Green IT: The issue of the year

The ICT industry around the world has been preoccupied this year with energy efficiency - so-called "Green IT" - and many leading companies have worked hard to present a corporate image of care for the environment.

Many of the biggest names, including Intel, Google, Dell, EDS, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Lenovo and Microsoft have also campaigned to encourage computer users and others in the industry to save energy by promoting energy-efficient computers and power-management tools.

In particular, data centres have fallen under critical examination. Having large volumes of computer hardware and equipment, all with a high demand for cooling, they consume considerable quantities of electricity. A recent study by research group Gartner found that about half of all data centres would have insufficient power and cooling capacity in the coming year.

Consequently, many major IT vendors are pushing the new concept of turning existing data centres into environmentally friendly centres.

Making a data centre "green" begins with making the servers energy-efficient. Sun's CoolThreads technology, for example, claims to make servers more efficient by a factor of five. Efficient processors from IBM, AMD and Intel are also creating machines with lower power consumption. The servers generate less heat and thus require less cooling.

The concepts of server consolidation and virtualisation are also regarded as pathways to better energy efficiency. Many leading IT vendors have begun consolidating their data centres with the hope of saving costs, especially on energy, but with the bonus of improved system management.

Mobile-phone base stations are another area that generates high energy bills. Their huge consumption of energy usually makes this the third most-significant operating cost for mobile operators, and there are also claims that they are responsible for climate change. Seeking new alternative energy sources is regarded as a way of helping mobile-phone companies to save costs and improve the environmental friendliness of their image.

Thailand's largest mobile-phone operator, Advance Info Services, has caught "Green IT" fever. AIS has deployed green technologies in all of its base stations by adopting the use of solar energy. Instead of using energy from oil to generate the electricity to operate cell stations, the company now uses "clean" energy captured from the sun. AIS is also exploring the use of wind power, and in the absence of solar or wind energy, is using biodiesel to generate energy for its base stations.

PTT ICT Solutions, an IT company under the corporate umbrella of energy giant PTT, has rolled out a green IT policy for the entire conglomerate this year by adopting server virtualisation as a key to reducing energy consumption.

As well as hardware consolidation, the company has introduced a software strategy to reduce energy consumption by developing software with shorter steps to access. Instead of using at least three clicks to enter a normal application, the new system is designed to require only one or two clicks.