CIOIN

CIO, in association with APC by Schneider Electric, is proud to acknowledge organizations that have emerged as the masters of technology and computing practices that are sound, sustainable, eco-friendly and support business growth and innovation. Now in its second year, the Green IT Enterprise Awards recognize all-round green computing initiatives in the country.

This year the field that we were presented with was 198 organizations. Of these, 22 percent were into Manufacturing, 19 percent represented Banking and Financial Services, a little over 13 percent were into software services and ITeS, 6 percent made automobiles and another 6 percent were telecom companies, among other verticals.  All of them had more than a 1,000 employees.

These were organizations, whose CIOs had to fill up a nomination form which was both easy and tough to fill. CIOs told us about purchasing practices, management attitudes, employee practices, and what was ticking internally -- from blades to virtualization to alternative energy sources to cooling and intelligent buildings.

The queries had already been assigned a weight, the responses were tabulated and then compared and a ranking was arrived at. We then looked at specific sustainable computing initiatives that had been evangelized, deployed and created both business and green value. And, that's how we arrived at the final list of the ten organizations that won the Green IT awards.

 Click through the links to read more on the study and key findings, the Green IT awards and how the winners implemented green IT projects in their organizations.

The Study and Some Findings

The Study and Some Findings

The CIO - 10 Top Green-IT Organizations Study 2011 powered by APC by Schneider Electric had more than 200 organizations participating. The study had the respondents answer just 'yes' or 'no' to a battery of questions that sought to validate everything from top-level support for energy efficiency to the level of encouragement IT staff got for internalizing power-saving practices.

Methodology
Based on the gravity of the questions, they had been assigned different weights. Responses were tabulated and then compared and a ranking was arrived at. We then looked at specific sustainable computing initiatives that had been evangelized and deployed, and inspected whether they had created business and green value.
Of these organizations, 22 percent were from manufacturing, 19 percent represented banking and financial services, a little over 13 percent were into software services and ITeS, 6 percent came from the automobile sector and another 6 percent were telecom companies, while the rest represented miscellaneous verticals. All the enterprises had more than 1,000 employees.

Top 5 Industries with Top-Level Green IT Initiatives 

Ranking of the top-5 industries with Green IT practices in place

Few examples of Top Level Green IT initiatives:

• Commitment from senior management
• Programs to encourage employees to save energy
• Purchase energy-efficient products

Purchasing Practices Turn A Green Leaf                     

Video Conferencing Is In

IT Purchases Go Green

In the Datacenter…

Divided on Outsourcing

We asked if they have outsourced the operation, optimization, monitoring and maintenance of data center power consumption and cooling infrastructure.

Alternate Energy. Not Hot

Click through the links to read more on the study and key findings, the Green IT awards and how the winners implemented green IT projects in their organizations.

The Awards Night

At the leadership summit in Bangalore on July 29th, APC by Schneider Electric, in association with CIO Magazine, recognized ten winners of the 'Green IT Enterprise' study. The winners were

1. BHARTI Airtel
2. BPCL
3. Essar Group
4. Firstsource Solutions
5. Forbes Marshall Group of Companies
6. HSBC India
7. IOCL
8. KEC International
9. TCS
10. Welspun Group

In the study - of power savings and efficiency practices, over 200 respected Indian corporate businesses were asked to share information on their green IT initiatives. While most of the respondents were very much aware of the need for more efficient energy utilization with respect to their technology infrastructure, the winners were those who had a plan to do something about it and a plan for follow-through as well.

In order to reduce their organization's carbon footprint, the winners have taken several initiatives, from promoting paperless offices, e-commuting, placing intelligent energy management systems, to installing energy-efficient devices and making buildings green.  Smart improvements made at the servers and storage front have resulted in almost immediate and dramatic changes. All the winners are well down the virtualization road, with a high percentage of their servers and desktops virtualized.

As new gadgets are rolled out each day, e-waste management has sought immediate attention. The winners are engaging themselves in lifecycle assessment of all their products vis-a-vis environmental concerns. This has resulted in their replacing old CRT monitors and desktops with LCD monitors and thin clients. “CRT monitors, besides consuming higher power, also generate more heat, thereby adding more load on air conditioning,” said Jagdish Lomte, CIO, KEC International Ltd.

