When rays of Sun went greener!

MUMBAI, INDIA: Much before the color Green (read Green IT) became the flavor of IT communities across the world, corporations such as Sun Microsystems, Inc. had initiated systems and processes that only led others to follow, giving a first mover advantage for this over two-decades-old entity that prides in its prowess of operating in the open source arena.

Speaking to Cybermedia News on the Green IT initiatives, Rich Green, EVP, Sun Microsystems said: “Our eco-green efficiency covers a wide variety of things whether it's our Niagara 2 microprocessor with its throughput per watt is just unparallel in the market. Even if you look at Solaris and Dtrace, it's all about getting more efficiency in existing platforms."

He also went on to mention the intricacies of working on a Dtrace platform when one achieves a 30 per cent performance escalation in flat two and half hours of working in Dtrace, which is about 30 per cent power less consumed.

"We have built kind of programs in which our servers and our software programs are configured to provide more eco-friendly and more efficient platforms," said Green.

Giving credit to the culture at Sun, Richard Green said: "One of the reasons we started early is that a lot of work which we did all these years had been about efficiency whether its past performance or voltage or software performance and this is just another step."

Application of efficiency and good design has become the epicenter of this enterprise.

With developers worried most about the "time to market" in every application they develop, the concern for most corporations is the path that would have to be taken from having a concept to developing a market around, building an ecosystem over it and having a user base that would give a competitive advantage.

"Typically the company that starts first gets that user advantage. Because of this rapid time to market focus, developers tend not to look far enough ahead and so they are not thinking about –what happens if I am actually successful in getting this application to the market and I track a whole bunch of users, technology that am employing currently help me address challenges later whether its performance or scalability and from a Solaris' perspective," said Ian Murdock, Vice President, Developer and Community Marketing at Sun Microsystems.

He adds that promoting environmental centric initiatives or technologies has to do with taking the right technological decisions upfront which allow the company to augment in scale throughout.

With green technologies becoming increasingly important, Gartner Research stated that by the end of 2008, companies across the world would make public statements in their financial results on their carbon emission norms and Sun Microsystems seems to be leading the way on that front.