This claim spurred a global awareness campaign that brought to the table a debate on whether or not human actions can gravely affect the planet on such a massive scale, forcing an inevitable climate change that affected most regions of the world.
The information technology industry was not left out of this equation, with data centers and equipment manufacturers being one of the major contributors to carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere, spurring a need for "green computing" practices.
A Mere Hype?
The threat to natural degradation is arguably clear and present. However, knee-jerk responses from IT vendors have been more of latching on to the "green" hype than actually addressing the problem head-on.
According to Bettina Tratz-Ryan, vice president and lead of research agenda for environmental sustainability at Gartner, the current state of green computing worldwide has been more of hype than actual initiatives towards sustainability, thanks to current events that spurred widespread awareness of the problem.
"There has been a lot of vendor hype the past year, especially because of the Copenhagen deal in December," remarks Tratz-Ryan. "Vendors have been ramping on how businesses can adopt green IT as a principle in their respective organizations."
The Copenhagen climate change conference held in December aimed at gathering various heads of state into an agreement on how to approach the climate change problem, especially since the timeframe for the Kyoto Protocol--an earlier agreement between companies to cut on carbon emissions--would soon lapse in 2012. The accord, unfortunately, didn't fall through, with "superpowers" unable to agree on a consensus.
Regardless of the effects of the Copenhagen meet, vendors continued to ramp up their green IT offerings. Proposing to companies based on environmental sustainability, however, has become a dicey road taken by vendors, due largely to the financial crisis that overwhelmed most firms in 2009. "The new strategy now mirrors a perspective based on operational savings," Tratz-Ryan explains.
With this scenario, Tratz-Ryan believes realism is slowly setting in. "Green computing is now going through a phase of realistic assessment," she posits. "Vendors need to assess if they will still take the costsavings route, or address the issue through an entire value chain of design."
A Green Supply Chain
Green computing is currently addressed by vendors and users through a three-pronged approach: by using and selling energy-efficient technologies, or add-on tools that promote energy efficiency; by utilizing sustainable materials in the production of goods; and by addressing product life-cycle management in an environment-friendly manner.
However, much of the green computing agenda is focused on energy efficiency, according to Gartner, which will see a level of maturity early on in the game. This is due largely to massive power requirements concentrated on firms' data centers, considered to be the largest energy-guzzlers in any company.
Data from research house Frost & Sullivan in February actually reveal that "as much as two-fifths of a company's total energy consumption is spent on powering data centers, making the cost of maintaining captive data centers highly prohibitive." Frost & Sullivan estimates that at least two percent of the world's electricity supply is spent powering data centers alone.
Most product offerings by IT vendors, therefore, revolve around reducing the amount of power consumed by servers inside data centers, with an end-goal of relieving the cost pressure points of companies.
Very little attention--if any, at all--is paid to evaluating the sustainable makeup of products and service offerings, which according to Gartner has the potential to affect longterm green benefits.
This is an arena where IT users have the capacity to change the scenario. Environmental services firm PSC, for example, holds vendors highly accountable for their sustainability claims, by refusing to conduct business with firms that don't put their money where their mouth is. "I've gotten more than one 'let me get back to you' response from major vendors," says Pamela Rucker, vice president of IT for environmental services firm PSC. "We have not done business with them."
Green With Envy
This particular market sentiment is what Eastern Communications (Eastern), a local connectivity and data center hosting provider, is currently latching on. In February this year, the company launched their Tier II data center, with a keen emphasis on its being a "green" facility.
But just how green is "green"? In the case of the Eastern data center, green translates to a careful data center design aimed at reducing energy consumption by power-hungry servers. "The traditional data center design requires cooling the entire room," explains Calixto Salud, Jr., director of product management and development group, Eastern Communications.
In Eastern's green data center, Salud says they employ a method called "precision cooling."
"Our data center is separated into cold aisles and hot aisles," he points out. "Air conditioning enters through the cold and into the front of the servers, which is dissipated at the back, where the heat is contained."
This eliminates the need to turn the air-conditioning on for the whole room, and subsequently cooling only certain segments that need air-conditioning.
Salud admits that the company ventured into being the first green facility in the country mainly due to competition. "We want to have a competitive edge," he discloses. To date, most of the clients from Eastern's old data center have chosen, or are currently planning, to migrate to their Tier II green data center, mainly due to the huge cost savings afforded by the facility.
Green Culture
Increasingly, according to a survey by CIO.com, more and more CIOs are prioritizing green initiatives in their IT project plans. At least 68% of those surveyed said they already have, or are currently planning to, address the sustainability issue.
In the case of Metropolitan Bank & Trust Co. (Metrobank), one of the biggest financial services institutions in the Philippines, green computing is defined and approached in a two-pronged manner. "For us, energy saving needs to be translated into real bottom-line benefits," explains Jose Raymund Vergara, chief technology officer of Metrobank. "At the same time, Metrobank, being a good corporate citizen, also wants to promote practices that are good for the environment."
Since 2007, Metrobank has been employing a host of different technologies that shave a significant amount of energy consumption off their regular bills. Its data center, for one, has been employing a fewer number of servers thanks to server virtualization. "The ratio of servers to applications has been drastically cut down [since implementation]," Vergara notes.