Working toward the “paperless office” is another green goal with a proven return on investment. Paper exacts a heavy toll on the environment. Each of the winners is drastically reducing paper-intensive processes — with online forms and scanned documents — through process automation. According to Silajit Samaddar, Head - IT Operations, HSBC India Limited, the banking corporation has reduced more than 850 devices such as printers, scanners, fax and photo copiers to 360 multifunctional devices.

Finally, as with most top-level players, the differentiation is often subtle and in small degree. So, the motivation for each of these CIOs stemmed not from the chance for short-term recognition, but from the foresight that energy conservation and green best practices went beyond the catch-all phrase of `corporate social responsibility.'

There were ten CIOs who walked away with the awards, but the real winner that night was definitely the environment.

Click through the links to read more on the study and key findings, the Green IT awards and how the winners implemented green IT projects in their organizations.

Awards Distribution - Picture Gallery

Alok Kumar, VP & Global Head - Internal IT & Shared Services, TCS Limited

Anil Kumar Kaushik, General Manager IS Infrastructure & Services, BPCL

Jagdish Lomte, CIO, KEC International Ltd

Jayantha Prabhu, CTO, Essar Group

Mukund Prasad, Director - Corporate Strategy, Business Excellence & Group CIO, Welspun Group

Click through the links to read more on the study and key findings, the Green IT awards and how the winners implemented green IT projects in their organizations.

Awards Distribution - Picture Gallery 2

Prashanth M.J, CTO Technology, Firstsource Solutions Ltd.

S.Ramasamy, Executive Director (IS), Indian Oil Corporation Ltd

Sharat M. Airani, Chief-IT (Systems & Security), Forbes Marshall Group of Companies

Silajit Samaddar, Head - IT Operations, HSBC India Limited

Click through the links to read more on the study and key findings, the Green IT awards and how the winners implemented green IT projects in their organizations.

Winner Speak: Amrita Gangotra - Bharti Airtel

“As people adopt 3G, it will be possible to extend our e-bill initiative to many more customers. We will continue to focus on datacenter consolidation and server virtualization, and usage of energy- efficient devices across the organization.” 
Amrita Gangotra, Director - IT, India and South Asia, Bharti Airtel

Q. What was the most important motivation to consider power conservation and carbon footprint reduction both at your IT organization and end-user level?

The key motivation to reduce carbon footprint was to contribute towards the betterment of our environment through Green initiatives. At an operational level, bringing in efficiency in terms of power, space and cost had been some of the important drivers. 

Q. What challenges did you face in achieving your power efficiency /conservation targets?

Addressing migrations of legacy applications in the new infrastructure had been an area that required a lot of focus. Some applications were not enabled to run on virtualized infrastructure. In fact, commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) vendors also need to focus on this area.

Q. What long-term benefits do you anticipate from the energy saving processes initiated at your organization?

As mentioned earlier, efficiency in the areas of power, space, cost through virtualization and reducing carbon footprint are the key benefits across the time scale.

Q. What else have you planned for the next few years, in terms of energy conservation at your organization?

• Exploring alternate cleaner power sources
• Continuation of hardware refresh and deployment of greener infrastructure
• Putting together e-waste management strategy for disposal of assets

Click through the links to read more on the study and key findings, the Green IT awards and how the winners implemented green IT projects in their organizations.

Winner Speak: Sharat M. Airani - Forbes Marshall Group of Companies

"We will be extending our green IT initiatives across the organization. These include server virtualization and consolidation, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and efficient recycling of equipment waste."
Sharat M. Airani, Chief-IT (Systems & Security), Forbes Marshall Group of Companies

Q. What was the most important motivation to consider power conservation and carbon footprint reduction, both at your IT organization and end-user level?

"Conserving Energy since 1946" is the punch line of the Forbes Marshall Group. The total business is aligned to this statement. There is no better motivation than this. We, in IT, also thought to contribute in conserving energy mainly to reduce electricity bills, heating bills, greenhouse gas emissions and global warming potential.

