March 1 2008 by Sreekanth Sastry

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From The Editor-in-Chief

Global Warming. Climate Change. Emission Norms. Carbon Credits. Power

Computing’s Changing Color Over time the returns of greening your operations are going to be sweet.

Bills. A few of the terms that CIOs are increasingly going to face. And with these come the scary statistics. Sample these for instance: the power consumed by fans and other cooling components already accounts for 60 to 70 percent of the total energy consumption in the data centre; India annually generates an estimated 146,180 tonnes of e-waste; and, an office setup with 15 PCs puts out roughly that same amount of carbon emissions as a mid-size car each year. Makes you take notice and think a bit, huh? The biggest problem is one of power. All the sexiest, most powerful servers, desktops and switches are but a pile of junk without electricity flowing through them. Of course, once powered up, it takes more electricity to cool systems Going green allows you to optimal working temperatures. to not only increase This should be of critical concern the efficiency of IT since the bulk of power generation in infrastructure but also India is courtesy the dirtiest and most helps reduce opex. polluting of fuels: coal. And backup power typically uses diesel, emissions of which are eminently carcinogenic. So the issue is one of reducing energy consumption while maintaining computing output. And, mind you, this is going to become an environmental imperative, as well as an economic necessity. As Prof. P.D. Jose of IIM-Bangalore puts it: “It’s better to fix things now than when mandated by regulation.” The good thing is that by going green, you can increase the efficiency of IT infrastructure and save on opex as well. The caveat is that pioneering a green initiative isn’t exactly an easy task. It’ll come with its share of naysayers, mindset issues and a price tag. Some things you’re going to be able to fix on the cheap, but there are going to be a few that will be about a ‘rip-and-replace’ that will cause you to tarry a bit before going to the boardroom brass for a sign off. Another thing to bear in mind is that though the returns are likely to be sweet, not all green projects will pay off in the short run (if you look at only monetary considerations). What we’re attempting to do with this special issue, its companion site and the Green Edge Exchange event is to offer you options to go green with as little pain as possible. Let me know what you think about this initiative.

Vijay Ramachandran Editor-in-Chief vijay_r@cio.in

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content MARCH 1 2008‑ | ‑VOl/3‑ | ‑ISSuE/08

Features

40 I Your Green IT Starter Kit Green IT is coming and if you still aren’t sure of what it is we can help in 12 questions. Feature by Katherine Walsh

Smart CIOs are using virtualization for much more than data center consolidation. It’s also helping them reduce power and space requirements. See how. Feature by Thomas Wailgum

50 I Face the Heat

75 I Cool Rules for Hot Computing

It’s time CIOs focused on creating an environmentally-friendly IT strategy. Feature by Sue Bushell

58 I Benefits From the Hardware Mess I P hOTO by SrIVATSA ShAnDIlyA

IDC says only 33 percent of companies use asset disposal – despite its multiple benefits. Feature by Leon Erlanger

64 I Facilities Get Greener

COVEr: DESIG n by An Il T

Automated control systems send vital data over IP-based networks, making facilities smarter and more energy efficient. Feature by Mary Brandel

66 I More Bytes, Fewer Watts Customers and vendors are scrambling to store more kilobytes with fewer kilowatts. Feature by Robert L. Scheier

70 I Virtual Possibilities

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Designing a new data center or retrofitting an old one to be greener is a complex process, but our six ideas will get you started in the right direction. Feature by John E. West

Photo Feature

32 I On the Green Edge

See how Indian CIOs came together to support CIO’s green initiative.

50 70

content

(cont.) departments Trendlines | 11 Telecommuting | Move Data, Not People Quick Take | Navin Chadha on Green Data Centers Voices | What Are the Benefits of E-Waste

Essential Technology | 80 Infrastructure | Getting Green Out of the Data Center Feature by Robert L. Mitchell Pundit | The Green Two-Step Column by Howard Rubin

From the Editor-in-Chief | 2 Computing’s Changing Color

By Vijay Ramachandran

NOW ONLINE For more opinions, features, analyses and updates, log on to our companion website and discover content designed to help you and your organization deploy IT strategically. Go to www.cio.in

c o.in

Expert View getting Serious About green | 26 P.D. Jose, associate professor (corporate strategy and policy), IIM Bangalore, says that companies should leverage the power of eco-efficient technology in chip and hardware if they want to go green. But, before that, CIOs need to answer one question: do you need a datacenter at all?

2 0

Interview by Balaji Narasimhan

Executive Decisions It’s Not Easy Being Green | 20 Are green IT issues an example of the tail wagging the dog, or is there something real going on here? Column by Steve Duplessie

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Advertiser Index Ma nagement

Publisher & editor N. Bringi Dev

CEO Louis D’Mello Editor ia l

ADC Krone

43, 44, 45, 46 & 49

Intel

AMD

Interface

APC

Microsoft

IFC & 19

Editor-IN-CHIEF Vijay Ramachandran

assistant editors Balaji Narasimhan

Gunjan Trivedi

Special Correspondent Kanika Goswami

Chief COPY EDITOR Sunil Shah

Avaya

4&5

Oracle

Ricoh

Copy Editor Shardha Subramanian

Des ign & Production

BEA Systems

52 & 53

Creative Director Jayan K Narayanan

SENIOR Designers Binesh Sreedharan

D-Link

SAS

Seagate

VSNL

Vikas Kapoor, Anil V.K Jinan K. Vijayan, Jithesh C.C Unnikrishnan A.V, Suresh Nair

Emerson

31 & BC

Designers MM Shanith, Anil T

PC Anoop, Prasanth T.R

Esys

Vinoj K.N, Siju P

MULTIMEDIA Designers Girish A.V, Sani Mani

Photography Srivatsa Shandilya

Production T.K. Karunakaran

T.K. Jayadeep

Mark eting a nd Sa l es VP Sales (Print) Naveen Chand Singh VP Sales (Events) Sudhir Kamath brand Manager Alok Anand Sukanya Saikia Marketing Siddharth Singh, Priyanka Patrao, Disha Gaur Bangalore Mahantesh Godi Santosh Malleswara Ashish Kumar, Chetna Mehta, B.N Raghavendra, Delhi Pranav Saran, Saurabh Jain, Rajesh Kandari, Gagandeep Kaiser Mumbai Parul Singh, Rishi Kapoor,Pradeep Nair, Hafeez Shaikh Japan Tomoko Fujikawa USA Larry Arthur; Jo Ben-Atar Events VP Rupesh Sreedharan Managers Ajay Adhikari, Chetan Acharya Pooja Chhabra

HP IBM

7 & IBC 29, 36 & 37

This index is provided as an additional service. The publisher does not assume any liabilities for errors or omissions.

Form IV Statement of ownership and other particulars about the magazine Real CIO World, as required to be published under Section 19-D Subsection (b) of the Press and Registration of Books Act read with Rule 8 of the Registration of Newspapers (Central) Rules) 1956. Place of Publication: Periodicity of publication: Printer Name: Nationality: Address: Publisher Name: Nationality: Address: Editor Name: Nationality: Address:

10th Floor, Vayudooth Chambers 15-16 MG Road, Bangalore 560001 Fortnightly N Bringi Dev Indian 10th Floor, Vayudooth Chambers 15-16 MG Road, Bangalore 560001 N Bringi Dev Indian 10th Floor, Vayudooth Chambers 15-16 MG Road, Bangalore 560001 Vijay Ramachandran Indian 10th Floor, Vayudooth Chambers 15-16 MG Road, Bangalore 560001

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Printed and Published by N Bringi Dev on behalf of IDG Media Private Limited, 10th Floor, Vayudooth Chambers, 15–16, Mahatma Gandhi Road, Bangalore 560 001, India. Editor: N. Bringi Dev. Printed at Rajhans Enterprises, No. 134, 4th Main Road, Industrial Town, Rajajinagar, Bangalore 560 044, India

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new

hot

unexpected

Move Data, Not People By rotating teleworkers into the office on different days of the week, Cox has cut computer equipment and cubicle space needs and avoided a building expansion. Employees benefit, too: in an era of 3 dollars-a-gallon gasoline, they like the voluntary program because it saves four commutes each week and takes several hundred cars off the roads each day. "It's been quite impressive from a cost perspective [and] what it does for the environment," Nelson says. Terremark Worldwide's hosting business requires lots of travel, including frequent trips between its main offices and its hosted data center facilities two hours away. But it recently deployed videoconferencing systems from Tandberg ASA to tie together conference rooms in those facilities.

"It helped us avoid about 20 percent of the travel we were doing before," says George Bandin, vice president of information systems and technology. "Just within our own facilities, it's a huge savings in fuel and time." —By Robert L. Mitchell

IllUStratIoN N by Pc aNooP

T e l e c o m m u T i n g A green office is about more than using energyefficient equipment. Applying IT to support telework and teleconferencing can make both people and businesses more efficient. Several hundred call center employees at Cox Communications recently began working from home four out of five days each week. Using a browser and their own home computers, remote staffers access a suite of applications hosted on a Citrix Presentation Server back end. Call center workers download a browser plug-in and then authenticate to the system. "We can present the entire environment to any computer anywhere. We even stream content to employees for staff meetings," says Josh Nelson, vice president of information and network technology.

Quick take

Navin Chadha on Greening the Data Center Studies have shown that the amount of power IT consumes results in carbon dioxide emissions that rival the airline industry. Gunjan Trivedi asked Navin Chadha, CIO of Tata Teleservices, how CIOs can do less damage.

green iT

How do you balance between increasing a data center’s energy efficiency and maintaining high availability? In the telecom space, it’s hard to keep pace with the business as we keep running out of our data center space. But we still try to reduce the number of data centers by consolidating many into a few key locations. We have expanded our key data centers to adequately address the requirements of an ever-growing business and yet stay energy efficient.

How green are you and what green IT best practices do you conform to in your data center? We don’t limit our initiatives to our data centers. We have sophisticated motion sensors deployed across our offices. We follow a 3R policy: reduce, reuse and recycle. We maintain — as far as possible — a paperless office and encourage users to print duplex. We have a large-scale blade server deployment to save on power and space. We have moved from singlecore to multi-core processors. We procure servers with low voltage CPUs and low wattage storage devices, low energy consuming desktops and laser printers with green functionalities. Navin Chadha Vol/3 | ISSUE/08

What can a CIO do to help the green IT movement and what are the impediments? CIOs can definitely do a better job of promoting green IT. We, as CIOs, should make our teams energy conscious and strive to propagate the concept among our users. But the speed of execution to meet the business requirements can hamper a green IT push. So, CIOs should plan implementations out well if they want to promote green IT. REAL CIO WORLD | M A R C H 1 , 2 0 0 8

What are the benefits of an e-waste management program? An estimated 75 percent of used electronic devices are not thrown away because organizations are unsure of how to do so. How can enterprises benefit from an e-waste management program? Kanika Goswami spoke to some of your peers and this is what they had to say:

H a r d wa r e D i s p o s a l

“We believe in an environment friendly policy. By using recycling vendors we ensure that e-waste doesn’t add to pollution. After hardware disposal software, licences are reused.” trendlines

Shridhar Rane Head of Technology, Barclays

“If there is a structured program for e-waste management, we would be very principled about e-waste disposal. We would have taken full advantage of deploying it in e-waste areas.” Annie Mathew Group Head-IT, Mother Dairy

“Due to the lack of governmental legislations on e-waste standards for disposal, these toxic hi-tech products mostly end up in landfills or are just dumped. India needs simpler, low cost technology to get maximum resource recovery through environmentally friendly methodologies.”

Deepak Sharma

Lend Your

Joint Director, Department of IT

Voice

Supercomputer: Back to the Future

To try to assess global warming's impact on the environment and see if the world faces an abrupt climate change, Zhengyu Liu, director of the Center for Climatic Research at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, is turning to supercomputing technology. Liu using a supercomputer made by Cray to run a continuous simulation of climate changes over the past 21,000 years, a span that reaches back to distant ice ages. To prove what will happen in the future, Liu said he first must be certain of the past. That means running his computer simulations backward in time to see if they can accurately model past climatic events. If the models do provide an accurate mirror of climate history, then they can be used to predict the impact of increasing atmospheric greenhouse gases on the planet, he said. The work isn't just an academic exercise for Liu. "What is most urgent — what we want to know is, 'Can the model produce some abrupt climate change event,'" he said. By abrupt, Liu said he means an event that could occur within someone's lifetime, such as a vegetation collapse in part of the world similar to one that took place in Africa about 5,000 years ago, when trees there suddenly died. "Abrupt change can happen," he said. But current computer models don't look at the planet's climate as a continuous unfolding event, and that keeps researchers from connecting different points in time to understand how climatic events connect. To run his models, Liu recently was awarded time on a Cray system at the US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The Cray machine is based on dual-core versions of Advanced Micro Devices' Opteron processor, with about 11,000 processor cores. Liu was given nearly 420,000 hours of processing time this year alone, for use as part of a multiyear project that began last year. Liu's work underscores the importance that supercomputing has in climate change research. The models used to determine the impact of industrial gases are very complex and require enormous computing resources. And the work required to effectively utilize large supercomputers still has a long way to go, according to Liu and other researchers. But already, climate research applications are increasing the demand for high-performance systems. By 2010, IDC expects annual worldwide spending on supercomputers used solely for climate research to reach nearly Rs 2000 crore, up from Rs 684 crore in 2000.

Intelligence

—By Patrick Thibodeau

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CIA Goes Green

Fro r m the roof to the Dra ro r in ra

Trendlines

F a c i l i T i e s The Central Intelligence Agency said it is making its new campus buildings energy-efficient and pleasant places to work, with offices that have outdoor views, lots of fresh air and preferred parking for carpoolers. The CIA is adopting green building designs and technology in its new campus facilities in northern Virginia. The end result is a campus that may be more corporate than spy novel, starting with the roof. The building will have a so-called green roof, with about 22,000 square feet of vegetation. Green roofs are designed to help buildings use less energy for heating and cooling. The agency said it will cut energy consumption 21 percent by using technologies such as occupancy sensors and energy-efficient appliances and equipment. The project also addresses the quality of the indoor environment. "The CIA has taken great care in creating a comfortable

workplace that fosters efficiency and collaboration while respecting our natural resources," said Camille Hersh, chief of the CIA's facilities, in a statement. The indoor improvements include 60 percent more fresh air than standard buildings, carbon dioxide monitors that will provide fresh air when necessary, individual lighting controls and extensive outdoor views. The agency said the use of watersaving technologies will result in 40 percent savings in potable water. Those efforts include the installation of lowflow toilets and waterless urinals. In waterless urinals, fluid passes through a cartridge to the drain, with no flushing required. The agency said the energy-efficient and environmentally friendly building designs have earned it recognition from the US Green Building Council, including silver and gold certificates

in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design rating system. The CIA's green roof project is large but not among the largest, according to Nate Johnson, a green roof consultant at Roofscapes. Wal-Mart Stores, for instance, built a store in Chicago that has approximately 75,000 square feet of green roofing. Johnson said it's difficult to know how much energy efficiency the CIA will get from its green roof installation, because it would depend on the size of the building and its height. Single-story buildings or buildings of only a few stories get more benefit than higher buildings with smaller roofs. Green roof technology has been in use for decades in Europe and is just beginning to catch on in America, he said. CIA officials weren't immediately available for additional comment on the green building plans. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;By Patrick Thibodeau

How Green are your Electronics? Greenpeace, the environmental advocacy group, ranks leading electronic manufacturers on their efforts to eliminate toxic and noxious substances from their products and their efforts to be environmentally responsible.

the tOp thREE greenest companies, according to the most recent rankings, are:

Sony Ericsson

Samsung

Sony

#3 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; by al Sacco

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B Y S c o tt B e r i n a t o

Cleaning Up After You

trendlines

The hardest thing to do with a computer isn’t buying it or setting it up or using it or fixing it. The hardest thing is throwing it away. To dispose off just one PC without exposing sensitive personal or corporate data, without running a foul of environmental regulations and without wasting what can be reused requires planning and time and, yes, money. And that’s just one PC. According to the International Association of Electronics Recyclers, about 100 million pieces of computer equipment a year are being added to the massive heap of e-waste. By 2010 that heap will contain 1 billion units of computer equipment. An estimated 30,000 computers become obsolete every year from the IT industry in Bangalore alone. Out of all that junk, only 40 million CPUs, monitors and printers annually are properly ‘de-manufactured’ to safely dispose of the hazardous waste encased inside and to recycle the reusable materials. Every computer contains more than 30 elements, many of them highly toxic. According to Infotrek Syscom, an e-waste management and recycling company in Bangalore, e-waste accounts for 40 percent of the lead and 75 percent of the heavy metals found in landfills. Fortunately, the deconstructing computers business is booming. The business of throwing away computers is growing faster than the market for buying them. For CIOs, it’s time to create a plan for safely disposing off their computers. Most companies don’t have this kind of plan. Heck, most companies don’t even know where their old computers are. Recyclers talk about discovering thousands of machines that no one knew even existed, piled up in closets. Out of sight, out of mind. Maybe junking those old machines is something you’ve been meaning to get around to. Maybe it’s on your to-do list but way down. Maybe it’s time to pay attention.

