2. ASPECTS OF SUSTAINABILITY
Economic Environmental Societal
• Direct • Material Consumption • Quality of Life
• RM & Labour Cost • Packaging Mass • Employee Satisfaction
• Capital Cost • Useful lifetime • Knowledge
• Potentially Hidden • Hazardous Materials Enhancement
• Recycling Revenue • Energy Consumption • Peace of Mind
• Product Disposal Cost • Life cycle energy • Perceived Risk
• Contingent • Operational power • Complaints
• Employee Injury Cost • Local Impact • Illness/Disease Reduction
• Warranty Cost • Recyclability • Illnesses avoided
• Relationship • Impact on local streams • Mortality reduction
• Loss of goodwill • Regional Impact • Accident/Injury
• Externalities • Smog, Acid Rain Reduction
• Ecosystem • Biodiversity reduction • Lost time injuries
Productivity Loss • Global Impact • Reportable releases
• Resource Depletion • CO2 emissions • No. of incidents
• Ozone depletion • Health & Wellness
• Nutrition provided
• Food costs
Source: Joseph Fiksel, Jeff McDaniel, Catherine Mendenhall, 1999. Measuring Progress Towards Sustainability Principles, Process, And Best Practices.
3. GREEN DATA CENTRE
• Started in 2006, assuming
electricity costs would only
increase; total cost €11 million
• Innovative cooling solutions –
servers installed back to back
• Innovative heat utilisation –
exhaust used to heat offices
• Joined The Green Grid – funded
research to reduce energy usage
for servers
• Electricity obtained from RECS
(Renewable Energy Certificate
System) potentially saving over
Heat exchanger in shade of building 9000 tonnes of CO2 /year
4. GREEN DATA CENTRE: IMPACT
• [-] Construction costs up by 15-20%; total cost €11 mn
• [+] Decreased PUE value to 1.35 (industry average ~1.8)1
Economic • [+] No AC until 17 degrees; savings for 250 days/year
• [+] Energy usage decreased by 30%; additional costs
amortize in 2.5 years
• [+] CO2 savings of 1,300 tonnes/year in air conditioning
• [+] Energy saving of 3.5 million kWh compared to
Environmental conventional data centers
• [-] Power consumption still high at 14.5 million kWh in
2009
Societal • No direct impact
1 http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2011/05/10/uptime-institute-the-average-pue-is-1-8/
5. VIRTUALISATION
• Virtualisation enables combining several virtual servers
on one physical server
• Offers high flexibility, scalability and increased stability
& reliability
• Host Europe GmbH began offering virtualisation in 2008
• Actively promoted by offering free hosting – not
successful
• By 2009, technology more widely accepted
• Host Europe one of the largest providers of virtualisation
technology in Europe
• Further efficiency gain expected through utilisation of
quad core processors
6. VIRTUALISATION: IMPACT
• [+] Server utilisation increased from 15%, in 2007 to 40%
Economic in 2008
• [+] Potential to increase SU to 80%
• [+] 20,000 virtual machines hosted in 8,000 physical
servers
Environmental
• [-] Utilisation limited by customer demand & hardware
limitations
• [+] Gains in efficiency lead to:
Societal • (i) lower energy costs per customer
• (ii) cheaper hosting solutions
7. COMMUNITY, EMPLOYEES &
WORKPLACE MEASURES
• Workplace measures
– Ergonomic workplaces coupled with courses to
improve posture and preventive training
– Smokers encouraged to quit
– Subsidised health food and membership to gym
• Flexibility for employees
– Special leaves for weddings, childbirth or moving
– Full overtime compensation and flexible working
hours
– Secondary employment encouraged
8. COMMUNITY, EMPLOYEES &
WORKPLACE MEASURES
• Family friendliness
– Average age 29 years; hence employees will be
planning for families
– Child care centre helps employees keep children close
• Social & Community engagement
– Direct donations: Doubled the employee collection &
donated the amount to charity during Christmas 2009
– Indirect donations: Free hosting solutions to 33
beneficiaries
– “Girl’s Day”: Initiative to encourage young women to
take up jobs in IT
9. COMMUNITY, EMPLOYEES &
WORKPLACE MEASURES: IMPACT
