Big Blue to Big Green - CIOL Interviews

Big Blue to Big Green

Here's some how, why and where of IBM's green stance that couldn't have been articulated more aloud than the $1 billion investment with Project Big Green. Pratima Harigunani of CyberMedia News checks the speedometer of IBM on the new green tracks in this chat with Shashi B Mal, director, STG, IBM India/South Asia.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

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Last month, at its annual IBM Pulse Conference in Orlando, IBM announced new software designed to help customers around maximizing energy efficiency and reducing power and cooling costs.

The software, and many other upcoming offerings, are part of IBM's Project Big Green initiative where this IT giant has committed $1 billion per year with an intent to dramatically increase the efficiency of IBM products and to deliver technologies that help customers increase energy efficiency in their data centers and physical plants.

From the latest version of IBM Tivoli Monitoring (ITM) software to "green" data centers, and to energy savings of approximately 42 per cent for an average data center, there is clearly a new colour apparent in IBM's product, technology and business roadmap.

There are many shades to this new tinge and the way it blooms out in a world getting increasingly worried about the sine qua non of going green. Here's something from IBM's palette.

Is there a legacy to IBM's Project Green? Since when has this drive kicked off, from a consumption standpoint too?

Energy conservation has been an integral part of IBM's environmental management system since 1974. From 1990-2005, IBM reduced CO2 emissions through energy conservation by an amount equal to 40 per cent of the 1990 amount.

IBM recently refreshed its energy conservation goal to achieve annual energy conservation savings equal to 3.5 per cent of its actual annual electrical and fuel use.

We also recently raised our goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by seven per cent. In 2006, IBM purchased 96,000 megawatt-hours (MWH) of Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) and 13,704 MWH of electricity generated by wind turbines, solar panels or biomass.

This offset approximately four per cent of our indirect CO2 emissions in the US while supporting the development of renewable energy technologies. This is the largest purchase by a FORTUNE 10 company. IBM won a US DOE and EPA 2006 Green Power Purchasing Award.

In 2005, IBM's total savings from energy management was $22.9 million.

And from a product development perspective?

IBM has clearly led on product design for the environment, or what is now known in the industry as "dfe" It began as a formal program at IBM back in 1991.

Under IBM's global environment management system, the company tries to use recyclable and recycled materials, we design products for energy efficiency, we choose environmentally preferable materials, we design environmentally favorable packaging, and finally, we design for the eventual disassembly of the products in order to support product reuse and recycling.

IBM was the first IT company to reach the 1 billion pound milestone for collecting and managing electronic product waste. It has sent less than three per cent of its product waste directly to landfills, and last year it was less than one per cent.

What is the broad strategy of IBM around Green IT?
What are the specifics in terms of milestones, projects, products, technology innovations, and research and community initiatives?

As part of Project Big Green, we have created a global "green" team of over 1000 energy efficiency specialists from across the company, to offer "green" solutions comprising IBM's hardware, software, services, research, and finance offerings.

One of the 10 new IBM businesses stemming from 2006's Innovation Jam was the mission for Big Green Innovations. The mission is to anticipate critical environmental problems confronting the world, develop breakthrough technologies and services, and deliver relevant solutions through collaborative innovation with clients and key business partners.

The focus of Big Green Innovations is to develop the solutions of tomorrow. The initial four core portfolio areas designed to leverage, then extend, existing IBM strengths consist of Advanced Water Management, Green Operations and Supply Chain, Alternative Energies, Computational Modeling etc .

What exactly happens with computational modeling?

This will apply IBM's demonstrated high performance computing capabilities to environmental issues, and involve data acquisition and preparation; complex system analysis, management and optimization; statistical analysis; stochastic models (scenarios, probabilities); physical simulation, and visualization.

We recently launched the z10 Mainframes in India. The z10 helps clients to create a new enterprise data center and is designed from the ground up to help dramatically increase data center efficiency by significantly improve performance and reduce power cooling cost and floor space requirements.

With this we are taking the Mainframes to another level for creating a new enterprise data center for our customers. It is the most sophisticated piece of autonomic technology available today, giving new levels of power and control in the provisioning of IT and the system's already unmatched standard of availability.

How and where does India specifically fit in this new Green atlas for IBM?

According to the Integrated Energy Policy document (Prime Minister's speech at the Energy Conclave 2006 - "Implementing the Integrated Energy Policy: The Way Forward") the estimated energy requirements in 2030 will be higher than today's levels by a factor of anywhere between 4 and 5, if our economy grows at around eight per cent per annum. The figures of future requirements are gigantic.

Electricity generation capacity would need to go up from our current installed capacity of a 131,000 MW to between 800,000 to a 950,000 MW. This is something that we in India need to address and Green IT awareness is growing rapidly among large and small companies especially in sectors like telecom, information technology, banking and financial services and manufacturing—all of which require large data centers— are booming and IT managers are increasingly moving towards energy-efficient technologies.

In a recent study conducted by IBM across eight regions including India, small and medium businesses cited energy costs as one of the biggest cost increases over the past two years and are looking at Green Technologies as an alternative.

It is clear that there is a growing interest and awareness in Green Technology among the Indian enterprises today.

IBM has announced spends of about $1 billion for more efficient computing centers? How would this translate in terms of the exact idea, geography/customer/product outline and the progress pits tops around this spend?

We will direct US$ 1 billion a year, globally, across our businesses, to mobilize the resources to dramatically increase the level of energy efficiency in IT.

This will be spread across research and development, products, software, services etc. IBM has led the technology industry in energy-smart innovation for over 40 years from radical breakthroughs in mainframe cooling efficiency to the development of the world's most powerful computer in Blue Gene that delivers the most performance per kilowatt of power consumed.