Best Practices 1.Find Them.Before you get rid of a computer, you have to find it. Then you need to sort them: redeployment, resale, donation, chopped up for parts or chopped up for recycling. 2.Device a plan. As computers surface the CIO and the disposition company should build a reverse logistics plan. Bold CIOs will create a repeatable disposition process. 3.Hard drives must be wiped. This is not optional. The risk of not wiping drives — the potential liability if sensitive information gets out — easily justifies the cost of doing it. 4.Reward Time. After their disks have been wiped, computers head off in various directions. Some get a light dusting and a technical refresh and are shot off to the secondary market for resale. —S.B.

Weight of Waste What 5,000 computers contain.

Sil

ica

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Pla ton

sti c

Iro 40

ton

Alu

5t on

Zin Le Nic Tin ad c3 ke 1 . 7 1 l 1. nu .5 t 5t 0.5 r 12 75 o m o ton ns .25 ns ton 24 s .5 t ton s on s s

Co p

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New Mobile Chip

Trendlines

c o m p o n e n T s Researchers at MIT have created a new chip design that they claim will be 10 times more energy efficient than the processors currently used in mobile devices. The new design, which was unveiled at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco, is intended for use in portable electronics, such as mobile phones, PDAs and even implantable medical devices. The key to the improved energy efficiency lies in making the planned chips work at a reduced voltage level,

according to a report by Joyce Kwong, a graduate student in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a member of the chip design project team. Most of the mobile processors now in use operate at about 1 volt, according to Kwong's report. But MIT's new design only requires 0.3 volts, the report said. "Voltage is critical," said Jim McGregor, an analyst at In-Stat. "All these handheld devices are being asked to do more and more. To be able to decrease voltage, lets you increase silicon complexity to handle more functions, and it also increases battery life, which is a critical component in multiple applications." Dean McCarron, president of Mercury Research, noted that in the 1960s and early 1970s, an average computer chip used about 12 volts. Ten years ago, that

was down to 5 volts, and it only dropped down to 1 to 2 volts within the past three years, he said. "Lowering voltage is actually the standard for lowering system power," said McCarron. "The challenge is that when voltage gets to a certain level, generally around 0.8 to 0.9 volts, making the chip work becomes more difficult." Kwong's report said that the new chip design is in the proof-of-concept stage, with researchers at MIT predicting that it could become available in five years, maybe even sooner. The MIT researchers worked on the chip design project along with a team from Texas Instruments. The project was funded in part by a grant from the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;By Sharon Gaudin

A Green Datacenter Strategy - Have none s a a s We've all heard of the fab-less computer company: now here is the datacentre-less computer company; Sun in this instance. Sun intends to operate without a single data centre by 2015. that's the somewhat incredible vision described, in a sign of the times, in a blog post by brian cinque, who is a data centre architect at Sun Microsystems. Sun's It cto, John Dutra confirmed the vision although not the 2015 goal, in a Forbes interview. Dutra said that Sun will eliminate five of its eight data centres by 2013 with the remaining three going sometime after that. Sun intends to operate entirely on a SaaS model. the answer to datacentre green house gas emissions, ever-increasing electricity prices, and data centre operating burdens is to do away with them. Stop treating a datacentre as an in-house DIy y activity and rent computing power over the grid, having applications run 'in the cloud'. Nicholas carr, author of the big ig Switch, a book on utility computing published earlier this year, which says that exactly this shift in It is happening, said: 'this is a very real sign of the shift from the private data center to the public grid for computing. It means that Sun expects the utility computing grid will be mature enough by 2015 to handle any type of

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software that the company runs.' by 2013, Sun will cut in half the total power needed by data centres today through a consolidation exercise, moving from eight to just three centres. He writes: 'Sun will move in an evolutionary manner from several generations of infrastructure, both technology and processes, to a model that is far more efficient with enabling factors like technology and It governance-like processes. as Sun reduces datacentres due to higher utilisation functionality, there will be a point proven by metrics, that Sun can only become so efficient. at that point Sun must progress from a Soa to more of a SaaS.' Why do this? reduced It costs due to a major reduction in data centre space, power, and cooling requirements. reduced It costs and decreased time to implement projects due to a reduction in operations complexity for the datacentre staff. compliance with Datacentre audit finding. a transition to an 'evolutionary change' infrastructure management style. alignment with application, security, business systems agent architectures. â&#x20AC;&#x201D; by chris Mellor

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IllUStratI oN by V INoJ K.N

Will boost Energy Efficiency

Steve Duplessie

ExEcutivE DEciSionS

It's Not Easy Being Green Are green IT issues an example of the tail wagging the dog, or is there something real going on here?

IllUST rATIon by pc An oo p

t doesn't matter if you are Warren Buffet or Bill Gates, you can't buy any more power in the cities of Boston or Houston. Other cities are either on the tapped-out list or about to be. That's a pretty harsh reality. I remain one of the people who is an eco-problem generator. I don't do it intentionally, I just have one of those lives: 87 kids = big giant vehicles and a house with lots of lights left on constantly. I make myself feel better by separating the cardboard and paper from the trash. You know the type. We all know that every data center in a restricted environment, such as the uber-expensive Canary Wharf in London, is facing very real limits and will have to do something radical and most assuredly expensive to deal those restrictions. It isn't as simple as just packing up and moving down the road. A new data center costs hundreds of millions of dollars and takes years to build. Cutting over to that new data center can take just as long. And the demands placed on the data center and its operations are growing. I was recently told that a power company in Boston will write you a $4 million dollar check (Rs 16 crore) if you break ground for a new data center â&#x20AC;&#x201D; outside the city. Green isn't just about building disk arrays out of reusable tin foil or switches that contain 30 percent animal waste. Green is about how efficiently IT gear uses space, directs air flow, how it is managed. It's a measure of 'usability' if nothing else. If you have no more room, you need to rip out big things and put in small things. If you have no more power, you need to rip out inefficient things and replace them with more efficient things â&#x20AC;&#x201D; remembering that whatever metric you are measuring (such as I/O, server cores, ports or throughput) is growing, not shrinking.

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Steve Duplessie

ExEcutivE DEciSionS

Ripping out 100 square feet of servers and replacing them with four square feet of blade servers with equivalent processing power is great unless the heat generated in the micropackage causes a meltdown in that area of the data center. I have had conversations with real people who won't buy blade servers for just that reason. Density equals heat, and heat equals hot spots, which require cooling and humidification and airflow consideration. It also doesn't make sense to replace a giant disk array that is an inefficient consumer of power with a more efficient array of similar capacity if the new one doesn't perform to the levels required because you'll just end up adding twice as much processing power and end up right back at the same problem. All this leads me to the next issue. In my quest for understanding all things green and IT, I have discovered that technology products might be the worst overall abusers of energy. Tech is all about making things smaller and therefore faster, and jamming smaller, faster things into ever shrinking packages. Each time we do that, we make things that suck more power per square inch and generate more heat. Coal burning might be bad for the ozone, but at least the process extracts and redirects the most amount of energy possible. We burn coal to create heat, which is used to generate electricity. A byproduct of that process creates steam and heat, which are exhausted as emissions. While the steam is heading up the chimney, the heat is again used to generate yet more electricity in another way. At the end of the process, the emissions (while arguably dirty and bad) are at least much cooler because the heat generated by the whole thing has been turned into electricity. In our data center (or living room), the gizmos that suck power perform their designed task of processing, but the heat that is released during that process is dissipated into the air, and we don't get any value out of that at all. As a matter of fact, we experience a negative impact — we have to buy more power to cool things and redirect air. Another interesting point to contemplate: we all run around thinking power costs us so per kilowatt-hour. That is true for your house, but not necessarily true for a data center. By the time you consider that there may be multiple concurrent power grids running in parallel to a shop, through heavily conditioned power-manicuring systems, through multiple diesel-powered generation backup systems, that amount is probably multiplied by 100. That's a big spread. I contend that the overwhelming majority of data centers contain infrastructure products that were all designed for a different era. Commercial computing has its roots in transactional systems, and those systems have been where all the 'green' is spent. The business was run on systems designed to process, house, and protect ever-increasing transaction rates. Big iron is where we came from, and today big iron is still at the design core of what we buy. It is only logical that vendors that won with

big iron would try to repackage its elements as the world slowly changed. Mainframes became modular Unix boxes. Single-frame arrays became modular arrays. Vendors cut up their big boxes into cheaper smaller boxes because that's what we wanted -- and now we are stuffed to the gills with them. There is no difference between a 'monolithic' disk system and a 'modular' disk system — other than the add-on components and cost of entry are smaller. Both have a beginning and an end. The primary difference is marketing. What we need is smarter packaging that deals with the new realities. The overwhelming

For the next five to 10 years, green is going to be a very big topic because of the true green motivations: the business implications, not the environment.

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majority of data we create and have today is not dynamic, it's fixed. It doesn't change. It isn't transactional. We don't need the same levels of performance, availability, etcetera. This is why it is inevitable that technologies such as MAID (massive array of idle disks) or data de-duplication are not flash in the pans — they help the green factor, but more importantly, they address the business reality factor. If we didn't shove all our data into transactional systems, we wouldn't need to keep adding bigger and bigger hardware, which leads to higher and higher software costs. If we used things more efficiently and matched the realities of our new world to the infrastructure that is available to us, we would never make the decisions we do. This is why VMware is kicking butt — not because you can get PG&E credits for using it (you can, I swear), but because the reality of IT is that we don't need a million new boxes; we need to act like we have a million boxes but manage a hundred. It's simple business. For the next five to 10 years, this is going to be a very big topic because of the true green motivations: the business implications, not the environment. Sure, folks will say they care about the spotted owls, but they really care about the bucks. Until now, if you could throw money at the problem, you didn't have to actually manage things. Now folks are going to have to demand more of the IT industry. This could well be the biggest inflection point in tech history — a perfect storm where we can't solve our problems by throwing money at them, which means there is a big opportunity for forwardthinking folks to completely turn a long-standing industry right on it's head. CIO

Steve Duplessie is the founder of the Enterprise Strategy Group and is ranked as one of the most influential IT analysts. Send feedback on this feature to editor@cio.in

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Not so curiously, IT has a fundamental part to play in achieving this objective. For one, information technology is a key driver and differentiator in top-tier organizations. And then there’s the fact that IT’s been a fairly reckless consumer of energy and resources. Specially of energy, since it’s a fair indicator of the rapid growth our economy is witnessing. Till recently, the IT industry has focused on increasing processing power, improving throughput and beefing up storage capacity. The amount of power consumed in the process hasn’t been stressed. One of IT’s mandates is to make organizations more productive, and to reduce operating cost. To do more with less, so to speak. That’s what keeps organizations competitive. Moving forward, CIOs will have to learn to use less electricity and utilize sustainable computing to prune costs. This will require both major and minor changes in IT policies as well as user behaviour. The recent CIO Green Edge Exchange event showed that many Indian CIOs decidedly tilt toward being environmentally-friendly. Unsurprisingly, their motives were just as decidedly rooted in pragmatism. Although it was great that consolidation was helping the environment, it also made maintenance easier and reduced operating expenses. The same held true for virtualization, TFT displays, closecoupled cooling, duplex printing, and e-waste management. Do you want to leave the planet a better place for your kids? Do you want your department to score brownie points in cutting costs intelligently? Do you want to future-proof your IT infrastructure? And as with all things that require you to change hearts and minds, start with yourself. Do as Mahatma Gandhi did — 'Be the change you wish to see.'

over the pages of this issue you’ll see the myriad ways in which you can indeed make the difference.

go green!

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im aging by unnikri Shnan av

It Is beCOmInG mOre ImpOrtAnt for organizations to conduct their business in a manner that’s environmentally responsible — to enhance brand equity, while meeting moral (and sometimes legal) requirements.

P.D. Jose, associate professor (corporate strategy and policy), IIM Bangalore, says that with energy costs spiraling, conservation needs to be on top of a CIOâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s agenda.

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expert View | P.D. Jose

Getting Serious About Green By Balaji NarasimhaN

P.D. Jose, associate professor (corporate strategy and policy), IIM Bangalore, says that companies should leverage the power of eco-efficient technology in chip and hardware if they want to go green. But, before that, CIOs need to answer one question: do you need a datacenter at all? CIO: What is the general feeling among Indian companies about going green? P.D. JOse: Traditionally, the Indian

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industry has not seen greening as a source of competitive advantage. There have been energy conservation initiatives and measures to restrict pollution but these were more in the way of capturing the low hanging fruit. There are honorable exceptions of course, but these are few. Further, environmental mitigation measures were seen more as a cost of doing business and a way of avoiding legal problems. Fortunately this is changing now â&#x20AC;&#x201D; there is an increasing realization that being green and sustainably-oriented can give you substantial reputational advantages, help avoid costs and improve revenues. Are Indian CIOs taking the concept of a green data center seriously?

Let us look at this somewhat differently. Should Indian CIOs take the greening effort seriously? I think so very much. Unfortunately, the general structure of calculating payback in Indian industry

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is such that even an enlightened CIO can have second thoughts about incurring costs when the returns are not billed into his account. For example, in the case of energy savings, the advantage would be credited to the utilities, whereas the investments would come from the IT department. As long as we do not adopt a system of full or total cost assessment and tie it in to the performance of the CIO and his team, it will be difficult to motivate CIOs to turn green.

measures to conserve energy, besides shifting to sustainable forms of power generation. Have clear policies to prevent pollution. Reduce the emission of toxic substances. Focus on increasing resource utilization efficiency. Promote the use of renewable resources and follow a reuse-recyclerecover approach. Also consider end-of-life management policies to prevent e-waste.

What goes into a green data center?

Even before asking this question, companies need to address a more basic issue: do our scale of operations need a data center at all? Is it better outsourced? Not every company needs to set up its own data center and there may be considerable advantages in letting other service providers consolidate several independent requirements. However, if you need your own data center, then there are several issues that the CIO needs to consider: Measuring, monitoring and managing energy usage. What is not measured cannot be managed. With energy costs spiraling,

Green data centers have three aspects. The first is concerned with minimizing the ecological footprint of the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s IT assets. The second relates to doing the same for supporting infrastructure like buildings. The third concerns minimizing the ecological impact of all outsourced activities (for instance the impact of transport contractors). In terms of management objectives, they can be stated as follows: Take measures to address climate change. Reduce green house gas and ozone depleting substance emissions and deploy

Can you suggest the steps that CIOs can follow to make their data centers green?

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and climate change concerns growing, energy conservation needs to be a top priority. A simple way to reduce energy usage may be to rationalize equipment and even retrofit the physical infrastructure if needed. Consolidate. Explore possibilities to consolidate existing operations. If you have several data centers spread geographically, can they be combined into one facility? Sun, for instance, consolidated many of its European data centers into one UK facility, reducing space requirements by 80 percent and energy costs by approximately 50 percent. IBM and HP, too, have similar success stories. Virtualize where appropriate. Virtualization and server consolidation can allow CIOs to reduce the number of servers in use, simplify their IT infrastructure, and reduce power and cooling requirements. Leverage. Companies must leverage the power of eco-efficient technology in chip and hardware. Using improved servers designed to operate at higher temperatures can significantly decrease cooling requirements. For instance, power management solutions are integrated into AMD’s Opteron processors and help to reduce CPU power consumption in servers by 15 percent while in use and up to 40 percent when idle. Eneco is developing a revolutionary solid state energy conversion/generation chip that will convert heat directly into electricity, or alternatively refrigerate down to -200 degrees Celsius when electricity is applied. Most other IT companies like HP and IBM are developing their own proprietary solutions. Eco-efficient infrastructure management. Unfortunately, much physical infrastructure has not kept pace with computing infrastructure. Some estimates point out that almost 40 percent of the energy consumed in a data center goes to maintain facilities. This is an area of concern that needs to be addressed. Follow lifecycle analysis and full costing approaches. Incorporate environmental aspects related to pollution prevention and mitigation more explicitly into traditional total cost of ownership calculations. 28

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Work on people. The CIO and his team need to be evangelical in promoting green IT.”

eventually get there, simply because it is financially very unwise to ignore energy costs. According to the US Environmental Protection agency, for every dollar spent on IT equipment, $3 to $4 is spent on operating it throughout its lifecycle — sometimes making it a bigger expense than IT depreciation. If left unmanaged, data centers can potentially attract as much environmental attention as SUVs in the past. The problem is that upfront costs may be significant and savings from operating costs may not be credited to the IT department. Further, a host of intangible advantages, including the impact on corporate reputation, improved productivity from a healthier working environment, and greater employee morale and satisfaction are not even likely to be accounted for in monetary terms. How can a CIO make a compelling green argument?

