Gartner call on Green issues (20-Jul-07)
From Lauraibm
MI Summary
Gartner call on Green issues (20-Jul-07)
There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that datacentres are running out of electrical power. Few clients are taking green considerations into account when planning their IT architecture. Retailers, financial services firms and consumer product companies are the industries most concerned about green issues. But most IT departments are not connecting their practices with their company's green aspirations.
Green issues are a fad, and many will fade away if an economic recession arrives, but climate change (a British obsession) is with us for the long term. While we lead on CO2, the Germans are ahead of us on waste and recycling. But while there is European consensus, the USA is politically divided on many green issues. The impact of IT on the environment can be divided into three categories: the Bad, the Good and the Structural. BT is advanced in its environmental philosophy and practices. The media is highly advanced in its environmental demands of business, government and society.
Present on the call: Simon Mingay (for Gartner), Caroline, Gavin, Laura, and Paul.
Electrical Capacity of Datacentres
- Q. Do we have evidence that we are in danger of running out of capacity?
- A. In terms of quantitative data, No. But anecdotally, Gartner has lots of supporting evidence. SunGard reported that power-related disruptions increased from 7% in 2005 to 26% in 2006. (See Business disruption from power failures up 350% (30-Apr-07).)
In high-density urban areas such as Canary Wharf, this is a common problem. And it could get worse with the advent of blades.
Server consolidation should reduce the total power needed, so it is good from a green viewpoint. But it is bad if you consolidate onto an old datacentre. There may be an argument for consolidating work onto a mainframe, rather than a big Intel server.
But there is no indication that environmental factors are influencing customers' IT architecture decisions.
There are three principal issues for datacentres:
- increasing the heat output per square foot, and they don't have enough space to spread it out
- pressure on the power grid of the local area, meaning there isn't enough power in concentrated areas such as Canary Wharf, London
- Consolidation (reducing the number of datacentres) isn't enough unless it's into brand new, highly efficient purpose built places
It's not going to get any easier, particularly with the rate of deployment on blade servers.
Environmental priorities by Industry
In descending order, environmental factors are of most concern to:
- Retail,
- Financial Services,
- Consumer Packaged Goods,
- Utilities, and
- Telecommunications
- Non-commercial organisations with ethical duties.
These industries present the key opportunities and are leading the way in their awareness of green issues.
- The Public sector, on the other hand, are pushing everything down the supply chain—by way of questions in RFPs etc—but are doing little themselves.
Most business today are taking a progressive position on the environment. But many IT departments are not joing the dots—i.e. they are not translating their company's environmental goals into IT behaviours. They need to act in line with their Corporate Social Responsibility.
Social Responsibility Statements could be the point of integration of all these different issues (both business and IT), especially where they hit shareholder value. This presents a challenge for CIO/IT Manager programmes where the 'dots haven't been joined' between IT and social responsibility. The broader question is one of sustainability.
The Issue of Climate Change
It is true that companies seem to be jumping on the bandwagon with regards to Green Issues—so-called green-washing. However, climate change means the Green Issue is not just a fad. It's here to stay.
The broader issue of sustainability has a more questionable future, but it is likely that this too will continue to gain attention.
Status on Green Issues
- Germany is ahead of the UK in terms of their knowledge on, and actions regarding waste, recycling and solar panels.
- The UK on the other hand is ahead of Germany in terms of awareness of Climate Change issues. It's obsessed with CO2 and greenhouse gases. The phenomenon of climate change has a scientific side and a political/consumer side. In the case of the latter, the level of rhetoric is high and it's going to get a lot of attention.
The US and European Perspectives on Green Issues are very different.
The US has a more divisive approach, hence it is harder to characterise what they are doing with regard to green issues. The consequence of this is that we should not be looking to the USA for guidance on what to do as we are likely to hear conflicting views. This poses the danger of only latching on to messages we want to hear and discarding the other messages.
The European perspective is non-divisive, and as a result much of the progress on Green Issues is coming from Europe.
Gartner's Hype Cycle and Green Issues
Simon referred us to his article(s) in the 'Journal for Unconventional Thinking', a Gartner publication which isn't subject to the same level of peer review as Gartner Research Notes. It's a sandbox.
ICT's Impact on the Environment
The impact of ICT on the environment can be broken down into three orders:
- First Order. Impact from the stuff we produce
- e.g. Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions, Electronic Waste, Hazardous Waste and non-renewable Resources. These aspects all have a negative impact upon the environment.
- Second Order. Application of ICT
- ICT can be used as a travel substitute, for engine management systems, to optimise transport networks, and for supply chain management etc. These aspects all have a positive impact upon the environment, and are concerned with increasing the material and energy efficiency of production.
- Third Order. Structural Impacts
- e.g. the macro-economic and socio-economic aspects of ICT. For example, increasing the use of ICT can decrease the travel density of the economy and decrease the number of miles travelled.
Media Coverage
It is important to remember that media coverage is way ahead of what most companies are doing. The same announcement will often be used in a number of different ways to make it sound like the company are doing more than they actually are.
The media can indeed be used as a good indicator of what is and can be done, but it is imperative to not take the media coverage too seriously. It's much easier to be a critic than to take action. If we looked, for example, at the BBC's environmental actions (apart from the Blue Peter garden), we would expect to find many of the faults that its reporters have identified in other compnies and broadcast.
Activities of other companies
Many companies who are involved in datacentres, power and cooling are now extending themselves to cover CO2. Then HP, APC, Emerson, Intel, and BT. The issues play well for telcos. BT has done a great deal for its own green profile and for its customers.
Second Life can have a role in reducing face-to-face meetings.
Gartner is developing thinking around Extreme Green—considering what would happen if the green threats move into mid-term from long-term. How would this change things?
- Sometimes a board can be persuaded that it needs to do thing simply because it's the right thing to do. More often, you have to appeal to its self-interest to get executive action.
