Virtualization is the future of computing and green IT

Everyone is talking about virtualization at the moment. Anything from Forbes to the security-specialized newspaper SC are writing about virtualization being the new trend after cloud computing. But what is the deal with it?

Virtualization offers great cost and efficiency benefits to IT systems. These benefits are quite lucrative and so companies should not be ignoring them. In very basic terms, virtualization allows you to simulate a computer on another computer. In that way, you can go as far as virtualizing an entire server farm on your home tablet

In effect, you can use several environments and cluster them together into a single piece of hardware. The concept is illustrated in the below diagram:

This video also illustrates the idea:


Practically, there are several business benefits to virtualization. The TalkTechToMe blog has provided an outline for these benefits. We shall explore a few of the benefits in more detail by using the technology of VMWare.

Firstly, virtualization offers cheap implementation. This benefit arises from the fact that the operating structure is united over several computers. Say, you own 5 servers. Classically, each server would require a a copy of the Windows Server operating system (or similar). Costs would be between $10,000 to $15,000 in fees. With a VMWare solution however, you only need one license and one practical server (that of VMWare) - all the rest is virtualized. This will also reduce your expenses on power and cooling.

The benefit of a virtualization also lies in the notion that everything is virtual. This might sound obvious, but the benefit is that, virtuality is much more flexible than reality. For example, you can virtually snapshot an entire computing system at any given moment and back it up. With virtualization software, this is easily implemented. You can snapshot a virtual system continuously and then go back in time to any step in the process and re-continue from there. It is very similar to Apple's TimeMachine for personal computers. In contrast, backing up real computers with even more computers is quite difficult. In addition, snapshots can also be duplicated and copied to any other system. This greatly reduces set-up time and increases the possibilities for quick expansion.

Furthermore, virtualization separates hardware and software. Mostly, hardware is linked to a single piece of software. An example for this are personal computers: there are Macs and there are Windows computers. Each come with their own operating system and neither of them can run the other. Through virtualization however, any operating system can be run on any hardware. Not only that, but virtualization allows to run multiple systems on one system. This makes your infrastructure simpler and much more efficient (see here).

These benefits show clear efficiency and cost advantages for businesses and the IT infrstructure. Though what makes this technology a green IT solution? Well, there are several eco-friendly factors that make this attractive. First, it is the requirement for less physical servers (the ratio here is roughly 10:1 in saving). This reduces the carbon footprint of a business. Secondly, the virtualization allows for usage of more resources of a single computer (in fact, up to 80% efficiency more!). Thirdly, there is an overall efficiency gain for processes and operations. Any gains in that area will somehow translate into a greener environment. Consequently, virtualization is a very green IT solution.

In conclusion, virtualization is an amazing green technology. It cuts costs, increases IT system efficiency and is more secure and expandable. This makes this technology something that any business should look at to increase its business position.

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Green IT for gettting closer to customers

So far this blog has been focused on how to bring green IT into businesses and how that will help management. If we shift our focus to consumers though, we also see some breakthrough green IT. We already know that managing relationship with customers (short CRM) is a key aspect for companies. Companies use software tools like Salesforce to manage the relationships with the customers.

Now, we want to illustrate that there are also some green IT aspects for CRM. It will however be boring to just look at who is the greenest CRM provider. In fact, we already know that Salesforce is not particularly green. The interesting aspect is that green technologies can be used to actually build new CRM methods. This allows companies to combine aspects of CRM and "greenness" to provide efficiency gains to both customers and companies itself.

So how can green technologies make CRM more interesting for companies?

There is a product out in the market called Automatic. It is a way for consumers to track the efficiency and driving styles of your car. In addition, it also provides safety features and fuel saving bonuses. To get an overview, here is an amazing product video describing Automatic:

Automatic is clearly targeted for customers as a product. However, the idea behind Automatic is that it can be a great technology for car companies as well. The technology would analyze the usage of consumer car and optimize efficiency. This data can be used by the car companies to detect problems about their cars and really optimize them on a whole new level. In turn, companies can offer more refined products which lead to higher customer satisfaction.

The greatest benefit though comes from the link between the way the customer behavior and how the car company can build a relationship from that. For instance, through providing an integrated tool like Automatic in the companies cars, the company could track the routes driven by the customer.