Look for measures that create positive externalities. Remember that not every sustainability measure is about incurring additional costs or minimizing negative impacts. There are often win-win situations that involve leveraging technologies such as video-conferencing to substitute travel and adopting practices such as telecommuting, both of which could have a significant positive impact on profits and the environment. Work on behavioral changes — ultimately, people run data centers. Probably the CIO and his team need to be evangelical in promoting green IT. CIOs have to focus on servers, storage and the network to be really green. Where should they start?

In any initiative of this type, it is necessary to prioritize. I would try and grab easily demonstrable win solutions first, irrespective of the source. This is important to get enough buy-in from the rest of the organization. IT isn’t accountable for energy, that’s a facilities issue. Will this change soon?

Unfortunately, I don’t see this happening in the immediate future but we will

The language of financial payback works. Try and quantify the impact in financial terms. When this is not possible, CIOs should try other auditing measures. Should CIOs look at alternative energy sources like wind or solar?

Given the Indian context, an alternate power supply is a necessity. With captive power sources, data centre designers have an excellent opportunity to examine clean fuels and environmentally-friendly technologies. Do you think that legislation will help?

The legislative environment in India is already quite stringent. Companies are already required to report their energy conservation efforts publicly and the impact they have on the environment to respective pollution control boards. The problem is really one of poor implementation. With an increasingly vigilant civil society and a judiciary that is not averse to taking proactive environmental stances, I foresee this situation beginning to change in the near future. CIO Assistant editor Balaji Narasimhan can be reached at balaji_n@cio.in

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SPECIaL SECTION

CIO EXECUTIVE VIEW POINT

Emerging Green How to attack the green issue. Mr. Sandeep Nair

Managing Director, Emerson Network Power (India) With a decade of experience in the IT industry, Sandeep is a mechanical engineer with an MBA degree and has worked with organizations like Acer Communication & Multimedia, Brother International and Godrej. Under Sandeep’s leadership Emerson has won several accolades like the Maharashtra IT Award as the best hardware company. He is currently the chairman – Western Region for the Manufacturer’s Association for Information Technology, MAIT.

What should CIOs stress while drawing out their energy optimization strategies? CIOs must understand what contributes to power consumption to figure out what to focus on. Global consulting firm EYP Mission Critical Facilities estimates that 50 percent of data center energy is consumed by IT equipment and 35 to 40 percent is for cooling. Given this, it makes sense to look at equipment itself to reduce power needs. Consolidation and virtualization can produce significant results. Organizations must ensure that the data center is properly sealed with a vapor barrier. Vapor seals can be created using plastic film, vaporretardant paint, vinyl wall coverings and vinyl floor systems. Another area is optimizing air flow within the data center. In the past, data center racks were arranged to all face one direction. But because most equipment manufactured today is designed to draw air through the front and exhaust it from the rear, there is a more efficient way to set up racks: the hot-aisle/cold-aisle arrangement. In many parts of the country, winter provides an opportunity to augment traditional cooling. This requires economizer systems, which come in two types. First, there are air-side economizers that allow outside air to enter a data center. The second type is a fluid-side economizer. These systems are commonly incorporated into a chilled-water or glycol-based cooling system. How can CIOs ensure that Green IT does not affect TCO and Opex of data centers? The fundamental reason for going green is to have lower TCO and Opex in data centers, which in turn reduces energy usage and pollutes the environment less. Green IT plans in any data center are more to do with mechanical and passive changes of various components in innovative ways to save energy and yet provide

reliability. CIOs should adopt the best design and best practices available in the industry. What innovations are being introduced in power management to increase energy efficiency in data centers? This includes solutions like power management, cooling, enclosures, monitoring and services. Power management does not only mean installing the best UPS solution, it starts from power distribution — earthing and grounding, proper cabling and installing surge suppression. Next is transfer switches between two power sources and the power distribution unit (PDU). This can save up to 15-20 percent in space. These are significant savings in terms of power distribution. For UPS systems, CIOs should go for non-distorting input specification (more than.95 power factor and less than 5 percent THDi). Instead of solutions (n+n), which is less efficient and reliable (when capacity goes up), CIOs must look for large systems with N+1 module for low TCO and high reliability. There are typically two components in any air conditioning which consume power: fans and compressors. CIOs must use precision cooling with EC fans which consume 30 percent less power than traditional AC fans. Also by using digital scroll compressors CIOs can achieve 18 percent energy saving in data centers. Emerson recently introduced its Energy Logic Model. How does this help CIOs to optimize data center energy consumption? Emerson Network Power analyzes the available energy-saving opportunities and identified the top ten. Each of these ten opportunities was then applied to a 5,000-square-foot data center model based on real-world technologies and operating parameters. Through the model, we were able to quantify savings on each action, and

identify how energy reduction in some systems affects consumption in supporting systems. The model demonstrates that reductions in energy consumption at the IT equipment level has the greatest impact on overall consumption. This led to the development of Energy Logic, a vendor-neutral roadmap to optimize data center energy efficiency that starts with the IT equipment and progresses to the support infrastructure. Energy Logic can deliver a 50 percent or more reduction in data center energy consumption without compromising performance or availability. This approach has the added benefit of removing the three most critical constraints faced by CIOs today: power, cooling and space. In the model, the 10 Energy Logic strategies freed up two-thirds of floor space, one-third of UPS capacity and 40 percent of precision cooling capacity.

On the Green

Amit Antil from IBM spoke about the need to be more energy conscious and the benefits of greening data centers.

The registration desk was kept busy by a notable turnout.

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Data center energy costs are 10 to 30 times more than typical office buildings. And energy use in data centers has doubled over the past five years.

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Presenting Partner

Supporting Partners

IT leaders at the CIO Green Edge Exchange event listening to what one CIO called ‘tomorrow’s priority today’.

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Green startegy expert Prof. Jose from IIM answering a query.

CIOs later exchanged notes with editor-in-chief, Vijay Ramachandran

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“Estimates say that almost

40% of the energy

consumed in a data center goes to maintain facilities. This needs to be

addressed.”

— P.d. Jose

Associate Professor, IIM Bangalore

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SPECIal SECTION

CIO EXECUTIVE VIEW POINT

The Greener Side The nuts and bolts of becoming environmentally friendly. Sanjeev Gupta

Offering Manager â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Site and Facilities Services (GTS - India Region) At IBM, Gupta is responsible for assessing the Indian market and selecting new service offerings in his service product line (SPL). He also drives GTS brand transformation within his SPL. Prior to IBM, he was program manager (projects and professional services) for Bangalore-based American Power Conversion. Prior to this he has worked at GTL, Tata Consulting Engineers, Powerica and Sterlite Industries. Incidentally, Computerworld has selected IBM as the top Green IT company for 2008.

Why do you think organizations should go green now? There are three principal drivers that have occurred in the past five years and will continue for the next decade: increased computing demand, changing cost dynamics and data center lifecycle mismatch. According to IDC, between 2000 and 2010 the server installed base over will grow at a rate of six times, while storage is expected to grow at a rate of 69 times. Every piece of this equipment drives the need for more energy. This is a lot of incremental capacity installed on the data center floors. At the same time, server utilization rates on Wintel are about 3-10 percent and Unix is 20-30 percent. If you look at the amount of energy used per square foot, the annual data center energy costs are 10 to 30 times more than those of a typical office building. Data centers are energy hogs because they are filled with technology that uses power. If you look at the use of energy in data centers it has doubled over the past five years. As far as changing cost dynamics are concerned, energy use is increasing, but we also know what is happening with energy costs. They are increasing as well. We are seeing the combined effect on our IT operational budgets. Some analysts estimate that the energy costs now make up to 40 percent of the operational costs of a data center. Whether the CIO is paying for this today or not as it may be buried in a facilities budget, it is a big bill and is going up every year. The other issue is that we have data centers, which were built for 10-15 years of life which are now trying to support new age technologies. This mismatch can put tremendous stress on the infrastructure,

which supports the differences in the needs and capabilities of the data center and the equipment being installed in it. Some consultants indicate that any data center more than five-years-old is technically obsolete because it is never designed to support current technology such as blades. So, if enterprises put all these factors together, it is easy to see how the increased demand for energy, increase in the cost of energy and the decreasing age of the typical IT facility are putting pressure on enterprises to be more responsible in making in data center planning and its TCO. Hence, going green is the best strategy for any data center â&#x20AC;&#x201D; for today and for the future. Other than cost cutting, what are the benefits of going green? It is not only about cutting costs. Going green has key operational benefits like more computing performance per kilowatt, more energy used by IT equipment than physical infrastructure supporting it and it also extends the life of existing data centers. Apart from these, there are obvious environmental benefits like meaningful energy conservation and reduced carbon footprint, improved public image and a positive impact on corporate social responsibilities. Above all, positive contribution to the green movement creates a good place to work in. What are the major issues involved in creating a green data center? In the past, data center design strategy was focused on reliability and redundancy, once data center sizing was decided. Today data center planning has TCO and

electrical energy efficiency as important criteria. First, an organization needs to decide what metrics to choose for IT and site infrastructure strategy at design stage as well as operations stage. Second, it has to know how to achieve energy efficiency and availability goals at the same time. Another issue that crops up here is: how can dynamic IT deployment be still added or removed while maintaining power and cooling systems at near full loads? IT hardware, which goes for a technology refresh every two to three year while data center power and cooling are going through innovative phases at a rapid pace makes decision making criteria for system performance stability and its design merits for future IT loads a real concern. Acceptance of few technologies like chilled water based cooling inside the data center and IT application integrations should also be kept in mind. There has to be commercial value justification of state-of-the-art data center technologies like direct liquid cooling of IT hardware. These are some major issues involved in creating a green data center.

SPECIal SECTION

What impact does greening a data center have on TCO? There is a direct correlation between reduced TCO and greening of the data center. Since green IT is all about reducing energy consumption, reducing waste of IT resource and reducing carbon emissions — it directly impacts both capital cost and operational cost. Innovative techniques like virtualization, stored cooling, free cooling, integrated power management, etcetera, along with right sizing the data center brings in reasonable reduction in capital cost while mature data center layout design, and optimization and operations techniques will bring in operational cost reduction. So, after initial investment in data center construction, the more CIOs focus on greening data center, the less will be its TCO. What are the challenges that CIOs face when they try to green their data center? How should they address these challenges? While CIOs can define IT strategy for their data center, same is not true about site physical infrastructure. The facilities team will be made owner of the data center design and build scope and quite often they are not aligned to IT lifecycle and deployment challenges. Even IT energy bills are not the responsibility of the IT team. Hence, it becomes an ownership issue when you try making changes which will result in greening data centers.

It is important for CIOs to ask for dedicated IT facilities operation team and outsource data center build. They should get a mandate to work on reducing energy bills. And all IT operations (physical and network infrastructure) should be owned by the IT team. CIOs should plan

“After initially investing in a data center, the more Cios focus on greening, the less is their tCo. Virtualization, stored and free cooling, integrated power management can help.” and merge the IT infrastructure strategy and the facilities infrastructure strategy by keeping overall IT TCO as key deciding criteria. For green data centers to become successful, who is the best driver? All three CXOs are important drivers but the CEO is the key as a green data center is all about bigger vision and better strategy. So, CEO sponsorship and personal commitment will bring CIO’s and CFO’s focus from their domain transactions.

Best Practices To Cut Costs Cooling and electrical costs represent up to 44 percent of a data center’s total cost of ownership. They also fall into two major categories: Capex and Opex. a few best practices to reduce these costs are: Cooling Costs: (a) Use right-sized cooling units which are ultra efficient. (b) Use hot and cold aisle IT rack layout. (c) Improve airflow management like blanking panels, floor air leaks and closed return air path. (d) Use free cooling (for location where ambient temperature is less than 8 deg C for more than 4-5 months in a year).

(e) Use liquid cooling. (f) Use innovative methods like stored cooling or thermal storage. Power Costs: (a) Use right-sized UPS, transformers and power distribution units which are also ultra efficient. (b) Use integrated power management. (c) Use combined power and heat system at generation stage. If implemented, these practices clubbed with IT consolidation, can bring down energy bills by 40-45 percent.

Green data centers are also important public postures and endorse corporate social responsibility values. Experts say the most productive first step for CIOs is to conduct a best practices assessment and energy audit. What steps are involved? Yes, data center energy efficiency or green IT is a journey rather than a destination. So, CIOs need to first know where they are in terms of energy efficiency levels in their data center. Then, choose one primary metrics and few sub-metrics for measuring green goals. IT industry (consultants and manufacturers) have widely accepted Green Grid’s (independent, IT-industry supported organization) metrics like PUE (power usage effectiveness) as primary. Step two is to conduct energy audit to know where you stand and then plan your immediate future objectives. This will help you in deciding and committing to your improvement plans. Deliverables at this stage should be estimating cost returns, prioritizing projects based on return on investment (ROI) and estimating energy bill savings. What unique challenges do Indian CIOs face when they try to green their data center? In comparison to western countries, Indian CIOs have been focused on building IT infrastructure at a faster pace to support their business growth. So, their bigger challenges have been un-structured growth leading to over-sizing data centers or planning for immediate future. Hence, they are not really thinking of overall IT green strategy to merge and blend two strategies — the IT infrastructure strategy and the facilities infrastructure strategy. Hence, they have deployed few best practices but still have not followed few basic ‘improved operations’ steps like IT physical consolidation, less system management complexity, etcetera. Externally, they have government policy which still doesn’t give incentives, say differential tariffs, power company rebates and environmental programs and certificates.

Your Green IT

Starter Kit

Green IT is trundling into town and, really, there’s no escaping it. But if you still aren’t sure of what it entails, we can help. Over 12 questions, we will answer all the questions from: what sustainable IT is to how you can get your management on board the green wagon. By Katherine Walsh

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FAQs

RIsIng EnERgy pRICEs. Global warming. Old equipment piling up in storage (and landfills). Environmental issues — and IT's role in them — are getting more attention than ever. If you want to use technology in a more sustainable way, here are the answers you need to begin. The importance of Green IT How being environmentally friendly can financially benefit the enterprise How to get the attention of your executives

Q: What is sustainable IT? A: Sustainable, or ‘green’, IT is a catch-all term used to describe the manufacture, management, use and disposal of information technology in a way that minimizes damage to the environment. As a result, the term has many different meanings, depending on whether you are a manufacturer, manager or user of technology. Q: What is sustainable IT manufacturing? A: Sustainable IT manufacturing refers to methods of producing products in a way that does not harm the environment. It encompasses everything from reducing the amount of harmful chemicals used in products (such as lead and mercury) to making them more energy efficient and packaging them with recycled materials. Q: What is sustainable IT management and use? A: Sustainable IT management and use has to do with the way a company manages its IT assets. It includes purchasing energyefficient desktops, notebooks, servers and other IT equipment, as well as managing the power consumption of that equipment. It also refers to the environmentally safe disposal of that equipment, through recycling or donation at the end of its lifecycle.

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IllusTRATIon by pC Anoop

Reader ROI:

FAQs Q: What is sustainable IT disposal? A: Sustainable IT disposal refers to the safe disposal of IT assets. It ensures that old computer equipment does not end up in a landfill, where the toxic substances it contains can leach into groundwater, among other problems. Many of the major hardware manufacturers offer take-back programs, so IT departments don't have to take responsibility for disposal. Q: What is the goal of sustainable IT? A: The goal behind most green initiatives, including green IT, is to promote environmental sustainability. In 1987, the World Commission on Environment and Development defined sustainability as an approach to economic development that "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." Q: What does it have to do with me? A: No one seriously disputes that global warming is due to human activity. And IT is an energy hog. Gartner estimates that power consumption by computers accounts for 2 percent of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. That's roughly equal to the carbon output of the airline industry. It is hard to determine how much CO2 any single company's computers generate, although researchers are trying to figure a way. Howard Rubin, a research associate with the MIT Center for Information Systems Research, suggests that the IT operations of computing-intensive industries like financial services and telecommunications generate more CO2 per Rs

created using Microsoft Access, captures information on potential manufacturing materials and communicates it to the design team. "The IT function and IT support is vital to that process," says Mike McCluskey, project manager for product development IT. In a CIO magazine column, Dan Esty, author of Green to Gold: When Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value and Build Competitive Advantage, writes that "marrying information-age tools such as data mining and advanced modeling techniques to environmental challenges holds potential to propel some companies ahead of their competitors because they can 'see' through data where their industry is headed." Mines at Forrester says that CEOs will eventually see environmental sustainability as a better way to do business, not just because it's the right thing to do, but because major stakeholders â&#x20AC;&#x201D; including shareholders and customers â&#x20AC;&#x201D; will demand it. Because IT is a large contributor to the greenhouse gas emission problem, it also has an opportunity to be a big part of the solution.

