How green is my IT?

Source: Technology Digital

Date :8/26/2008 2:22:38 AM

Exec considers how to make IT systems ‘greener’ – less costly, more energy efficient and less polluting.

Written by Ruari McCallion

You have your CSR policy, you’ve launched a drive to reduce utility costs and you’re investing in equipment and technology to make your processes less energy-intensive. Doors are being closed; windows are shut or open as appropriate to keep heating and air conditioning bills down. The toilets make use of water-saving technology and the lights are switched off when everyone leaves a room. When the people go home in the evening the evening and everything is shut down, the only things left running are…a mass of computers across the operation. They sit there, even on standby, consuming hundreds of precious kilowatt-hours while no-one is using them. OK, desktop PCs may be switched off but not everything can be.

“You can issue instructions to turn everything off at night but if it’s the online purchasing system, then customers in other timezones won’t be able to use it,” said Marina Stedman, marketing director of Touchpaper, a software and management solutions provider. Understanding what you have and where it will be used is step one in using resources more effectively. Make sure your schedules are properly lined up; for example, do not, as one of Touchpaper’s clients did, take a POS server off line on the first day of your seasonal sales. Taking money manually for an hour or so when the tills are besieged by bargain-hungry shoppers is no fun for anyone.

The focus on socially-responsible IT equipment has been driven largely by legislation. In the EU, that has been led by the WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) and RoHS (Reduction of Hazardous Substances) Directives. Together, they have obliged companies to devote more effort to thinking about the whole lifestyle of products and, in the case of RoHS in particular, to invest in the development of new materials and work on ways to enable their integration. Things like lead in solder wasn’t used just because it was traditional and long-established; it is malleable, less likely to crack and altogether a great material. The only problem is that it’s highly toxic. The same applies to arsenides and the other banned substances – very useful, great in application and too much will kill you. The producers of IT equipment seem to have adapted to the new requirements very well; the final frontier, if you will, is the effective use in practice.

Quick question: do you, or your IT department, know exactly what the company has, how many laptops, how many desktops, printers, servers, and so on and so forth? Do you or the IT department know exactly what everything does; who has what and what they do with it? The answer is, probably, no – but if you want to reduce the energy consumption of your equipment, proper asset control and management is the essential foundation.

“We find customers don’t actually have good knowledge of the assets they have. A survey we undertook found that 59 percent of respondents still relied on manual systems and 84 per cent said they found it difficult to know what their assets were. How can you manage if you don’t know what you have?” said Stedman. “Better asset management leads to improved compliance. If a company wants to replace all its computers over two years old, for example, it helps if they know where they are!”

Ms Stedman has an axe to grind: Touchpaper offers software to help with asset and service management but the issues she identifies are real. Companies are wasting a lot of money through lack of understanding and poor control. People join and leave organizations all the time and keeping track of laptops isn’t straightforward. The trend towards more home and e-working throws up challenges that waste resources.

“Support staff can be used more effectively. Instead of sending engineers to remote locations, or requiring staff to return to base to fix problems, is wasteful,” she said. “Remote working provides opportunities for more efficient and flexible operations but we found 72 per cent of companies said home workers lost time because of IT issues – they can’t get things to work. The company doesn’t want to send people out to collect PCs. Self-service helps; people in an office environment will simply ask a neighbor if they have a problem; you can’t do that at home. Self-service features, like FAQs covering regular problems, help sort problems out quicker and thus reduce overhead. Remote control enables the support people to see what the customer is having problems with and advise on solutions. Time can be used more productively if it isn’t wasted on unnecessary driving.”

Laptops and desktops don’t operate in a vacuum. Better control helps organizations to understand what their interdependencies are; when it does, then even simple initiatives, like turning everything off, will achieve better results.

“Remote control can help improve efficiency in large operations, as well,” Ms Stedman said. “Waitrose, for example, have a big organization in Bracknell [in the UK]– it runs across seven or eight buildings. Previously, one person spent a lot of time driving between buildings, sorting out issues. Remote control saves the travel time and delivers better response and service.”

IT equipment uses a lot of electricity and consumes support resources and attention. Improving its performance can make a direct contribution to the bottom line as well as boosting companies’ CSR performance. Although deploying modern equipment, with more environmentally-friendly components, is something that looks good in press statements, it’s a big capital investment – and it’s all for nothing if the systems they stand on aren’t effectively managed. ‘Green IT’ begins with understanding, which inevitably means an asset inventory. It’s time-consuming but, once done, it will pay back in better resource deployment and reduced utility bills. You want to save money by switching off whatever isn’t needed; you don’t want to lose customers by cutting off Japan just because it’s night-time in New York. The understanding Stedman champions is the foundation of better IT operations.