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August 6th, 2008 [by Doug Alder]
Until of late conventional “wisdom” has held the belief that negatively affects a company’s . This view, rightfully, is beginning to change, no doubt in part from the perception of coming .In a very insightful post , President of , makes some excellent points on :
Companies today can be classified in one of five stages as advances toward sustainability. Those stages are:Awareness: Company becomes aware that environmental concerns are permeating discourse, though sustainability as a value is absent from corporate culture.Resistive: Company becomes aware of its own environmental impact of doing business, but demonstrates no commitment to environmental responsibility and possibly some reaction against it.Legalistic: Company strictly focuses on compliance to minimum environmental regulations, with no commitment to raising standards for conservation or energy efficiency.Reactive: Company recognizes strategic value of sustainability opportunities, but pursues only opportunities that do not create new risks.Strategic: Company uses proactive approach to sustainability opportunities and evaluates the impact of sustainability initiatives on the long-term value of the enterprise.In spite of the payoffs that some big businesses have received from many companies still view a sustainability commitment through the lens of compliance. When companies progress beyond compliance and extend their actions strategically, they become more nimble, and better equipped to meet the rapidly changing demands of the marketplace . [emphasis added]
That last sentence is very important. Consumers, whether of “real” goods or digital goods, are becoming acutely aware of the costs of and the rising costs of anything that relies on petrochemicals, be that fuel, food or any other consumer product. When hit in the pocketbook consumers start paying attention. A smart company gets to where the consumer wants them to be long before the customer gets there.In today’s business world pressure is increasingly being brought to bear, by shareholders and boards of Directors, on CEOs to reduce costs and gain at the same time. Pressure is also being put on them, from the same people plus consumers and government, to reduce corporate carbon footprints. How to accomplish this and maintain a viable long-term business?Well, Ms. Clark goes on to show the benefits of going green:
- Earn publicity with the local, regional or even national media
- Uniquely differentiate themselves from competitors
- Attract the interest of top job candidates
- Attract consumers in the rapidly-growing green marketplace
- Transform their companies into industry leaders
- Reduce operating costs
- Create brand distinction and recognition
- Create significant competitive advantage
- Enhance employee satisfaction
- Become preferred vendors in green supply chains
- Attract top job candidates
- Build credibility with stakeholders
- Attract investors
[emphasis added]
One of the best ways a company can start down the road to greenness is to overhaul their () strategy. In an interesting study (.pdf), via Bill St. Arnaud , Dr Yuji INOUE, (President & CEO The Japanese Telecommunication Technology Committee) postulates that Japan can meet 90% of its objectives simply through changes in ICT and in another study by Climate Group and the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI) a claim is made that
“The Smarter technology use could reduce global emissions by 15 per cent and save global industry $US 800 billion in annual energy costs by 2020″
In the process of overhauling their there are several factors that companies can focus on that will bring quick, bottom line, results: and .
Trends like virtualization of data centres, long-life devices, smart chargers, Next Generation Networks, and growth of renewable energy consumption (eg solar powered base stations) could help deliver future sustainable sector growth. (GeSI study)
Virtualization is huge and over the course of the next decade it will be come the norm for and networks. It saves money by making the most efficient use of hardware and network resources. New virtualization technologies, such as Microsoft’s are going to revolutionize the whole server and datacenter industry. Data Center outsourcing is important because it can take advantage of green infrastructure that is already in place. Upgrading an existing in-house to meet new is time consuming, difficult and expensive. Very expensive. Outsourcing datacenter requirements brings stability to a companies IT expenses (particularly if they choose to go with a Server Capacity model where they rent/lease server capacity, especially virtual server capacity, instead of colocating their own hardware) and it also reduces the need for additional IT personnel.Virtualization is also becoming an important part of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) as it saves resources, lots of resources, due to a massive increase in efficiency, while at the same time lowering costs. As David Linthicum from InfoWorld says
The fact of the matter is that the more efficient a business is, the fewer resources, natural and otherwise it will consume. Thus, the better the business is automated, and business processes optimized, the more efficient it will be. The primary of objective of an SOA is both efficiency and agility through architectural rejuvenation, we’ve beat that to death here.So, is SOA green? Perhaps, considering that businesses that practice both good IT architecture, including , will be rewarded with business processes that are both optimized and changeable to align with the business. Thus, anything that the business does will require the fewest amount of resources and dollars, and you can call that green no matter if you mean saving the environment or cash in the bank…both are very good. [emphasis added]
Or, as this IBM article (a must read article) by , Program Director, Grid Technology and Strategy, puts it:
SOA and infrastructure virtualization techniques are highly synergistic. As services take hold in enterprises, and their size and scale grows, it will become increasingly necessary to implement infrastructure virtualization techniques to support them. Without , enterprises become exceedingly complex to manage and the primary benefits of agility and flexibility difficult to realize.[snip]A recent issue of eWeek (see Resources) referenced a CIO survey by Merrill Lynch in which 87 percent of the participants cited SOA “as the next big thing” in enterprise software. (Personally, I think SOA is already big.)It’s no wonder why CIOs are interested in SOA. Business challenges and pressures are becoming increasingly intense and global in nature. There is now a need for new types of businesses and operating models. In IBM’s 2006 Global CEO Study (see Resources), two-thirds of the business leaders said they plan to “radically change” the shape of their companies in the next two years. And they need to do it quickly for the following reasons: The first companies to market usually stake out strong positions and capture the lion’s share of profits, and opportunities materialize so quickly and vanish so rapidly that speed and time to market are essential.But this proposition isn’t so easy. At least not for CIOs. They have to contend with myriad architectures, interfaces, and technologies that constrain their ability to provide a technology infrastructure, which could support — or even facilitate — responding to competitive market dynamics.
Put simply, virtualization of all layers is green and profitable. It reduces overhead, it makes SOA much easier to manage, it has become integral to running a successful IT structure.This is where and enter the picture. RackForce is an industry acknowledged expert in virtualization. We have been perfecting virtual server models since 2003. Going forward we will be bringing you the most advanced Hyper-V systems in the business over the next few months (sorry no details – don’t want the other players to know what we are doing. 
) gigaCENTER, when it opens its doors Q2, 2009, will be the greenest and in its class anywhere. Between the two companies we will be able to offer customers scalable , modular , green server and infrastructure services unlike what any other company can.RackForce is now pre-selling space in gigaCENTER so don’t miss out on this opportunity, phase 1 space is selling out fast. Contact Doug Alder (dalder at rackforce.com) Direct: 1-250-448-2203 or Jay Robinson (jrobinson at rackforce.com) 1-250-717-2340 ext 2303 on our gigaCENTER sales team now to get started.