Q: Can it help my company? A: There are some steps IT departments can take toward becoming green that don't cost a lot. You can start by reminding your IT staff to turn off their PCs or shut off the lights before leaving for the day â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and championing such behavior companywide. Meanwhile, there are many IT investments you probably want to make anyway that will also reduce your impact on the environment. Virtualization technologies, server consolidation, PC power management and deployment of more efficient equipment when you do a refresh can reduce energy consumption while simultaneously improving IT operations. Then, there are intangible benefits. Mines says a green reputation helps with employee retention and recruitment. Employers "see the surveys that say young people are greener, and that's a differentiator for them in the war for talent." There's some evidence that more Source: Gartner people seek to do business with companies that offer green services and products, or that have a proven track record in corporate social responsibility. 4 crore in revenue than other industries. IT may account for An October 2007 study on climate change conducted by about 10 percent of a company's energy consumption and 10 Accenture found that nine out of 10 consumers worldwide percent of its CO2 emissions, according to Chris Mines, senior would switch to energy providers whose products and VP with Forrester Research. services are designed to reduce carbon emissions, even if it Many companies also have to comply with regulations meant having to pay a little extra. that restrict plant emissions or the use and disposal of toxic Systems you need to comply with environmental materials. Like IT improves business processes, it can improve regulations may cost you, and there's not much you can do how companies manage what goes into their products. about it. But there is packaged software that can help. For For example, furniture maker Herman Miller uses IT to example, Synapsis, a software and consulting company, help inform designers about the chemistry and the sustainable offers an Environmental Material Aggregation and Reporting properties of hundreds of materials. A materials database,

Power consumption by computers accounts for 2% of global

carbon dioxide

emissions. That's roughly equal to the carbon output of the airline

industry.

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air conditioning is aimed at hot aisles. Sealing gaps on server rack cabinets with blanking panels and placing ventilated tiles away from equipment exhaust areas also helps maximize airconditioning efficiency. Finally, there's your hardware. By Q: How can I cut my energy bills? reducing the number of boxes you A: There are two ways that IT managers operate through virtualization or server can help to reduce their companies' consolidation, you'll use less power. energy consumption: run data centers And turning off servers you aren't more efficiently and manage desktops — Karan B.Singh using can cut power usage by between more efficiently. AVP-IT, BSES 10 percent and 30 percent, says Ken Brill, executive director of The Uptime Q: How can I make my data center Institute. A large company can save more efficient? as much as Rs 1,000 crore, Brill says, A: An August 2007 EPA report on data by improving airflow, maximizing air center efficiency concluded that unless conditioning and optimizing servers. US companies change the way they Next time you upgrade your servers, design, build and operate data centers, you can look for more energy-efficient annual data center electricity costs models, although currently, there are could reach Rs 29,600 crore in 2011. no standard benchmarks for comparing The first step for CIOs who want to cut energy efficiency between products by data center energy costs is to get to know different vendors. their data centers in detail. A good place to The EPA is working with vendors to start is with a True Total Cost of Ownership develop new energy-efficiency specifications (TCO) assessment, which accounts for the cost for enterprise servers by 2008. of building and owning a data center facility, along Meanwhile, says Lawrence Berkley's Koomey, vendors with the usual hardware purchase and maintenance costs have been improving server efficiency through more efficient that go along with operating it. (The term True TCO was chips and power supplies. Someone purchasing many servers coined by The Uptime Institute, an IT research organization, could go to the manufacturer and ask it to provide a power which provides a tool for modeling it.) supply that is well above 80 percent efficient, Koomey It's also a good idea to get to know your facilities managers. suggests. "It doesn't matter what the processor is; if the power According to Jonathan Koomey, a staff scientist with Lawrence supply is more efficient, you are going to save energy," he says. Berkeley National Laboratory, the facilities department Koomey adds that it's cost-effective to spend extra money on a usually pays the power bills, and therefore, IT generally is more efficient power supply because it now costs more to run unaware of how much energy it consumes running servers the data center than it does to purchase the equipment. and air conditioners. "Traditional IT metrics like response time and uptime are what they are measured on, not energy Q: How can I reduce my electricity consumption on efficiency," says Mines. But without an understanding of the desktop? the data center's energy consumption, IT managers have no A: If you want to know what your PCs are made of before starting point for improving energy efficiency. you buy, you can use the Electronic Product Environmental Some improvements don't cost much money. For example, Assessment Tool (EPEAT) developed by the Zero Waste says Mines, you can remove obstructions to airflow, such as Alliance to evaluate your purchases. Products that meet blocked cabling, piping or air-conditioning ducts. EPEAT's voluntary standards have smaller amounts of Before you invest in new servers, examine whether mercury, cadmium and lead, are more energy efficient, and changing the layout of your equipment can help you use air are easier to refresh and recycle. Recently six organizations, conditioning more efficiently. Thermal mapping tools (sold which were recognized for their use of EPEAT, saved a total by vendors including IBM and HP) can help you pinpoint of over Rs 20 crore buying greener equipment. hot and cold spots. Traditional energy-efficiency assessment PCs and laptops that meet EPEAT standards also carry services are also offered by vendors such as EYP Mission the EPA's Energy Star 4.0 label. Such computers use half Critical, Syska Hennessy and APC. the electricity of other computers and automatically go into Once you have the data, you may decide to implement sleep mode after a period of inactivity (they use 75 percent in-row, on-rack cooling systems, which allow you to bring less energy in sleep mode). Energy Star certification also cold air just to hot spots, or to rearrange server aisles so that System, which helps companies manage and report the material content of their products. Eviance offers tools for environmental health, safety management and compliance.

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Feature - 01 - Your Green IT Starter Kit.indd 47

“If you look at my CEO's list of priorities, going green comes somewhere in the middle.”

REAL CIO WORLD | M A R C H 1 , 2 0 0 8

3/1/2008 7:30:39 PM

FAQs requires that equipment use more energy-efficient internal and external power supplies. According to the EPA, if all businesses were to purchase only Energy Star-certified equipment, they would save Rs 4,800 crore over the life of the computers. You can also deploy PC power management tools. Vendors like Verdiem and 1E offer products that you can use to customize en masse when PCs shut down or enter sleep mode. "In call centers or universities, or anyplace that has many desktops running, PC management products are no-brainers that pay themselves back quickly," says John Davies, VP of green technology research with AMR Research. Verdiem estimates that its Surveyor product saves Rs 600 to Rs 1,600 in energy costs per PC per year. Q: How do I recycle IT equipment? A: There are a different ways to get rid of IT equipment without throwing it in the dumpster. Many manufacturers offer take-back programs through which they assume responsibility for proper disposal. IT departments can also hire a lifecycle asset disposal company to take used equipment off their In 2006: hands, although not all of these 28 crore companies have expertise in environmentally-safe disposal. In 2010: "Most of them are very local 40.4 crore or regional and often lack the ability to provide in-depth reporting and auditing," says David Daoud, research manager From 2005 to 2010: at IDC, so you can't review their 23.75 crore performance. He says to pick Source: IDC a company that is well known and has a good track record. Some companies that offer takeback services also offer data security services to insure that intellectual property and confidential information is removed from the hardware, notes Daoud. Start now, and you can make a dent in a mountain of electronic trash. Daoud says that in 2006, obsolete desktops, laptops and servers accounted for 18 billion pounds of electronic trash worldwide, but the major companies involved in e-waste recovery (Dell, HP and IBM) recovered only 356 million pounds â&#x20AC;&#x201D; about 2 percent. According to National Geographic's The Green Guide, 50 percent to 80 percent of recycled electronics end up

number of pCs in the Us

pCs that Will be retired:

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in developing nations, where they are disassembled by untrained workers without the proper equipment. This exposes them to toxic substances like mercury, cadmium and lead. If the equipment is left in landfills, those same toxins end up in water sources. Q: How can IT make my operations greener? A: IT can help almost any part of the business lessen its environmental impact. For example, technologists can help reduce the amount of paper employees use for printing or deploy tracking systems to measure plant emissions. Such practices can save companies money and also generate revenue. At Sun Microsystems, OpenWork, the company's telecommuting program, provides employees with shared office space, home equipment and subsidies for DSL and electricity, according to Dave Douglas, VP of eco responsibility at Sun. More than 55 percent of Sun's employees are currently in the program. "In the last five years we have cut our office space by one-sixth and have saved over Rs 240 crore a year on space and power," Douglas said. Sun also saves an estimated 29,000 tons of CO2 per year due to reduced employee commuting. That's equivalent to taking 5,694 cars off the road for one year, according to the EPA's carbon calculator. Dow Chemical's process control automation system will shut a plant down if it is not compliant with air and water emissions requirements. Dow also uses a monitoring system to measure the air and water emissions at its plants and is deploying an environmental reporting system to manage reporting of this data to state and federal authorities, says CIO and Chief Sustainability Officer David Kepler. IT systems can also help save energy by controlling heat and air conditioning in office buildings. Wireless sensors can be used to measure airflow and room occupancy. If the occupancy sensors (which turn lights on and off when people enter or leave a room) are networked to airflow sensors, the amount of air conditioning used when people are not in a room can be reduced, says Lawrence Berkeley's Koomey. "The basic idea is to collect data on how the facility is using energy and use that information to define patterns that can help change what you are doing and reduce operating costs." Q: How can I get executives' attention? A: Arguing that going green is the right thing to do won't get you anywhere. The best way is to make a business case based on energy savings, operational efficiency or new revenue opportunities. In other words, you need to find a way to make going green fit with the corporate agenda. "When the CEO and the board of directors recognize that it's the right thing to do for shareholders, employees, customers and the brand, that's the catalyst," says Mines. "Then, things start to happen." CIO send feedback on this feature to editor@cio.in

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11/16/2011 11:56:19 AM

Facing The Heat

Chances are that a good portion of your organizationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s environmental footprint, however small it may be, comes from IT. It's time CIOs focus on creating an environmentally-friendly IT strategy.

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Feature - 02 - Facing the Heat.indd 50

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Strategy

Depending on the building type and the features it offers, a green facility saves between

15 to 50% in energy and uses 30% less water. Source : ADC Krone

By Sue BuShell

IllUStrAtIon by MM Sh AnIth

As A mAtt A ER Of pERsOnAL AL bELIEf, CIOs are free to count themselves among the diminishing band of troglodytes that continue to deny the reality of human-induced climate change. However, with global warming soaring to the top of the political and social agenda, the organization that employs CIOs does not have that luxury. Shareholders and board members are starting to press their companies to go green as the harsh clamor of community expectations holds their feet to the forest fire and demands swift and credible action. Organizations that make like an ostrich are likely to find their nether-regions ever more dangerously exposed. It is CIOs who will increasingly get duckshoved the responsibility for leading the organizational response to global warming — and quite right too, as technology pumps ever-greater loads of carbon into the atmosphere and technological waste increasingly poisons the earth. The good news is that in some area s the environmentally sound is also the economically sound. Line all those ducks up in a nice green eco-row and with any luck you can be a hero who helps save the planet and the future prospects of your employer. For instance, after GE deployed its digital cockpit — a Rs 40 crore system that supplies metrics on environmental performance, resource use, safety and compliance — it substantially cleaned up its act, reducing violations of wastewater emission regulations by more than 80 percent in a decade and saving tens of millions of dollars through

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environmental, safety and productivity improvements. AISO, which describes itself as a ‘responsible green Web hosting company’ and has customers around the globe, is saving Rs 1.6 lakh a month by running its data centre and office entirely off solar panels. The company, which maps its IT purchasing decisions back to its overall efforts to be environmentally responsible, has been generating 50 percent less heat and using 60 percent less energy since migrating to AMD's Opteron-powered servers. Dow Chemical Company estimated it would spend Rs 4,000 crore on technology and processes to save Rs 12,000 crore to reach its 2005 Sustainability Goals, but saved Rs 20,000 crore through a combination of rising energy prices and better use of its resources, including energy. Investa, included on the third Global 100 (G100) list of the most sustainable corporations in the world and named one of the leading companies on the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index (DJSI World), is Reader ROI: The importance of saving Rs 6.8 crore a year, with a combined getting top management ROI of 61.7 percent, through its energy and support in going green water programs. Why CIOs should start "Over the past two years alone, Investa waking up to the call of has reduced water consumption in our green IT commercial office buildings by 28 percent The changes that going through a number of new initiatives," green will created in the way CIOs think Craig Roussac, Investa's general manager, REAL CIO WORLD | M A R C H 1 , 2 0 0 8

Strategy sustainability, safety and environment, said in a statement. "We have been able to demonstrate a 'hard dollar' increase in a property valuation due to improvements in a building's environmental performance. This supports our long-held view that superior environmental performance can create value over and above mere cost savings." Energy, wastewater and Internet service provider ActewAGL, while admitting there is a long way to go before any organization can claim its technology use to be carbonneutral, is saving energy and money by running Citrix terminals and making sure staff turn off their machines at the end of the day and helping the environment by running its data centre entirely on green power. And let's face it, if you don't take action voluntarily, you are bound to be dragged to it kicking and screaming sooner or later — and later is likely to come at far greater cost. Already in Europe and to a lesser extent in the US, corporations are being subject to a host of environmental regulation and the brutally critical appraisal of an increasingly anxious public. Businesses are unlikely to remain free of demands that they drastically reduce their carbon footprint. Nor should they be allowed to, as long as their data centers suck power like humongous vacuum cleaners and their discarded electronics spew toxic metals and other pollutants into the environment.

Clean Up Your Act JEff nEyLAnD, CIO Of IntEChRA, a rs 400-crore information technology asset disposition company, recommends other CIos adopt some of the steps he and his organization have taken to help clean up their organization's environmental act.

1 2

Set specific internal recycling goals and objectives and measure them annually with reduced levels targeted each year.

buy energy-efficient equipment when purchasing. Seek lower power and lower heat output, which can be significant for servers and other devices.

Purchase recycled It equipment when possible. reuse is among the most environmentally responsible practices available to individuals and organizations.

4 5

Set power consumption guidelines for energy conservation using Windows power management options.

reduce water runoff and solid waste generation. build energy efficiencies in plant operations. For example, Intechra's los Angeles facility operates recycle machinery on the third shift only — this conserves energy and is non-peak for the utility company. Intechra has also built practices that have allowed its facilities to be ISo certified for environmental management. —S.b. 54

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Does this sound like an exaggeration? It isn't. In 2005, total data centre electricity consumption in the US, including servers, cooling and auxiliary equipment, was approximately 45 billion kWh, consuming as much as all color televisions in the county and using as much power as the entire state of Mississippi, according to a recent survey by AMD. That is the total output of five 1000-megawatt coal power plants. And that usage is soaring exponentially, with the power usage of data centers having doubled between 2000 and 2005. In the next three years, individuals and organizations worldwide will replace more than one billion computers. The average mobile phone in the US is replaced after just 18 months, and more than 75 percent of all computers ever sold remain stockpiled in our closets, garages, office storage rooms and warehouses. "After years of helping global organizations manage the recycling/disposal/re-marketing of retired IT assets, the days of companies turning a blind eye to proper IT asset disposal are over," says Chris Adam, NextPhase director of IT asset management solutions.

