Green IT initiatives promise to reduce IT’s impact on the environment through increased efficiency in energy consuming equipment and optimized IT assets. The bottom line to Green is reducing costs by increasing IT efficiency, and is therefore a positive benefit to any consolidation/optimization effort. This paper explores how IT management software can leverage new and existing IT investments to help achieve Green IT goals.
The Role of IT Management Software in the Greening of IT
1. WHITE PAPER: THE GREENING OF IT
The Role of IT Management
Software in the Greening
of IT
JANUARY 2009
Benjamin Scheerer
S O LU T I O N S M A R K E T I N G
Sam Somashekar
S O LU T I O N S P RO D U CT M A N AG E M E N T
3. Executive Summary
Challenge
The demands on information technology continue to rise at an increasing rate. To keep up
with the demand, IT departments are increasing the use of computing and associated
resources. The demand on energy is also reaching epic proportions, and power grids are
showing signs that they are struggling to meet demand through higher consumer energy
costs and power usage caps for corporations. As a major consumer of power, IT departments
are being challenged to find innovative ways to reduce power consumption and reduce the
company’s overall carbon footprint. IT is now facing overall economic and socioeconomic
pressures to reduce costs and go green.
Opportunity
As companies build and implement strategies for increased efficiencies in IT-related asset
utilization and process orchestration, they can also begin to realize significant opportunities.
These include cost savings and the reduced environmental impact from excessive power
consumption. Well-executed strategies aligned with the proper IT management software
solutions allow these companies to swiftly execute and accurately identify its benefits.
Going green in IT does not necessarily require a substantial investment in new technology.
Enterprise IT management software can leverage legacy and new technology investments
to achieve greater efficiencies faster and at lower costs, while accurately measuring IT
savings and impact on the environment.
Benefits
Many IT departments already have the tools for IT management in place. Leveraging those
investments to implement more efficient computing practices benefits the business in two
distinct ways: cost savings and support for Green IT initiatives. This includes support for
pending environmental or green regulations and support for internal objectives (such as
reducing energy usage and associated costs and driving better utilization of existing
assets). The net result of implementing software solutions for Green IT is overall cost
savings, reduced environmental impact and good corporate citizenship.
WHITE PAPER: THE GREENING OF IT 1
4. SECTION 1
The Increasing Demand for Energy
IT’s Role in Energy Usage, Cost and Environmental Impact
Today’s fragile economy presents many challenges to corporate IT departments to cut
costs, reduce risk and increase efficiency. Energy costs are on the rise and the demand for
IT-supported services continues to grow. As a result, many IT departments have taken a step
back to reassess their delivery and support of IT-related services to the business.
Along with the economic impact, there is also a socioeconomic challenge for businesses
worldwide to embrace sustainability practices with an emphasis on IT, particularly in the area
of data center operations. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), energy
consumption from servers and data centers has doubled in the past five years and will continue
to double again in the next 5 years.
Green IT, by most accounts, is not a frontline initiative by corporate IT departments, but rather
a positive side effect of what IT departments are already being tasked to do given current
economic conditions. In fact, the slowdown in the economy and overall IT spending presents
ideal conditions for moving towards more efficient use of technologies, which supports
corporate Green IT initiatives.
According to a recent study by Echo Research, Inc., IT plays a major role in corporate green
initiatives, primarily when addressing energy consumption within the data center. Many new
and improved hardware technologies have been introduced to address data center power
inefficiencies. These include newer energy efficient server and networking hardware, advanced
power-distribution units (PDUs), and intelligent HVAC equipment.
Software technologies also further the Green IT movement by making IT more efficient through
better use of new hardware technologies and existing investments. For example, virtualization
management software enables Green IT initiatives through server consolidation onto more
efficient platforms, which reduces power, space and cooling requirements. In this way, software
technology allows for that efficiency to become part of normal service flows.
Current economic conditions are forcing IT departments to become more creative when
implementing strategies that increase IT efficiency. Software technology has been recognized
as a more cost-effective option, as opposed to solely adopting newer hardware solutions that
can prove more costly and more likely to present additional risk. Green IT must represent many
facets of an IT management strategy to both enable and demonstrate consequential value.