We are facing global energy crisis. There is power cut for hours even in major cities. Small villages get power only few hours a day. There is a large demand for energy and in the absence of immediate solutions to generate clean and safe energy, it is necessary to use energy generated from existing sources more judiciously. This need to use present energy sources more judiciously is another important motivation.

Q. What challenges did you face in achieving your power efficiency/conservation targets?

One of the major challenges was changing over to the new technology at a very premature state. Internally, we had to conduct a thorough, hands-on testing to gain the acceptance of the middle management. The whole process took us some time, but we finally succeeded.

Q. What long-term benefits do you anticipate from the energy saving processes initiated at your organization?

Over all, we expect to see reduction of operational costs, shrinkage of carbon footprints, demonstration of strong corporate position and community commitment, reduction of costs and improved operational efficiency.

Q. What else have you planned for 2010 in terms of energy conservation at your organization?

We will be extending our green IT initiatives across the organization, by stepping out of the data center. These initiatives include power management, reducing gas emissions and efficient recycling of equipment.

Click through the links to read more on the study and key findings, the Green IT awards and how the winners implemented green IT projects in their organizations.

Winner Speak: Mukund Prasad - Welspun Group

"We will be looking to bring energy efficiency in our datacenters. In fact, going forward, this will be one of the most critical review parameters for our datacenters."
Mukund Prasad, Director - Corporate Strategy, Business Excellence & Group CIO, Welspun Group

Q. What was the most important motivation to consider power conservation and carbon footprint reduction, both at your IT organization and end-user level?

The most notable benefit is energy-efficiency, resulting in the cost-efficiency. Since our business was expanding by leaps and bounds, we also endeavored to build on the existing infrastructure and accordingly designed the primary and secondary data centre. Consequently, we envisaged an increase in power consumption and, hence, resorted to Green IT to rescue us.
Global warming and climate change are particularly important in the context of sustainable development, especially for developing countries, which tend to be ill-equipped for such changes. According to recent studies on climate change, the majority of Asian companies are "largely oblivious" to the risks posed by climate change issues to their business models and the environment. In view of the above, it is imperative to go green by mapping carbon emissions and determining their carbon footprint and, thereafter, helping achieve reduction targets to cap carbon emissions.

We in Welspun IT have taken several steps for reducing power consumption. Following are the projects which we have adopted for the same:

Project 1: Data Center:

Earlier, Welspun Group had server rooms, scattered across different locations, within India as well as abroad. The following were the locations where servers were located:

Mumbai, Vapi, Anjar, Bharuch, Little Rock (US), New York, Ohio & Mexico

There was no disaster recovery (DR) in place.

The above situation was difficult to handle, required more resources and was not energy efficient and, also, prone to fail time and again due to staggered environment / services.

This created a need to consolidate and standardize the infrastructure as per the latest best practices.

Currently, we follow a new set-up:

1. Anjar Data Center       -           30 servers
2. Mumbai Data Center -           60 servers

We also clubbed the following initiatives with the same set-up:

• Application / Server Virtualization: All the servers are virtualized in these two data centers.
• Design was done through Experts with a view to have a Green Data Centre.
• Creation of internal cloud
• High Availability with Storage level replication
• Tools like VMware used for the virtualization.
• Business Continuity with DR of all critical applications at an alternate site within the setup
• The building of datacenters has been outsourced in order to ensure utilization of best products and services from the market
• The managing of datacenter has been outsourced to ensure that proper processes for Power Management, Backup Process among others are in place.

Project 2: Change in IT Asset Procurement Strategy - As part of the organization-wide initiative to reduce the carbon footprint, the IT department has contributed by purchasing only power-efficient IT equipment.

Project 3: Implemented Active Directory to ensure IT Policy is practiced across the organization and to start with, set up Power Save parameters for all Desktops & Laptops

Project 4: Implementation of managed printing solution

Project 5: Implementation of an HD Video Conferencing system across the group companies.

2) What challenges did you face in achieving your power efficiency / conservation targets?