IBM will continue to drive leadership in power efficiency with its "Cool Blue" portfolio of innovation. "Cool Blue" spans the spectrum – from materials, devices, circuits, chips, system architecture and software – and all can be utilized to help solve data center energy problems.

Is Green IT as powerful as a business rationale as it is from an overall technology and responsibility perspective?

Both…seeded deep within the concern for a better environment is the need for a strong business imperative. There is a severe energy crisis facing the global marketplace and Green IT helps address both i.e. the environmental concern as well as helping economies cut cost.

Businesses around the world are consuming extreme amounts of energy through their use of information technology --- over 100 billion kilowatts per year globally -- furthering today's energy crisis. In 2007, there will be $10 billion spend on data center energy worldwide, and IDC predicts that power and cooling spend in the data center will grow at eight times the rate of hardware spend.

This is a concern for all and considering that we are a thought leader on green initiatives we are trying our best to bring more innovative products that can help companies curb cost and energy, thereby adopting best IT practices.

What's the role that virtualization" technologies are playing in making data centers greener?

IBM offerings include products that virtualized storage, server, and network resources and products to manage a virtualized infrastructure.

IBM is providing the industry's some comprehensive virtualization technologies – including mainframe, UNIX, x86, and storage systems -- which allow clients to consolidate work onto fewer computers, increasing utilization, which can significantly reduce energy and maintenance bills and simplify their infrastructure.

Today, many computer systems use five per cent to 12 per cent of their capacity. IBM's mainframe, which includes the world's most sophisticated virtualization technologies, already allows clients to reach nearly 100 per cent server utilization.

In August 2007, IBM announced it would do a massive transformation of its worldwide computer data center by consolidating 4,000 small computer servers in six locations onto about 30 refrigerator-sized mainframes running Linux.

IBM expects to conserve enough energy to power a small town, and reduce the floor space devoted to computers by 85 per cent.

Can you elaborate the green contribution of virtualization on data centers?

Virtualization can create an impact on data centers by trading physical servers for virtual ones and dramatically reduce costs along a broad front, including expenditures like these.

Energy consumption, in replacing 3,900 servers, each with its own power supply, with 30 mainframes, IBM is expected to save enough electricity to power a small town.

Software, which often is priced on a per processor basis. IBM expects to help minimize software-licensing charges as the new IBM mainframes contain significantly fewer processors than the current 3,900 servers.

System support, the project is expected to free up IBM technical personnel from system administration tasks to work on higher-value projects, including designing and building customer solutions.

What is the momentum so far on provisioning software and other server switch-over (to power-saving standby mode) technologies?

IBM Tivoli Server, Network and Device management products allow one to manage an end-to-end view of the IT infrastructure in an integrated approach to resource allocation, monitoring and provisioning as well as problem prevention and resolution.

These products enable the automation of repetitive IT tasks and processes, and deliver optimized resources in real-time to address changing business demands and to meet service level agreements.

Server, Network and Device management is an integral part of IBM IT Service Management.

How effective can liquid-cooling systems be in balancing peak-off and peak-use times in power consumption? Where exactly does IBM stand on this technology?

IDC estimates that in 2006, $29 billion was spent on powering and cooling IT systems (IDC, Worldwide Server Power and Cooling Expense 2006–2010). Water has been used for a long time in professional cooling solutions, as it is infinitely more efficient than plain air as water is about 4000 times more efficient than the air-based cooling solutions.

Also, liquid cooling comes at a lesser cost when compared to air conditioners; air conditioners require huge blowers, which add to the cost. We haves patented "stored cooling" solution that dramatically increases the efficiency of the largest single use of power in the data center – the end-to-end cooling system.

The IBM Data Center Stored Cooling Solution service product, implemented at an IBM data center in Quebec, achieved 45 per cent savings and has already been named the "best new energy product" by the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE).

IBM's patented Rear Door Heat eXchanger "cooling doors" are now available across most IBM Systems offerings. While requiring no additional fans or electricity, they reduce server heat output in data centers up to 60 per cent by utilizing chilled water to dissipate heat generated by computer systems.

IBM also plans to introduce a new set of liquid cooling technologies later this year developed by IBM Research Labs. We recently launched a new supercomputer- Power 575 is five times more powerful and 60 per cent more energy-efficient than its predecessors.

Our solution places the cooling pipes right above the processor, which means that the heat transfer is dramatically improved. Also, the hydro cluster is comprised of self-contained liquid vessels that keep the fluid at a moderate temperature. We are at the forefront of liquid cooling systems and technologies.

What are the implications of consortiums like the 100-member Green Grid for Green IT market in general and for IBM in particular?

Green initiatives is a commitment that is close to IBM's heart and retreated time and again in the kind of innovations and the spectrum of products and services that we bring for effective energy utilization and an initiative that comes from across the highest levels of management to energy savings and, wherever possible, reducing the impact of climate change.

The Big Green Innovations business group was one of 10 in which IBM CEO Samuel J. Palmisano agreed to invest ($100 million was spread out across the 10) after IBM's InnovationJam, a November 2006 online brainstorming session that included thousands of employees, business and university partners.

The new business unit is focused on applying IBM's research and market strengths to environmental issues in order to develop new processes, technologies and products that benefit both the company and the environment.

Green IT is a global trend and IBM is a thought leader on Green IT. We work within ourselves and with our clients as well to spread the awareness about the benefits of adopting Green IT.

If you look closely at the Green Grid member companies, there are a lot of companies we work closely on a daily basis and from this probably you can understand the implications the Going Green will have on business.

Green is something that businesses have started to demand and is a strong business focus areas for all vendors.

©CyberMedia News

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