CIOL: Are enterprises really going green in the context of maximising infrastructure efficiencies?
SM: Green software is a topic discussed by businesses around the world.  I don’t think it starts with an altruistic view of protecting the environment. Most companies say they do have to think of the permission they receive to do business anywhere and everywhere. We have to be sensitive to these aspects.

What every country is concerned is about increasing the global concern about environment.

What is motivating many companies right now specific to Green IT is the reality that they are out of space and out of power. They have got a lot of environmental issues in their operational set up which is having a significant economic impact on them. The marvel of computing is highly fragmented, disaggregated where they just keep adding more machines. 

But the good news is that, computing costs have come down in terms of how cheap semiconductors have become and how inexpensive it is to build power for computing machine. The bad news is that all the other factors are now becoming a limitation which really costs you to operate these environments.

We see customers talk about server consolidation, virtualization, making changes to the infrastructure, which actually are being driven by labor costs and environmental considerations. They are talking about real problems and it is getting a lot of attention.

For all those who have been advocates of environmental responsibility, they have always said that when it becomes economic everybody will pay attention to environment. Until it becomes economical, people have a choice to either pay attention because they believe in it or not as they don’t feel any direct effect. But the direct effect is being felt gradually.

CIOL: How does IBM cater to the requirements of Indian market?
SM: There are two parts to the whole issue – indigenously India and businesses in India. The needs and requirements of Indian enterprises are similar to that ones in other parts of the world. For ex., banks around the world have the same issues of concern regardless of a country. The requirement of customers in any vertical is more or less the same as we see happening elsewhere in the world, typically those companies who are doing work on behalf of others.