Green IT = Green Bucks

Green is on everyone's mind and vendors are going out of their way to flaunt
their greenness. But why should the solution providing community be all excited
about it? It was to address this question that a session on 'Green IT'was held
at the 3rd DQ Channels SP Summit at Andaman and was chaired by Prasanto Kumar
Roy, Chief Editor, CyberMedia who said, “The way we understand it, globally
atleast 50 percent of customers today are conscious of the 'greenness' of an IT
vendor and there is no doubt therefore that 'Green IT' as a concept will drive
the economies of the world in the coming days. Although the concept is not as
popular yet, it is bound to grow big in the coming days.”

(L-R): Saurin Shah of Ashtech Infotech; Sudhir Nayar of Sun Microsystems; Ranjan Chopra of Team Computers; Sandip Nair of Emerson Network Power and K Sivashankar of LifeSize Communication listen while Prasanto Roy of CyberMedia states how 'Green IT' as a concept will drive the economies of the world in coming days

He further added, “The driver for 'Green IT' in countries like India is the
huge shortage of power which leads many an enterprise to invest in IT
infrastructure that can accom­modate enough power back up, which in turn means a
greater cost. So it is more an economy drive rather than environmental
friendliness that has lead to an increased adoption of Green IT. As far as the
future goes, we believe that this is a huge opportunity area for both vendors as
well as a channel partners to grow.”

Sun shines on green IT

Sharing his thoughts about the concept, Sudhir Nayar, Director Partner
Sales, Sun Microsystems said, “As a first step toward 'Green IT', Sun Micro has
gone in for consolidation of its own servers. We realized that by doing what we
did, we managed to not just increase performance but also reduce power
consumption considerably. This change was seen in a period of just 90 days.”

Agreeing with him was Sandip Nair, MD Emerson Network Power who said that
power saving was among the top three concerns of most CIOs globally and
therefore this was an area of huge opportunity for solution providers as well.
“Customer concerns as regards power saving are also increasing and technologies
like virtuali­zation and consolidation can help in that area. The need of the
hour is to begin work by using the right kind of equipment that can help save
power.”

While most customers know about the need to go green, it appeared that as far
as adoption was concerned the main area of concern for most organizations was
who to approach to take a call as far as adopting power saving techniques were
concerned. According to Saurin Shah, CEO, Ashtech Infotech, “Since the concept
of green is still at a nascent stage in India, it is the CEO who takes a call

on the adoption of 'green' technologies and equipments in most organizations. As
yet there is clear green mandate from the government. However this situation
will change in the times to come.”

nvironmental benefits

Accepting that there is no clear written law as yet as far as environmental
friendly techno­logy adoption is concerned, Ranjan Chopra, CMD, Team Computers
said, “I feel that we have to grow a little more conscious about what we do and
what we will leave behind for the next generation. I feel that the concept of
going green is actually more personal and there is a need for leaders to emerge
who can increase consciousness among other members of the industry as far as the
environment is concerned. Continuing in the same vein was Sivashankar K, Country
manager, Lifesize Communications India who said, “Prevention is better than cure
so it is time that we make available better systems and processes that can save
power. All it takes to do that is make our habits a little healthier. We can
adopt to videoconferencing, working from home and teleconferencing and thereby
reduce on travel time and energy which will go a long way in making the
environment better.”

Agreeing with the need to go green, K Jagannath, Director, Choice Solutions
felt that the challenge of going green would still be a big one, given that many
customers are still very price conscious as far as products and solutions are
concerned.”

Others partners who had assembled at the discussion felt that while many
climate-saving initiatives have been taken up by various vendors it would still
be a little while before a complete adoption to the same would take place.
Accepting their thoughts, Prashanto Roy felt that an ROHS mandate could help to
save on the current power consumption and called upon all partners to make use
of the opportunity to grow bigger and better. “The need of the hour is for you
to go out and evangelize the concept so that customers are well prepared to
accept and adopt to green technologies in the days to come,” he added.

DQC News Bureau