Focus: Doing business the green way

In a recently released film, The Age of Stupid, a man living alone in a devastated 2055 reminisces over footage from 2007 and asks why the human race did not take any action to stop climate change when it had the chance.

Tracey Rawling Church, director of brand and reputation at print vendor Kyocera Mita, previewed the film. “It asks, ‘When we have the chance to save ourselves, why don’t we?’,” she said.

“I am aware that there are people who claim it is all a conspiracy, or that it is all Al Gore’s fault, but it doesn’t take rocket science to work out that our future depends on looking after this planet and if we don’t it is pretty much curtains for us.”

Kyocera has long been keen to present itself at the forefront of moves towards increasing environmental sustainability. Its environmental charter states that it will operate in accord with its basic management philosophy, which is not only to provide for the material and intellectual growth of the company and its staff but to “contribute to the advancement of society and humankind”.

The Japanese parent company believes that preserving the environment is central to achieving those goals. It requires all its affiliates to actively participate in sustainable measures that will protect the environment.

But green IT is not just the latest fad.

Andy Lawrence, research director of analysis on eco-efficient IT at The 451 Group, said green IT really started in around 1990.

“They were more concerned then with paper and chemicals in manufacturing, as well as waste and disposal,” he said. “And it did result in some reductions.”

We all know that the vision of the paperless office turned out to be a mirage. Costly paper consumption actually increased as businesses and customers alike found the need to create more records and archive electronic files ­ many of which were never used again.

Paper is only finally being less used now as cost pressures are brought to bear. “There are signs that paper consumption is falling, but it is unclear whether that is just because of the recession or increased use of collaboration technologies,” said Lawrence.

“It is also possible that paper production may be a form of carbon sequestration. The real issue isn’t the paper but printing: the toner and the ink.”

The business imperative
Scientists do generally agree that we must take better care of our environment. The devil is in the detail, and research therefore continues. But whether you agree or not, the business imperative ­ one that’s not going away any time soon ­ is about cost and waste control.

And printing waste is not the only or even the most important issue. Lawrence said that the EU’s Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directive has mandated improved management of electronic waste. And today the emphasis is increasingly moving to the datacentre.

“Around 2003, people started to realise that datacentre energy costs were very, very high, which again raised questions about the carbon footprint of all that energy use,” said Lawrence.

“The focus went very much to the datacentre, especially in 2007 when the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) reported to the US Congress.”

The difficulty for resellers and their customers is in differentiating genuinely eco-efficient offerings from the merely greenwashed, he added.

But that choice is an important one to make ­ because the 2007 report r evealed that datacentres account for 1.5 per cent of US energy use. That figure is expected to be similar in other developed nations and to double by 2012.

“Existing technologies and strategies could reduce typical server energy use by an estimated 25 per cent, with even greater energy savings possible with advanced technologies,” the EPA reported ­ and that was all the way back in 2007.

Since then, organisational eco-efficiency strategies have concentrated on improving the energy use and insulation of datacentres. This is particularly critical when much datacentre kit is habitually left running whether it is in use or not.

Beyond that, most businesses could save a lot of energy by deploying simple things like desktop power management software. Surprisingly, few firms have done this, according to Lawrence, despite evidence suggesting it is very effective in saving energy and money.

Suppliers have been growing their desktop power management sales 20 per cent, 30 per cent or even 100 per cent a year as a result, and the market may double or even quadruple in three or four years.

“But it is hard to predict,” added Lawrence. “For example, Microsoft is always capable of integrating a lot of that technology into its own products. But it is a good market right now.”

The UK government’s CIO council has also indicated that a plan around desktop use will be formulated ­ although it is likely that it will be carefully worded to allow CIOs to use their discretion.

“It will provide clear guidelines on when equipment should be replaced,” said Lawrence.

Rawling Church said she believes that most green IT initiatives are driven by a near-universal need for improved efficiency. Kyocera has worked towards that goal across its range, redesigning printer technology such as cartridges where needed, bringing technology into line with standards such as ISO 14001.

Developments in motion
Products that create even less heat and use less energy than before are always appearing. Duplex printing has not yet been widely adopted, but even that potential has now been superseded by ‘two-up’ and ‘four-up’ ­ where two or four pages are printed on one side.

Print-and-follow technology means people can no longer hit print and then forget to pick up the document ­ the cause of the traditional paper mountains at many departmental printers. Instead, they are forced to swipe a card or enter a passcode at the printer itself to actually print out.

“Since the first Kyoto Summit in 1992, people have been talking about things like embodied carbon, counting everything that has gone into a product,” she said. “But, actually, the biggest issue is in how people use the products.”

Culture and processes need to change. These things provide obvious revenue opportunities for the channel through consultancy, training and other IT-related support to customers.

“The key thing is that it really is not about polar bears,” said Rawling Church. “It is all about the sustainability of humankind being at risk. I have heard some really interesting people speak on the subject recently. One man pointed out that fluctuations in climate are natural and not a new thing, but it has never happened when industrialisation was already taking place.”

The problem can be summarised as exponential growth and demand for resources colliding with climate change. That means that thinking about green is not a nice-to-have but a must-have. Governments are falling into line and businesses must as well, notes Rawling Church.

“When people started out with it, there was a huge price premium,” she said. “In our technology at launch, that was 10 to 15 per cent. But there is no longer a price premium with our products ­ in fact, over time they will cost you less. And this is true for a lot of environmentally focused technology.”

With business lobby CBI estimating that some 30 per cent of energy used by UK businesses is wasted, there appears to be plenty of room for increased energy efficiency, said Rawling Church.

Most movies are made pretty much purely to entertain. But like its extremely successful forerunner, An Inconvenient Truth, The Age of Stupid has a definite message and purpose.

