doing.”

Next week: The second part of our definitive guide to green computing looks at how UK businesses are reducing carbon emissions

Five startups to watch out for

OpenEco.org
For free, easy-to-use tools that help users assess, track and compare energy performance, OpenEco is a global online community formed to encourage sustainable innovation and share proven best practices in reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The energy performance calculator is a useful tool for organisations of all sizes.
www.openeco.org

VSR2
Coming to a desktop near you soon; your very own real-time display of carbon emissions and energy consumption. VSR2 produces display software for companies to demonstrate Kw per hour and CO2 savings to their customers, staff and investors. Designed in collaboration with Verdiem, the Corporate Environmental Emissions Display shows clear evidence of the amount of energy and carbon dioxide being used within a company and will track any savings.
www.vsr2.com

HelioVolt
Aiming to bring solar technology to the mass market, HelioVolt is designing a thin film solar capture system, known as photovoltaics. The technology can be built into building materials and architectural modules – everything from roofing tiles to sunshades and skylights.
www.heliovolt.com

Secure IT Disposals
The disposal of redundant computer equipment falls under a mountain of UK and European legislation, and companies have a legal duty to ensure equipment is disposed of in an approved manner. Hence the need for companies such as Secure IT Disposals, which promises a flexible recycling service for old equipment, fulfilling legal duties under the Environmental Protection Act and the Data Protection Act.
www.sitd.co.uk

Rackable Systems
The ICE Cube is the modular, fully portable datacentre in a box from Rackable Systems. The 8ft wide container is available in lengths of 20ft or 40ft and has been designed to replace or augment existing datacentre capacity. Promising 20 per cent greater component density, Rackable claims its novel cooling technology can reduce power costs by up to 80 per cent compared with a traditionally cooled datacentre.
www.rackable.com

Top tips for greening your IT

Christopher Mines, Forrester Research

Many IT leaders are addressing the energy use and environmental impact of their firm’s computing operations, seeking to reduce costs, improve efficiency and align with corporate green initiatives.

In Forrester’s work with enterprise IT practitioners, we find a high level of awareness about issues such as energy efficiency and recycling, but a lower level of activity. Many companies ask how they should start their green IT initiatives. We have identified five overarching best practices for companies to begin or accelerate their green computing programmes.

Create an action plan
Green IT is not just a technology challenge. Changing operational processes – and people’s behaviour – is just as important as implementing new hardware and software. We recommend IT organisations create a comprehensive action plan for implementing green IT initiatives, and that the plan starts with process changes. Start, for example, by reflecting environmental metrics and goals in employee incentive plans – and identify quick wins for green IT through employee engagement and brainstorming sessions.

Get aligned with operations
The myth is that green is more expensive; the reality is that companies can simultaneously improve their environmental posture and the bottom line. Reducing electricity consumption is the clearest example. By consolidating IT equipment and improving the efficiency of servers, storage and related power and cooling equipment, IT organisations can cut their energy bills and shrink their firm’s carbon footprint. To do so the operations organisation, which typically owns the electric bill, must be on board for a plan to invest in energy efficiency.

Enlist help from finance
The finance department can help IT and facilities blend the capital investments and operating expenses involved in such a plan, taking a total lifecycle view of IT investments. Increase green procurement We are especially keen on changing procurement criteria, which will affect not only the firm’s IT infrastructure, but also the design and manufacturing processes of the computing manufacturers. When it comes to the internal operations of their suppliers, sourcing professionals should add and enforce criteria that specify energy efficiency, recycling and greener behaviour.

Look beyond IT
As companies plan their green computing activities, there are plenty of directions to pursue, including optimisation of existing equipment and the revamping of overall system design. But leaders should be encouraged to think about how IT can enable greener business practices across the organisation. In many firms, IT is leading by implementing systems such as videoconferencing, collaboration systems and automation technologies. By tackling such areas, IT leaders can move technology from a reactive cost centre to a proactive strategy contributor.

Five green computing approaches to consider

Power monitoring systems
Historically, no one bothered to measure the power consumption of IT equipment and datacentres because power was cheap and the bill usually went to the facilities department. Expect to see power monitoring and management rise to the top of the agenda, with large financial as well as carbon savings to be made for more economic use of power. Cost-effective power monitoring systems start from £10 for a single computer to tens of thousands for a comprehensive datacentre system. However, the payback time can be swift.

Virtualisation
Despite the added costs for licences and management time, virtualisation is a great green initiative as well as cost saver. Running one high-performance server at optimum capacity takes far less energy than operating five or six older servers at partial capacity. Taking average server utilisation up from 15-20 per cent to more than 80 per cent, virtualisation is efficient in energy terms as well as delivering improved performance for users. Overnight when systems are often underused, you can even shuffle your virtual machines onto fewer servers and turn the rest off for further savings.

Unified communications
Combining unified communications with thin-client virtual desktops has the potential to save hours of commuter time and litres of fuel. By incorporating IT and telephony into one thin-client device and removing the need for multiple devices, organisations can reduce power consumption and costs. Chris Hanson, sales director at Computacenter, has already reduced his annual business mileage from 40,000 to 6,000 miles by installing interactive whiteboards and using data conferencing to replace shorter meetings. Imagine the potential savings if we all followed suit.

Informed purchasing
With the likelihood of government legislation on the carbon emitted during the production, distribution, usage and disposal of goods, there is going to be a need for much more discerning purchasing policies. Purchasers are going to be asking their suppliers key questions about sustainable business, carbon dioxide emissions and environmental impact – and they will expect answers. Vendors are going to have to set out their green credentials in a way that will meet the procurement processes of large organisations and the public sector, demonstrating how they will add to the sustainability of their customers’ business.

Datacentre in a box
Stuffing all your customised datacentre components in a shipping container and parking it next to your building ready to be plugged in, is one of the cheapest, fastest and greenest ways of implementing a new datacentre. These “lights-out” boxes need no permanent human occupation and can therefore be run hotter, or cooler, than a purpose-built datacentre. Guaranteeing to be 20 per cent more efficient in power and cooling terms, these containers also claim to reduce initial outlay costs by up to 90 per cent compared with a traditional datacentre.