We faced the following challenges:

1. Some of the administrative power consumption costs were initially hidden.
2. Many fuel consumption costs were not recorded during the initial part of the project implementation.
3. Difference of opinion with the building administration and civil departments on various structural designs and load balancing on the same.
4. Due to stringent laws, only a permissible amount of fuel, like diesel, can be stored in the office premises in Mumbai. This impacted our goal and, thus, forced us to remove gensets from the original design and ensure power supply through alternate feeders - incase the main feeder shuts down.

3) What long-term benefits do you anticipate from the energy saving processes initiated at your organization?

We hope to achieve ROI  on our green IT projects within 24 months of operations considering the rate at which the Welspun group is expanding.

We can now accommodate more Servers, thanks to virtualization and this has helped us achieve:

• Space optimization
• Ease of server and application administration
• Reduction in power consumption

4) What else have you planned for the next few years, in terms of energy conservation at your organization?

1. Optimization of our printing facilities and minimizing the use of paper.
2. Sustaining power conservation and carbon footprint reduction activities (via Green IT).
3. Implementation of IT asset refresh and disposal policies.

Click through the links to read more on the study and key findings, the Green IT awards and how the winners implemented green IT projects in their organizations.

Winner Speak: Silajit Samaddar - HSBC India Limited

"We will be focusing on datacenter consolidation projects to see significant energy savings, carbon emission reduction and improved infrastructure resiliency. We will also be using tools which can switch off inactive desktops." 
Silajit Samaddar, Head - IT Operations, HSBC India Limited

Click through the links to read more on the study and key findings, the Green IT awards and how the winners implemented green IT projects in their organizations.

Winner Speak: Anil Kumar Kaushik - BPCL

“New Green data centers, proper recycling of e-waste are some initiatives we plan to implement in the near future. Besides, we are taking up power saving measures through consolidation and virtualization on blade servers.” 
Anil Kumar Kaushik, General Manager IS Infrastructure & Services, BPCL

Click through the links to read more on the study and key findings, the Green IT awards and how the winners implemented green IT projects in their organizations.

Winner Speak: S Ramasamy - Indian Oil Corporation Ltd

"We will continue to deploy devices and applications that consume less energy to further lower our carbon footprint. Our new datacenters will be environment friendly units to optimize power and cooling resources."
S.Ramasamy, Executive Director (IS), Indian Oil Corporation Ltd

Click through the links to read more on the study and key findings, the Green IT awards and how the winners implemented green IT projects in their organizations.

Winner Speak: Prashanth M J - Firstsource Solutions Ltd.

“We will be using smarter, smaller and less power consuming devices which will help us to lower our power consumption by several folds.”
Prashanth M J, CTO Technology, Firstsource Solutions Ltd

Q. What was the most important motivation to consider power conservation and carbon footprint reduction both at your IT organization and end-user level?

The single most motivation is cost leadership here. We were aware that going for thin clients would reduce our carbon footprint, allowing us to highlight our CSR initiatives. Also, this particular move reduces the number of incidents and maintenance overheads would be minimal.

Q. What challenges did you face in achieving your power efficiency / conservation targets?

Actually, power efficiency / conservation targets did not pose any challenges, though these were part of the equation. The real challenge was to change user mindset and ensuring application performance degradation would not be a show stopper in this journey. The teams were smart enough to understand the challenges both from IT and user perspective and addressed them seamlessly.

Q. What long-term benefits do you anticipate from the energy saving processes initiated at your organization?

Savings on energy cost definitely reduces our cost of operations and more importantly set the stage for going greener in every endeavor of the company.

Q. What else have you planned for the next few years, in terms of energy conservation at your organization?

Going on, using LED lights and innovating to provision low-power end points is the plan. This long-term plan is set to reduce the cost of energy savings to many folds.

Click through the links to read more on the study and key findings, the Green IT awards and how the winners implemented green IT projects in their organizations.

Winner Speak: Alok Kumar - TCS Limited

“Green Initiatives are integral part of TCS’ social responsibility. We will continue to optimize our Next-Gen infrastructure and facilities to improve energy efficiency and lowering of carbon footprints.”