If the company, or the CRM tool, is able to predict where the customer is heading, like driving home from work, it could, for example, automatically suggest the customer to drive to the next gas station as gas is running low. The CRM tool would also have a reason for this suggestion. For example, it would know that the customer always has a rushed driving style in the mornings, so it would be more convenient to drive to the gas station today, instead of tomorrow morning. In conclusion, the CRM increases interaction between the car and the customer behavior.

In much the same way, the Nest Thermostat is a similar starting point for new CRM technologies. Nest is a self-learning thermostat which adapts heating in your house to your lifestyle. As before, easiest explained with a video:

Nest collects data about your habits and your environment. It then uses and processes that data to introduce a smart heating plan to your home. While this is obviously beneficial to customers, for saving money and have a working heating plan, companies still fail to see the opportunity for them to actually provide such a CRM technology. As with Nest, energy companies could collect data and precisely estimate the demands for heating oil up to the minute of the day. This is a proposition for them. It not only provides resource efficiency but it allows companies to interact with the customers to meet their demands.

With these two examples it becomes evident that consumer technologies for green IT are a great CRM starting point for companies to improve customer relations and expand business propositions.

Benefits therefore are:

• Building customer relationships
• Ability to analyze products and offer more product refinements
• Analyze customer behavior to offer new products
• Meet customer demands more clearly

Challenges are however the building of such a CRM tool. Companies are already collecting data from customers in industries such as social networks and e-commerce. Especially for non-internet industries however, there is a great opportunity for business to expand to. The overwhelming new approach to managing a business,  is probably why companies have not fully shifted to using such technologies. It is a completely new business model approach from product-oriented to consumer-oriented marketing. Nevertheless, the challenges can be overcome. Why? If these CRM technologies works for the consumer market through third-party providers, there is really no reason why first-party providers can not also enter these markets.

Clearly, these technologies have great benefits for both consumers and companies. They offer incredible new possibilities for companies to go into CRM in ways that go beyond the average e-commerce tracking or targeted Google ads. Great technologies are to come here and Yashilife will keep you updated.

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Strategic Sustainability for Product Design - LCA

"Going green has become a necessity, not an option, for companies facing the new reality of balancing business objectives with dwindling environmental resources. Limited energy supply and skyrocketing costs are compelling organisations to take radical measures to reduce their carbon footprint."

- Sanjay Deshmukh, Area Vice President, Citrix, India Subcontinent


What is the current market trend in sustainable product design?

"Sustainable consumption" has become a growing trend for companies and consumers because of its numerous benefits. The concept of Product Longevity seeks to extend the life of a product through its design. Nowadays, companies are more aware of the practices used to increase their Eco-friendliness; this new trend will ensure the companies sustainability in the long run.

Product longevity

The main goals are to reduce chemical material, maximise energy efficiency during production and promoting recycling.

Life Cycle Assessment – Product design

Life cycle assessment enables designers to reduce their aggregate energy waste levels. Computer product design is a crucial element since it is during this phase in the manufacturing process that companies can reduce their overall costs. Moreover, computers can be designed in a manner that accelerates the "dis-assembly" method, facilitated the recycling process that is involved at the end of the product life cycle.

What’s in it for companies?

By increasing the expected lifetime of their products, companies could increase their overall market share and position themselves as a "premium" product producer. Consequently, consumers will value the expected longer product lifetime. Moreover, companies can increase their current market shares by promoting “value for money, not cheapest price”.

Sony - Wandular Project

Sony developed new methods to counteract the threat of resource scarcity that many companies face in the current economy. One of Sony's main projects, "wandular", focuses on increasing product longevity. Head of Design Rodrigo Bautisa said, "Wandular is about making technology more human and mitigating consumer behaviour for wanting new stuff through the use of emotionally durable design and cloud service trend". Hopefully, this project will result in a decrease in consumption and an increase in production contributing towards improving and decreasing the negative effects on our society and ecosystems. The computer manufacturing process accounts for most of the natural resources used in the life cycle of a computer. By improving the manufacturing process, companies will be able to reduce cost whilst also reducing in the long term their carbon footprint levels.


