By annie shum | April 23, 2009
Title: The Greening of IT: How Companies Can Make a Difference for the Environment
Author: John Lamb
Publisher: IBM Press; ISBN 0137150830, April 2009
U.S. $39.99 List Price; 350 pages
Top green IT expert John Lamb, presents compelling reasons why businesses must establish more efficient technology practices: they will help save the environment, and they’ll help save money. The book is published by Pearson imprint, IBM Press (www.ibmpressbooks.com).
The book focuses on the sustainable practice known as “IT greening,” or the process of using information technology more effectively to reduce fossil fuel-based energy consumption. IT and data centers are currently trending toward an exponential increase in the world’s consumption of electric energy. Lamb emphasizes the importance of IT managers understanding how to create and maintain green data centers, facilities in which the mechanical, lighting, electrical, and computer systems are designed for maximum energy efficiency and minimum environmental impact. Given the frequent “refresh cycles” for equipment, Lamb says IT groups are often well-positioned to innovate with these new technologies.
The book’s opening chapter presents an overview of the basics, including both the benefits and challenges involved in moving to green IT. These include organizational issues (Who Pays the Electricity Bill?), motivations that speak to executives, and logistical issues such as asset procurement and disposal and supply-chain issues. Lamb emphasizes the need for collaboration, both among competing vendors and with energy utilities and the government.
Lamb devotes an entire chapter to virtualization, a process for consolidating hardware and software, perhaps the most promising technology for green IT. He also discusses the need for standard IT energy-use metrics, adhering to the mantra “You can’t manage what you can’t measure,” and includes information on new energy-efficient cooling technologies that support IT.
Other chapters explore the impetus for change, how future government regulations will likely have an impact, and the role of electric utilities. The Greening of IT concludes with case studies representing energy utilities, universities, and a large company that extract lessons learned and best practices for implementing green IT.
News Facts:
•Data centers consume more energy per square foot than any other part of an office building;
•Energy costs represent the second-largest line item associated with data center operations today, consuming more than 10% of a typical enterprise’s IT budget;
•IBM consultants estimate that in the next decade, IT server shipments will grow by six times and data storage by 69-fold.
In the book, Lamb provides a checklist of tasks that are applicable to all green IT projects, including these top three:
1) Communicate Green IT Plans and Appoint an Energy Czar Set up an organization to drive the effort. You may start by making one person responsible; give that person a title (like “Energy Czar”).
2) Consolidate and Virtualize Consolidating IT operations, and using virtualization to reduce server footprint and energy use, are the most well-recognized and most-often-implemented efficiency strategies of the past few years.
3) Install Energy-Efficient Cooling Units In most cases, traditional data center design called for bulky computer room air conditioners (CRAC) units that are placed on the perimeter of the floor to move large amounts of air around the data center. In-row or supplemental cooling units have been shown to save energy.
By Yeshim Deniz, April 22, 2009
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