E-commerce sites generally do not need to have any shop
fronts in the real world and they are generally more tech-savvy
than traditional businesses. As such, you would expect
internet-based businesses to be green. But because they rely on
power-hungry servers, routers and storage arrays running 24/7, they
are increasingly coming under scrutiny over their green
credentials.
The papers were buzzing a few weeks ago when someone calculated
that
two searches on Google is equivalent to boiling a kettle to make a
cup of tea, although Google quickly rubbished the claims as far
too high.
The negative image of the previously clean web industries show
internet and e-commerce sites must work on their green
credentials.
In the Think
Ecological survey of 275 business professionals - sponsored by
the Business Performance Management Forum, Rackable Systems and
Intel - 97% say it is important for internet and e-commerce related
businesses to reduce their carbon footprint. Yet the report has
found that only a small percentage of budgets are allocated towards
green IT. Of internet and e-commerce businesses, 83% spend 10% or
less of their budget on purchasing and implementing environmental
IT. This weighting towards the bottom end of the budget could
signal one of two things: either companies do not see green IT as a
discreet line item or they are not funnelling substantial resources
towards the problem.
In spite of this, reducing power and cooling costs (79%) and
satisfying social responsibility commitments (78%) were by far the
top potential benefits of improved ecological practice, followed by
positive publicity (60%).
Virtualisation
Companies are keen to use
virtualisation, and server and equipment consolidation to
reduce the carbon footprint in their datacentres.
The study showed that the top ecological plans for the next year
mainly involve reducing printed documents (64%), virtualisation
(47%), consolidation (45%), and server efficiency (39%).
Times Warner is one company that has used virtualisation to cut
the number of servers in the business. In the report, Simon Tsiu,
IT director at Times Warner in Hong Kong, says, "For IT, one of the
most significant things we have done is server virtualisation to
save power and electricity. Through virtualisation, we have saved
about 100 servers since 2001. We have also extended PC life cycles
from three years to four years in an attempt to save equipment.
"Now we have an agreement with a partner to refurbish or recycle
parts of used equipment. We have also implemented a tapeless backup
system to reduce the number of physical tapes we actually use."
Thanks to developments in chip and server design, new hardware
is often far more energy efficient than the older machines it
replaces. One new server box can often do the job of several older
machines, and thanks to breakthroughs in server virtualisation,
servers can run multiple applications simultaneously.
With server virtualisation, businesses can consolidate the
servers in their datacentres, which reduces cost and lowers carbon
emissions. It looks like a win-win for e-commerce.
Source:Think Ecological