Consumers Will Decide

he article Competitive Advantage on a Warming Planet in the Harvard Business Review points out that whatever your industry the numerous risks associated with global warming are affecting your business, from tough emissionreduction legislation through to a damaging backlash from consumers concerned about the environment to weatherrelated damage to physical assets. "Consumers are increasingly taking your environmental record into account when they make purchasing decisions. And investors are already discounting share prices of firms poorly positioned to compete in a carbon constrained world," authors Jonathan Lash and Fred Wellington say. However, they add that the risks of climate change also offer new sources of competitive advantage for companies prepared to measure their firm's contribution to global warming, assess their climate-related risks and opportunities then reinvent their business — before rivals do — to mitigate those risks and seize the opportunities. Environmentalist and former VP Al Gore recently implored an audience of Silicon Valley executives and technologists to use their collective knowledge and resources to promote green technology that causes less pollution and can reverse the effects of climate change. "The world faces an unprecedented challenge and Silicon Valley can make an unprecedented contribution to meeting that challenge," Gore told them. "You can change the future of civilization." That line of reasoning applies to CIOs as much as IT vendors and software companies, and some industries are already rising to the challenge. Lawson Software vice president of marketing Jeff Frank predicts responsibility for green business practices will

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most critical requirement is for a CIO eventually be placed squarely in the to make it a point to secure executive lap of the CIO. Like any other business buy-in and subsequent budgetary problem, the organization initially tries commitments to green initiatives," he to manage its eco-responsibilities in a says. "In my experience, technology piecemeal, fragmented and manual funding for environmental issues way before realizing that that approach within corporations is almost always at does not work, he says. When things the bottom of the list. Companies don't start to fall apart they then turn to fund green initiatives — generally IT and the CIO to lead the charge on speaking — until there's a problem, managing programs and bringing such as EPA or OSHA [Occupational information together in the interest of — Sanjay Malhotra Safety and Health Administration] better decision making. VP-IT, Amway fines, or a PR-based need, such as "Ultimately, the CIO is going to consumer or environmentalist-based really be one of the driving forces complaints or concerns, for change. behind how companies manage their "The CIOs who are visionary green business practices and corporate in this area, and make the effort social responsibility programs," Frank and proactive commitment to the says. "What CIOs should expect from environmental impacts of their their business application providers organizations, are the ones who are are really the tools to bring together well ahead of the game in terms of the fragmented programs that positively affecting the environment, they're trying to manage today into an presenting their companies as good integrated dashboard that would allow citizens and realizing cost savings the CIO and decision makers across and bottom line positive results to their the company to better manage their CSR financials," Homer says. [corporate social responsibility] and green Technology companies have of late been business practice in a more integrated manner." focusing more on green technology: designing computer And they should also expect and be prepared to change processors that generate less heat, building systems that their own approaches and thinking. "When a CIO decides better manage electricity use in data centers and improving to go green in response to global warming, a change in manufacturing processes and recycling old computers. thinking needs to precede a change in corporate decision The Green Grid, with its blue-chip list of charter members making," says Judah Freed, the author of Global Sense. "A including Intel, AMD, Sun, IBM and VMware, has released chief information officer familiar with general systems guidelines on energy-efficient data centers, even as TechNet theory already thinks of his or her organization as an — a network of tech company CEOs — looks to enhance interconnected network. Going green means seeing that energy research and find technology-driven solutions. organization interacting within the wider planetary system, The moves make excellent business sense. Gartner so the green CIO wants to ensure the information network recently reported that regulations, costs and global warming truly makes global sense. were driving European IT leaders to ‘green’ data centers. "Beyond videoconferencing instead of air travel, beyond In October 2006, Gartner analysts in Europe called on IT component recycling instead of throwing away obsolete organizations to curb computing's insatiable appetite for computers and other enterprise technology, the CIO can energy. Organizations are under mounting pressure to choose among a range of options," Freed says. develop greener approaches towards their IT practices, But as Chris Homer, VP sales and marketing and and IT and business leaders need to wake up to the issues legislative affairs with environmental management software of escalating energy consumption and environmental solution company EnvironMax, notes, any efforts by the CIO legislation, the research company says. will go nowhere without support from the top. "The first and

“Thanks to the rising costs of both power and cooling, green IT is already a priority for us.”

Organizations will initially manage green IT in a piecemeal way. When things start to fall apart they will turn to IT to create better decision making. Vol/3 | ISSUE/08

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Strategy "IT's age of innocence is nearing an end," says Steve Prentice, distinguished analyst and chief of research at Gartner. "Technology's clean and friendly 'weightless economy' image is being challenged by its growing environmental footprint." The telecommunications industry's age of innocence is also drawing to a close. "The telecommunications industry has largely considered itself a good citizen when it comes to the environment and, in comparison to many others, it is," says Leith Campbell, principal consultant at telecomms, software and IT consulting firm Ovum. "But it cannot rest on its laurels and it does have a few potential issues on its hands. They are related both to the environment and social responsibility." These issues include emissions from mobile phones, the vast amount of paper used in the printing of telephone directories and the mining and use of coltan (columbitetantalite) ore for use in mobile phones and IT equipment, a chemical that becomes toxic waste when discarded.

toxins such as lead and mercury for Apple customers. Apple CEO Steve Jobs had previously dismissed the group's concerns, telling shareholders they were "bull . . . " during a financial call in April 2005. However, as if to embody the old saying: give them an inch and they'll take a mile, the activists are refusing to rest on their laurels. Now they are demanding Apple not only set some public goals for how much equipment it will take back but also stop lobbying against producer responsibility legislation. "When the millions of Apple's obsolete computers and other electronic products hit the landfills and incinerators, millions of pounds of toxic lead and other highly toxic materials will be dumped into our air, land and water," the activists claim. Other companies have also learned the very high cost a failure to factor environmental concerns into decision making can have. For instance in 2001 the Dutch government seized 1.3 million Sony PlayStations at the start of the Christmas spending spree because they contained illegal levels of the toxic metal cadmium. It cost Sony more than Rs 520 crore to replace all cables manufactured by an obscure supplier, and by 2009, one-third of some of its good reputation. ActewAGL CIO and general manager It t organizations will commercial development responsible for include environmental renewable energy generation Carsten Larsen sustainability in their says CIOs of all stripes should be aiming to eventually achieve a carbon-neutral computing platform. He says that although for this may not be achievable in the short term, hardware and while organizations insist on buying coalservices vendors. fired electricity because it is cheaper, it can Source: Gartner and should be a long-term aim. ActewAGL is buying green electricity, which is at least a start, but has achieved greater dividends by being an early adopter of LCD screen technology, which Campbell says coltan has become the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;blood diamondâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; requires lower power, and by running the aforementioned of the IT industry, with the mining of coltan in the Congo thin-client technology and encouraging staff to turn off their funding and prolonging a civil war in the east of the country. computers before leaving for the day. It has spawned a global movement under the banner: No blood on my cell phone! "The telecommunications industry must respond with comprehensive recycling programs and environmentally credible processes for reclaiming valuable and toxic components," Campbell says. ow Chemical Company CIO Dave Kepler is not only The list of companies pushing to improve their responsible for Dow's Shared Services and Information environmental credentials is astonishing, whether motivated Technology departments, but is also very involved in Dow's by a sincere determination to clean up their act or fear that 2015 Sustainability Goals. Kepler told CIO magazine recently doing nothing will invite environmental activists and of his belief that sustainability is about the world and concerned citizens to come after them with the proverbial Dow's contribution to some of its challenges. Ten years ago baseball bat. the company set environmental anzd safety goals around And that fear can prove perfectly realistic â&#x20AC;&#x201D; just ask things like injury and illness, process safety and chemical Apple. After enduring a year of pressure from members emissions, he said, and progress to date has been significant. of environmental activist group Computer Take Back "One of our goals was to reduce our energy consumption Campaign, Apple in April 2007 announced a scheme to take by 20 percent, and we reduced it by 22 percent. We also back and dispose of discarded Apple products containing achieved an 84 percent reduction in emissions.

top-six buying criteria

Doing the Right Thing

M A R C H 1 , 2 0 0 8 | REAL CIO WORLD

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"We expanded beyond those initial goals recently with Dow's 2015 Sustainability Goals. We intend to improve our environmental health and safety performance by 75 percent within the next eight years. IT touches almost every one of our goals. For example, IT is charged with creating databases to track environmental activity — measuring our emissions, tracking the safety and performance of our carriers, and managing our contractors. IT not only manages the information but it serves as a watchdog." Dow has such stringent process control automation at its plants that they will shut a plant down automatically if it is not compliant with air and water emissions requirements. IT also helps provide safety assessments for all of Dow's products. Ultimately the company plans to provide stakeholders with key information related to the safety and risk of every chemical from Dow, via an integrated database that tracks consumption, usage and loss of a given base material. And in the US, after Fairmont Hotels & Resorts' move to power all its check-in computers with wind power proved so successful last year, it is now expanding the initiative to include all computers in its corporate office. The organization claims last year's purchase of Eco-Logo certified wind power for 249 check-in computers will result in a greenhouse gas reduction of almost 100 tons over the next year. The first step to reducing your environmental footprint is to measure it. The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) aims to make reporting on economic, environmental and social performance — sustainability reporting — by all organizations as routine and straightforward as financial reporting. To achieve this, the GRI continually improves and builds capacity around the use of the GRI's Sustainability Reporting Framework, currently the de facto global standard in sustainability reporting and built on the Sustainability Reporting Guidelines. An AMR Research survey reported early 2007 that within the next two years 89 percent of companies in the US and 62 percent in Europe plan to use technology to manage their corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. It also found that while environmental issues are of prime importance in Europe, US firms seem to be ahead in the integration of CSR-related data systems. Currently, 47 percent of European companies either gain no CSR-related data from IT systems or have numerous disconnected systems, compared to just 19 percent in the same position in the US. Nearly half of US companies (49 percent) claim to have some or fully integrated systems to provide information on CSR topics. "What CIOs should expect from their business application providers are really the tools to bring together the fragmented programs that they're trying to manage today into an integrated dashboard that would allow the CIO and decision makers across the company to better manage

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How to Go Green Naomi Moneypenny, vice president research, content and technology at advisory company ManyWorlds, offers these suggestions for CIOs.

Manage energy. Don't only ensure that all computers are on power management cycles, but also encourage users to shut down their PCs at night, even at home.

2 3

Support recycled plastics and materials in products such as mice and keyboards.

The CIO should support paper recycling, even though the direct responsibility for recycling bin availability may fall under the domain of the facilities manager.

Integrate energy consumption into building design (such as the solar panels that are so popular at Google). The CIO can support these efforts with measuring data and appropriate reporting to stakeholders.

Stage the shifts of a manager's employees so they spend less time in peak traffic (thus less air pollution). Sponsor programs for ride sharing and tech talk at the same time.

6 7

Ensure that suppliers globally have the same standards and environmental practices that the CIO's corporation does.

Provide a screen saver tip or other daily tip mechanism to encourage employees to reduce energy consumption. — S.B.

their CSR and green business practice in a more integrated manner," Lawson Software's Frank says. Alan Perkins, former CIO of Australian company Altium, says CIOs should aspire to as close to perfect information as possible. "The more unity, timeliness, accuracy and relevance in the information captured and provided to decision makers and users, the greater the efficiencies," Perkins says. "This will result in focusing attention on contributing to society and profit-making. Get the efficiencies right and you will be able to focus on doing the right things. "For example, GE has come up with a new device called the eco-dashboard that is designed to let home owners know how much energy and water they are using and how trends track over time. Since the unit also doubles as their thermostat and central port for all their home systems (like security, and so on), it can help people learn how to conserve and how much they are conserving. Taking this logic to the workplace can be the start of changing behavior." CIO

Send feedback on this feature to editor@cio.in

REAL CIO WORLD | M A R C H 1 , 2 0 0 8

3/1/2008 7:33:37 PM

Benefits The Har d By Leon Erlanger

The e-waste problem is big and growing. Yet IDC estimates that only 33 percent of companies, mostly large ones, have made use of the asset disposal industry.

Total e-waste in India is estimated at:

1,46,180 tons per year.

Reader ROI:

The growing problem of e-waste and its impact Different approaches and whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s on offer for help How proper disposal benefit CIOs

Source : IRG systems South Asia

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3/1/2008 7:35:30 PM

Recycling

From r dware Mess

IllUSt RAtIon by p c Anoo p

In LAt LA E 2000, Union Bank of California concluded that it was time to refresh its desktop PCs every four years, based on findings from a PC Total Cost of Ownership Study. This meant that 200 PCs would have to be retired every month. Unfortunately, there was no strategy in place for the task, or even a designated person or department to manage the systems. "Until then there was no process for disposing of PCs," says Julie LeDuc, IT group purchasing manager at Union Bank. "Each department would do its own thing, either storing them in warehouses, saving them for contingency purposes, or simply disposing of them." With a mandated company policy of environmental friendliness and the rumblings of the Sarbanes-Oxley and Gramm-Leach-Bliley acts, LeDuc knew the company couldn't simply have the machines shipped to the local junkyard where anyone could harvest them for sensitive data. It was time for a corporate asset-recovery strategy to ensure that the machines were retired in a secure and eco-friendly manner. After considering several alternatives, Union Bank chose Intechra, a growing national asset-disposition firm, and continues to enlist its services today. "They handle everything from our PCs to notebooks, printers, servers, monitors, telephones, scanners, and projectors," LeDuc says. After Union Bank does a preliminary disk wipe, Intechra's logistics team comes out to shrink-wrap and pack the equipment onto pallets and ship it all to its facilities, where it performs several subsequent disk wipes and tests everything.

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Usable PCs are either made available for reuse to Union Bank employees, donated to charity, or refurbished and sold on the market. Unusable equipment is disassembled for whatever usable parts can be sold, and the rest is recycled where possible so the materials can be used in other products.

Waking Up to E-waste

nion Bank's asset-recovery awakening is typical of many large companies today. "We see a new interest in e-waste recovery, thanks to all the recent debates about climate change and global warming," says IDC Analyst David Daoud. "Large corporations have decided that it's to their interest to tackle environmental e-waste issues and are competing with each other to reduce their environmental footprint." The e-waste problem is big and growing. According to IDC, the US installed base of PCs is expected to grow from 28 crore in 2006 to 40.4 crore in 2010, with 23.75 crore PCs expected to be retired between 2005 and 2010. In 2006 alone, 3.07 crore PCs, or 70 percent of the total commercial installed base, were retired. REAL CIO WORLD | M A R C H 1 , 2 0 0 8

Recycling Yet IDC estimates only 33 percent of US companies, mostly large enterprises, have made use of the asset disposal industry. In the European Union the number is closer to 40 percent. That's unfortunate, because the increasing number of retired PCs that end up in landfills results in more toxic pollution. PCs and monitors, especially old ones, contain a multitude of hazardous substances: lead, which can cause brain and kidney damage in children; mercury, which can cause nervous system and kidney damage; as well as cadmium, BFRs (brominated flame retardants), and PVC (polyvinyl chloride), which are known to cause health problems such as cancer, respiratory illness, and reproductive damage and are able to accumulate in the human body and travel long distances through air and water when not disposed of properly. Notably, legislators have been laying down regulations to rein in e-waste, which gives companies further cause to embrace IT asset recovery practices. The European Union has taken the lead with its WEEE (The Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment) and RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) regulations, which require electronic manufacturers to take on the ecologically responsible disposition of the equipment they sell. Further, the laws require companies to eliminate several environmentally hazardous substances. Moreover, a proposed REACH policy (Registration, Evaluation, and Authorization of Chemicals) would create an even tougher regulatory framework for chemicals if it is passed.

clients and consumers must be notified if any customer information gets outside of the custody or control of a company. Along with proper environmental disposal of systems, many companies, particularly in the financial and health fields, now have to prove that all sensitive customer or patient data is eradicated according to strict state and federal requirements.

What Goes Around, Comes Around

sset recovery providers range from the principal system vendors â&#x20AC;&#x201D; including Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Dell, and Sun â&#x20AC;&#x201D; to scores of specialty providers, to another emerging class of providers, such as Redemtech, Intechra, TechTurn, and NextPhase. The latter have been on a buying binge, acquiring local providers to expand their reach. In many cases the major system vendors partner with various local and regional providers to broaden their reach as well, as one of the most expensive parts of the disposal process is transport. For example, Leduc claims that Union Bank's recovery costs were reduced by 25 percent when Intechra opened a facility in Phoenix and PCs no longer had to be shipped from California to Columbus. The services provided by the hardware vendors differ in subtle ways. IBM and HP run their asset-recovery services as part of their leasing and financing operations. Indeed, leasing can be a good solution for companies that want as little as possible to do with asset recovery, as it places responsibility for environmentally sound disposal with the vendor rather than the lessor, though the lessor retains responsibility for protecting user data. Both vendors can build asset recovery into the leasing cost. Dell's asset recovery services are part of its managed services offering. HP and IBM will take non-leased equipment and equipment purchased from other vendors, though in HP's case, only as part of an upgrade to the company's hardware. HP will apply what Source: International Association of it considers the trade-in value of third-party Electronics Recyclers equipment toward a new hardware purchase. Dell takes third-party equipment as well and will either cut a check for the value or apply the value to a Hand in hand with environmental concerns of e-waste new purchase. Sun takes only its own equipment and does so disposal are security and privacy issues. "When we got free of charge, with no value applied to a purchase. into this business, companies were spending thousands of Contract arrangements also vary. Most of the vendors work dollars on firewalls but giving away their PCs," saysIntechra on fee-for-service as well as long-term-contract bases. In some CEO Chip Slack. cases, such as with IBM Global Services, disposal can be part In the US, regulations regarding e-waste disposal of a more comprehensive asset-management offering that have also passed in several states and several federal helps customer take inventory and determine appropriate and state regulations now make it the corporate user's refresh strategies. responsibility to protect the privacy of customer data Vendors then attempt to reap whatever commercial value at every stage, including during the disposal process. they can out of the PCs they collect, either by refurbishing Laws in more than 20 states mandate that all the affected

CRTs are hard to recycle. In 2000,

48 million kilos of lead bearing CRTs were trashed, and by 2030, that total will rise to 640 million kilos.