IT Must Reduce Its Carbon Footprint
There is a dramatic energy side-effect of the ever-increasing demand for information
technology that must be dealt with now. EPA findings report that data centers consumed about
60 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) in 2006, roughly 1.5 percent of total U.S. electricity consumption.
That’s enough power to run over 24 million 42-inch plasma televisions for 3 years! The report
also states that this number could nearly double again by 2011 to more than 100 billion kWh.
2 WHITE PAPER: THE GREENING OF IT
5. The increased demand for power by IT is placing additional stress upon the already overloaded
power grids that support them, and that means less power given to those organizations that
are in need. Also not to be forgotten is the further proliferation of harmful greenhouse gas
emissions from fossil fuel power plants. IT is in a good position to do its part in controlling and
reducing its growing need for energy. This includes protecting itself against potential roadblocks
that may place physical limits on the amounts of power provided by the traditional grids. In
addition, pending regulations such as the Kyoto Protocol and carbon trading programs will
force IT to realize the issue and better manage their total carbon emissions. IT leaders must
mandate identifiable and measurable green standards through existing and new project plans.
This will validate and support an organization’s overall green efforts and goals. In turn, IT will
help prepare the business for a sustainable future.
SECTION 2
IT Management and Asset/Process Optimization
FIGURE A GREEN IT MANAGEMENT
IT management maturity levels for
enabling efficiency.
In the early stages of distributed computing, the focus on cost savings was primarily centered
around hardware, with a much lower emphasis on the total cost of ownership across the entire
lifecycle. This era produced a wave of over-provisioning of server and desktop hardware that
resulted in vast complexities and inefficiencies, which significantly drove up overall costs. Today’s
trends in IT management show undeniable proof of the benefits from server consolidation and
optimization through the use of virtualized and automated environments, which include greater
efficiency in overall server utilization. Furthermore, IT leadership is being tasked, and challenging
their teams, to find innovative ways to stretch their budgets through increased efficiency.
WHITE PAPER: THE GREENING OF IT 3
6. Asset and process optimization is paramount to progressing data center efficiency, which in
turn supports Green IT initiatives. But, many risks have come to light as a result of preparing
the IT environment for becoming more efficient. To optimize IT assets through virtualization
and consolidation, organizations must gain a thorough understanding of the current state of
utilization and associated dependencies. This, in short, involves leveraging IT management
tools to gather and report asset catalogs (through asset discovery) on both software and its
supporting hardware infrastructure. Additionally, application dependencies must be accurately
and dynamically mapped so that the impact of consolidation is both recognized and anticipated.
Next, companies must apply change and configuration management approaches with the same
rigor as their traditional physical infrastructure.
Change must be carefully managed to ensure a smooth transition to virtualized machines, and
checkpoints must be determined in the event that change needs to be reverted. If unapproved
changes happen to occur, mechanisms need to be in place to automatically detect them and
notify the appropriate management personnel based on a triggered instance. This allows
companies to control potential risk and manage impact, such as what a change could
potentially do to their energy and cooling footprint. Finally, implementing a thorough IT
management strategy that utilizes new and existing investments is necessary to ensure
optimal performance and delivery of IT services to the business. An optimal IT management
strategy must provide extensive visibility across platforms and underlying infrastructure, both
physical and virtual.
Green IT and IT Management Software
Hardware manufacturers continue to drive towards greater efficiency around power consumption
and total heat output (which lowers cooling costs), and increased capacity within their server,
network and device technologies. These advancements allow IT management software to play
an even greater role in taking advantage of those achievements to increase IT efficiency and
moreover measure progress against stated goals. However, IT management software can also
make better use of existing equipment and reduce the need for purchasing new hardware.
According to the EPA study, “…existing technologies and design strategies have been shown
to reduce the energy use of a typical server by 25 percent or more. Even with existing IT
equipment, implementing best energy-management practices in existing data centers and
consolidating applications from many servers to one server could reduce current data center
energy usage by around 20 percent.” Streamlining IT performance does not have to mean
increasing energy consumption.
