CTO Blog
I guess like many people I am frustrated by the topic; on one hand there is no lack of outpourings on the topic, and on the other it’s difficult to find well thought through and substantiated material. I was pleased to find a new report that actually takes a detailed look at ‘energy’ usage in the IT sector in an analytical manner. Well done to the 451 Group and their report with the fully descriptive title of; ‘Eco-Efficient IT; the eco-imperative and its impact on suppliers and users 2007-2012’.
If you want to see the other side of the picture, and get thoroughly alarmed, then the other report out at almost the same time that you may want to see is from an environmental charity called ‘Global Action Plan’ called ‘An Inefficient Truth’. This report uses information from its own survey of IT management to calculate that 3 to 4% of global carbon emissions is due to the IT industry. With a number of other statements such as ICT accounts for 10% of the UK energy bill, and the average server has roughly the same foot print as a 4 x 4 Sports Utility Vehicle, it conveys the same demonic approach that has characterised too much of the debate, together with the same lack of any meaningful suggestions on what can be practically done.
So let’s turn to the 451 Group report, and why I want to ‘advertise’ it, something I try not to do in a blog. This is 150 pages of detailed analysis and recognisable conclusions. It’s also balanced, and points out that IT is also used to monitor and manage various aspects of ecology in a beneficial way, as well as there being a diversity of energy sources already in use and some are of a sustainable nature. Incidentally it also rates the IT industry as producing around 1 to 2% of global emissions.
Wisely it comments and I quote that; ‘IT organisations will almost always favour reliability and cost over conformance to ill defined green objectives’. Bingo!!! At last the truth. The problem is that the more we get hype and alarmist reports the less easy it is to build a realistic approach. I don’t think that the industry doesn’t wish to be ‘green’ and certainly at Capgemini we are doing our best to consider these issues and come up with feasible implementations, but I wish we were better informed by research sources to know what really makes a difference.
The most effective approach seems to be to align energy consumption with cost objectives, this is tangible in both directions, i.e. reducing demand for energy on the green side, and reducing operating cost on the commercial side. It allows real targets to be set, but it also throws up some more serious questions; as an example how green is it to decommission working servers to replace them with more energy efficient units? The investigation of the real workings of the European WEEE act (here is informative piece on it) seem to suggest that it’s really not a great idea to prematurely throw out working units given the energy, etc, that has already been expended to produce them.
And that leads me to conclude; firstly there is no simple solution, and that means we are looking for a balanced score card approach which combines all the factors. Everything I have seen to date seems to deal with just one side of the coin, the assumption that you can make new decisions untroubled by the older, existing decisions; even the excellent work of the 451 group report doesn’t cover the issue of the environmental impact of the throwing away the old in any detail. Secondly exactly what is meant by ‘IT’ in these reports? Personally as a user I find I am expanding the devices that I have, and use, to interact as a ‘digital’ employee beyond what is being provided by my company.
In a ‘services’ environment this is as it should be, i.e. the ‘thin client’ using services from efficient centralised sources, but what exactly does that do to my personal, and corporate, ‘green IT’ footprint? I can only think that there is a personal element in all of this that lies beyond corporate action. How do you identify, monitor and measure this is the unanswered question, because I reckon this is where the real challenge lies as we move forward. Sorry, but it looks like we all have to take some personal stake in the issue as well as expecting the appointed ‘green IT’ person to come up with the answer.
Internally within Capgemini we have tried to provide advice on how to set up your PC to ‘hibernate’ when you wander off to meetings, coffee machines, etc., added advice on not printing too many emails etc, but you can only go so far, maybe that is the value of the alarmist reports? They are what will drive the users to recognise that they have a role in this and must change their habits too.
