Green IT Training

Giving Time and Solutions are working with QA to assist with raising the awareness of the 3 day ISEB Foundation Certificate in Green IT course.

We are the first company working with QA to do so and are therefore able to provide discount bookings to the ISEB Foundation Certificate in Green IT course to individuals and organisations worldwide.

Click here to read more on how to book.

DATE: 29/07/2010

Tripta Prashar

www.givingtimeandsolutions.com

Reducing the need to travel, save costs and reduce carbon footprint using teleconferencing

Reducing the need to travel is a need for many organisations and teleconferencing is considered the best way to do so. Teleconferencing is yet another buzz word in the Green IT world!

There are three types of internet teleconferencing options to consider

1) voice telephone – ISDN vs VOIP

2) web 

3) audio.

With so many products/vendors on the market, how would you know which to choose? There are 3 large vendors for video conferencing equipment, several for web and audio-conferencing.

Before deciding on which to choose, I will yet again stress the need to understand what it is organisations are actually wanting to achieve. This is only known when you have an understanding of the business processes, people and current technology used in house. Lots and lots and lots of information gathering and analysis has to be carried out. My first recommendation would be document the business processes.

A few questions to consider before deciding if teleconferencing is the option to replace travel are

1)     How many frequent travellers are there?

2)     How many meetings are held and how often?

3)     Where are meetings held?

4)     What are the salaries for those who travel and what form of transport are they using?

5)     Are there home/remote workers?

I have a long list of questions which can be sent to Green Champions or Senior Management, collated quickly and the findings presented to show what the typical current costs and carbon footprint would be and recommendations on to reduce it. Investing in particular technology just because another organisation had savings is not necessarily the right solution, as each organisation has different business needs.

There are many benefits with teleconferencing, such as the time savings, the speed of decision making, no weather impact, cut travel expenses, projects delivered on time and within budget perhaps, etc. However as usual, there are cons too, such as managing the behavioural changes for staff, technical failures….both of which do have solutions to overcome them.

Instead of using a car for each individual, there are other options to consider such as car sharing, public transport or leasing company cars.

To compare the cost and carbon footprint using a car and public transport should also be considered…assuming it is national travel. Obviously it differs on what car it is and the cost of the train ticket (peak/off peak/season ticket).

Anyway, assuming there are 1000 employees in a company who have 3 meetings a week off site during the 46 working weeks of the year, whereby the distance is 15 miles from the office site…..

                                             Carbon Footprint

Car                                     27240 (CO2)

Train                                  410 (CO2)

There is obviously a huge difference in carbon footprint! You would need to consider the time to travel it takes, as no one can predict the delay in the car journey or train delays.

As well as the installation costs, investing in teleconferencing equipment also requires looking at the costs for licenses, support/maintenance, number of additional users,etc. The return on investment may show after a few years, but it is very important to remember teleconferencing is considered a way to ‘reduce travel and not replace it’.

Some of the research used in this blog post  for the products and teleconferencing was carried out for me.

DATE: 20/07/2010

Tripta Prashar

www.givingtimeandsolutions.com

Whether you store files locally, on the server or up in the cloud (cloud computing) – it is important to structure well

Whether an organsation has decided to store files in house or give access to another organisation, I believe it is very important to structure files and have file naming standard conventions. The observation has been made many times in people wanting to keep all the versions of documents, to keep all their emails, or even just having database tables which they do not realise are actually redundant. All this does is add to the storage and that in itself will affect any back ups which are carried out on file/database servers, and effectively affect actual efficiency.

Having worked for many years as an Oracle database designer/programmer and as a Configuration Manager, I know the importance of ensuring there is structure. Not only does it ensure files are kept organised, the time required for teams to provide support and maintainance is made a lot easier. Time is valuable!  When I used to design database systems, I always had to question the clients on what they did and why, and whether there was a need to keep an audit trail for example. If records were deleted by a client using the front-end system, the record would be flagged as being deleted on the database table and then either copied into an audit table or a script created as a materialized view. So even though the client does not see the record on screen, physically it is still kept in the Oracle database. Some business processes require records to be stored for some time for legal reasons. Having worked on a HR/Payroll system, there was a need to keep sickness records for 12 years, on the UK charts system there was a need to keep everything, on the gas/billing system there was a need to keep all client transactions, etc. Basically, each business process needs to look into why data is required and ensure it is stored efficiently.

