Green IT by Anthony & Toby Velte

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Data Center Cost Avoidance

Last week in the New York Times, Steve Lohr wrote an article, In Tough Times, Build Fewer Data Centers. He makes a compelling case that “The smartest, greenest, most efficient data center is the one that a company decides it doesn’t need to build.” Building a new data center is the natural reaction to a need for increased processing power. It all starts when a new application is sold into an organization or a new division is spun up due to an acquisition, for example. The users demand more processing power and the business demands more out of its IT infrastructure. Thus begins the vicious cycle of server provisioning, data center construction, new hardware costs, new management costs, and increased power and cooling costs. What starts as a need for new features and functions can quickly turn into a $10M-100M+ data center project.

During times of IT budget reductions, this bolus of immense cost is hard to swallow. Fortunately there is solution that can create Data Center Cost Avoidance. Using virtualization, processing power can be harvested from existing systems to avoid building new data centers. Traditional servers are provisioned to run a single operating system and a small number of applications. Typically they use only a small fraction of their processing power. Under sever virtualization, multiple operating systems (maybe a dozen or more) are placed on a single server and collectively use more of the system’s capabilities. Reducing the number of servers by a ratio of 12:1 or greater has a tremendous impact on all the costs associated with IT infrastructure and avoids that new center.

However to be successful, the old standard response to new demands placed on the infrastructure need to change. Instead of the standard purchase order being generated for a new server, a new system is spun up on an existing server all at reduced costs and increased business agility.

Toby J. Velte, Ph.D.
Avanade Inc | Minneapolis
My Fast Company Profile
Co-author of Green IT: Reduce Your Information System's Environmental Impact While Adding to the Bottom Line.

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The Reputation Green IT Doesn’t Deserve

“For the rays, to speak properly, are not coloured” - Sir Isaac Newton, 1730. What Newton was talking about is our perception of color. The reality is that visible light is electromagnetic radiation of various wavelengths. So that rays of 400nm are perceived by people as blue, 540nm green, and 700nm as red. The point is that the rays themselves do not contain color; it’s people that create this perception in their brains. So, our ‘green’ will be perceived differently by a turtle or a bee. I like this observation because it demonstrates the fundamental disconnect from reality and perception. Green IT is suffering this disconnect at the moment.

In a recent article in The McKinsey Quarterly, the authors describe a survey of almost 8000 people worldwide, 87% said they “worry about the environment and social impact of the products they buy” (“Helping ‘green’ products grow”, McKinsey & Company, Bonini and Oppenheim, 2008). However when they looked at the market adoption of green products such as hybrid cars or green laundry detergents, these products comprised fewer than 2% of market share. It seems as though people say they are pro-environment and will look for this in their products, but in reality their spending behavior paints a different picture.

It makes sense that such a large portion of the population is pro-green. How many people do you know that would go on record saying the environment is overrated and should be destroyed? The McKinsey article goes on to postulate that the hesitation to put your money where your mouth is stems from a number of factors that have hurt the adoption of green. Namely that there is a general lack of awareness of green products, a belief that green products are less effective and of lower quality, there’s distrust in a product’s green claims, that green products carry a premium price, and that these products are unavailable. It’s not that these issues are unwarranted given the early green consumer products. Take compact fluorescent lights (CFL) for example, yes they cost more than regular light bulbs, they take a little longer to fire up, and the light they give off can be described as harsh. Fair enough. Initial hybrid cars were pricey, unavailable, and didn’t provide the performance consumers could get from regular vehicles. OK, so the reputation was substantiated. Maybe that’s why initial adopters made their purchases for more altruistic reasons. It’s this same reputation that has tarnished Green IT. This reputation is completely unfounded.

While Green IT is focused on environmentally sound practices in IT, Green IT only suffer from one of the consumer’s claims highlighted above. That is there is a general lack of awareness of IT and business professionals of all the green choices and options they have. The technologies that can provide green benefits such as virtualization (running many operating systems virtually on a single physical server) have been around for years and can provide every bit of quality or performance as alternative solutions. The environmental benefits are clear and can be directly tracked back to a reduction in CO2 emissions through a reduction in power use. The benefits are substantial and impactful. With IT causing 2% of the global greenhouse gas released and doubling every 5 years (US EPA Report to Congress, 2007), Green IT can cut these emissions by greater than 50%-70% in most cases. These solutions are largely based on software and process changes so there is no issue with availability. Perhaps the biggest misperception Green IT needs to overcome is the one that Green IT programs will cost a lot of money to put into place. The truth is that this is the biggest reason Green IT will grow. Green IT programs often save so much money on power, cooling, administration costs, space considerations, and hardware costs that they have a return on investments (ROI) of about 12-18 months. That is the entire cost of the program has paid for itself in about a year to a year and a half. After that, all the financial benefit is enjoyed and the carbon impact is reduced into perpetuity. If the real challenge is to change the behavior of businesses to adopt Green IT principles, then I will put my money on the ability of money to drive that change. Let’s see Green IT for what it really is – the right way for organizations to treat their customers yet stay healthy and competitive.

Toby J. Velte, Ph.D.

Avanade Inc | Minneapolis

My Fast Company Profile

Co-author of Green IT: Reduce Your Information System's Environmental Impact While Adding to the Bottom Line.

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Perfect Storm Forming for Green IT

Once we dispel the common misconception that Green IT, the practice of environmentally sound practices in the Information Technology field, is an altruistic pursuit alone and not grounded within the constraints of capitalism, we will see the adoption of Green IT explode. Several key elements in the financial markets, public opinion, and technology have aligned to form the perfect storm to bring about radical change in business behavior.

With the world’s financial markets at near collapse, lending clogged with fear, and revenue forecasts looking downhill, IT Departments across the globe are being told to 'do more with less'. That giant groan you heard over the past week was the sound of budgets everywhere getting tightened in reaction to the markets. Mandates tell business leaders to hold tight with what they already have and find ways to get more out of their current environments. That's tough when data centers are doubling every 5 years (US EPA Report to Congress August, 2007). That's tough when companies are more and more dependent on IT to run their business and differentiate themselves against their competitors. That's tough when technology in general has already resulted in lower operating costs and increased productivity. Shrinking IT back to where it was in the early 80's is more dangerous than the third rail.

If that pressure system is not enough, over 90% of consumers in the US say they'd consider switching brands if they learned about a company's negative environmental practices. Seventy-five percent of MBA students polled from top b-schools said they were willing to accept a 10-20% lower salary to work for a responsible company (Corporate Citizenship Study, Marc Gunter, Faith and Fortune, 2006). Consumers and employees are not only asking for more environmentally responsible organizations; they are voting with their pocketbooks and where they decide to invest their time.

Technological advances in a few key areas address these shifts head on. One group of technologies is called virtualization. In server virtualization, multiple server operating systems reside on a single server displacing the old model of one operating system per physical server. The result is an overall reduction of physical servers with ratios operating servers to physical servers of 10:1 or greater. OK, so what? Well, using modeling tools developed at Avanade by Steve Fink reveal that this simple change for 1000 servers would produce annual savings of ~$7M a year and 70% reduction in carbon emissions. All this benefits comes from just this one server farm.

Doing more with less coupled to an environmentally responsible approach that yields to the constraints of capitalism is Green IT. The storm may be unpleasant and painful at times, but the results may cause the necessary changes to form real, sustainable organizations. Next time, let's discuss why some of the clouds from this perfect storm are going to stay around for a while.