Safe bet

As federal agencies and corporationslook more closely athow environmentally friendlytheir information technologyoperations are, vendors areresponding with products,services and advice.It helps that green IT covers both kindsof green: the environment and money.Environmentally friendly programs oftensave on costs, especially in the long run.One Defense Department agency cut$3.4 million a year on its power costs whenit replaced all its PCs with thin-client terminalsconnected to a back-end server, said BillVass, president and chief operating officer ofSun Microsystems Inc.'s federal division."That's a great example that green isn'tjust ecology, it's also money," he said.Large IT operations have several optionsfor becoming greener, such as thin-clientcomputers, one of Sun's specialties. Theyare little more than monitors and inputdevices; most of the computing takes placeon a server, reducing paper demand andemissions. Data center virtualization consolidatescomputing demands onto fewerservers and saves on electricity costs.Telework programs are becoming viableoptions for many employees.Government contractors and their partnersare ready to help agencies with any orall of those approaches to going green."Helping clients of all sizes is an importantissue," said Rich Lechner, vice presidentof IT optimization and system softwareat IBM Corp. "We believe that, onaverage, a client can save about 40 percentof the total power being consumed in thedata centers by taking a holistic approach."Data centers are perhaps the singlelargest target for green efforts. In traditionalenvironments, a typical server CPUis used about 5 percent to 15 percent of thetime the machine is on, Vass said."You're generating all this heat, and 90percent to 95 percent is being thrown awaybecause you're not using it," he said.Virtualization technologies consolidatethe demands of several servers onto one.That server's CPU runs 80 percent or 90percent of the time and can handle theneeds of dozens of computers, Vass said."Virtualization of all sorts gives you alever to use to consolidate gear," saidJonathan Eunice, principal IT adviser atthe consulting firm Illuminata Inc. "Wehave a lot more of an ability to shrink thefootprint of storage. Over the last couple ofyears, we've realized that we've massivelyoverprovisioned and we're not using thegear we have."Money will probably always be a biggermotivator than ecological friendliness, hesaid, but the effect is beneficial either way."It's hard to control sprawl so you need apowerful tool," he said. "Virtualization hascome along as a very powerful tool."Finding ways to go green in the datacenter means examining everything, fromthe big picture down to the fine details. Forexample, IBM has developed energy-savingservers by modifying the exhaust fans,Lechner said.The always-spinning fan accounts forabout one-third of a server's power usage,he said. "So we've introduced systems thathave heat sensors built in, and the fanspeed is variable," he said. "The fan onlyspins as often and as fast as it needs to todissipate the heat. That one innovationalone can reduce the power consumptionof a server by 15 percent."Although hardware is the most visibletarget, software can also play a role inusing computing power more efficiently,said Jim Russell, vice president of the publicsector at Symantec Corp. He said thecompany's Endpoint Protection software,which bundles seven key security measuresinto one application, requires fewerprocessor cycles to run."There's a way that you can architectfamilies of software products that are similarto bring the cost of processing downsignificantly," he said.Like many efforts to persuade people tochange their way of thinking, virtualizationfaces cultural resistance. Simon Shiach,vice president of technology services atUnisys Corp., compared it to carpooling.Most commuters agree that carpooling is a good idea, but many of them still drive towork alone."This is about the maturity of your environment,"Shiach said. "It's not just aboutpooling resources. People are still concernedabout pooling resources."Virtualization isn't complete withoutcontrol systems. Because the systems shareresources in different ways than they do inmore traditional configurations, data centermanagers need new software to governthe interaction and provisioning of servers."When you move from a fixed model to avirtual one, a whole lot of things change,"said Andy Jordan, program manager of thereal-time infrastructure program at Unisys."When everything is locked away in a box,they're easier to maintain and protect thanwhen they're in a virtual environment."When organizations upgrade to more currenttechnology, they generate piles of obsoletecomputers they must dispose of. Ratherthan haul the machines off to landfills, someorganizations are finding more ecologicallyfriendly ways to unload the computers, withthe help of vendor partners."The large vendors have all arrangedextensive recycling centers and programsso that you don't just create more trash,"Eunice said. "There is a clear reclamationand reuse aspect to it."Dell Inc. is one company with an ambitiousrecycling program. It has take-backprograms for all of the hardware that customersuse, said Max Peterson, Dell's vicepresident of sales for civilian agencies."When the useful life is over, a lot oftimes those excess assets end up piling upin rooms, in inventory areas, even in aislessometimes," he said. "There are issuesabout disposing of it. Dell offers thoseasset-recovery services, and federal customersin particular are taking advantageof that."Other agencies are moving to the thinclientPCs that Sun and other companiesoffer. Because the desktop unit is not afull-fledged computer, it does not need tobe replaced as frequently as traditional PCsdo, Vass said.Packaging is a more mundane aspect ofminimizing waste, but Dell has madechanges to its shipping practices to reducewaste there as well, Peterson said."In the past, customers got pallets ofindividually wrapped items," he said. "Thatcreated a deployment problem because youhad all that material to get rid of."Now the company offers an optionalmultipack process, under which Dell shipsseveral products wrapped together insteadof individually.In the past, companies did not often highlightenvironmental benefits to sell theirproducts and services, but that is changing.Customers are increasingly interested inhearing about energy savings, reduced emissionsand other improvements.However, Vass said most of Sun's federalcustomers still see green as an economicrather than an environmental motivation."Right now, I find for a lot of them it'svery much an economic decision," he said."They look at the amount of power they'reusing and figure out how to reduce it. It hitsyour pocketbook directly. Driving a moreenergy-efficient car is not as importantwhen gas is cheap. When gas is more expensive,you look at how it can save you money."By next year, he said, agencies will beginthinking more about the ecological consequencesof their decisions."More and more, customers both in thepublic sector and in commercial companiesare under pressure to be green because customersand employees want it," Lechnersaid. "The social and environmentalresponsibility dimension is a motivatingforce, but we're mostly seeing customerscoming for the economic and operationalfactors first."But things might be changing, Petersonsaid."I think the attitudes are definitely continuingto shift," he said. "When I talked tocustomers three years ago, green IT wasnot part of the conversation. Today they'reinterested and concerned and want toknow how to do it better."