According to Echo Research, companies are budgeting for changes to their IT infrastructure to
manage energy consumption, with virtualization and consolidation leading the way. The Echo
Research findings also confirm that software solutions are very important to energy efficiency
for 80 percent of the U.S. respondents and 72 percent of the U.K. respondents. The emphasis
on software to manage change and enable efficiency paves the way for more innovative
thinking in the application of efficient practices throughout IT management software.
4 WHITE PAPER: THE GREENING OF IT
7. FIGURE B ECHO RESEARCH FINDINGS ON SOFTWARE BUDGETING
What changes to IT infrastructure have
organizations budgeted for?
VIRTUALIZATION/CONSOLIDATING SERVERS
VIRTUALIZATION & CONSOLIDATING STORAGE
IMPROVE EFFICIENCY OF EXISTING ASSETS
CONSOLIDATING DATA CENTERS US
IT PROCESSES & METRICS UK
SOFTWARE APPLICATION CHANGE MANAGEMENT
IMPLEMENT PC & SERVER POWER MANAGEMENT
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%
Two examples of how management software can help support Green IT initiatives are
as follows:
First, consider the holiday shopping season. Many online businesses count on the period
that begins on Black Friday and continues through Cyber Monday and the end of the year. It is
important for them to handle the increase in load effectively so that they can be profitable. In
the past, servers were provisioned to meet the high watermark of requirements, but they also
remained up and running for the entire fiscal year. This draws on energy requirements without
the necessary increases in capacity usage and business support for those resources.
IT management software today allows those very same resources to be brought online in a
scheduled manner. They are provisioned to the specific application requirements needed to
support the influx of demand for this period of time. These resources can either be physical or
virtual. When the need has been satisfied, those resources can then be shut down and placed
offline for future use. What’s more, for unplanned events, these very resources can also be
brought online dynamically when predetermined consumption thresholds have been exceeded.
Then, they can be shut down when the low utilization point is reached. This allows IT to
intelligently respond to user demand in near real-time, and significantly reduce power
consumption during non-peak periods.
Effectively leveraging a pool of resources that can be dynamically provisioned to meet the
specific needs of a particular functional group (such as order processing) saves energy. It can
limit the number of physical machines that an organization needs to have up and running.
From a virtualization context, this also aids in properly throttling capacity for those physical
machines to match dynamic business needs. Pooling resources also enables companies to
balance support for multiple functional groups and services, faster and with less physical
infrastructure.
WHITE PAPER: THE GREENING OF IT 5
8. The second example involves client hardware such as laptops, desktops, and PDAs. With the
low acquisition cost of PCs and laptops today, PC sprawl is a very real concern. The increase in
the number of desktops dramatically increases the power load for an organization without the
necessary business productivity gains. IT management software can dynamically discover and
categorize client hardware to give companies a complete view of how these machines are
being used throughout their business environment. Power-related configurations can then be
enforced to save on overall energy costs and consumption. For those machines that do not
seem to be supporting the business in any particular way, appropriate action can be taken to
pull them offline and dispose of them according to proper guidelines. Perhaps some of those
machines require upgrades based upon the applications that they need to run.
With certain IT management software, organizations can specifically determine the client
machines that require upgrades to control costs and hardware waste. Furthermore, client
machines that are not really being used can effectively be repurposed based upon the roles
within the organization. This involves determining if those client machines are not being used
to their fullest capacity. All of this goes towards maximizing the use of existing hardware and
avoiding new hardware purchases when possible to support employee productivity, cost
savings and energy impact as it relates to the business.
These examples show how IT management software improves efficient management of
resources to reduce the effect that IT has on the environment.
SECTION 3
IT Management Software Enables Green IT Goals
Key Green IT Software Capabilities
When looking at software to support Green IT initiatives, there are three key goals that
companies will want to achieve. These goals will have associated software capabilities that
can enable fulfillment (as is shown in Figure C and described below).
INCREASE EFFICIENCY Enabling Green IT initiatives are synonymous with implementing more
efficient processes and practices within IT. Therefore, it is important to harness the benefits
that IT management software provides:
• Physical and Virtual Systems Management solutions allow for the identification of
underutilized equipment and the correlation of power and cooling consumption with the
servers that use them.