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and selling them or disassembling Due diligence means coming up them and selling the parts, sometimes with your company's own set of through a broker. All will enter into a requirements for asset recovery, based profit-sharing arrangement with the on company philosophy and standards, customer. Dell boasts that 90 percent as well as relevant local, state, and of the sales profits go to the customer. federal regulations, then investigating Intechra gives a 60 percent figure. whether your recovery partner, and Other vendors are not so public about that partner's recovery partners, meet their sharing ratio. those requirements. A global enterprise Obviously, PCs that are refreshed will obviously have to consider policies on a regular two-, three-, or even fourand regulations abroad. — Virendra Pal year schedule and immediately sent to "You have to ask a provider questions CTO, Spicejet the vendor are more likely to get some like, 'How do you manage your partners return than PCs are that five years old and hold them accountable?' " says Joe or more, or those that sit in a corporate Strathmann, Dell's senior manager of warehouse for months or years first. worldwide asset recovery. "What is All the vendors claim that they do not your audit protocol for your partners ship equipment, either PCs or parts, and your partners' partners?" If the overseas unless they can verify that it vendor has a high percentage of its own is in working and saleable condition. recovery and recycling facilities, that The younger the PCs, the higher the may be a measure of comfort level. possibility that recovery will end up It's also important to do your own being no cost after profit sharing or checking. "We recommend that you go might even result in an overall return for out and visit providers and kick the tires," the customer. says James O'Grady, director of technology All the vendors and most of the larger thirdvalue solutions at HP. Even though Intechra party services provide the customer with serialized has its own third-party auditor, Union Bank does reporting on each and every asset, including whether and its own periodic audits, mostly for security purposes, to when it was resold or recycled, and certificates confirming ensure that disks are being wiped properly. data destruction. In most cases the vendor recommends that Transportation is not only a cost, but a risk as well. It's the customer do at least one data wipe on its end and/or disable important to understand what background checks are done on the disk with special utilities or by driving a nail through the the persons driving trucks the company uses. And it's worth hard drive. Then the vendor will transport the equipment to checking what percentage of e-waste handled by your partner one of its own sites or partner sites and do subsequent wipes, on average ends up as landfill. For example IBM claims that including anywhere from three to seven wipes according to its number is .78 percent. Slack claims that Intechra's goal is customer and Department of Defense specifications. zero-percent landfill and jokes that there's more waste from However, vendors are also open to providing data wipe the company's lunchroom than its asset-recovery process. services on the customer site for an extra fee. IBM and HP Another aspect to consider is the efforts your PC vendor have their own recovery and recycling capabilities but also puts in at the manufacturing end to make its equipment easy partner with third parties in several locations. to disassemble and recycle. Among other things, this means using as few screws and plastics as possible. Finally, little things can make a big difference. LeDuc was sold simply on the professionalism of the people Intechra sent to its 320 bank branches to pick up equipment, which t can be tempting to look at asset recovery as a cost and is important for bank offices with a high public profile. "It choose the least-expensive vendor as an asset-recovery shouldn't be like calling a moving company," LeDuc says. partner. However, experts agree that reducing risk should be Whatever approach your company ends up taking to IT the primary criterion when devising a strategy: the risk of asset recovery, the benefits are clear: organizations stand to fines, lawsuits, or damaged reputation. That's why in large gain peace of mind that data on their retired systems is safe, enterprises, increasingly, responsibility for asset-recovery has higher ROI on their hardware investments, and a jumpstart moved beyond the department level and the IT division, to the on forthcoming e-waste legislation. The environmental CXO level — often to the CIO, CFO, or even CEO. It makes benefits are green icing on the cake. CIO sense for companies to have a centralized recovery strategy so that one department doesn't get the entire organization in trouble with the law or the media. Send feedback on this feature to editor@cio.in

“It is definitely the CIO's job to drive e-waste management because nobody else in the company can do it.”

Proceed with Caution

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Infrastructure

Facilities Get Greener Automated control systems send vital data over IP-based networks, making facilities smarter and more energy efficient. By Mary Brandel

There’s a loT loT of focus Today oday on the greening of the data center. But the energy conservation movement and the proliferation of IP-based data transport are also causing IT to pay more attention to building and facilities management.

Reader ROI:

IT’s role in helping facilities go green How IP and WAN networks can reduce utility budgets

In many cases, facilities and building managers work directly with integrators to design and implement these networks. But even then, IT is needed to make critical decisions, such as whether there’s enough bandwidth on corporate IP networks for data to flow in real time; what security measures should be implemented, especially when the setup involves sending the data across the Internet; and how to set up the network addressing and naming schemes for the new devices. When Redmond-based Eddie Bauer needed to replace its automated temperature control system at its 2.2million-square-foot fulfillment center in Groveport, Ohio, it went with the LonWorks system from Echelon, a provider of networks that control and monitor heating, ventilation, air conditioning and lighting systems as well as other equipment. With LonWorks, facilities manager Jim Annable can track the accuracy of the company’s electric bills, as well as monitor trends and analyze data to fine-tune the schedule for turning on and shutting down systems. He can set thresholds for system alarms to notify him of conditions such as excessive Source: Singapore IBMS 2005 Survey temperatures, and he worked with IT

From sportswear retailer Eddie Bauer to the New York public school system, organizations are implementing automated building control systems that send vital data over IP-based networks and are manageable through Web portals. The common goal is to reduce energy costs and comply with green building standards. “Building systems are beginning to use the IT backbone as their medium to get information back and forth from the control systems” to the people who monitor them, says Terry Reynolds, vice president for business development at Control Technologies, a systems integrator, that helped implement the New York schools’ system.

Intelligent building management (IBM) reduces power needs. Building without IBM:

356 KW/m2 /yr Building with IBM:

125.6 KW/m2 /yr 64

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to enable the system to page him over the intranet to respond remotely to unusual situations. Annable can also monitor electrical usage in real time via a Web interface to minimize usage during periods of peak demand and thus reduce costs. “Utility bills are based on peak usage, so you want to keep that as low as possible,” he explains. “We can shed load by turning off our air-handling units in certain parts of the facility or our high-speed sorting equipment. It’s a matter of constantly balancing what we turn on and off, sequencing and timing. If the system calls for an air handler to turn on, and we delay it by 10 minutes.” So far, the system has helped the facility reduce costs by more than Rs 1.4 crore — just under 20 percent of its utility budget — and achieve return on investment in less than a year.

a massive design, construction and renovation effort for the city’s 1,200 schools. The system will also help the agency comply with the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design initiative, a US standard for green building design. Reynolds worked closely with the city’s IT department to carve out a piece of the existing WAN for data transport from each school to a central location in — S.S.Mathur Queens. “We’re sharing a data highway GM, IT Infrastructure, CRIS that’s typically not used for this kind of [real-time] transport,” he says. “The timing of information can be critical,” he adds, like when the school system is trying to respond to a utility provider’s request to shed power load. “We had a lot of discussion about disaster recovery and allocation of channel bandwidth that had to be ironed out,” Reynolds says. “Now we’re one of the regular users on the WAN.” IT’s involvement with these types of systems varies from organization to organization. In the New York school project, IT he New York City School Construction staffers were present right from the start, Reynolds says, Authority is also adopting LonWorks to reduce noting that they helped select his company as integrator. energy and facility management expenses as it undertakes IT also helped work out contractual issues for network support roles and responsibilities. “Our interaction with IT was to iron out the grand design and establish grounds for ongoing communication and coordinate things as each school is built,” Reynolds says. In the LonWorks system, a building system’s At Eddie Bauer, Annable worked with integrator devices — HVAC equipment, light switches and Advanced Control Systems in Columbus, Ohio, to design room occupancy sensors — are outfitted with chips. and implement the system. Annable first planned to These chips run scheduling, alarm and data-logging connect the network to the existing corporate network. But applications and also enable the devices to communicate just a few months after the implementation, he and the IT with one another in a peer-to-peer control network via a group decided to switch to a dedicated Ethernet backbone widely accepted protocol written by Echelon. based on concerns about cost, throughput and security. The control network interfaces with the i.LON 100 “This reduced some cabling costs for the locations we Internet Server, which serves up Web pages to any were trying to pick up,” he says. Eddie Bauer also liked the Internet Explorer-compatible browser. It also acts as idea of having a single point of connection with the intranet a gateway to the corporate IP network, a dedicated IP via a router so it could establish a firewall there rather than network or the Internet, providing facilities managers have multiple points of connection, Annable says. with Web access to the scheduling, alarm and dataAs the green movement grows in the US, IT’s interaction logging applications residing in the devices. with facilities management will only increase. “There’s no Another company, Site Controls, offers an openway IT can dodge controls anymore,” says Echelon CIO source, Internet-enabled energy management system Dick Carlson. “Buildings are just getting smarter.” CIO that allows retail, restaurant and convenience-store franchises to monitor and control their building systems to minimize energy costs. —M.B. Brandel is a contributing writer. Send feedback on this feature to

What would really clinch matters is legislation or executive orders to enforce green building principles.

Greener Schools

Working the Web

editor@cio.in

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3/1/2008 7:36:51 PM

Storage

More Bytes, Fewer Watts Customers and vendors are scrambling to store more kilobytes with fewer kilowatts. By RoBeRt L. ScheieR

IllUStratIo n by an Il t

Rick king helps Run a Rs 12,400 cRoRe information services business for the Thomson Corp., and he says it’s crucial to get enough power to store 2.5 petabytes of legal and regulatory data.

King, executive VP and COO for Thomson’s North American Legal business, completed a 17,000-square-foot upgrade of two 10-year-old data centers in May 2005. Among other things, he boosted the power available from the original 25 watts per square foot to the 60 watts required by today’s denser, virtualized servers and storage. He also added redundant power feeds and added more backup batteries and generators. With the online share of Thomson’s business growing rapidly, King can’t afford to rely on third-party data centers that might not have access to sufficient power — or the will to make costly upgrades. So he’s preparing to consolidate smaller data centers and build a new 80,000-

M A R C H 1 , 2 0 0 8 | Real cio WoRlD

Reader ROI:

The impact of electricity's rising cost on datacenters How growing storage needs will make managing power harder Why storing less can help

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square-foot data center to house servers and storage for his company’s growing customer base. Thomson’s hardware footprint is no small investment. With power costs on the rise, King says his main concern is finding and keeping staffers who understand the interplay of technology, power and facilities design. Those staffers come at a premium, stretching budgets even further. Towards the beginning of 2007, pay for some storage administrators grew 20 percent, according to David Foote, CEO at IT workforce consultancy Foote Partners LLC. Salaries for senior storage network administrators rose 10 percent in the 18 months prior to December 2006, which was “well beyond the growth in pay for IT jobs,” Foote says. The combination of more expensive power, rising salaries and growing storage is hitting IT budgets hard. Here’s how some companies are coping with these multiple storage headaches.

“It is the CIO's job to ensure that purchasing criteria concerns how green IT equipment is.” — Mohit Agarwal CIO, Hindustan Times

Where’s the Juice?

isk and tape drives typically consume only one-fifth or less of the electricity used by a data center, with servers using much of the rest. But every terabyte of data stored online needs to be backed up for disaster recovery, with a third copy often archived for legal purposes. Saving data in triplicate can triple the power required to run and cool storage devices. Electricity is also getting more expensive. In 2005, commercial customers in the US such as data centers paid an average of 16 percent more per kilowatt-hour than they did in 2000. By early 2007, the average price per kilowatt-hour had risen by another 5 percent. In late 2006, Gartner estimated that in 2008 nearly 50 percent of data centers worldwide will lack the power and cooling capacity needed to support high-density equipment such as blade servers. Increases in the demand for power are outpacing expansions of the US' power transmission grid, the large

power lines that send electricity from power plants to major urban areas, says Clark Gellings, VP of innovation at Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto. While the cost of building data centers varies widely according to their location and the degree of uptime they need to provide, Jim Kerrigan, a principal at The Staubach, a commercial real estate firm in Chicago, says a data center providing ‘five 9s’ (99.999 percent) reliability can cost upwards of Rs 40,000 per square foot.

Coping Strategies

o combat high costs and low availability, some users are being forced into collocation facilities that rent space to multiple companies. Universal Service Administrative is moving much of its operations out of its Washington headquarters into such a facility. “We can’t get any more draw to the building itself,” says Bryan Sastokas, director of information systems, strategy and architecture at the organization, which administers a fund that pays for telecommunications services to rural and poor customers. Hoping not to get caught short of power again, designers of new data centers are building in extra power and cooling capacity that can be tapped as needed. When outsourcing vendor Infocrossing built a new data center, it left 36 inches (rather than the usual 11, 18 or 24 inches) under the raised floors so it would have more cool air available in the future, says CTO Dave Leonard. It also designed extra capacity into both the power lines coming into the building and the connections that carry cooling water and air through the data center. Other organizations are using technologies like virtualization, data de-duplication and data compression to reduce the amount of storage they need — and thus the number of power-hungry devices required to hold data. Vendor coalitions are also collaborating on ways to improve the energy efficiency of their products.

This year, Gartner estimates that nearly 50% of

data centers worldwide will lack the power and cooling capacity needed to support high-density equipment.

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3/1/2008 7:38:51 PM

Storage

Reduce Your Data Center Storage Costs alMost eveRy stoRage vendor claims that its can cut power and cooling needs. Most pitches have at least a grain of truth, since anything that reduces data volume also reduces energy costs. Here are eight ways to start saving.

Information life-cycle management (IlM) is as much a management philosophy as a technology and involves moving data to less-expensive systems or eliminating it as its value falls. Many vendors provide software and services to help customers implement IlM.

Virtualization makes more efficient use of both servers and storage by combining physical devices into logical ‘pools’ that can be more completely utilized than separate devices. this can cut power demands by reducing physical servers and storage. but it can also increase power demands by using dense racks of servers and storage that max out the power capacity of data centers long before they are physically full.

De-duplication and compression can yield a 20-to-1 reduction in storage needs by storing only the differences between old and new copies, or by reading data as it is written to the backup device and storing only the unique data.

by allocating as much ‘logical’ capacity on drives as apps are expected to require but allocating physical capacity as apps actually need it, storage servers from vendors such as 3Pardata postpone the need for additional drives. this approach, known as thin provisioning, gives storage managers more time to juggle capacity and buy drives.

MaID (massive array of idle disks) storage also offers power savings. this technology spins up a drive only when data is required from it. but the extra time required to spin up the drive can make MaID unfeasible for apps such as transaction processing, which require high performance.

Managing Lean

he process of managing storage can be one of the big contributors to its cost. But done right, managing storage can dramatically reduce the demand for storage. Sastokas says he is relying on strict storage management policies, the use of document management systems “and changing workflows and culture” to eliminate common, space-wasting practices. For example, to avoid situations where users send multiple copies of a 5MB PDF to 30 or 40 co-workers, a document management system can direct all users to a single copy of the file. Warren Habib, CTO at Fotolog, a photo-sharing and social networking site, estimates that storage servers from 3PARdata save his company Rs 24 lakh in administrative costs annually, not to mention the savings in storage management software. Because 3PARdata’s ‘thin provisioning’ technology automatically expands storage volumes as needed, “we don’t need to have people constantly resizing volumes or constantly monitoring our growth,” says Habib. 68

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other vendors offer combinations of specially designed hardware and software. bluearc, for example, claims its titan 2200 file server, which can serve as a front end for multiple storage-area network or network-attached storage systems, generates one-third the heat and provides twice the performance of competing high-end naS hardware. agami Systems uses 64-bit opteron chips to create high-end naS servers that consume half the power and as little as one-eighth the space of other naS hardware, says Paul Speciale, VP of product management.

Some vendors have built temperature sensors into storage arrays and other hardware to direct cooling to where it’s needed most. For example, HP claims that its Dynamic Smart Cooling System can save 25 percent to 40 percent of a data center’s energy use.

—r.l.S.

Ken Lehman, group director for the shared services operation at defense contractor Northrup Grumman in Dallas, is focused on a companywide information life-cycle management project designed to hold back the growth of the more than 700 petabytes of data he already manages. Over the next three to five years, Lehman says, he doesn’t foresee major technology changes “that are going to handle the demand coming our way.” But properly moving data to less-expensive tiers as its value declines — and disposing of it when it’s not needed — “has a direct impact on staffing, power, space, data protection” and every other piece of the storage cost footprint, he says. In other words, it’s fine to use new technologies such as de-duplication, thin provisioning and virtualization to reduce the amount of staff and electricity it takes to store your data. But put policies in place that let you classify and eliminate data wherever possible so you don’t have to store it in the first place. cio

Scheier is a freelance writer. Send feedback on this feature to editor@cio.in

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Trendline_Nov11.indd 19

11/16/2011 11:56:19 AM

Over 60% organizations

believe that virtualized servers improve

disaster recovery and backup plans.

