Green IT: A Conceptualization Towards Eco-Sustainability

Green IT for Sustainable IT

Question:

Case Study on Green IT.
 

Green IT is the process which involves the effective usage of all the resources involved in IT department also by increasing the total performance. In order to have the sustainable Green IT, the following should work in integration,  power management, fundamental, technology to improve cooling, recycling, complete upsurging of the IT sector. Recent studies have revealed that power consumption alone by the IT department is nearly 50% of the total consumption of the organization. With the Green IT it is expected that the cost will be reduced, but actually, very less effort has been made. The aim of the Green IT is to create awareness and encourage the IT industries to adopt the policies for encouraging the environment-friendly  technologies. The Australian Information Industries Association (AIIA) and the Australasian Association for Information Systems (AAIS) have shown their support in SIGs Activities. The Conceptualization of Green IT is to incorporate the eco-sustainability  at various levels in the existing IT department. The major aim in adopting Green IT is to incorporate the present generations needs without negotiating with the future generations environmental conditions. The three sustainability pillars are the environment, society and economy (Rao & Holt , 2006). In order to understand the clear meaning of Green IT lets have a look at the literature review of the infrastructure of IT department. There is a green supply chain which involves the integration of the environment in designing the product, its resource, the manufacture of the product, distribution and management of the destruction of the product all this should be eco-friendly (Srivastava, 2007). The IT company’s main focus is to deal with the output of the data center. IT companies have been taking the initiative for Green IT by improving technologies, decreasing the power consumption, cooling and the cost of real estate involved in data center operation.  

Instead, Green IT is more than this rather than just focusing only on technologies related hardware, practices should be acquired for soft businesses also (Rasmussen & Williams, 2006). So Green IT is not just the application of greening on IT artifacts, but also using the IT for achieving sustainability in the enterprise. It is actually involving of the environmental factor during formation of policies at various levels of operation, at the human infrastructure than at managerial level also.

As the Internet – based business is growing at a rapid rate now, which is metamorphically termed as Cloud IT. The energy utilized for running these upgraded technologies are the major cause for industries turning toward Green IT. In the past few years with the excessive use of environmental, energy which has further led to increased carbon generation, both these above factors have led to have Green IT. With the growing demand, there has been the rapid expansion of the data centers at an increased cost of IT, which has, in turn, caused the excessive increase in energy consumption resulting in having a detrimental effect on the environment. The data centers of the IT companies accounts for approximately 50 % of the power consumption bill of the total company bill and accounting nearly half of the waste in the form of corporate carbon. Even though the rate at which energy is consumed and the cost involved is the key factor for Green IT, but the risk involved along with it of climatic change has alarmed the issue globally (Society, 2016). Now the government has become aware and increasingly forcing the industries to adopt more and more Green IT practices in their system. No doubt the use of Green IT has its impact on business so companies will keep its focus on reducing the cost and also focus on improving its technology of energy consumption in data centers. The first initiative toward this change will not be completed towards the end of ecological damage. The first wave will be more driven to reduce the cost of the business and making the potential for Green IT products. As more and more ecological issues are being raised with the IT products and its complete process needs to take care of. Even though the market seems to be changing as now vendors are also distinguishing the product and their services on the basis of energy consumed and its costs. Definitely, the benefit will be delivered with time when the company itself will realize the environmental and social responsibility. Then came the second wave, which was more focused on the sustainability of the product and its services. In this, companies have made an effort to bring the change in Green IT by adopting the strategies for the benefit of ecology (Rouse, 2016). The changed business model includes, change in behavior and the culture of the organization, new innovations in the technology is the demand of the hour, redefine market all this will work in unison for new business models for integrating its environmental and civil responsibility. 

Green IT and Data Centers

1. Improved Technology at rapid rate

With the growing facility, the dependency has also increased for electronic data, which in turn demanding  a number of data centers. At very fast pace, people adopted this new technology of communication and transferring data. Its usage has increased and reached to every sector involved in the government sector – storing large data, legal documents have made the process simpler and easier. Not only this entertainment sector has completely seen vast change, industries like banking, healthcare, real estate, transportation etc have seen large benefits because of this evolution. Not only this many federal, local and state government agencies were seen changing the strategies by implying the web services for their work (Mortleman, 2010).

2. Development in Equipment

Advance CPUs were introduced of higher performances with decreased power consumption capacity per CPU, but there was the flaw in this development, such CPUs require more servers with higher performances with an enhanced memory space. Which resulted in more power consumption.  Not only this, more servers needed more space to be placed. Further development was introduced which invented smaller servers with larger capacity. Now by increasing the packaging density it led to an increase of power density. This increased power density led to more power consumption, it was much more than in comparison to the previous one it was nearly more than ten folds. Earlier which was 300 watts for each square foot in 1996 in 2007 it reached to 4000 watts for each square foot.

3. Demand for increased cooling

As the power density of the server was increased, the demand for increased cooling came as complimentary with this development as each data center started experiencing increased heat density (O'Flynn, 2011).

4. Enhanced energy cost

As the power consumption and cooling expenditure have increased for the data centers. More expenditure will be required by the increase in energy consumption at each data center.

With the increase in the number of server and data centers and with the latest ongoing approach followed by the industries for carbon capping and marketing scheme, the cost tends to increase tremendously (Nguyen, 2011).