Servers, being one of the significant components of the data center, also have demanding power requirements. Vergara says they have significantly cut down on power consumption from servers by deploying units with low-wattage processors installed.
But Metrobank's energysaving agenda isn't entirely relegated to its data center alone. Out on the floor and into their branches, Vergara says they are replacing their CRT monitors with LCD screens after realizing that these consume less power. "Obviously, LCD monitors are more expensive, but after some pencil-pushing, we discovered that the payback for these monitors will be achieved in just five years," he shares, adding that the recent downward movement in prices of LCD monitors is going to make that payback time shorter.
Years into utilizing green computing technologies, Vergara says employing energy-saving technologies have brought them not only monetary benefits, but hard-line efficiency gains as well. "Green computing plays a part in the overall emphasis for processes that benefit the institution as a whole," he relates.
Metrobank, however, doesn't restrict itself to acquiring physical hardware and add-on technologies to become energy-efficient. "We also employ a combination of green practices," Vergara says.
In their operations, for instance, Vergara says they try to cut back on using--and subsequently wasting--a lot of paper, by employing document imaging solutions. "What usually happens is a person prints several copies of a document," he explains. "With document imaging, employees can just look at one copy of a digital document and annotate from there."
Some of their essential forms have been digitized for the same purpose as well. "Our business forms, for example, can be accessed through the computer," Vergara says, adding that this practice not only saves on paper, but makes transactions faster as well.
At night, Vergara says they encourage employees to pull the plug on electronic appliances or shut the power off a whole floor in order to avoid what is called "vampire power."
"Computers, even if they are turned off, still consume power when on standby," he explains. Powering down or pulling the plug on appliances ensures that no unused energy is wasted.
Despite having tackled green technologies full-on, Vergara says the company is still on the lookout for innovations that address their power pain points. "We are evaluating the technology of using water-cooling to reduce the need for air conditioning to cool our data centers," he says.
Aside from cooling options, Metrobank is also looking at modular construction of data centers. Vergara says IT managers are forward-looking when initially designing their data centers. "In effect, you end up cooling a huge space even if you have not utilized most of it," he adds. Modular construction allows cooling to be concentrated only on places where it is needed.
The case for RP
Despite boisterous claims by various vendors about the cost and ecological benefits of green technologies, businesses in the Philippines seem caught in a rut regarding its implementation. "The key focus among users is still maximizing and optimizing the current infrastructure," explains Jubert Alberto, research manager, IDC Philippines. "Philippine companies tend to have longer replacement cycles, which affect adoption of more green-centric technologies."
Lukewarm reception aside, what is notable in the Philippine market is the increased awareness of sustainable technologies. "The country's prominent business organizations as well as government officials are treading the path towards efficiency," says Katrina Tirante, communication and marketing manager, Emerson Network Power Southeast Asia.
In the same manner, IT companies have actively chosen to tread the green path in recent years. "They have taken proactive roles in the promotion of green technology to highlight the efficiency, industry standards and compliance features and environment-friendly specifications of their respective product offerings," explains Ronnie Latinazo, country manager, EMC Philippines.
There is, however, a growing disparity between vendor-side efforts and end-user collaboration, according to IDC. "The gap exists especially in communicating the longer-term benefits and in-depth understanding of green IT adoption," Alberto relates.
In the same manner, the government's silence on green computing is stalling its adoption in the country. "Lack of more concrete government programs for green IT adoption, as well as the willingness to pay a price premium, serves as critical challenges to the success of green IT in the country," he adds.
Green Prospects
Vendors harping on the green features of their products still have a lot of ground to cover in order for widespread adoption to take place. According to Gartner's Tratz-Ryan, vendors need to have an end-to-end view of green computing. "Green IT is obviously at its infancy, and a lot of discussion is focused on operational and tactical goals," she explains. "Vendors right now are just starting to assess the prospects of their products, with only a few brands reaching the peak of development."
Difficult as it may seem, PSC's Rucker and Tratz-Ryan are in agreement that green computing requires a move towards a green supply chain. "It's not enough to say you're responsible only for the carbon you produce," Rucker says. "If I use transportation or [an outsourced] data center that is wasteful, then I'm adding additional carbon to the environment. I don't want that."
"Vendors need to have a long-term view of the approach in positioning their products," Tratz-Ryan added.
End-users, on the other hand, have a role to play in triggering the move towards a green supply chain. According to Ron Blitstein, managing director at IMprove Technology advisors, efforts like that of PSC help green the supply chain. "The key is properly evaluating claims about sustainability," he remarks, adding that this can be achieved by evaluating vendor claims using data from reports of various environmental groups that hold these providers accountable for their sustainable practices.
In the same manner, companies need to do an introspective check-up of their infrastructure before embarking on the green path, according to IDC. "As green IT adoption has just started, many organizations do not have effective measurement of the sustainability of their ICT systems, so this should also be focused on," Alberto suggests.
Emerson Network Power, for instance, provides measurement tools for users that enable them to measure the efficiency of their current infrastructure. "It allows them to model different investments and how these impact their OPEX, system availability, and energy consumption," she explains.
Because of these developments, IDC expects green computing will eventually become a standard for technology acquisitions across Asia Pacific. "Green requirements are bound to become a standard component in an organization's request for proposal," Alberto adds.