Sources

"Life Cycle Assessment." Life Cycle Assessment. Department of Ecology , 10 Mar. 2010. Web. 28 Nov. 2013. <https://fortress.wa.gov/ecy/publications/p
Chen, Yuh-Shyan . "Green Computing."Green Computing. National Taipei University , n.d. Web. 28 Oct. 2013. <http://www.csie.ntpu.edu.tw/~yschen/course/2011-1/Green-ICT/Chapter%2011.pdf>.
Sarwar, Muhammad . "Green Computing: From Current to Future Trends ." Green Computing: From Current to Future Trends . N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Oct. 2013. <http://www.waset.org/journals/waset/v63/v63-105.pdf>.
"Sony explores futuristic ideas on product longevity." edie.net. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Dec. 2013. <http://www.edie.net/news/5/Sony-explores-futuristic-ideas-on-product-longevity/22738/>.

Algorithmic efficiency is key in green IT

Today's world of IT relies on software as the key aspect which makes it powerful, adaptable and interesting. All of this software is programmed by engineers who have developed a way to make sure that whatever you do on the computer gets translated into electrical signals and put into action. The more the efficient software is, the less electricity we use and the more green our IT becomes.

One of the aspects of software efficiency is algorithmic efficiency. It sounds more difficult than it is. Lets break this down with a metaphor. Say you take a Taxi to the airport. If you have an experienced and good driver, he will take the shortest and quickest route. If you have a bad driver, he will take a longer route. In the same way, software can be programmed with algorithms that work fast and efficiently or algorithms which are slow and inefficient. Good software is algorithmic efficient.

Lets take Google: two searches produce about the same amount of emissions as boiling a kettle of water. Although Google is probably very efficient in its algorithms, it could reduce the emissions by trying even harder.

One technology that is noteworthy in light of algorithmic efficiency is Hadoop. Hadoop is a highly efficient software project aimed at big data. Big data is obviously a great trend at the moment and the more efficiently we can use it, the greener and better. Without getting into the details of Hadoop, the concept is to be more efficient with algorithms. This video of IBM provides an overview:

Especially for companies in the data business (such as social networks or data storage) this is a very lucrative business proposition. It provides greater efficiency in retrieving and using data and thereby yields two benefits that interest managers: cost-saving and efficient resource allocation.

The difficulty here is that Hadoop is fundamentally very different from other software structures and would require businesses to completely change their IT systems (at least on a software level). A risk is also that if companies were to switch, they might be unfamiliar with the new system or have difficulty to maintain it. This is why cloud providers, like IBM, have specialized in providing Hadoop solutions.

Hadoop is a classic example of algorithmic efficiency and, or similar solutions, should be considered by all software businesses. It will not only make your software more green, but it also makes it more resource efficient (therefore requiring less servers) and quicker (increased consumer satisfaction). Algorithmic efficiency is therefore key in green IT and one of the most interesting technological trends out there.

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Making data centers and server rooms more green

Data centers are very inefficient in their nature and require huge amounts of energy. It is therefore of essence to try and make data centers itself very efficient. Emerson, a company specializing in setting up data centers, is providing solutions to reduce these inefficiencies.

Emerson has developed a method called energy logic (introduced in a white paper) which traces the dissipation of energy and optimizes these negatives effects in a logical manner. The results speak for itself. The energy logic approach reduces the footprint of a data center by two thirds of floor space and cooling requirements by more than 40%. This is illustrated in the following diagram:

The solution reduces the number of servers by a huge amount and thereby saves space, costs and energy usage.

There are clear benefits to businesses who have data centers to implement this technology solution:

• Reduction in power, cooling and space. These three aspects are the key drivers that cause the high requirement for energy in a data center. By reducing these aspects, energy is saved and the entire data center becomes more green.
• Costs are saved as less servers are required for the same amount of processing power. In addition, less cooling and space is required. These are great cost savings for a company.
• Consultation is a positive investment as it brings expert knowledge to a very complicated topic.

This technology approach already present in the business world and as a result there are no big challenges or serious risks associated in implementing this. It is certainly a cost issue in initially consulting a firm like Emerson to implement such solutions. If the data centers or server rooms are however set up in a proper way since the beginning, the costs will depreciate over a much longer time period.

