Green IT is becoming Clean IT...
As I look at the evolution of Green IT, it occurred to me, it is much more transformational than one would have ever guessed. I think there are three buckets typically one could sort Green IT activities into:
- reduction of waste, packaging materials, hazardous materials and such in production, operations and facilities
- holding your vendors to the same Environmental standards as you are (vendor management)
- reduction of Green House Gas (GHG) emissions which is synonymous for Energy savings
The last bullet, GHG reduction, is really interesting, it evolved. At first it was all about upgrading your IT facilities, specifically Air Conditioning and Power Delivery equipment. Then the efficiency of Server Power Supplies was added. Realizing that the majority of IT equipment of an average Enterprise is outside of the Data Center, client compute equipment (specifically desktop PC's and CRT's) got in focus of power supply improvements early on with the first version of E-Star in 1992.
But the power consumption of IT wasn't going down, the ever increasing exponential IT demand used up the improvements and upgrades rather quickly. IT demand seems to have a constant growth rate, a characteristic of an exponential function. The issue with exponential growth is, if you don't know you are on it, it can really surprise you. The initial growth looks slow, after 2/3 of the planned time only 1/3 of the resources are used, so you could think you have plenty to go... But then things start to go really fast, the last 2/3 of resources are getting used up in the remaining 1/3 of the planned time, you could think you are running into a wall with light speed... Sounds familiar?
- reduction of waste, packaging materials, hazardous materials and such in production, operations and facilities
- holding your vendors to the same Environmental standards as you are (vendor management)
- reduction of Green House Gas (GHG) emissions which is synonymous for Energy savings
The last bullet, GHG reduction, is really interesting, it evolved. At first it was all about upgrading your IT facilities, specifically Air Conditioning and Power Delivery equipment. Then the efficiency of Server Power Supplies was added. Realizing that the majority of IT equipment of an average Enterprise is outside of the Data Center, client compute equipment (specifically desktop PC's and CRT's) got in focus of power supply improvements early on with the first version of E-Star in 1992.
But the power consumption of IT wasn't going down, the ever increasing exponential IT demand used up the improvements and upgrades rather quickly. IT demand seems to have a constant growth rate, a characteristic of an exponential function. The issue with exponential growth is, if you don't know you are on it, it can really surprise you. The initial growth looks slow, after 2/3 of the planned time only 1/3 of the resources are used, so you could think you have plenty to go... But then things start to go really fast, the last 2/3 of resources are getting used up in the remaining 1/3 of the planned time, you could think you are running into a wall with light speed... Sounds familiar?
Data Centers still were filling up, Client equipment still was on and idling over night. A recognition set in that the utilization of IT assets was very low and lead to unnecessary consumption of energy, hence unnecessary emissions of GHG's. But this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to cost, IT continues to use an enormous amount of Capital and has significant operational cost associated to manage this exponential growth.
At that point the focus of Green IT became how to optimize the operations of IT to be more efficient. Things like managing client equipment remotely with tools allowing to enforce Power management and shutdown at night; using virtualization, thin provisioning on storage and such to increase the utilization of IT assets in the Data Center. Aside from the Energy savings a reduction in complexity and associated costs are observed.
With better policies around IT utilization in place (or getting in place), the next improvement was possible, bringing Moore's law into the Physical IT world, e.g. Data Centers and Offices. Moore's law is an exponential function by itself, and with the right policies on refresh and utilization of IT equipment it can offset the exponential IT demand growth. For Data Centers, that requires a rethinking of how they are used and build, but also has the promise of no more additional power and space needed. With that, no more additional GHG's. And a significant reduction in cost all around. Most Data Centers today are not built and operated with that in mind.
What Green IT drives now is an industrialization of IT operations, it is a cleaner way in all respects to run IT with less pollution, less complexity, less use of resources, less expensive.
Green IT is becoming Clean IT!