Prince2 is a document driven methodology and having used it across a number of organisations, I have noticed a lot of documents stored on the individual’s own server, the centrally accessed server and in a configuration management system (which has its own server). 3 different locations! There is definitely a need to make sure files are kept in a central location and there also needs to be some contingency planning in case access to the files cannot be made.

I have already touched upon back-ups. Personally, I only back up files which I amend on the day. I have noticed some people back up everything on a daily basis, but that can take time to do and use more power consumption. More power consumption, more energy usage and more carbon footprint. Stating the obvious again, but once you get into the habit of ensuring there is discipline and structure in what you as an individual do, there will a difference made in reducing your IT equipment’s own carbon footprint and cost. There is also software available which automatically backs up files which are new or have been amended.

Going back to emails, many people have folders set up to organise their emails. Does everyone delete the same message which has had many reply to’s? No doubt the inbox is organised, but the sent items folder often does not get looked at. Some people even forward all their messages from their separate email addresses to one account they use, but may not delete it from the other accounts. Storage!  

There will be many what if scenarios such as ‘what if the server goes down?’, ‘what if the internet goes down?’, ‘what if my local hard drive becomes corrupt?’, and more importantly ‘how would it affect the business’ should any of these actually occur?

Cloud Computing is definitely one of the buzz words in Green IT. Strictly speaking, I actually question whether it is actually truly Green though! I shall write another blog post on Cloud Computing, as again there are pros and cons to consider. A few other questions to bear in mind are of security and control. Chapter 5 in the Greening IT book (http://greening.it) covers Cloud Computing very well.

On another note, Facebook, LinkedIN, Skype and Messenger store a lot of information globally, and I am sure all the data is still kept/archived even though you may have deleted it.

Rather than clicking the delete key, probably best to unsubscribe from those you do not really read anymore otherwise it just keeps on building up.

So in a nutshell, before your system grows to the point you cannot regularly maintain it (we all have work to do! ) , ensure your files are named well, files storage is  kept to a minimum (feng shui/de-clutter the files once a month! ) and you can get into the habit of actually deleting what you do not need. All it requires is ‘structure’.

Greening IT – How Greening IT Can Form a Solid Foundation For a Low-Carbon Society

 

The book ‘Greening IT – How Greener IT Can Form a Solid Foundation For a Low-Carbon Society‘ was officially released on Mon 7th June 2010. It is available to download free or can be purchased through a number of online retailers. To find out more, please click on GreeningIT

This book has had contributions from a number of high-profile international representatives, including European Commissioner for Climate Action Connie Hedegaard who wrote the foreword. It is an internationally collaborative, creative commons licensed, non-profit project which was initiated by Adrian Sobotta, Irene Sobotta and John Gøtze.

It covers a number of topics on Green IT such as cloud computing, thin clients, Green ICT strategy, smart grids,  etc, and is definitely a must read.

Taken from the book ‘The aim of the book is to look into how Information Technology can support society in reducing CO2 emissions, saving energy and optimising resource utilisation – thus becoming greener and developing towards a low-carbon society‘.

Adrian Sobotta states

‘It is clear that the messages in the book put a lot of faith into technologies. Yet, technologies will not stand alone in this immense task that lies before us. Technology will take us only so far. Changing human behaviour and consumption patterns is the only real solution in the longer-term perspective”,  IT may support this task, by confronting us with our real-time consumption – for instance through Smart Grid and Smart Meters – thereby forcing some of us to realise our impact.

As I keep stressing myself, the theory is there but it is behavioural changes which need to be dealt with to ensure these are incorporated practically. That is where the challenge lies!  When any change is bought into an organisation, there needs to be an understanding of why it is needed, how it affects people and what people can do both individually and collaborativelyto ensure it is successful.

Well done to the team who have been instrumental in contributing and for helping to raise awareness of Green IT worldwide. The contributors (listed below) are situated in Denmark, United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, USA, Japan and Australia. Please see the company logo ‘collaborative’ – I say no more!

• Adrian Sobotta
• Ariane Rudiger
• Bianca Wirth
• Dominique Brack
• Flavio Souza
• George Arnold
• Hans M Moonen
• Irene Sobotta
• John Gøtze
• Laurent Liscia
• Rien Dijkstra
• Sean Whetstone

Many thanks to the authors for acknowledging Giving Time & Solutions in the Greening IT book.

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