Green road, still untrodden!

The whole hoo-ha around Green IT is actually ho-hum. The real nails are still missing out of the hammer’s zone. And even the spots being put on the map are not being drilled down properly. Well, a report that says CIOs are not doing enough for Green IT, sure trots out its strong remarks and can stir many a hornet’s nest. The question is what makes the global analyst and consulting entity Ovum bring out a report titled “Sustainability management: an opportunity for CIOs,” underlining the gap, and why is the report’s bold and maverick author Warren Wilson (who is a senior analyst at Ovum)  so sure that Green IT, is a term, that still doesn’t seem enough, whether as a word or the action it brandishes.

We ask the green-hat mind all that and more as he shares some breakthrough thoughts on many areas, from IT’s carbon burden, myopia around the two to three percent energy guzzlers, green sales brochures, to Obama’s initiatives, green payback, IT’s operational effectiveness etc.

Your report says that “Most CIOs have looked at sustainability through the narrow lens of ‘green IT’ – the energy consumption and CO2 emissions directly tied to computing and communications. What they’re missing is the critical role that IT can play in supporting green practices across the entire organization.” Why do you opine that? Why is the onus on to a CIO?

It’s because you have an opportunity in front of you that you are not taking advantage of. You can raise your own profile and add a big role there. It’s easier than you think. Coming to ‘sustainability’, most companies have not given serious thought to sustainability policy across the business have to yet see closely their energy usage patterns and study them in a fine-grained way as what process can cause green issues. So, yes, that way there is a leadership vacuum there. 

Does conventional ROI mindset gnaw at green-hat thinking and related investments? You also talk about an analysis angle in the report?

Interestingly, energy consumption can be much less expensive and have a faster payback. Plus what makes it an opportunity for CIOs is that monitoring, analyzing of energy data is a data-intensive process. Sustainable practices aren’t something a business can simply define, deploy and forget about. Each department has unique processes and problems that must be addressed. The solutions must be monitored and analyzed to make sure that they deliver the desired results. This kind of monitoring, measurement, analysis and reporting is inevitably a data-intensive process, and is very similar to ERP, BI deployments.

Does that translate into a gap on proper green calculations?

One has to monitor that data to meet regulatory requirements, specially in Europe, Us etc. The discussion that mostly CIOs have around sustainability is around energy measurements related to communication, computing or desktop environments. But that part is just two to three per cent of the total pie. And even if you make communication and computing twice as efficient, it won’t solve the problem. 

Green IT is definitely part of the bigger issue, but it’s so closely associated with the two per cent of energy/carbon directly attributable to computing and communications that as soon as “green IT” is mentioned, people automatically think of the conventional definition and have difficulty holding onto the notion that it’s “the other 98 per cent” – the energy used / carbon emitted by manufacturing, buildings, logistics, etc. – that offers the larger opportunity for IT.

Yes, we need to make computing and communications more efficient, but we have to focus on the big energy consumers / carbon emitters to find the big cost savings and carbon reductions. Fortunately, there’s a close correlation between saving energy, saving money and reducing carbon – making the business “greener” can make it more profitable, not less – and that companies can often achieve these benefits with relative ease just by extending existing IT capabilities to see where/how they consume energy. It always surprises me to hear how few companies have systematically looked at that, and how much efficiency they can gain simply by gaining new visibility into existing processes.

What are we missing to touch then?

There are many areas like manufacturing, vehicle fleets etc where energy gets used and ERP, BI, SCM etc can provide a lot of visibility into that area of operations where one is spending large.

And so CIOs have a lot to do there?

The selection, deployment and management of ERP, BI and SCM solutions is largely the CIO’s responsibility. Broadening these solutions to encompass sustainability should be the CIO’s job as well, but so far, few have risen to the challenge. Those that do can increase their strategic importance by affecting how, when and how well their organizations succeed in adopting greener practices.

