Green Tech: Smart Savings

If you someone says something along the lines of, “What is good for the environment, is going to mean increased savings for us as well,” it’s bound to get your attention. That’s why when Salman Ansari, CEO of SATC, addressed an audience of CIOs and IT heads during the Clearcube ME product launch, everyone furiously took notes.

It’s not all that complicated. “It’s about being logical and smart. For example, if you double glazed your windows and paint your roof white, the temperature inside the room will drop by about 8 degrees.” A decline in the temperature means lesser cooling, which means an impact on what the KESC bills you for.

As with most things, the thing that makes Salman’s discussion so interesting is the fact that it makes business sense. “At times it’s almost as if I am the only talking about savings. Green Tech isn’t just about impacting the bottom line; while you’re at it, it will take the same amount of effort to, let’s say, reduce the overall carbon footprint of an entire organization. So if it takes the same amount of effort and makes the organization cleaner and more efficient in every way, why not do it?”

Green Tech has become a buzzword and everyone’s talking about it. According to the consultant, you have to take a more holistic approach to computing and take into account the complete cycle and how policies, both domestic and international policies, impact the organization as far as the environment is concerned. “We’re not looking at only reducing energy consumption but also decreasing the usage of hazardous materials. How do we, for example, recycle decommissioned hardware? You’ll be surprised how many solutions you can find in the process of recycling or reusing hardware.” Technological innovation plays a critical role here. Almost as if he speaks from experience, Salman grabs the audience’s attention by saying, “The laziness of our technical people who really think technological innovation is not their job are simply adding to the wastage. Let me explain how.”

Before trying to make everything within an organization and its ecosystem efficient, it is imperative for companies to realize what options are available to them. “Not everything fits into the ecosystem just because it is a trend. Take the example of a Data Center. Everyday I meet companies who want to have Data Centers set up. They have their pet set of responses ready, so they want a 100 rack Data Center and a Tier 3 facility developed. Ask them why and the discussion often ends quickly. You see, ever since I began designing and participating in the constructing of Intelligent Buildings, coupling that with my study of how to make it all work so much more cost and carbon-effectively, I have come to one realization – the buzzwords sound great, but mean nothing.”

According to Salman, most companies have no idea what they will need from the Data Center that they are installing – and because they can’t justify it, when someone from the Finance department comes in and begins to hack the budget, the end result will be nothing short of a nightmare. “That’s why so few stand the test of time.”

Impact, ROI and TCO

“I think I frighten the CIO because the concept of how much work needs to be done is frightening – on the other hand, I think I scare the CFO a bit more because I think it’s better to invest in a more expensive piece of hardware and do a total cost of ownership over a four year period.” But before the plans are drawn out and the deal is signed, identifying the objective and resource utilization (or allocation) is the biggest challenge the organizations face.

“Approximately 70% of the cost in running a Data Center is allocated to cooling. If you go with the ‘less is more’ philosophy, which is what Clearcube is all about, you save on this in a big way.” Salman alludes to a project he is doing for the Allama Iqbal Open University where they are going to be deploying 2000 remote training centers, each ranging from 10-20 computers. “Another project I am doing for the Universal Service Fund involves the setting up of approximately 500 call centers, eventually replicating this to about 12,000. This means lots of data and lots of internet connectivity. The Data Centers are going to have to be situated in the middle of nowhere and powering up these locations is the biggest problem.” He is talking about making a choice between choosing the top-of-the-line, Pentium 5 running Microsoft Windows Vistas or opting for an absolutely scaled down machine which consumes one-fifth of the power. “It may come to a point where the cost of the hardware and software is not going to be more important than the amount of power these things are going to consume. That will determine how much power generation is required for these units!”

PC Blades play an equally important role here. “With access to the Cloud, scaled down hardware that can be the thin clients to access everything from a mesh of apps and kernels, is all that’s needed. Lightweight, clean and sleek running machines have to be able to do everything that the most powerful machine can do. Virtualization can help you to simulate operating systems that don’t impose any weight on the hardware – once again, fewer additions make it less power-thirsty. Clustering will enable lower-powering machines to collaboratively share and generate computing power. And all of this is very easily available in Pakistan.”

People need to learn how to efficiently manage space and power within the confines of their Data Center or even Server Rooms. “Without mentioning the name of a local entity who currently has 100 racks, and has been pestering me to plan out their 200 rack Data Center. For the past several days, I have been agonizing as to how to break this news to them: if they use blade servers as the newest technology in storage devices, their next ten years of projected requirements can be met in 6 racks!!”

Interesting Bytes

• To manufacture a CRT monitor, it takes approximately 240 kilograms of fossil fuel and 266 kilograms of fossil fuel for an LCD.
• CRTs have lead, zinc and, according to Salman Ansari, all those ‘ugly chemicals’.
• LCDs have mercury which you can add to water to kill a lot of people and then
• On an average, a computer consumes about 120 Watts and only 10% of that is converted into actual computing. The rest is used up in
• For every time you Google a search query, some server somewhere consumes 15 grams of energy generation. Next time you waste so much time running search queries, you might want to consider boiling one less cup of tea to make up!