A general problem with less servers is that each server is used more to maintain same processing capacity. This means that the servers might have to be upgraded to faster processors. This would be costly for a business and therefore difficult for management to implement.

Approaches like that provided by Emerson are basically an optimization of resource allocation. This is one of the pillars of green IT. Thus, a server room or data center is ideally not just a room of computers. It is a highly optimized room that builds the surroundings in such a way that output is maximized at both efficiency and processing power.

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The top 3 greenest and top 3 dirtiest cloud vendors

There is currently an intertwining trend between cloud computing and big data. More and more companies take a big data business model approach that focus on high-value customer relationships. This requires ever more storage space for data and a local server is barely enough. This is why demand for cloud computing, as the last resort for infinite data storage, has grown by almost 30% in 2013 alone.

The classic options for a cloud solution are Amazon, Google and Apple. In regards to green IT, Apple for example states that all its data centers are running with renewable energy. Amazon though, does not even report carbon emission numbers. This can be taken as a sign that they are not using green energy for their energy supply.

So to shed some light on who's green and who's not, here is a list of the top 3 green cloud vendors:

1. Google: As mentioned in one of our previous articles, Google's focus on green energy is high and they do try to use as minimal unclean energy for their services.
2. Rackspace: High focus on green energy as well. It is the leader in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for the second year in a row. 
3.  HP: One of their business propositions is to provide green energy.

On the contrary, we have the bad boys in the industry:

1. Salesforce: They show no focus on green IT at all.
2. Oracle: "Green is not in Oracle's vocabulary" as experts have said.
3. Amazon: Amazon is actively using coal as one of its main energy sources.

The ratings are based on a scorecard system developed by Greenpeace to measure their "greeness" in cloud services.

While companies have great economic benefit in this fast growing sector, they have a unique opportunity and great responsibility to become more green. Managers have the decision power to influence this by always picking the provider which is more green. It is not about having to pay more, it is just about making the right decision.

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The energy need of Google, Apple and other tech giants

Tech giants like Google, Microsoft and Apple advertise renewable energies and the environment on their website. Is this because they are hugely dependent on energy or is this just a marketing campaign?

Recently, Google invested almost $80 million to build a gigantic solar plant. It will not only provide clean energy to the people around the area, but it also provides a reliable and clean source of energy for its data centers. These data centers require energy because they have a lot of power-sucking servers and air conditioning units. And cooling a huge warehouse to fridge temperatures (which is when computers work best), requires a lot of energy. The amount of energy required is overwhelming.

Companies like Apple are planning to move completely off-grid and produce their own energy. Apple in particular plans to use a green energy source for itself and use the normal power grid as backup. In that way, none of their 24/7 services and productions will come to a halt. Apple is even implementing innovative technologies in buildings so that natural ventilation is promoted and as efficient as an AC. That is break-through development to build a sustainable campus.

Looking at these two examples, it becomes evident that benefits of a energy source owned by the company itself include:

• Integrated energy production exactly matches production and service requirements. There is no power wasted and demand is always met.
• Optimization of the energy production to the business model means that the key requirement for reliability is met.
• Own energy sources are independent of energy price fluctuations and other market factors. They can also be continuously re-adapted to meet new business needs.
• Lower carbon emissions means lower tax rates and hence less costs. 
• Green energy sources, such as solar panels, require low maintenance and allow the company to focus on its core business (and not energy production).

It therefore makes sense for tech giants to invest in their own energy sources.

Obviously, not every tech company can have its own energy source. Certain economies of scale need to be achieved first before anything remotely similar to the examples above can be achieved. Nevertheless, even solar panels can be worth an investment. Even household consumers are already implementing them successfully.

The key takeaway here is though that the companies are not going for massive coal plants. They are going for solar panels and hydrogen cells. They require less maintenance, are independent of oil prices and are highly sustainable. For a company where energy production it is not its main focus, most of the green energy sources, anything from wind mills to dams, are ideal to produce its own energy.

In conclusion, to ultimately become fully green in IT requires a company to optimize every aspect of its IT structure. As outlined here, this starts with the green energy production and moves to optimization of every chip on a server.

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