Posted by NaviSite Quarterly

By Rathin Sinha, Chief Marketing Officer 

Environment friendliness is no more a mere socially responsible gesture but an urgent need in today’s world. With rising reliability on information technology and greater emphasis on ‘Going Green’, the businesses are exploring ways to use IT for greening their operations. NaviSite moves along the green path with multiple initiatives that offer a combination of economic and environmental benefits to the customers.

Going green with technology: The possibilities 

With organizations across industries facing newer challenges to save the planet, the green talk is going beyond the boardrooms. The environmental challenges like reducing the carbon emissions, lowering energy consumption, and meeting strict environmental regulations are spurring the organizations to walk the green talk. Technology offers innovative ways to meet the environmental imperatives while helping companies build a sustainable future. Green IT possibilities extend across a company’s entire operations gamut – both external and internal.

Here are some key enterprise-wide green initiatives…are these part of your green agenda?

• Controlling material spend
• Adopting energy efficiency measures such as moving to a green data center
• Measuring your carbon footprint
• Using technology to manage product lifecycle and supply chain so that you create green products and services
• Adopting eco-friendly technologies such as Virtualization to eliminate server sprawl
• Purchasing IT products that meet environmental standards and perform multiple functions
• Recycling
• Telecommuting
  …and even switching off PCs when not in use and sharing desktop printers!

 Looking for a good reason to go green? 

Most organizations are going green because their customers and competitors are, but this is just one of the triggers. According to a recent research by IDC, most of the companies have just jumped onto the green IT bandwagon either because of the environmental mandates issued by the regulatory bodies or as part of their marketing strategy.

Another significant trigger for going green is cost. Contrary to the belief that going green is expensive, there are certain green initiatives, which if done right, can transform into cost and material savings. In the long term, every green IT initiative delivers technology solutions faster, efficiently, and cost-effectively – which is good for your organization, your bottom line, and your customers. For example, think that instead of using eight servers with 10% utilization, you switch to virtualization where one system works with 80% utilization – saving you hardware resources, power, cooling, and space, which further lowers your capital and operating cost by 30-50%, and you offer your customers a cost advantage. So, green is certainly good!

The reasons for going green can be many, but the common objective is to build a sustainable future for your business and save the planet. So, next time you hear about green IT, think of your business.

 Tread the green path with NaviSite! 

At NaviSite, we are helping our customers leverage the green technologies that align the climate and cost advantage. As a leading managed hosting and application services provider and a member of the Green Grid, we offer green data centers with environment-friendly equipment and software that reduce the energy consumption needed for cooling by more than 20% over conventional methods. We deploy virtualization technologies that reduce the power consumption as well as server sprawl – ensuring cost savings as well as eco-efficiency.

If you have any questions or need more information on Green IT, please contact the author of this article at rsinha@navisite.com.

Posted by NaviSite

You might have heard a lot about ‘Green IT’ already, but it is surely not a passing fad. Especially with environmental issues flashing on the radar screen of organizations of all sizes and industries around the globe, it has become a reality today. The question is: how many of us are going beyond the talk and actually treading this green path? 

Before we answer this, let’s understand what is Green IT. Simply speaking, it is all about getting innovative in using your IT resources and strategies optimally to make the world cleaner and energy-efficient. It is about taking IT decisions that reduce environmental impacts such as pollution, carbon emissions, e-waste, and the unsustainable use of energy resources. With escalating energy and carbon costs, global climate changes, and stringent environmental and fiscal regulations, organizations across industries are actively seeking ways to reduce their carbon footprint – be it switching over to alternative energy, redesigning their buildings, creating more eco-friendly products, or altering their internal business processes. And IT has a pivotal role in helping them achieve their ‘low carbon’ objectives for greater environmental and business sustainability.  

IT organizations have responded to the environmental needs with multiple ‘greenovations’ – such as creating a green data center design to achieve cooling, processor data storage, and energy efficiency, using virtualization technologies, adopting eco-friendly hardware, going carbon-neutral, and urging others to ‘think green’. According to a recent Gartner research, by 2009, more than one-third of IT organizations will have one or more environmental criteria in their top six buying criteria for IT-related goods and services. The ‘green’ approach further extends to proactively creating IT tools and services needed to drive the eco-efficiency of enterprises – be it enabling remote collaboration using technologies such as videoconferencing and telepresence, tracking energy consumption and emission levels, enabling recycling, or creating eco-friendly processes to meet their business objectives.  

We at NaviSite are keeping pace with the green momentum through multiple initiatives. We are a part of The Green Grid – the global consortium of leading IT companies dedicated to raising energy efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems. Our data centers use the equipment and proprietary monitoring software that cuts the energy consumption needed for cooling by more than 20% over conventional methods. We use virtualization and cooling technologies to offer a more energy-efficient, green environment to customers.

While going green has an attached cost, it is believed the long-term dividend you reap is worth much more than the spend. In today’s downturn economy, are the enterprises willing to pay this premium for ‘Green IT’? 

Posted by NaviSite

As we announced news of a major European customer to usher in our 18th state-of-the-art data center in the United Kingdom, The Green Grid decided to feature NaviSite and its innovative work in data center management in its Member Spotlight.

NaviSite joined The Green Grid in 2007, the same year the organization was founded, to adopt industry-wide standards for best practices, metrics, and technologies for improving data center efficiencies. Composed of the leading IT and web-centric companies, The Green Grid facilitates and promotes the adoption of energy efficient standards, processes, measurements, and technologies in data center management. Read more…