Alok Kumar, VP & Global Head - Internal IT & Shared Services, TCS Limited

Q. What was the most important motivation to consider power conservation and carbon footprint reduction both at your IT organization and end-user level?

Green initiatives have always been an integral part of TCS’ social responsibility. TCS focused on implementing green IT programs as part of business and social responsibility. Some of these initiatives were directed towards greening of data center, office environments and optimizing systems/applications that helped improve productivity, reduce cost, lower energy consumption and reduce carbon footprint.

This also helped us implement eco-friendly practices and processes to enable green procurement, eWaste disposal, recycling etc., with a focus on saving energy, ensuring operational compliances and improving IT sustainability.

Considering the benefits, TCS’ next-generation offices are designed using standards such as ‘Energy Conservation Building Code (ECBC)’ and ‘Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED)’ to enhance energy efficiency. TCS also invested in energy audits, and most of the Delivery Centers in India are ISO-14001 certified.
Using Green-IT initiatives, TCS was able to reduce the monthly per person energy consumption by 16.3% in the last 3 years.

Q. What challenges did you face in achieving your power efficiency / conservation targets?

TCS has a well-established green IT governance framework and eco-conscious workforce, which helped drive and manage green programs efficiently. TCS uses a Balanced Score Card (BSC) based approach to manage goals and incentives, encouraging associates to ideate and contribute towards a greener IT setup.

However, in a large and heterogeneous setup involving complex systems and diversified technologies, we faced challenges related to measuring, monitoring and optimizing power consumption due to interdependency of various parameters.

TCS has dedicated labs that develop internal tools to provide information and analytics on power consumption for IT and non-IT components, and help optimize power consumption by identifying improvement opportunities.

Institutionalizing these initiatives across a large number of diversified locations spread across the globe was a challenge in itself. This required detailed planning; setting up of required processes, and use of tools, template and profile-based, centralized policy enforcement during deployment. There were dependencies on hardware, software and critical applications.  A pilot-based, phase-wise implementation approach was followed, wherein less critical areas were addressed first; best practices were evolved and then used for subsequent implementations.

Q. What long-term benefits do you anticipate from the energy saving processes initiated at your organization?

Going forward, ‘green initiatives’ will further reduce TCS’ per person energy consumption which will help us meet our societal obligations in conserving energy and reducing carbon footprint.

This will also improve our workforce productivity, reduce operating expenses, deliver more value from IT investments and help TCS manage business growth and margins.
TCS is growing and our business need is to continuously expand/add global facilities involving network, data centers, servers, desktop/workstations, printers, video conferencing etc. Our continued focus on green IT will ensure that TCS always invests in energy-efficient, environment friendly, state-of-the-art technologies and facilities. This will enable TCS to create a benchmark in the IT sustainability space and further enhance demand for green technologies in the marketplace.

The biggest benefit that any organization will get by embracing green initiatives is that it can address business and societal concerns for environment while maintaining business growth and enabling cost containment.

Q. What else have you planned for the next few years, in terms of energy conservation at your organization?

TCS has integrated green IT processes with existing IT service management processes for better compliance. We will continue our journey to further optimize processes and systems that further reduce per capita energy consumption and improve efficiencies.
TCS also has dedicated labs which will continue to evolve innovative solutions to further optimize energy efficiencies at various levels and help further enhance measurement and monitoring capabilities. Enhanced analytics will help optimize power consumption by identifying new avenues for improvement.

Leveraging on improved processes, governance framework, latest tools and technologies, we will continue to optimize our Next-Gen infrastructure and facilities to improve energy-efficiency and lower our carbon footprint.  

Click through the links to read more on the study and key findings, the Green IT awards and how the winners implemented green IT projects in their organizations.

Winner Speak: Jayantha Prabhu - Essar Group

"We will enable our employees to bring their own device and work from anywhere. This will reduce their commute. We will also be replacing about 10,000 desktops with low powered thin clients using desktop virtualization." 
Jayantha Prabhu, CTO, Essar Group

Q. What was the most important motivation to consider power conservation and carbon footprint reduction both at your IT organization and end-user level?