Source: CIO Research

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Virtualization

Virtual Possibilities By Thomas Wailgum

Smart CIOs are using virtualization for much more than data center consolidation. They are becoming masters of flexibility — delivering results lightning-fast — while reducing power and space requirements. See how.

Il lUStRat IOn by Un nIkRIShnan aV

ThERE ERE Isn’T T muCh AbOuT T TOm sAnzOnE that bespeaks drama. The CIO of Credit Suisse is direct, meticulous and practical, and it doesn’t seem as if he’d suffer fools gladly, an impression partly informed by his New York accent, nearly shaven head and confident demeanor. But ask him what virtualization has helped him deliver to Credit Suisse, and you’ll get a dramatic answer: tremendous results. He’s not just talking about savings reaped from data center consolidation — which was what the first wave of virtualization projects was all about. Sanzone and other leading CIOs are taking virtualization to the next level. They’re using it to become the fast, flexible business partners that CEOs have always wanted. One example: virtualization has radically changed the way Sanzone’s IT group delivers computing power to the company’s application-hungry line of business units. The old process of allocating a server box for a business unit — including purchasing, provisioning and configuring the hardware — took weeks or months. Now, Sanzone says, with his growing number of virtualized servers, “it can be done in one day.

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“And we want to move even quicker.” This, he notes, is the kind of benefit his business partners understand loud and clear. “They can see the impact of this type of technology and what it can mean to the business,” he says. Such as? “Such as a quicker time to market for the products that they need, competitive advantage and driving revenue growth.” Virtualization, he continues, “is a beautiful combination: it’s cheaper and offers a lot more capability.” Sprung out from server farm savings Reader ROI: and spreading to Credit Suisse’s four core How virtualization business units, virtualization has become helps save money a central piece of the Rs 28,000 financial How virtualization in services company’s future. reducing power needs Stephen Elliot, a research manager in the Why virtualization enterprise systems group of IDC (a sister is used for disaster company to CIO’s publisher), says this piece recovery REAL CIO WORLD | M A R C H 1 , 2 0 0 8

Virtualization At Credit Suisse, Sanzone will remove more than 2,500 of the company’s servers (which total more than 20,000) by year’s end. In the development environment, he’s been able to realize a 20-to-1 ratio for consolidating servers, meaning he consolidated 20 physical servers onto one new server. He’s also upped utilization rates on those servers from some as low as 7 percent up to 40 percent. In turn, he expects to save millions on reductions in maintenance, hardware capital, networking, migration, real estate, and data center power and cooling costs. Credit Suisse is on track to reduce its data center power consumption by 1 megawatt by year’s end — all courtesy of virtualization. (Recent virtualization research from Aberdeen Group shows that 83 percent of 'best in class' companies have increased their server utilization rates, 57 percent have decreased capital costs, and 52 percent have reduced staffing overhead. David Siles, who is CTO of the Kane County government in Illinois, has realized massive savings since he started virtualizing in 2005. Those savings have come from a 30-to-1 utilization ratio, the elimination of 110 servers and licensing ike Sanzone, many CIOs have realized that fees (more than Rs 40 lakh); server renewal costs that he virtualization is much more than a cost-saving tool. But avoided (Rs 148 lakh); and power and HVAC savings (nearly almost every CIO’s journey to a virtualized environment Rs 120 lakh). Siles says that virtualization has not only become will start with a data center consolidation project — and a strategic piece of Kane County’s infrastructure but, thanks big savings that provide a pleasant starting point with the to annual budget cuts, it is how he’s been able to provide “the business side. same level of services to the county with less money.” Virtualization technology from vendors such as In fact, if CIOs haven’t virtualized at least a part of VMware (which owns about 80 percent of the Fortune their server populations by now, they are woefully behind the curve. When Arch Coal CIO Michael Abbene began investigating virtualization products in 2006, “I tried to get a sense of who else was doing it,” he recalls. “It turned out to be everybody.” According to IDC, 75 percent of companies with 1,000 or more employees are employing virtualization today. And more than half of the respondents to the Aberdeen Group survey on virtualization were using it in their production environments (meaning, everyday user applications), “a clear sign that end users Source: VMware trust that the technology is mature enough for mission-critical systems.” Data center consolidation is a critical first step toward 1000 market) acts as an 'abstraction layer' between unlocking virtualization’s potential because it demonstrates physical server boxes and the operating systems and to the business that IT can run more cost-effectively — software running on them. This means that up to 30 slashing server costs plus tackling expensive power, virtual servers can be housed on just one physical server, cooling and real estate expenses. IDC says enterprises though that number varies widely from data center to data spend 50 cents to power and cool servers for every one center (depending on how resource-hungry a company’s dollar in server spending today (that number will increase applications are, for example). CIOs can then create a to 70 cents by 2010), and new data center costs run Rs virtual pool of computing power, which reduces the need 40,000 per square foot. Abbene says that consolidation for a huge number of servers and allows for much better has enabled him to defer a major data center upgrade that CPU utilization rates (which typically run anywhere from would have cost him around Rs 160 lakh. 5 percent to 15 percent) in servers. of technology can be vital for CIOs who are struggling with the business side’s expectations (one recent Forrester survey found that just 28 percent of CEOs think their CIOs are proactive business leaders). “Virtualization is an opportunity to strike more of a partnership with the business because you can drive out a more agile infrastructure and meet those [business] requirements faster,” Elliot says. CIOs and analysts agree that IT departments need to move beyond simple 'data center consolidation' thinking. Virtualization can enable dramatically faster provisioning of equipment and computing resources, better chargeback systems and stronger disaster recovery capabilities. It all adds up to a more flexible infrastructure that’s less a problem and more a solution. “That’s when a CIO moves from tactical to strategic,” Elliot says.

Thou Shalt Save A Lot of Money

Datacenters can

lower their TCO by 30 to 70% if an enterprise

opts for virtual infrastructure.

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According to Abbene, as lo ng as you don’t overburden physical servers with too many VMs, you won’t notice any degradation in application availability. And as long as applications are running just fine, “they don’t need to know what box [their applications] are running on.” Despite serious growth at the Rs 10,000 crore company over the past three years, Abbene reduced his overall budget by 10 percent to 15 percent a year, largely due to his server virtualization efforts. In fact, Abbene says that at his company, many businesspeople have become enamored of the virtualization concept. “They’ll say, ‘I want a virtualized server,’” he says.

on those services because of the virtualized savings. “If you can get away with that,” Elliot cautions. This sneaking around is, in part, a response to the fact that some LOB chiefs have become married to their servers. These executives are 'server huggers' and they can be very territorial about their boxes. But it’s those server huggers, and their demands for loads of computing — Arnab Biswas power for their applications, who CIO, Oxigen Services are one of the chief causes of server sprawl in the CIOs’ data centers. At Arch Coal, Abbene was feeling the heat. “We were just getting inundated — one application, one server, one application, one server, and it was again and again,” he recalls. He’s tried to keep the virtualization conversations simple. “When I explained to management about virtualization as a concept, it hat first win and proof of was just as easy to say, ‘You take 30 concept with server consolidation computers and run them on one,’” he invariably lead to more virtualization says. Their response: “Oh, OK.” conversations, say CIOs and analysts. CIOs CIOs don’t need to delve into the should seize on these second-round discussions technological specifications of virtualization, as to expand upon how virtualization can provide greater Sanzone and Abbene’s examples prove. Businesspeople flexibility and speed in provisioning computing power can easily understand getting their servers faster — from to lines of business (LOBs), allow for greater utilization weeks or months down to just hours or one day. of idle CPUs, speed up business continuity and disaster Using VMware-based virtualization, AIG recovery operations, and improve application and Technologies, which makes insurance-related IT system availability. products, has cut server provisioning time by 50 percent But, experts and practitioners say, you should take it — from six hours (when a physical server already slow and keep it simple. That’s because even many who was available onsite) to just three hours. Whereas work inside IT still have difficulty understanding all of provisioning a new server from offsite typically takes virtualization’s complex terminology — just imagine six to eight weeks, CIOs like Sanzone can now answer how your CFO or marketing VP will feel if you start business requests for new server power with responses discussing hypervisors and CPUs. (Hint: eyes glazing like, “How about tomorrow?” over, furious typing on BlackBerry.) “They have no idea what that all means,” says Matt Wilson, vice president of IS at Chevy Chase Bank, which has Rs 56,000 crore in assets. “As long as [their servers] perform well, they have no input into it.” When Wilson learly, virtualization is helping CIOs like Sanzone has moved Windows-based servers over to virtual and Abbene develop a rep for being fast responders machines in the past, he says, “it’s not something that to the business. What about when the stakes are raised? we’ve advertised to the business.” Since the turn of the millennium, organizations have In fact, IDC’s Elliot says he’s talked to some CIOs who become more aware of their need for better and more have hidden the fact that they have virtualized their efficient business continuity and disaster recovery servers (and realized cost savings) altogether. “They systems. More recent events such as 9/11 and Hurricane don’t want to spook anybody with tech jargon,” Elliot Katrina, as well as new governmental regulations about says. In a rather subtle way, he says, it’s conceivable data handling practices, have only reinforced that need. that those CIOs who don’t inform the LOBs about their For a growing number of CIOs, virtualization has become virtualized savings are actually able to make a 'profit' a valuable tool in being able to quickly restart business

“Virtualization leads to direct cost-cutting by reducing the number of boxes required in a given environment.”

What Business Doesn’t Need to Know

Rewriting Recovery Rules

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3/1/2008 7:41:37 PM

Virtualization operations and applications in times of man-made or natural disaster, and keep IT service interruptions (both planned and unplanned system maintenance) to a minimum. IDC’s Elliot says that the business continuity application of virtualization is “the next big iteration” as CIOs move forward. Disaster recovery and backup operations have garnered much of the attention, simply because the time and cost savings CIOs can deliver to the business can be almost as dramatic as a flood or fire.

been the speed at which his group can recover a virtual machine after a disaster. Wilson’s now using a third-party company as his disaster recovery center, and his virtualized infrastructure has been strategic to the bank’s operations. First, he’s been able to cut his monthly disaster recovery costs because he doesn’t have to own a duplicate set of hardware and all of its associated costs — the power and cooling costs that come from all of those idling CPUs just waiting for a disaster. That’s no small number: IDC says that there’s Rs 560,000 crore in excess server capacity sitting around worldwide right now. In addition, because it’s easy to replicate the contents, Wilson doesn’t need staffers to ensure that OuT On ThE EDgE Of ThE vIRTuALIzATIOn frontier are It t chiefs like David the data between the two locations Siles, CtO of the kane County government in Illinois. In addition to his server is in sync and that configuration virtualization, data consolidation and disaster recovery successes, which he started changes and updates have been in 2005, Siles has embarked on an ambitious desktop virtualization project. made in both locations, which Siles is about a quarter of the way through deploying VMware’s virtual desktop can be incredibly complex due to infrastructure to the county’s user base, which accounts for 2,000 PCs. dissimilarities in hardware types at those users who have started to switch over, including administrative folks, the locations. “It’s a big time-saver,” politicians and sheriffs, use thin-client terminals that are hosted back in the data he says. When asked what the value center on virtual machines. of his efforts is to the business side, although Siles says it’s still early in the changeover to calculate exact savings, his answer is simple yet critical: he will eventually be able to cut maintenance, hardware and service costs because “We can quickly recover business everything is controlled inside the data center. For example, each terminal cost him applications — that’s the value.” Rs 24,000. but since he has been able to get 50 to 60 hosted desktops on each In Kane County, one of two data four-processor server, he has been able to cut in half each terminal’s cost. and, he centers sits on a bank of the Fox River notes, terminals boast an eight-year lifecycle, rather than a four-year one for a PC. in Illinois, vulnerable to flooding. In addition, his four desktop staffers no longer have to make service calls to the Siles has ensured that both data four corners of the growing county (which accounted for two hours of driving time, centers can be easily and quickly in most cases). those thin clients — especially the 55 mobile units — now pose less replicated to each other using of a security concern. “We had a couple laptops stolen out of police cars,” Siles says. VMware’s VMotion technology. “now [with the virtualized thin clients], you essentially just lose a dumb terminal.” That’s crucial, Siles points out, —t.G. t t.G. because county emergency personnel use these resources. At Arch Coal, Abbene’s team has been able to reduce At the core, virtualization technology reduces the time to recovery from six hours to two hours on the contents of servers to a set of files (called file virtualized servers that include active directory and encapsulation), which makes replication and restoration base operating systems. “We’ve been able to speed up of all the contents much easier than traditional methods. recovery, and we’re reducing costs with our [offsite] In some cases, CIOs can reduce recovery time to just a recovery vendor because of the fewer servers that we few hours in a process that can be as simple as copying need,” Abbene says. and pasting. After businesspeople saw some of the disaster Chevy Chase Bank’s Wilson is currently migrating from recovery results, they responded with a collective a backup process that includes having to manage loads of “Wow,” he says. “They said, ‘This is the fastest we have backup tape. He’s found that the new virtualized system ever had this up.’” CIO reduces a 20-hour recovery process per Windows server to 15 minutes for each of his virtualized blade servers. (Wilson has already been able to consolidate and virtualize his development group’s 100 servers to 14 blades, which amounts to a 7-to-1 ratio of physical server to virtual servers.) He notes that a huge advantage for the bank has Send feedback on this feature to editor@cio.in

How Savings Add Up

M A R C H 1 , 2 0 0 8 | REAL CIO WORLD

VOl/3 | ISSUE/08

Data Center

Cool Rules for Hot Computing Designing a new data center or retrofitting an old one to be greener is a complex process, but our six ideas will get you started in the right direction. By John E. WEst

UntIL RECEnt ntLy, Ly, L y, mAny ORgAnIzAt A IOns didn't have to think about At their data center infrastructure more than once a decade. As long as there was enough space to house the new server rack, cooling and power needs would work themselves out. But those times are quickly passing as the demand for computing power increases and puts a strain on electricity supplies. According to market research firm IDC (a sister company to CIO), ), computer support infrastructure needed to house and run servers is second only to system price among the concerns of data center managers. Steve Conway, a research vice president for high-performance computing at IDC, says, "These issues were at the number-12 position just three to four years ago, which means they were a non-issue." This change in priority reflects shifts in technology and a sharp growth in demand for processing power. Virtualization and multicore processors are allowing us to put dramatically more power in a smaller footprint. Meanwhile, Gartner predicts that by next year, half the world's data centers will not have the infrastructure needed to meet the power and cooling requirements of the latest high-density equipment.

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These changes bring to managers of mainstream data centers issues that managers like myself in high-end scientific and technical supercomputing centers have been dealing with for decades: how to properly site infrastructure support equipment, optimize cooling for high server rack densities, balance data center efficiency against business needs and track all the little details that can make or Reader ROI: break an implementation. How to improve the The data center in which I work, a efficiency of your data Department of Defense supercomputing center center located at the Army Engineer Why it is important to Research and Development Center consider cost benefits for (ERDC), is in the middle of a two-year going green effort to totally overhaul its data center How to go about designing a new data center support infrastructure. Designing a REAL CIO WORLD | M A R C H 1 , 2 0 0 8

new data center or retrofitting an old one is a complex process, but the six ideas below — road tested by our experiences during the past decade and informed by ERDC's ongoing infrastructure modernization — will get you started in the right direction.

our national utility infrastructure is starting to show signs of wear. The bridge collapse in Minneapolis and massive power outages in the early years of this decade are symptoms of a rapidly declining national critical infrastructure. Events like the outage on Aug. 14, 2003, which left 50 million people around the Great Lakes without power, are expected to become more common over the — S.C. Mittal next several years unless significant Exective Director-Systems steps are taken to rein in demand and rowing your computing IFFCO increase the capacity and reliability of infrastructure is challenging. our aging power grid. Before you commit to your next With utility power disruption upgrade, ask yourself, 'Do I even need likely to become more frequent in my own data center?' the near term, data center managers A minimally robust infrastructure should be motivated to design is going to include power-switching their infrastructure with power equipment and generators. But availability in mind, including almost no one stops there. You have to redundant power distribution and protect yourself from fire and natural generation systems to protect against disasters. And once the data center is system failure in the face of commercial built, you're going to have to field a crew power interruptions. Clearly, you to monitor and maintain it. As Amazon need to design your infrastructure to be CTO Werner Vogels said at the recent Next as efficient as possible (even taking steps Generation Data Center conference, unless you're like specifying high-efficiency power supplies in in an industry where having a highly efficient, in-house servers). But the degree to which you can green your data center translates directly into revenue, you might be power distribution infrastructure will depend upon the better off running your applications in someone else's value of continuous availability to your organization data center. and the costs of expanding capacity. For example, our This solution isn't right for everyone, but as utility supercomputing mission at the ERDC requires very costs rise and growing demand squeezes the support robust availability of our computers. Our electrical infrastructure even tighter, it's worth considering. distribution infrastructure features redundant switches, batteries and electrical generators. These enable us to perform routine maintenance without exposing operations to an interruption, as well as to continue emergency operations over long periods ising costs and consumption rates are driving during which a failure in one of these components might electricity concerns to the front of IT planning be expected. This increases our fixed electrical losses, but conversations. Items like transformers, electrical wiring, is unavoidable given our operational requirements. cooling and UPS can have large, fixed electrical losses, taking a slice off your available power before it gets to the first server. The Green Grid, a consortium of information technology companies interested in improving data center energy efficiency, recommends right-sizing your infrastructure bout 30 percent of the power that goes into the by eliminating redundant components, installing only the data center is turned into heat inside servers. The equipment you need to make your data center run today. traditional approach to cooling puts large chillers outside According to the group's Guidelines for Energy-Efficient Data the facility to cool water, which is then pumped to computer Centers, right-sizing the infrastructure can save as much as room air-conditioning (CRAC) units on machine room 50 percent of the electric bill. floors. This approach essentially floods the entire room But there is another wrinkle to the energy story that's with cold air and offers very little flexibility for targeting only just started to work its way into data center planning: specific hot spots.

