Green IT: How far is the Indian corporate ready to go? |
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By Jasmine Desai, Principal Correspondent
21 Dec 2009 | SearchDataCenter.in |
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As delegations from 192 countries sit at
Copenhagen amidst talks for a new global treaty, it must be said that
green is the way to go. All the more so, since the Data
Center
Purchasing Intentions Survey carried out by the
SearchDataCenter.in team over a period of 60 days on various facets of
IT purchasing decisions by Indian enterprise IT users support these
views. Going by the IT budgets allotted for 2010, it's obvious that
Indian companies are seriously concerned about being
environmentally-savvy. Despite this interest, the survey shows that
India still has a long way to go before competing with more developed
countries. Though most Indian organizations are gung-ho about green
IT, changing the current infrastructure or tweaking it to suit
green technology will take more time.
While India has willingly accepted the need to take
the green IT route, experimenting with new technologies calls for more
technology spends. Little wonder, that only 27.2% of Indian businesses
have implemented power-saving technologies like hot
aisle
or cold aisle containment.
With power outages common to Indian cities and
towns, 77% of the surveyed Indian companies feel that there is a dire need
to
reduce power consumption in the data center. Another reason is
also the pressure from their respective business units (in 78% of
cases, it is the corporate that foots the power bill), since the power
bill (for IT included) is usually billed to the corporate. Compare this
to organizations in the US and UK, where business units usually don't
pay the data center power bills.
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India Inc is reluctant to spend on new power saving technologies. So 2010 is more likely to witness spends on improving air conditioning efficiency or activating the power down feature on servers.
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For that matter, even liquid
cooling has been deployed by only 19.5% of the surveyed
organizations. About 28.2% of CIOs have deployed air-side
or
water-side economizers, though. Free
cooling
as a concept is still new in India, and only large
organizations have opted for it. This, because, using air-side or
water-side economizers requires additional infrastructure.
There is also a general reluctance towards spends on
new power saving technologies. So 2010 is more likely to witness spends
on improving air conditioning efficiency (63% of organizations) or
activating the power down feature on servers (51.3%). This is largely
because Indian companies find it hard to justify new capital
expenditure costs to the finance teams.
The scenario is much more rosier when it comes to
green servers. In 2010, a significant chunk of investments will be made
towards buying energy-efficient servers (for 54% of surveyed Indian
businesses) and server
virtualization (41%). The driver behind these initiatives is
savings on the space and power fronts. For 32% of Indian IT decision
makers, saving power is the driving factor for server purchases.
While CIOs show a definite interest in going green,
it comes at a price. It will still take a while before we see more
Indian organizations becoming aggressive on the green IT front.
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