With the growing concerns worldwide over climate change and global warming; many organizations have been able to take up a positive step in this direction. Energy usage generates a large amount of greenhouse gases throughout the world. IBM has decided to focus on this aspect and endeavours to make IT infrastructure energy efficient and environment friendly. It has a global team of more than 850 energy efficient architects working on this initiative across IBM. This is a part of a broader environmental initiative called Big Green Innovations. IBM is offering consulting for water and energy management alongwith coming up with better and green technology for environment protection.

With $1 billion investment a year, IBM launched Project Big Green on 10th May, 2007 to increase the efficiency of IBM products. As a part of the same project the first corporate led Energy- Efficiency Certificate program was launched on 10th November, 2007. New products and services launched under this project contain a five-step approach i.e.
- diagnose,
- build,
- virtualize,
- manage, and
- cool to create energy efficiency in data centers.

Diagnose- This step assesses the current energy usage of the company, to see what kind of tool is available with IBM, set metrics to measure the power consumption. This also includes assessing energy efficiency for determining important first steps to be taken.

Build- IBM created MMT- Mobile Measurement Technology to indicate the key areas that require attention in terms of temperature rises, it visualizes hot spots, air leakages and other inefficiencies accurately and in lesser time than if done manually.

Virtualize- Another IBM tool can give virtual representation of energy needs in data centers. This helps in assessing what time the data center has the highest energy demand and how the need can be increased or decreased on the basis of small changes thus, helping in accurate forecast of power requirements. This can help in cutting down both hardware and energy needs of the IT infrastructure.

Manage- IBM’s power management software is an easy way to reduce electricity usage. If US data centers would set their servers to sleep when not in use, it can save 5.4 billion kilowatt per year equivalent to electricity for 370,000 homes for winters.

Cool- IBM Data Center Stored Cooling Solution is a new service of the company. It was used in Quebec and was able to reduce 45% of the cooling cost of a data center.

This program aims at reducing the energy consumption of the data-centers by approximately 42%, thereby reducing carbon dioxide emissions and making them ‘green’ data centers. The company has come up with a Rear Door Heat Exchanger product that uses chilled water to dissipate heat of the system by about 60%. By using IBM’s mainframe or new BladeCenter Server, companies can utilize 100% of server capacity and cut their energy usage by about 50%.

Mike Daniels, IBM’s senior vice president of Global Technology Services, said “There are times when we need to mobilize the entire company, as we did with the internet, with e-commerce, and others. We think this is one of those times, and we have reallocated $1b around these initiatives.” To address the global energy issue, IBM shall be channelizing its efforts through 4 initiatives under the Intelligent Energy Campaign i.e.
- Client Innovations in Energy
- Application of Technology & Services for Energy Efficiency
- Activities with Energy Influencers
- Environmental Efforts at Big Blue

“Across the world there’s been frenzy in moving forward in information technology,” Rahmani said. “It’s estimated that the cost of energy (it takes) to power these data centers will increase by 50 percent every two to three years. It’s huge: a huge cost to us, a huge cost to our clients, and also a huge cost to the environment.” While announcing Project Big Green in India, Steven Sams, vice president , Site & Facilities Services, IBM said, “Businesses around the world are consuming extreme amounts of energy through their use of IT -over 100 billion kilowatts per year globally furthering today’s energy crisis.”

Jyoti Satyanathan, country manager, eServer pSeries, IBM India said, “In India, the need for intelligent energy solutions is more acute than many other nations. As per IDC, IT spending in the Asia-Pacific region is expected to grow by 52 % to reach US$162.5 billion by 2010 and this growth is driven by India in addition to China. However, our country is already facing an energy crisis.” “According to the Central Electricity Authority (CEA), at the current annual generation capacity of 1,30,000 MW, we face a shortage of nearly 9% with peak load deficits being higher at 10-11% and it will only get worse. It is important that Indian organizations start taking this problem seriously, and make the appropriate investments so that their energy spends can keep pace with their growth,” he added.

Sources:
www.ibm.com
www.greenbiz.com
Economic Times