• Data Center and Workload Automation solutions enable unified management and dynamic
optimization of physical and virtual server resources. Those resources can be enabled when
required and, more importantly, shut down when not needed. These solutions also increase
management capability for virtualization to ensure physical machine capacity is properly
controlled. They also allow for optimized workload placement and execution, taking
advantage of peak and off-peak energy usage times and minimizing resource consumption.
• IT Client Management solutions drive standardization of desktop power management
settings to optimize energy efficiency. They correlate hardware upgrades with specific
employee and business needs to reduce waste and increase optimization of existing
hardware.
6 WHITE PAPER: THE GREENING OF IT
9. • IT Asset Management solutions keep track of IT assets and their relation to the applications
that they run to optimize equipment upgrades and identify those assets which are not
providing a business purpose. Those that are not needed can be properly disposed of to
ensure compliance with internal standards and government regulations.
REDUCE RISK IT management software can help companies identify and mitigate environmental
risk. This includes compliance to environmental regulations such as the Kyoto Protocol and
cap-and-trade programs. The Kyoto Protocol is a protocol to the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which is an international environmental treaty. The
treaty’s intent is to achieve "stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere
at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system."
Emissions trading (sometimes called cap-and-trade) provide economic incentives for achieving
reductions in pollutant emissions. IT management software capabilities to support this goal include:
• Change, Configuration and Release Management solutions track and implement general
change management, configurations and settings to minimize energy consumption and
reduce environmental risk.
• Service Level and Catalog Management solutions allow organizations to clearly define, price
and publish a catalog of services to users. They can be used to automate and track
sustainable behavior and distribute energy costs across the many departments involved
within composite services. For example, a building pass service can grant hybrid car owners
parking passes closer to the building.
• Green Governance solutions allow companies to use a systematic approach to environmental
sustainability. These solutions incorporate a continuous improvement lifecycle and
encompass business areas such as:
– strategy
– risk management
– compliance management
– idea management
– portfolio management
– project management
– performance management
– stakeholder reporting
MEASURE SUCCESS It is very important for organizations to understand where they are by
establishing a baseline before deciding upon and enacting change, and to continually measure
success towards their Green IT goals. Without measurement, it would be difficult to understand
any progress towards achievement of these goals, let alone be able to surmise the benefits that
Green IT software solutions provide. IT management software is ideal for this purpose:
• Operations Energy Management solutions allow companies to harness the abundance of
power and cooling information available from a variety of simple to complex monitoring
devices deployed throughout their IT infrastructure. That data can then be accurately
provided to the many other IT management solutions for reporting and decision-making
prowess. These solutions also enable facilities and IT to work better together, using the
same information.
WHITE PAPER: THE GREENING OF IT 7
10. The Green Grid is a global consortium dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in data
centers and business computing ecosystems. This association suggests that internal
collaboration between IT and Facilities promotes propagation of planned and measurable
data center efficiency. As stated in a white paper published by The Green Grid, “…not having
strategic representation by Facilities will result in data centers not being properly provisioned
and exhaustion of existing energy capacity early in the useful life of the data center.”
• Project and Portfolio Management solutions allow for the organization and management of
sustainability projects as a portfolio, and the incorporation of environmental variables into
existing projects. This allows organizations to gain insight into how their portfolio of projects
affects the environment and to track performance of those projects.
• Green Governance solutions, in addition to helping reduce risk, also allow for the
measurement and visualization of progress towards stated sustainability goals.
FIGURE C ESSENTIAL GREEN IT SOFTWARE CAPABILITIES
IT management software capabilities
aligned with Green IT goals.
These essential IT management software capabilities contribute to efficient management,
directly furthering Green IT goals. From increasing hardware utilization to decreasing equipment
footprint and cooling costs, these IT management areas can be effectively managed with low
risk by employing the proper management techniques.