• [-] €750 expended per employee on professional training
Economic • [-] Additional costs in subsidising services like gym and
health foods
Environmental • No direct impact
• [+] High employee engagement, with better quality of life
at home & workplace
Societal • [+] CSR initiatives to encourage net societal
improvement
• [+] Encourage gender diversity though “Girl’s Day”
10. NEED FOR SUSTAINABILITY
• Sustainability is becoming important for businesses due
to:
– Rising concerns about environment and climate changes
– Stricter regulations on green house gas emissions
– Impact on consumers and economic factors
• Companies need to anticipate regulatory changes in order
to succeed in a dynamic environment
• Peer pressure and customers expectations are also
pushing companies to adopt greener practices
• However going green is not always a compulsion, and
these days companies are adopting green practices in
order to improve their efficiency and cut down on costs
11. CONCERNS – ENERGY USE
• Global energy usage for IT doubled between 2000 and
2005
• By 2050 the energy use in ICT expected to quintuple from
2005
• By 2020 45 per cent of domestic energy usage was
predicted to be consumed by ICT
• A large share of energy usage in IT is not productive
• A major portion of the total energy goes into cooling the
equipment and other peripheral activities
• Only a quarter of the total energy is used in the core
activities
12. CONCERNS – ENERGY USE
• Use of internet and ICT is going to increase, hence it is
energy efficient data centers are essential
13. CONCERNS – E-WASTE DISPOSAL
• Most of the IT systems and tools are rapidly involving
• Shorter technology cycle ⇒ Systems become obsolete
sooner
• Constant renewal of hardware will continue in future as
the ICT sector is constantly evolving
• Close to 80% of components in junk hardware is
recyclable
• Dumping of toxic substances such as lead, cadmium,
arsenic etc., pose serious health and environment risks
• Lack of proper systems to tackle e-waste
• Businesses have a social responsibility to take the lead in
reducing the environmental impact
15. CHALLENGES FACED
• Pushing Virtualization to Customers
• Improving Sustainability
• Improving Gender Ratio
16. PUSHING VIRTUALIZATION
• Pushing Virtualization to customers is a challenge
• Why are customers reluctant to use VPS:
– Lack of understanding or Security/Privacy issues?
• Educate customers about lower cost, lower carbon
footprint and help them calculate possible savings
• Address any security and privacy concerns customers
may have
• Showcase customers who have been using virtualization
solutions to save costs
17. IMPROVING SUSTAINABILITY
• Reaching out to schools to educate children about
sustainability
• Donation/Recycling vs. Disposal of IT products
• Promote use of public transport and bicycles by
employees
• From the bottom up - ideas from employees to conserve
resources like paper and water
• Explore alternate options while expanding capacity:
– Off-shore data centers
– Alternate technologies (e.g. ARM servers)
18. IMPROVING GENDER RATIO
Very low proportion of women, especially in technical
positions
• Showcase child-care day centre to attract more women
applicants to positions
• Spearhead an industry - wide initiative to instil interest in
girls about IT industry (a la Grace Hopper Women in
Computing)
• Short-term: Preferential recruitment to administrative
positions for women
• Women employees can become ambassadors to attract
more women to Host Europe
19. IMPACT OF SUGGESTIONS
• [+] Virtualization helps cut down on costs – both for
Host Europe and customers
Economic • [+] Low-power servers help reducing energy and
cooling costs by several magnitudes
• [-] Expenditure on initiatives to improve gender ratio
• [+] Virtualization & Low-power servers reduces
energy consumption
Environmental
• [+] Public Transport reduces individual carbon
footprint
• [+] Improvement in gender ratio helps make the
workplace more diverse
Societal
• [+] Donating IT equipment helps spread technology
to the less privileged communities