In that vein, what would you say on data centres hogging a lot of Green IT attention?

Yes, a lot of attention is being focused on data centre power and with data centre design, virtualization etc, people are attacking their IT energy consumption from a variety of angles. But there is a lot of room for improvement with increase in number and size of data centres. Overall, that’s a tiny part of carbon, energy problem. Even if you make it energy free, the regular economy growth clip would wipe out the gains on two percent slice, in no time. We have to attack questions around vehicles, operations, and electricity grids etc that are big sources of power consumption.

IT as part of the green problem, or as part of the solution? What’s your pick?

In as much as computing requires energy as business world becomes increasingly dependant on communications and share of total energy consumption which is attributable to computing, IT is a part of problem. But still a small part, as I earlier mentioned in the two to three per cent estimate. What about the other 98 per cent? What are you going to do about that? If IT understands that software like ERP, BI etc can be solutions extended into the realm of sustainability management that will be helpful. Most CEOs recognize that they have to work on this area but they don’t know how to go about it. So, CIOs should investigate into such options and capabilities.

But are real solutions around? From the vendor side of the industry that is?

I guess so. Growing number of companies like SAP, Microsoft, Oracle are beginning to recognize and add new software tools for measurement etc. SAP recently launched a pretty ambitious product on those lines in December with a carbon accounting tool. It also has a SaaS offering for carbon management.

Microsoft, likewise has a dashboard add-on to its Dynamics ERP. Other vendors are building similar capabilities, either on their own or through their partners. Dozen of smaller companies are focusing on a growing array of solutions. So, yes vendors are responding to the opportunity. We have much stronger capabilities than a year back. Even in large organizations like IBM, Accenture are building new practices around sustainability. Yet, the market is quite immature but it’s beginning to change.

Obviously, this requires cost-benefit analysis and so many companies have not undertaken it. This shows how much room exists in figuring out where one is wasting energy and where one is saving energy. This is possible with relatively modest improvements. It’s incumbent on CIOs to make sense of extending ERP, BI etc into this sphere. They should approach vendors and ask – what can you do for me in providing cost-effective visibility in carbon footprint areas.

What about offerings like Cisco Unified Computing or green data centres or all such solutions pitching on Green benefits?

Energy savings in any form is good but all this alone would be a drop in the ocean. I am not saying that it’s not enough but it’s about adding all components of energy consumption. So figure out how to apply green thinking to vehicles, manufacturing, buildings etc. These are areas of gain and have a much larger impact on carbon footprint. It’s not IT alone, it’s clean energy sources, more efficient vehicles, and better fuel consumption; but yes IT can do much more to solve these problems than we have thought of so far.

What else can be done?

If you are running a manufacturing operation, or an oil & gas distribution company, in the past it was difficult and expensive to get real-time and fine-grained detail or visibility to get energy spends but today sensors and wireless technology have become more useful. So you can look at RFID as a cost effective tool to track flow of materials through manufacturing and distribution operations to find out where inefficiency and bottlenecks are. It helps you find out why your delivery trucks are making longer trips to can they carry more on the road, or are they half loaded.

Enterprise software in junction with sensory technology can have a bigger impact than most people realize. Yet, it’s beyond the convention of Green IT. 

What’s your take on the US spending $12 billion by 2010 on the smart grid project?

Every one has their view in such matters. It’s easy to pass an opinion but whose fault is it that more isn’t being done. It is good we are trying out options we see but I would say there are more options than we have thought of. Smart grid is essential and it obviously helps in a much easier and transparent way of power consumption. Still, things like solar energy or wind options are there.

And President Obama’s initiatives around nuclear energy is what needs a mention here. It is sure a controversial option but a carbon-free one. Because when you get down to it, all pieces of solution have a component. It’s incumbent on vendors too to improve and apply data management capabilities to many dimensions. More expertise is around than before but still there’s a big vacuum of solutions to be taken advantage of.