1. Decide Whether you Really Need Your Own Data Center.

“To cut costs, get the right power conditioning solution and ensure that there are no cooling leaks.”

2. Weigh the Costs and Benefits of Green Design.

3. Improve Flexibility by Designing for Closely Coupled Cooling.

M A R C H 1 , 2 0 0 8 | REAL CIO WORLD

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The concept of 'closely coupled cooling' has moved in and out of fashion over the years in supercomputing centers; we have found it to be efficient and effective. The idea is to put cooling very near the source of the heat it is meant to remove. This approach allows for targeted cooling and control of hot spots, and can result in shorter air paths that require less fan power to move the cold air around the room. Closely coupled cooling can allow for rack densities of up to four times the density of a typical room-oriented cooling solution. As customer demand pushes rack densities up, all the major server vendors are now offering closely coupled configurations. There are many rack and chip-based closely coupled cooling solutions. For example, there are designs that install cooling in a rack form factor alongside server racks, or place it at the top of each rack for a 'top to bottom' approach. There are also solutions that deliver chilled water directly to the rear door of racks, or interleave coolers in drawers inside racks alternating with drawers of computers. Chip-based cooling solutions come in two basic varieties. The simplest deliver cool water to one or more radiators located over heat sources in your server. More complex systems use inert liquid that is directly applied to server chips in a closed loop system. The ERDC supercomputing center was using chiplevel vaporization heat exchange in some of its Cray supercomputers last year. All of these options require plumbing for chilled water right to the computer racks, and you need to plan for this as you are designing your data center plumbing. If the thought of moving water into the heart of your data center causes your heart to skip a beat, fear not: there is a large body of engineering knowledge about how to minimize the risks. You'll want to take steps like keeping your water pipes as low as possible under your raised floor, installing leak detectors, providing leak-containment features like gravity drains and drip pans.

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Feature - 07 - 6 Cool Rules For Hot Computing.indd 77

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Data Center

4. Think About the Floor Tiles: It's the Little Stuff that Matters.

f you are not planning or cannot plan for closely coupled cooling, there are still steps you can take to improve the efficiency of your cooling. Plan to minimize the profile of cables and pipes you put under the raised floor in your machine room. This is the space that your CRAC units are using to push cold air toward your computers, and the effectiveness of energy used in cooling can be greatly increased if you can minimize the interruptions that air encounters. Minimizing underfloor obstructions can also help eliminate data center hot spots and prevent air handlers from working against one another. Another step you can take is to commission a fluid dynamics study of your data center or buy the software you need to perform that study yourself. This approach uses a computer model to simulate the flow of air around your data center and can help you identify the causes of and solutions to cooling problems, including the optimum placement of perforated floor tiles. The ERDC supercomputing center adopted this approach several

Almost 80% of a data center’s

ERDC, we found that we needed to add UPS and generator equipment that would not fit into the building that housed the rest of the electrical distribution infrastructure. This problem was compounded by the siting of the building 10 years ago between the foot of a steep hill and a road. The solution — to put the equipment outside in an area created by cutting into the hill — was expensive and added time delays to an already tight schedule. Our new longterm design places most of those components outside the building in modular units in a newly created utility field. "This move eliminates the constraints that building walls place on us when we need to increase our capacity and should give us the flexibility we need for at least another decade," says Greg Rottman, the engineer in charge of implementing the upgrade. The Green Grid found that as much as 25 percent of the electricity going into the data center is converted to heat in power distribution units, UPS equipment and switchgear.

6. Monitor for Power Management.

o you know how much power you are using? Are your servers pulling more or less electricity than the vendor specs say they should be? How close to your facility's power capacity will that next machine upgrade put you? An infrastructure monitoring system for the power and cooling systems needs to be part of any upgrade you are planning. Actively managing and monitoring your energy usage will help you plan for the future and assess the effectiveness of steps you take to improve your data center's efficiency. Convincing senior managers to fund data center improvements not directly related to business delivery can be a challenge. You may have to build your monitoring system piece by piece as you can afford it. But it makes sense to add your power monitoring to your data center before you undertake major changes designed to save energy and improve efficiency. This will allow you to establish a meaningful baseline from which to judge the effectiveness of your changes, and more effectively plan for the future. CIO

efficiency in any organization is unutilized. years ago to make sure we were getting the most out of our cooling. Perforated tiles are often simply lined up in front of the racks on the cold aisle of servers in a data center. The fluid dynamics study showed that we needed to increase the diameter of perforations in some tiles, and concentrate additional courses of perforated tile in critical areas.

5. Move Support Equipment Outside.

ne of the most important steps you can take is to move as much of your power and cooling equipment as possible out of your data center. In fact, if you have the space, a good solution is to move the bulk of these items outside the building. When we needed a short-term fix to get 2 megawatts of additional power for a new supercomputer at 78

M A R C H 1 , 2 0 0 8 | REAL CIO WORLD

John West is a Senior Fellow in the Department of Defense High Performance Computing Modernization Program and the executive director of that program's supercomputing center at the US Army Engineer Research and Development Center. Send feedback on this feature to editor@cio.in

Vol/3 | ISSUE/08

EssEntial

technology IllusTraTIon by MM sHanITH

From InceptIon to ImplementatIon â&#x20AC;&#x201D; I.t. that matters

Tamping down your energy usage across the organization can do more than save you money. It can simplify IT and make it more customerfocused. Here are five ways to go green and lean.

M a R C H 1 , 2 0 0 8 | REAL CIO WORLD

Getting Green Out of the Datacenter By RoBeRt L. MitcheLL Infrastructure | Concerned about energy costs, IT organizations have begun to make significant changes to how their data centers are powered and cooled. But many IT departments haven't yet looked at saving energy throughout the rest of their companies' IT infrastructures. That's shortsighted. Although data centers may use more power per square foot, as a percentage of total power consumption, office equipment is the big kahuna. "Office equipment has become more highly featured and powerful than ever before, but there's an energy cost to that," says Katherine Kaplan, who manages the US Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star consumer electronics and IT initiatives. "If you look at overall power consumption, you're seeing almost double for computers and monitors than for data centers," says Jon Weisblatt, senior product manager of the power and cooling initiative at Dell. Verizon Wireless is one company that's saving plenty of green by going green. Earlier this year, the wireless carrier deployed 1E's NightWatchman power management software, which is designed to put desktop computers and monitors in offices, stores and call centers into power-

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essential technology

saving mode after a period of inactivity, overriding any personal settings. Another 1E product, SMSWakeUp, can ‘wake up’ those machines to deliver patches and updates after-hours and then shut them down again when the process is complete. "It saved us [money] just turning computers on and off on demand," says CIO Ajay Waghray. Waghray also replaced 7,000 PCs in 10 Verizon call centers with power-sipping Sun Ray thin clients from Sun Microsystems and began a companywide migration to LCD monitors. The managed thin clients use 30 percent less energy than the non-managed PCs, says Waghray. He estimates that the power management and thin client initiatives combined have decreased the cost of frontoffice power needs by Rs 3.6 crore annually. To Waghray, going green is good business. The projects were good for customer service — off-hours patching and the more reliable thin clients improved uptime and reduced trouble-ticket volumes by 50 percent. "To make things more efficient, simple and customer-focused, green becomes a very important factor," he says. Here are five tips on increasing the efficiency of front-office equipment.

Do an Energy Audit It's hard to know where you stand if you don't first measure the efficiency of the equipment you have. Fortunately, a simple, inexpensive meter that fits between the target device plug and the outlet can measure current loads and total power consumption. Meters include basic models such as P3 International's Kill A Watt or Sea Sonic Electronics's Power Angel, and moreadvanced units like the Watts Up Pro from Electronic Educational Devices. Watts Up Pro stores data and includes software for graphing that data over time. At Geiger Brothers, an audit revealed that computer equipment was consuming nearly as much power after-hours as it was during the day. It became "a driving force behind initiatives to get power consumption down," says Joe Marshall, a business systems analyst and software specialist at Geiger Brothers.

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EssEnTIal E ss technology

Adopt and Enforce Power Management "The biggest impact you're going to make in your overall computing environment is to get systems to go to sleep," says Weisblatt. For example, a laptop that uses 14 to 90 watts in full operation uses less than 1 watt in standby mode. Desktops consume even more, and a single CRT monitor may use upward of 90 watts in operation mode. Some corporations are doing something about it. Network administrator Keith Brown deployed LANDesk Software's LANDesk to manage â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and lock down â&#x20AC;&#x201D; power settings on all laptops, desktops and attached monitors at Gwinnett Hospital System. Like SMSWakeUp, LANDesk and similar tools can remotely awaken or turn on PCs, upload updates and turn them off again, Brown says. Lenovo recommends configuring employee laptop disk drives to spin down after five minutes of inactivity, setting monitors to go blank at 10 minutes and configuring the machines to go into standby mode after 20.

space as well. Compact PCs include Energy Star 4.0-mandated high-efficiency power supplies that are at least 80 percent efficient. Jenny Craig is moving to a thin-client setup. Thin clients use less power and space, since they have no disk drives or fans, and the applications run on the server. Although replacing PCs with thin clients and a presentation server requires adding servers on the back end that boost power demand, the savings on the desktop more than make up for that, says Jeff McNaught, chief marketing officer at Wyse. With the 64-bit edition of Presentation Server running on the back end, three 800-watt servers can accommodate 1,000 PCs. That's about 3 watts per client, he says. For all their energy-saving benefits, thin clients won't work in every case. Northrup Grumman's space technology sector is rolling out 3,000 thin clients and has tested 39 engineering applications. While most of the programs ran just fine on the thin clients, a few graphics-intensive ones didn't work, says Clayton Kau, vice president of engineering.

Dump Those CRTs

Print More Efficiently

Replacing older computers and peripherals with Energy Star-rated equipment can save energy and space, and the decreased power consumption can significantly reduce the need for cooling in office areas. Start with CRT displays. "The biggest offenders are the monitors," says Brown. Most businesses have already begun phasing out CRTs in favor of more efficient LCDs, which use about one-third of the power. Energy savings can add up. Brown estimates that replacing about 70 percent of Gwinnett's CRTs with LCD monitors and using automated power management tools has already saved the health care company Rs 12 lakh to Rs 24 lakh a year in electricity.

Desktops and laptops aren't the only areas where IT can improve efficiency. Printer efficiencies get better with every new model. HP claims that the energy efficiency of its printers improves 7 to 15 percent with each new generation. So, replacing older units with new, Energy Star-labeled models can cut energy costs by as much as 25 percent. New technologies also improve efficiency. For instance, last spring, HP began replacing the fluorescent tubes used for photocopying with LEDs in some products. The technology uses 1.4 times less energy in use and onefourth the power when idle, says HP. Both Jenny Craig and Terremark Worldwide have configured printers to output double-sided pages by default. While using duplex mode doesn't save energy, it does avoid unnecessary paper use, says Jorge Bandin, VP IS and technology at Terremark. Administrators can configure duplex printing across all printers, invoke powersaving modes, or configure machines to shut

Slim Down the Client For the desktop, look for equipment with Energy Star 4.0 labels. Compact PC models, such as Lenovo's ThinkCentre A61e desktop or Dell's Inspiron 531, are more powerefficient than standard desktops and save 82

M a R C H 1 , 2 0 0 8 | REAL CIO WORLD

43% of

respondents to a green it survey say that they consider a vendor's 'greenness' when selecting their suppliers. Source: iDc

down during specific evening or weekend hours using automation tools available from various printer vendors. Consolidating and better managing printers and other peripherals also saves energy and money. According to Forrester, an individual copier, printer and fax machine can consume 1,400 kilowatt-hours of power annually, but a multifunction printer (MFP) consumes half that amount. Even so, says IDC analyst Keith Kmetz, "for every MFP out there, there are [still] six or seven printers." MFPs, which combine copying, printing, scanning and faxing, offer additional efficiencies. Terremark, for example, uses them with j2 Global Communications's eFax service to route incoming faxes to e-mail instead of a printer. There's no one-size-fits-all solution, says Waghray. But the best options will be those that complement the business by simplifying processes, making staffers more efficient and improving customer service. Even if green isn't the goal, he says, it is a means to those ends. "Start to think about [green computing] as something that's pretty much part and parcel of what you're doing," he says. CIO

Send feedback on this feature to editor@cio.in

Vol/3 | Issu E/08

Pundit

essenTIaL technology

The Green Two-Step Before you tango with Green IT, take a step back and check if you don’t need to tap your IT infrastructure better. By Howard ruBin

| Green IT is all about moving forward, right? Well, not quite. Most companies need to take a step backward first, and then a step sideways. Let me explain. We're seeing rapid growth of computing resources within companies worldwide: server growth at 28 percent per year, storage growth at 45 percent per year, and desktop growth at 1.3 times the rate of labor pool growth. What impact does this growth have on the climate? And what can IT managers do? A Step Back With technology's expansion, most organizations follow conventional wisdom

Infrastructure

businesses and creating perhaps more than three times the carbon footprint. What produces this large gap? Differences in underlying business processing — the way these businesses design and deploy their systems. And this in turn is a major driver of their power consumption, cooling needs and resulting carbon footprint. Coincidentally, those power-hungry financial services firms have a ‘compute cost’ of more than Rs 6.8 lakh per Rs 4 crore in revenue. The most efficient competitor in their market is at Rs 3.56 lakh per Rs 4 crore in revenue. There are clearly business benefits for footprint reduction, too.

transaction ranges from 0.04 lb. of carbon output per transaction for one company's card to 0.23 lb. of another card. If you had this data, which card would you choose? A Step Sideways Optimizing computing resources within one company won't have the maximum climatechange impact the planet needs. Green IT has to be a group effort. At any point in time, 40 percent or more of the world's computing capacity is untapped or idle. If shared wisely, this excess capacity could forestall perhaps two to three years of expansion within companies. Although issues of data and application transport,

Look laterally across companies, look at technology sizing, and focus on options to forestall growth. — adding capacity to do more business. The word ‘adding’ is key. Few IT managers are looking for the ‘right’ capacity. The question IT should be asking is: do we have more or less technology than we need to effectively run and grow business? Since the beginning of the IT-business era, ‘more’ has always been defined as better. Let's look at the financial services industry — the poster child for computational intensity. The average financial services company has 0.46 servers per Rs 4 crore in revenue. The most power-hungry firms in that sector are using 1.26 servers per Rs 4 crore in revenue. Those users are tapping three times the computing capacity of similar

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In this context, taking a step ‘backward’ means reassessing the very basics of your entire footprint (more than just compute) before moving forward to optimize. Optimizing from the wrong starting point will likely lead to suboptimal ‘green’ results for your company — and for the planet. There are other critical business reasons to take a step backward that tie into business competitiveness. Just as consumers today look at nutrition labeling on food packages to make buying decisions, they will soon look at information about a product's carbon footprint and effect on climate change. For example, preliminary analyses of the IT load generated by a single credit-card

privacy, and security are extremely complex, companies need to address virtualization ‘in the large’ and create mechanisms to offset increasing consumption. What am I advocating here? First, look at technology sizing and leverage to get the right starting point. Second, look laterally across companies and focus on options to forestall growth. The views presented in this column are solely those of the author and do not represent the views of any affiliated organizations. CIO rubin is professor emeritus at City university of new york's Hunter College, an associate at MiT's Center for y information research and a senior adviser at Gartner. Send feedback on this column to editor@cio.in

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