The most important motivation for us to consider reducing power consumption and carbon footprint is the organizational sustainability initiative that has been driven by the Essar Senior Management.

Essar is in the Power business and we are the first to realize the potential of power consumption in a country like India where are already facing a power deficit. We are one of the first manufacturing organizations to claim carbon credits as our plant in Hazira, Gujarat (Bhander Power Limited) has received the sale of carbon credits from UK based EDF trading.

Some of the Green IT Initiatives that we have taken or are underway are

• Avaya VOIP and Video Conferencing Bridge.
• Desktop Virtualization through Citrix Technology.
• Virtualization of UNIX Servers in GDC, Hazira.
• Consolidation of Infrastructure in Global Data Centre (GDC), Hazira.
• Eco friendly disposal of electronic waste.
• SSLVPN for Secure Remote access from any device using an internet browser to enable work from anywhere thereby reducing travel.
• Virtualization and Server Consolidation
• TFTs in place of CRTs
• Implementation of Managed Printing Solution with Secure Printing
• Procurement Standard for buying Energy Star rated equipment.
• Usage of e-learning to reduce trainee or trainer travel
• Digitization of workflows needing approvals
• E-fax to receive fax through e-mail rather than on paper

What challenges did you face in achieving your power efficiency / conservation targets?

1. Change of Mindset: Efforts were required to change employee behavior when transitioning to an environment where face to face meetings were replaced with video conferencing, Audio calls, etc. We had to change the mindset of the employees who believed in giving maximum prints to increase the ROI of a fixed monthly cost of outsourced printers to reducing printing and paying per print.
2. Cost premium for energy rated equipment: Buying equipment that has been rated by agencies like Energy Star comes at a premium cost over the standard equipments which do not have the power consumption ratings and quality control. Justification of this initial high cost and showcasing the long term ROI benefits to the accounts and finance team needs time and efforts and is sometimes a challenge.
3. Eco Friendly Disposal and Recycling: Similar to the high cost of energy rated equipment, if you are disposing your IT equipment in an Eco friendly manner through Govt. Authorized vendors, the monetary returns are less due to the processes carried out by the vendors as compared to a non-authorized vendor. Convincing the internal team of the risk of non-compliance to the environment laws to the organisation in view of interaction with non-authorized vendors is a challenge.

Q. What long-term benefits do you anticipate from the energy saving processes initiated at your organization?

1. Initial implementation always calls for increase in budget but latter benefits will always show profits.
2. The intangible benefits in long term are also increase in customer satisfaction and increase in profit bottom line for the organization.
3. Essar as an organization is dedicated to the sustainability initiatives across the group. Green IT initiatives carried out by the Information Technology team is a subset of the same.
4. For the employees, it also gives a sense of satisfaction and ownership when they feel that they are also trying to contribute at their level in saving the environment.
5. Green IT initiatives also help in improving productivity in the organization.
6. Through Green IT Initiatives like virtualization and collaboration, the Management team has been able to improve the sustenance and reduce the calls.
7. There were direct savings in power consumption and the cost there of - whether at data center or at user end - it was not just power consumption by equipment but also considering the lower heat generation, the room required reduced air-conditioning.
8. Other savings include space, power and Administrative cost saving at Datacenter.
9. There has been a reduction in paper consumption costs.

Q. What else have you planned for 2011 in terms of energy conservation at your organization?

Few initiatives that we have planned in the present financial year are:

1. New Global datacenters for North America’s, Europe and Asia respectively with the latest power efficient Technologies. This will be followed with a consolidation exercise of Infrastructure from the existing Datacenters who have been installed for the last 4 to 5 years and have a relative poor efficiency due to the new technology enhancements in the Power and Energy Management landscape.
2. Incorporation of Green Building Technologies in our Green Field Infrastructure projects that are planned for the immediate future and for long terms projects.
3. Implementation of more measures to further optimize the Power utilisation of both Datacenter Equipment and well as the equipment touching the end user.
4. Focus on IT enablement of Power and Energy savings of the NON IT equipment in existing Infrastructure installations.
5. Rollout of existing Power and Energy saving templates to new global acquisitions for further enhancement of the ROI of the investments.