New and improved infrastructure alternatives such as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Cloud
Computing provide further innovation in efficient resource utilization. SaaS solutions allow the
user to avoid the cost of infrastructure setup by renting the software on-demand for use as a
service. Cloud Computing involves the use of computing resources as a service over the internet,
relinquishing control of the infrastructure to the provider. On-demand use of pooled resources
increases efficiency through just-in-time utilization, providing computing resources as needed
without the necessary burden of changing local IT infrastructure. Use of SaaS solutions and
Cloud Computing resources promote efficient management of IT infrastructure, which in turn
reduces environmental effects.
8 WHITE PAPER: THE GREENING OF IT
11. SECTION 4
Conclusions
Going green represents a company’s mission to support environmental sustainability. Whether
it’s socially inspired or economically driven — it simply makes good business sense.
In most cases the initial driver of a Green IT strategy is the cost savings that can be attained
through increased efficiencies in energy usage. Achieving sustainability benefits represents a
secondary, albeit positive by-product. While advancements in energy efficient IT hardware promote
this cause along with services to implement best practices, IT management software represents
a powerful yet cost-effective solution to implement unified and consistent Green IT goals.
IT management software enables comprehensive management, monitoring, and optimized
utilization of new and existing hardware investments. This includes the most effective use of
energy-efficient hardware while extending the life of existing hardware.
Finally, to demonstrate a company’s commitment to the environment and its progress towards
achieving stated goals, a system to measure progress must be in place. Whether from the
business perspective or support for environmental sustainability, Green IT must be managed
like any other project to realize its full potential. IT management software lets companies
execute on all of these mandates. It allows Green IT goals to be incorporated within existing
business processes and practices to prevent silo efforts around increasing general IT efficiency,
and helps to reduce integration complexity in the future. Additionally, in the process, companies
become better corporate citizens and help save the planet for tomorrow’s generations.
SECTION 5
References
"Article 2", The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
http://unfccc.int/essential_background/convention/background/items/1353.php
(accessed February 11, 2009).
Echo Research, Inc., The Future of Green IT: Implications for Software Solutions, November 17, 2008.
http://www.ca.com/us/products/collateral.aspx?cid=188114 (accessed December 11, 2008).
The Green Grid, Addressing Organizational Behavior Issues to Optimize IT and Facilities Energy
Efficiency, July 30, 2008. http://www.thegreengrid.org/gg_content/White_Paper_9_-
_Addressing_Organizational_Behavior_Issues_073008_v1.0_.pdf (accessed January 20, 2009).
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Report to Congress on Server Data Center Energy Efficiency
Public Law 109-431, August 2, 2007.
http://www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/prod_development/downloads/EPA_Datacenter_
Report_Congress_Final1.pdf (accessed December 10, 2008).
WHITE PAPER: THE GREENING OF IT 9
12. SECTION 6
About the Authors
Ben Scheerer is senior principal product marketing manager for CA, Inc. With more than 16
years of industry experience, which has run the course of sales to pre-sales, consulting and
product marketing, Ben’s experience with enterprise IT management has helped businesses
better align their goals for improving service while reducing costs. Ben’s contributions outside
of CA include numerous speaking engagements, published articles and white papers on IT
management related topics. Ben holds a BBA in Marketing from Western Michigan University
and a Masters degree in Computer Information Systems from the University of Denver, and is
ITIL V3 foundation certified.
Sam Somashekar is an advisor of product management at CA, Inc. Sam has over 15 years of
experience demonstrating success in enterprise software product management and development,
business development, marketing, and market research. He has experience establishing,
developing, and inspiring high-performance teams, providing product vision, and delivering the
best value to customers. Sam’s current responsibilities include defining CA’s Enterprise IT
Management strategy and vision around Data Center Automation and Green IT initiatives. Sam
holds a BA in Computer Science and Biology from New York University, and is PMC certified in
Product Management. He is also on the board of AFCOM’s Data Center Institute, and has
several published articles and white papers on the subject of enterprise IT management.
10 WHITE PAPER: THE GREENING OF IT
13. CA (NASDAQ: CA), one of the world’s leading independent,
enterprise management software companies, unifies and
simplifies complex information technology (IT) management
across the enterprise for greater business results. With our
Enterprise IT Management vision, solutions and expertise,
we help customers effectively govern, manage and secure IT.
MP335070209