Hosted, Managed Applications is Green Computing?

One too many Software as a Service computing fits very well with the requirement to drive environmental improvements in any companies operations. We are already holders of ISO9001 and ISO27001 to ensure process and data security standards and now the business is now implementing ISO14000. This standard addresses the growing need for international environmental management standards and covers all aspects of environmental management systems including auditing, life cycle assessment and performance evaluation.

We serve many 1000s of small and medium companies messaging and data management requirements from our multi tenanted infrastructure. I believe a major part of ensuring that we reduce the negative environmental impact of IT is multi-tenancy. Our platform right now operates on about 1-100 ratio, which means for every server we have deployed we are replacing around 100 on- premise servers and it gets better, our servers optimally operate at around 60% utilization and around the clock due to our worldwide user base. In a smaller business environment, servers are often only utilized during core office hours but are drawing power all the time, so replacing those servers adds up to significant savings in Kw Hours.

We have become more and more interested in green computing over the last two years for a number of reasons and the adoption of the international quality and process standards requires us to take a hard look at all aspects of our operations. We started to realise that at the scale we are doing this we are replacing 1000s of on-premise servers and this has to be a good thing, environmentally, we also realized that power consumption is going to be a huge deal in today’s and tomorrows connected world.

We have also reviewed our own internal IT operations, and when we moved into bigger offices to combine our to two office locations at the end of last year we had a problem, the data room in the new space was not up to taking the 60 or so servers that are used to internal systems and test and development environment. We needed to find a better solution than spending a small fortune on upgrading the power and air conditioning in the new building.  We looked at the options and got very excited about the possibilities of emerging blade and vitalization technologies. This was the next logical step for us and knew that these technologies would be an important part of the production platform strategy in years to come and will deliver even better server-saving ratios and save us power cost as well as being far more flexible. The move to the vitalized environment went better that could be expected and we are down to 3 blades and a few physical servers, easier to manage and great for the polar bears!

We also have a strong social and environmental culture, and worked hard to ensure the new office is as green as possible, Mark, our Quality and Security Manager is leading the effort. We have a young workforce who are all keen to work for a socially responsible company, so getting buy in is not a problem for most, but for some turning off their PC every night means a change of working practices, but they will get used to it! There is lots we can do.

What about your organization, I know it’s hard in a small business, but what are your thoughts?

Comments

[James H]

Interesting article on 'Green Computing' under the fundamental statement that 'less is more'...

http://hardware.silicon.com/servers/0,39024647,39168119,00.htm?p5=3bx

[Robbie K]

That's pretty much it right there and because these systems are still in their infancy it will be interesting to see how they develop as time goes on.
They are free services of course provided by Google/Microsoft and some other providers but with popularity I wonder if they begin to start charging for usage of certain features - This is how most things start out in this area afterall so perhaps it's a case of enjoying it while it lasts?

It's quite funny because there's also talk of having an "internet tax" so whilst we are urged to save money by going as green as possible we are also being pushed to give more money to do our daily duties!

[James H]

I take your point - although from an individual user perspective I have found Google Mail to be far more reliable to the web based mail services offered by Microsoft and Yahoo. This is really the essence of my original point that when it comes to delivering 'web based' and potentially 'greener' applications, Google certainly appears right now to be significantly superior. Here is an interesting review of Google Apps versus Office Live...

http://www.crn.com/software/193003893?pgno=5

I also agree however that beyond the attractiveness of simple, easy to use applications emphasised by this review that reliability and security of data is of paramount importance for many businesses. I'm yet to be convinced though that having Google store my data via Google Apps will be any less secure than having Microsoft store it via something like Office Live.

The reality right now is that these services are aimed very much at micro/small businesses and I recognise that the demands for reliability and data security rise significantly as organisations grow beyond a certain size.

[Robbie K]

I understand what you mean here and from an individual user perspective this method of Google Apps and its add-ons makes total sense but from a business point of view you'd need to take into account security and support as well as possible downtime and from experience with Googlemail (which I like by the way ;)) there has been a few occasions every once in a while where the service is not accessible or a exploitable flaw is identified.

Sure as a Green system it works but as a safe and reliable system? this remains to be seen from a business perspective at this moment!

[Robbie K]

I understand what you mean here and from an individual user perspective this method of Google Apps and its add-ons makes total sense but from a business point of view you'd need to take into account security and support as well as possible downtime and from experience with Googlemail (which I like by the way ;)) there has been a few occasions every once in a while where the service is not accessible or a exploitable flaw is identified.

Sure as a Green system it works but as a safe and reliable system? this remains to be seen from a business perspective at this moment!