Click through the links to read more on the study and key findings, the Green IT awards and how the winners implemented green IT projects in their organizations.

Winner Speak: Jagdish Lomte - KEC International Ltd

"We plan to carry out the successful green IT initiatives in our acquisitions also. Virtualization and Information Security are two other areas through which we plan to take the green initiative further."
Jagdish Lomte, CIO, KEC International Ltd

Q. What was the most important motivation to consider power conservation and carbon footprint reduction both at your IT organization and end-user level?

The RPG Group firmly believes that Corporate Social Responsibility is not just an added function to business. It should be ingrained in core business operations. Thus, RPG CSR  covers workplace, community and environment. KEC International Ltd. is a global infrastructure Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) major & is a billion dollar turnover flagship company of the RPG Group. It has presence in the business verticals of Power Transmission, Power Systems, Cables, Railways, Telecom and Water. Power Transmission is the largest vertical of the company. 

The most important motivation & support came from our MD & CEO Mr Ramesh Chandak & CFO Mr Vardhan Dharkar to implement Green IT initiatives including thin clients, server virtualization at our all corporate & manufacturing locations.  Previously, KEC INTERNATIONAL LTD. had a traditional Setup of Desktops FAT Clients - where all business applications like  ERP, MS Office, Mailing, Internet Surfing & other applications ran on individual systems. Approximate 650 users  were working locally at different locations.  KEC INTERNATIONAL LTD. decided to adopt a centralized, consolidated Server Virtualization for server-based computing architecture on Microsoft products.

Desktops & CRT Monitors were consuming high power energy. The need of energy-efficient technology for having data security & backup process has driven us towards  Green IT initiatives. Accordingly, KEC offices at Worli, Vikhroli, Gurgaon & the manufacturing plants at Nagpur, Jaipur, Jabalpur and Thane replaced the old traditional computing architecture based on desktop Fat clients with the new energy efficient thin client system. The aim here was to consolidate users’ data & applications so that users can access a secure & centrally-managed platform for accessing business applications using Thin client as an end-user appliance. 

Q. What challenges did you face in achieving your power efficiency / conservation targets?

Earlier, users were downloading email from Exchange server to Outlook in PST Files which were, individually, stored in their desktop systems. All business-oriented applications were running on desktops, as well.

User acceptance, system performance, running ERP & other software applications on the new energy-efficient thin client systems were the major challenges we faced while achieving power efficiency/conservation targets. We had overcome those by taking necessary steps of communication, awareness & training. 

In server-based computing environments, hardware & software upgrades, application deployment, technical support  and data storage & backup  are simplified because only the servers need to be managed. Data and applications reside on a few centrally managed servers rather than on hundreds or thousands of clients. PCs become terminals. They are replaced by simpler, less expensive and more importantly, easier to manage devices called “thin clients”.

Q. What long-term benefits do you anticipate from the energy saving processes initiated at your organization?

The long term benefits include reduction of electronic waste and energy consumption.  A Thin Client contains less electronic elements and is, therefore, lighter than traditional computers. Thin clients are 80 % smaller than PCs and consume 80 % less electricity. This results in a significant reduction of electronic waste and asset deposition. It also diminishes CO2 emission i.e. carbon footprint by 50 kg per desktop per annum. 

The long term operational benefit would reflect on the centralized database, backup & information security.  Thin Clients need less maintenance during the actual operation because they consist of less removable components which reduces the impact of the supply chain & brings down the maintenance cost.

Common security policies & centralised control over flash drive / removable drives would also help in ensuring information security.

Q. What else have you planned for the next few years, in terms of energy conservation at your organization?

KEC international Ltd. believes in continuous innovation & investing in Green IT initiatives. Implementing thin client / energy efficient systems  at our new acquisitions & mergers would be our next course of action. Introducing common server-based applications through thin client for drawing & design users is a major challenge for us in future.  Another initiative would be to implement unified communication to reduce frequent traveling by employees.

Click through the links to read more on the study and key findings, the Green IT awards and how the winners implemented green IT projects in their organizations.