Being Green, who really cares about it? (19-Sep-07)
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Being green, who really cares about it? The majority of large vendors seem keen to support, or at least publicise the concept of being green, and according to the results from a recent survey from Ipsos Insight this is a good idea as green factors are now emerging as a critical-mass consumer consideration.
A Sun Microsystems study found that since the first quarter of 2006 more than 75% of executives involved in buying decisions for data centre equipment prioritised energy efficiency. One of the key components to green IT is server consolidation and this is an area where enterprises seem to be making progress, a further way to reduce energy consumption is through streamlining applications and data to avoid duplication.
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Survey offers insight into the importance of being green in the IT industry
Being green-conscious seems to be something most A-brand vendors seem keen to support, or at least publicise the concept of being green. However the IT industry big boys didn’t get where they are today by concentrating on and investing in a do-good image. So how important is being green in the IT industry and does the end-user really sit up and notice if you make the effort?
Well according to a survey covered online (www.crn.com.au/?91483), pretty damn important. A survey released online by Ipsos Insight showed that green factors are now “emerging as a critical-mass consumer consideration”.
More than half the consumers (57 percent) who were asked to rate the importance of six green practices that influence their tech purchase references said the Energy Star label is influential. Forty-eight percent said that manufacturer commitment to environmentally friendly disposal practices influenced their purchasing preferences, while 45 percent said that meeting EPA standards for product disposal influenced their preference.
Respondents also ranked a long list of brands for environmentally friendly business practices. Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, and Apple ranked in the first tier. Kodak, Sony, Gateway, IBM, and Motorola ranked in the second tier.
“As these green issues emerge as more mainstream considerations, what’s striking is their overall consistency regardless of age, gender, income, or where people live,” said Todd Board, senior vice-president of Ipsos, Insight’s Media, Entertainment, and Technology practice.
“To some extent, the rank order of these brand mentions seems to mirror their prominence in the tech landscape, if you factor in Apple’s increased exposure in recent years,” said Board. “At the same time, it’s something of a ‘halo index,’ in that there’s precious little information available to consumers.”
Keeping Australia clean and tidy, details of a new computer disposal initiative in Victoria have also been released (www.crn.com.au/? 91542). The program is being launched by Sustainability Victoria in partnership with AIIA and other computer and printer manufacturers such as Apple, Canon, Dell, Epson, Fujitsu, Fuji-Xerox, HP, IBM, Lenovo, and Lexmark.
If the past couple of week’s online stories are anything to go by, being green will remain a key focus for the IT industry, and it seems consumers are sitting up and taking notice of who is making the effort to be green.
- Source: CRN Australia
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Who's Really Walking the Green IT Walk? (3-Oct-07)
We've heard so much about green IT initiatives recently you'd be forgiven for thinking that everybody had this under control. You might be surprised to learn that storage vendor ONStor found that 58% of the companies they surveyed were either still talking about what they were going to do, or have no plans as yet to do anything.
Green IT hasn't had the headline profiles of recycling plastic bottles or driving a hybrid car, but the fact is that IT is a major contributor to CO2 emissions. The UK's Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) estimated last October that the UK's PCs and servers were already consuming 14% more power than the entire power consumption of Luxembourg, and of course the figure is still rising. All this power is also costing businesses dearly. IDC's John Humphreys estimates that power, cooling and other operational costs account for 70% of a server's lifetime cost. Yet all too frequently this was not taken into account when servers were bought.
That was then. A Sun Microsystems study found that since the first quarter of 2006 more than 75% of executives involved in buying decisions for data center equipment prioritized energy efficiency -- although 63% admitted they didn't know what their energy costs or carbon emission rates were. For its part, Sun announced in August that it had just completed a consolidation of one of its data centers that resulted in 5,000 old servers, network switches and storage devices being switched off.
One key component to green IT is server consolidation, and here enterprises are making some progress. According to ONStor's statistics, 55% of respondents stated that storage consolidation would be a central element of their green policy. While an even more upbeat Gartner survey found that 92% of respondents had a data center consolidation planned for, underway, or completed.
Along with server consolidation, another essential way to reduce energy consumption is to streamline applications and data. Duplicated data and applications is a major problem in many organizations and causes a range of operational inefficiencies, including demand for more storage space. Most companies know that at the data and applications levels they are far from efficient, but the risk, cost and time to consolidate applications has put them off. Celona recently conducted a survey of telecoms executives and 59% said they'd been so discouraged by an application migration that they decided not to go ahead with it. The new generation of migration technology overcomes these problems, making the long-awaited benefits of application consolidation a reality.
The "end user community is some way behind," when it comes to reducing energy consumption says ONStor's Bob Miller. What will it take to get end users to change their ways? Well, according to ONStor's survey, 48% of organizations felt that a drying up of energy supply would drive a reduction in power consumption at their data centers, while higher power bills were driving business decisions in 66% of companies. "Ultimately, if energy costs continue to rise, more businesses will be forced to look at this by their shareholders. Longer term we can also expect regulators and governments to use big sticks to drive better efficiency in the name of environmental protection," notes Simon Sherrington, founder of Innovation Observatory, a company that specializes in tracking opportunities in green technology markets.
"Environmental sentiment is all well and good, and it helps that environmental issues currently enjoy a high media profile, but few companies have the financial freedom to go green overnight" says Simon Sherrington. "They simply can't justify decommissioning equipment unless there is a clear cost benefit in terms of saved opex, or unless the kit is becoming obsolete anyway. That is why companies with comparatively high energy costs, and companies in markets with high rates of technology obsolescence, have been swifter out of the blocks than peers in other industry sectors."
BT is just such a company, being a major energy consumer and operating in a highly competitive market. It has already cut its carbon emissions by 60% since 1996, saving more than one million tons of CO2 annually. This drive extends from data centers to applications-level consolidation. BT's One IT consolidation project, and similar projects in other large operators, is all about delivering business benefits. There are huge opportunities within large Telco's to consolidate IT infrastructure and thereby enhance efficiency, which should deliver the ability to bring new services to market more quickly, but also savings in terms of both cash and carbon.
This point is underlined by BT's Steve O'Donnell who comments that to date One IT has enabled BT to decommission and consolidate over 1000 racks of servers, resulting in a net saving of 22GW hours per year. "We calculate this translates to a cost saving of just under £1.8 million per annum or around 3,110 metric tonnes of carbon per year," says O'Donnell.
BT is using its supply chain to drive change by incorporating environmental and efficiency goals into its procurement process. It expects suppliers to work to reduce the energy consumption and impact of each new generation of products or services, and this will become a mandatory criterion in all tender adjudication. Donna Young, BT's head of Climate Change, notes that the extended supply chain is a powerful force for positive change. "About three years ago our large business customers started coming to us and asking about our carbon status. They understand the need to drive efficiency down their own supply chains. The power of the supply chain, and of competition, to drive this sort of change should not be underestimated."
- Source: IT World.com
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