Green Channel

Australian mathematicians have developed software aimed at helping businesses prioritise their carbon reduction projects and are on the hunt for partners.

From the outside, Hewlett-Packard's newest data center looks like a massive, well-secured loading dock, devoid of logos and surrounded by a robust barbed-wired fence in a nondescript industrial park.

Intel, looking to be a leader in the green energy movement, is getting ready to begin construction on eight solar power installations in separate facilities in four states.

Alcatel-Lucent wants the telecommunications industry to turn a little more green by developing new equipment that cuts power consumption by a factor of 1,000.

While most of the conversation at ARN’s Sustainable IT roundtable focused on energy efficiency, a critical issue that can’t be forgotten is asset disposal. E-waste is a massive problem around the world and one that’s not easy to contain, Symantec’s Jose Iglesias said.

So how can the channel demonstrate environmental savings to their customers and drive interest in sustainable solutions? ComputerCorp’s Michael van Zoggel said integrators can only do what they can do and what they can measure and justify.

It’s one thing to talk about greening your own infrastructure by better utilising or buying more energy efficient assets, but what happens when those computing resources are being delivered by a third-party provider? Is outsourcing in fact, a way to minimise your carbon impact?

A collection of images and industry expert comments from ARN's sustainable IT roundtable.

Could saving the Earth – and your company's bottom line – be as simple as using fresh air to cool the datacentre?

Although the ramifications of the dour economic climate have yet to be fully felt, networking market observers are already forecasting significant changes in 2009. Many predict organisations will look to reduce travel expenses and implement cost-effective mechanisms such as unified communications and video conferencing, increasing demand on the network. Meanwhile, virtualisation, which has had a strong hold in the storage and server space, will gain prominence as a network trend.

The potential for wind power in the upper Midwest United States has led some to dub the region the "Saudi Arabia of wind." But tapping that potential isn't easy. In particular, the difficulty of integrating wind power into utility companies' transmission grids is hampering adoption.

The 2008 presidential election gives CIOs and other IT executives a choice of two major-party candidates who are interested in technology-related issues. While the US economy and the war in Iraq have dominated the debate between Republican nominee Senator John McCain and Democratic nominee Senator Barack Obama, they have also hit on such IT hot buttons as telecommunications and tech jobs.

Big companies carry big responsibilities in leading the green push in IT. And that responsibility is something IBM takes very seriously.

With most Americans switching their mobile handsets once every 18 months, the need to find safe ways to dispose of old mobile phones has only grown. ReCellular, a self-described "electronics-sustainability" firm based in the US, has spent the past two decades working with the US-based Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association (CTIA) to become a major recycler and reseller of mobile handsets and accessories. Every day, ReCellular processes thousands of unwanted handsets and either fixes them for resale or sends them off to be melted down and recycled. ReCellular Vice President Mike Newman spoke with Brad Reed about how his company is helping to reduce e-waste, as well as how enterprises can benefit from donating their mobile devices for reuse and recycling.

What was your first IT job?

EBSCOhost is a fee-based research service that provides libraries in North America with access to more than 20 million articles from 20,000-plus journals and magazines, all driven from two data centers in the coastal town of Ipswich, Massachusetts. The data centers are owned and operated by EBSCO Publishing, the second-largest business unit of EBSCO Industries, which is one of the largest privately held firms in the Fortune 500. Michael Gorrell, senior vice president and CIO for EBSCO Publishing, explained that green IT principles are fundamental to helping the company keep up with sales growth averaging 26 percent per year for the last three years and storage growth of 200 percent annually, without equivalent growth in computing and data center infrastructure.

While I applaud any company's attempt to be environmentally responsible and implement "green" projects, I remain skeptical of long-term commitments to green initiatives that don't decrease costs, fatten the bottom line, or polish the organization's image.

The past year has seen more column inches dedicated to the concept of green IT than just about any other topic you could name in this industry.

The state of today's economy has triggered many economists, job experts and hiring managers to warn of layoffs and hiring contractions, and tech pros themselves have become skeptical about job security and future opportunities. Despite these concerns, the outlook for US employment, particularly in the tech sector, is not as dismal as some fortunetellers would lead us to believe.

Broadly speaking, there are two main reasons for companies to go green. The first is to reduce energy costs, thereby saving the company money. As one IT executive put it to me recently, "Green computing is all about saving greenbacks."