About the author
Capgemini Global Chief Technology Officer, Andy is a member of the Capgemini Group management board and advises on all aspects of technology-driven market changes, together with being a member of the Policy Board for the British Computer Society. Andy is the author of many white papers, and the co-author three books that have charted the current changes in technology and its use by business starting in 2006 with ‘Mashup Corporations’ detailing how enterprises could make use of Web 2.0 to develop new go to market propositions. This was followed in May 2008 by Mesh Collaboration focussing on the impact of Web 2.0 on the enterprise front office and its working techniques, then in 2010 “Enterprise Cloud Computing: A Strategy Guide for Business and Technology leaders” co-authored with well-known academic Peter Fingar and one of the leading authorities on business process, John Pyke. The book describes the wider business implications of Cloud Computing with the promise of on-demand business innovation. It looks at how businesses trade differently on the web using mash-ups but also the challenges in managing more frequent change through social tools, and what happens when cloud comes into play in fully fledged operations. Andy was voted one of the top 25 most influential CTOs in the world in 2009 by InfoWorld and is grateful to readers of Computing Weekly who voted the Capgemini CTOblog the best Blog for Business Managers and CIOs each year for the last three years.
A very well put article. I think the whole area is starting to suffer from the same superficiality (mostly from bandwagon jumpers) that strangled the potential from Knowledge Management in the 90s.
I would love to read the Group 451 report you refer to! Although I note from the exec summary that it focuses on direct energy use from IT equipment rather than including the broader factors of production and recycling etc. (this may account for the discrepancy between its figures and those from the Global Action Plan).
As you put in your Blog, it is difficult to get a grip on how we can measure our contributions to emissions from various sources nowadays. As we see more and more green-aligned taxation/incentives I believe the trend will also be to disseminate these costs/responsibilities to the end-user in one way or another.
The underlying philosophy is the important point – i.e. to make the best use of what we have, to consume less and to do more with less. Nothing new here obviously, simply common sense (or more appropriately, to usurp Peter Cochrane’s book title, uncommon sense)! But it is neither technological nor commercial issues which typically represent the most major hurdles, it is the cultural ones.
I think this is reflected within the most common technical themes i.e. virtualisation and thin client. Neither are new, neither represent insurmountable technical or commercial barriers, yet the former has only recently become widespread (under the Green IT banner in many cases) and the latter is gradually getting revisited (under the virtual desktop theme for example). Indeed, the thin client approach has actually been evolving through other channels and, as you mention, we are finding multiple end-point devices can be adopted and are more transient in nature.
It is these opportunities to culturally re-invent which I think represent the real value behind a common sense (Green IT) strategy. I also believe the more operational capabilities around measurement and allocation will come to fruition soon. We are already seeing people try to address the more obviously measurable operational symptoms of our non-Green IT practices (hibernation/powering-off, minimise printing, etc.) but, as we tried to put across in Capgemini’s Sustainable IT proposition, it is the more tactical approaches through more innovative and comprehensive architectural designs which will make the greatest differences. More so, and again as you refer to within the 451 report, how we apply our existing and emerging technologies to reduce our overall corporate and residential impact will be make by far the greatest contribution – and yet will be almost impossible to measure!
Hi Brian
I reckon the other issue to address is how to come up with a multiple score card approach to choosing and implementing an IT project. If you did this then I think you would need to get the corporate sustainability manager into a matrix to know what level of influence they should have.
Right now the poor project team can be whacked afterwards but have no rights to change
their cost driven decision when actually implementing
I think the 3 emerging drivers (outside the somewhat deafening one of cost-saving) are sustainability, availability (which includes BCP) and agility (which includes mobility).
As you say, a multiple score card should cover each of these and I couldn’t agree more. This is an emerging view for sustainability but a long since recognised one for availability (with a business continuity perspective needing to be included within each project – and not just IT). Looking at these aspects post-project is like beating a dead horse after it has bolted (never mind closing the barn door). Unfortunately the cost-saving themes are so over-powering a false-economy route all too often prevails.
The other dimension to try to consider is not just the projected cost today to operate but the expectation of the cost curves for energy and CO2 trading as time goes forward.
I think we may assume that they will track upwards!
Something With Substance about Green IT
In a previous post, Something Substantial on Technology and Green IT, I wrote about the difficulties we face as an industry in putting together well thought-out recommendations about how to raise ‘green’ higher on the IT agenda. IT tends to…
Sometimes, reports from researchers try to make alarming statements because that is the only kind of reports that get media and people’s attention. Moreover, that is what people have grown to expect. But we need to get a more realistic picture as you have rightly pointed out in your post. At the website of Climatarians, a global sustainability directory, we bring relevant sites together to present a more cohesive picture.