5. Decreased server application

The efficiency of the data has become the major problem. On an average, only 5-10 % of the server was utilized at big data centers. Which means actual utilization is very less and power consumption compared to its effective usage is quite large for servers, which means companies are paying a huge amount as compared to little work done.

6. The Impact of IT on an environment

Carbon is emitted as the by-product of the IT product usage, which is directly proportional to the amount of energy used. In 2007 nearly 45 million servers were working worldwide, consuming approximately 0.52 % of total  electricity. It is expected if the scenario continues like this than by every year carbon emission will grow by more than 11.1%,  which will lead to 342 metric megatons till 2020 (Olson, 2008). 

The transition of IT to Green IT is a comprehensive process as it involves various strategies of applying different approaches to amend the current working policies and condition in order to improve the efficiency of the operations at the data centers. The main aim is to focus on lowering the cost along with reducing the impingement on the environment caused by computing. Undoubtedly, this transition is a comprehensive approach which involves integration at various levels of power, then cooling with more efficient hardware, improved softwares etc. 

1. Infrastructure of the Data Centers

Green IT for Electronic Data Dependency

Infrastructure includes the following equipment storage devices, network equipment, chillers, pumps, power supplies, fans, etc. The data centers whose infrastructures were made past ten years, their equipment has reached the end life so they needed to be changed. As the outdated equipments are inefficient and they consume more energy (Bose & Luo, 2011). The outdated data centers consume nearly double or three times more power and they also need more cooling. So here the strategy is to set up a new data center with the latest and more efficiently designed equipments or recycle the existing one.   

2. Managing the Power

Effective managing softwares for the power and distribution of the workload can actually save nearly $60-80 on each desktop per month and this is more for servers. Power management softwares are designed to regulate the processor by understanding its power states so that it can distribute the workload according to the desired requirement. Processor power act like a good manager who understand the need of the server when the workload is less it conserves the power (Bose, 2011 ). Companies have understood that the laptop  has better power management ability as compared to the desktop. 

3. Management of heat

Technology has improved and has become compact because of which power density has raised in data centers, which has lead to the need for efficient and Skillful heat dissipation equipments (Wrong, 2005). Emblematic strategies which have been followed for the thermal management of more effective cooling equipment, smart thermostats, also data centers were designed with raised floor. 

4. Product designing

Latest products  are designed with improved technologies, like microprocessor which was introduced in 2002 was having nearly 50% better performance from the processor in 1982. Even though energy consumption by the server continued to upsurge relatively in proportion with the new improved server. Multi-core microprocessor were introduced which runs on low voltage and at low speed than to those compared to the processors which run faster and consume more energy. A scaling component of the microprocessor helps to manage the fluctuating workload. Still the existing microprocessor which works at low level consumes more energy. The strategy is to have the microprocessor which works in accordance with work the performance (UNSW Business School, 2011). 

5. Virtualization 

Virtualization is the support system on which latest computing system relies upon. Virtualization in data center affects the following areas: hardware of the server and its operating system, network, storing capacity, type of infrastructure (Molla, 2009). Visualization works by enhancing the server utilization by incorporating the more applications on few servers. 

Conclusion

As the business is increasing, government and NGOs have started realizing the problem caused to the environment by the IT sector. Now the consumers are becoming more responsible and aware about the current condition so they support the use of sustainable product and its usage. So now IT companies were initially forced to to have Green IT product now they themselves have started taking the initiative for the same.  Virtualization has great impact on technology as well as on the business processes. Implementing the new advanced techniques with less energy consumption with more power and increased in space microprocessor. As to plan better environment for our future generation.  

Bose, R., 2011 . Integrative framework for assessing firms' potential to undertake Green IT initiatives via virtualization - A theoretical perspective. The Journal of Strategic Information Systems , March, 20(1), pp. 38-54 .

Bose, R. & Luo, X., 2011. Integrative framework for assessing firms’ potential to undertake Green IT initiatives via virtualization – A theoretical perspective. The Journal of Strategic Information Systems , March, 20(1), p. 38–54.

Molla, A., 2009. GREEN IT DIFFUSION: AN INTERNATIONAL COMPARISON

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Nguyen, D., 2011. Australia lagging on Green IT: Report. Australia lagging on Green IT: Report, 20 September.

O'Flynn, A., 2011. GREEN IT: THE GLOBAL BENCHMARK

Olson, E., 2008. Creating an enterprise‐level “green” strategy. Journal of Business Strategy, 29(2), pp. 22 - 30.

Rao, P. & Holt , D., 2006. Do green supply chains lead to competitiveness and economic performance?. International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 25(9), pp. 898 - 916.

Rasmussen, C. E. & Williams, C., 2006. Gaussian Processes for Machine Learning: MIT Press.

Rouse, M., 2016. Green IT (green information technology). Green IT (green information technology) .

Society, A. C., 2016. Green IT: Mission and objectives. Green IT.

Srivastava, S. K., 2007. Green supply-chain management: A state-of-the-art literature review. IJMR, 28 February, 9(1), p. 53–80.

UNSW Business School, 2011. Green IT: A Costcutting Strategy Beyond Switching Off the Screensaver. Green IT: A Costcutting Strategy Beyond Switching Off the Screensaver, 19 July.

Wrong, V., 2005. Marketing Strategies and Market Prospects for Environmentally-Friendly Consumer Products. BJM, 21 March, 7(3), p. 263–281.