It also wasn’t made or sold like other films ­ it was crowd-funded from the start (the first £50,000 was rumoured to have come from punters in a London bar on a single night) and employs the distributor directly.

It is also likely that innovative, individual approaches from IT providers and the channel will also prove essential if the green message is to succeed.

Popular power
Another company that has already recognised the inevitability of being green ­ and that has started to make changes that will help its customers towards more environmentally efficient businesses ­ is IBM.

Jacqui Davey, vice president of the business partner organisation at IBM UK and Ireland, said green IT has become a business imperative. Drivers for action move beyond costs to regulation and compliance, corporate social responsibility, stakeholder reputation and business development.

“IBM recognises that solutions to climate change represent both an opportun ity for innovation and an imperative for corporate action,” she said. “As such it is helping clients reduce energy use and carbon across their business, while implementing climate protection as part of its own strategy.”

IBM tries to take a holistic view of customer needs, moving beyond the close focus on IT through its energy and environment model, and harnessing its 100,000 Business Partners as much as possible.

It promises to invest in channel success, offering training, education and incentives that help them offer value-added services.

“Further, we engage our Business Partners in opportunities that arise from emerging technologies and evolving market dynamics,” said Davey. “So, in support of this we continue to share our vision and messages for climate change with the channel and how the channel can take advantage of latest technologies.”

IBM is helping Malta develop nationwide smart grid systems for power and water distribution that are aimed at improving efficiency and customer service.

It also tackled Chinese shipping giant COSCO, helping it move from 100 to 40 distribution centres, slashing logistics costs by 23 per cent and CO2 emissions by 15 per cent or 100,000 tonnes a year. It has been building greener datacentres in universities in Australia and the US, that it claims can halve the power needed.

“This is a massive opportunity,” said Davey. “There will be £233bn spent on business upgrades to infrastructure by 2025.”

IBM itself reduced its CO2 emissions by 40 per cent between 1990 to 2005. Big Blue pledges to reduce its own greenhouse gas footprint seven per cent from 2005 figures by 2012, primarily by saving energy.

Globally, IBM renewed or recycled £100m of kit in 2006, returning one per cent to landfill.

It is also aiming to reduce energy costs and consumption through system and resource optimisation.

Businesses and governments are opting for smarter and greener buildings, IT infrastructure, utilities, supply chains, and business operations.

“This is clearly around key emerging technology and is a key evolving market,” said Davey.

However, she added that the market currently appears oversaturated with solutions
that have a green label in one way or another. Customers and resellers need to be able to differentiate.

IBM is looking across customer needs, at IT infrastructure efficiency, at business process transformation, and at the need for the development of new products and services. It has formed the Green Sigma Coalition, an industry alliance to provide better metering, monitoring, automation, analytics and the like for energy, emission, water and waste management.

“The coalition will enable companies using these solutions to better understand energy and water usage, waste, and greenhouse gas emissions across their business operations,” said Davey. “It will help them make changes to improve efficiency, reduce consumption and waste, and lower environmental impact.”

Other members include Cisco, ABB, Honeywell Building Solutions and Siemens Building Technologies. The Lean Six Sigma business improvement methodology will be applied in assessing customer needs and processes ­ because when it comes to green IT, the best solutions must be complex and individually tailored.

“There is no one answer,” said Davey. “Every customer is different. Solutions can range from developing smart grids, to smarter datacentres, to digitising otherwise paper-laden processes and technologies that monitor and help reduce carbon emissions.”

Taking responsibility
According to IBM, green technology solutions can be most successfully offered by paying attention not just to Return on Investment (RoI) but also the notion of corporate social responsibility ­ which is gaining ground in an era of mandated accountability, sustainability ideals and regulatory compliance.

Meanwhile, VARs must, as usual, demonstrate real business benefits to prospective customers.

“Particularly in tough times, resellers can encourage businesses to spend money on environmentally friendly initiatives,” said Davey.

Independent analysis may agree. The London office of Datamonitor has just released a report, Can Green IT Bloom in an Economic Downturn?, which indicates that green IT is one area in which businesses are still keen to invest.

Rhonda Ascierto, senior analyst at Datamonitor and the report’s author, said: “The global economic recession has spurred a shift in the way organisations evaluate, budget for and deploy green IT.

“The downturn has also resulted in green IT trends for datacentres, client devices and asset lifecycle management, as well as reshaped return on investment (RoI) models.”

While IT spend overall has remained flat, green IT is a larger proportion of that spend. Organisations no longer regard green IT and cost-effective IT as mutually exclusive concepts. In fact, green IT that lets companies slash capital expenditure is enjoying increased demand ­ with environmentally focused legislation and cost control as the drivers.

Datacentre virtualisation, datacentre design and layout, as well as asset lifecycle management, have become increasingly important, and the green IT market is expected to benefit and evolve accordingly, the analyst said, especially as green IT vendors are being forced to develop IT solutions that are more efficient as well as environmentally friendly.

“Flat IT budget growth also means that organisations that face critical datacentre limitations, such as a shortage of floor or rack space, are looking to software or outsourcing alternatives to building new datacentres or upgrading existing facilities,” said Ascierto.

“Those alternatives include IT leasing, managed services, virtualisation software, cloud computing and software-as-a-service (SaaS).”

Changes in the datacentre
Cloud computing should also be green. Meanwhile, datacentre virtualisation will become more all-encompassing ­ with servers, storage, communications infrastructure and business applications being virtualised across a pool of datacentre hardware, the analyst said.

The next UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) summit is coming up this December in Copenhagen, following an initial June round of negotiations, involving 182 nations, in Bonn.

With the December talks aimed at amending the Kyoto Protocol to take strong action against climate change, it looks like the timing has never been better to go green. Who can afford to look stupid now?