Green Channel: Opinions

Data center managers and equipment vendors looking for greener alternatives will begin to benefit this year from a major initiative aimed at reducing the power consumed by Ethernet equipment. IEEE 802.3az, or the Energy-Efficient Ethernet (EEE) standard, will implement low-power idle (LPI) modes for the full range of Ethernet BASE-T transceivers (100Mb, 1GbE and 10GbE) and the backplane physical layer standards (1GbE, 4-lane 1GbE and 10GbE).

These days, with the shock of US$150-per-barrel oil only a year old, consumers in the market for a car will likely pay much more attention to a pair of numbers: The vehicle's two miles-per-gallon ratings.

As the dust settles from the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show, here are four trends worth looking at based on some products that were announced at the show. On my radar screen for the year:

After months of speculation, the Gershon review into the Federal Government’s ICT procurement strategy hit the streets last week.

In putting together this special ARN Green Channel guide, our journalists spoke to a broad cross-section of the local IT community about a number of different matters relating to technology and the environment.

The high-end data warehousing wars are fast upon us. Vendors are launching ever more scalable DW solutions. And they're delivering them with more aggressive -- and slippery -- performance claims.

Motivated to help the environment as well as their businesses, SMBs are increasingly embracing green practices. One of their primary approaches: employing green technology, according to recently released survey results from KRC Research.

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.

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.

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."

All datacentre products claiming to be green are not created equal. That's because metrics to determine how green equipment is usually are vendor-driven and measuring energy efficiency can be a chore for network architects.

Measure, measure, measure: It's one of the pieces of advice repeatedly doled out to companies looking to make their datacenters more energy-efficient. Without question, it's a sound suggestion; if you don't know where you're starting from, how do you know where you should go or whether you've made any progress?

Doing the right thing makes sense from a business point of view as well as from an environmental and corporate social responsibility perspective.

The IT industry must smooth the transition path if CIOs are to stop thinking of green initiatives as an inconvenience.

I remember when I started in this industry with IBM, a key sales strategy was to create FUD -- Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt -- in the minds of our customers. The idea was that if we covered prospective customers with a thick layer of FUD, going with the 'big, safe' IBM would be an easy and logical decision. In those days 'no one ever got fired for buying IBM' was the subtle subtext in IT decision making.

You may very well prefer to postpone the task of refreshing your fleet of desktop systems and monitors, an exercise that can be both expensive and time-consuming. But inevitably, machines break down or your needs change, so you have to bite the bullet.

There are many ways to flex your environmental muscles

With all the fanfare for Al Gore, receiving an Oscar, Emmy and the Nobel Peace Prize all in 2007, one would think that global environmental concerns rank No. 1 on the list of "corporate social responsibility."

There are two kinds of people: optimists and pessimists. Sadly, I'm one of the latter. So I wasn't surprised when the vast majority of scientists concluded that human contributions to the buildup of greenhouse gases are a key component of global warming.

The IT industry has a duty to show customers how they can optimise working environments