The question is: do we need some new metrics and points of reference when it comes to the relationship between IT, its users, and its carbon foot-print? 

It is estimated that IT already has a carbon footprint as big as the airline industry – 2% of all carbon emissions. Somehow, that already seems a little low and not that unreasonable. After all, though many would argue about the aggravations caused by IT – Little Britain’s archetype: `the computer says “no”’ now being part of urban folklore  - its benefits-per-Kg of carbon is quite possibly better for most people than the aircraft – and most certainly will be in the future. 

More importantly, however, its carbon footprint is growing fast, while so far managing to avoid the public opprobrium now meted out to the airline business. So there is still time for the IT industry – vendors and users – to grasp the nettle of cutting energy consumption and reducing carbon foot-prints before the rest of the world notices the problem. 

Most of the big systems vendors are already trundling down this track, but there still seems a reluctance amongst users to readily jump on the bandwagon they are collectively pushing. Which is why the question arises about the need for new metrics that make the point to users more effectively. 

Sun Microsystems certainly seems to be thinking along this line, and is keen to use itself as an example. It has re-engineered its own technology and business procedures – for example, 40% of staff now work from home – and in the process has saved an estimated 29,000 tons of CO₂. This is important, but in IT usage terms perhaps a rather meaningless metric. Sun’s analogy - the equivalent of 500 planes flying round the world 10 times – doesn’t help much either: I suspect that equates to about an hour’s worth of global air travel (approximately 120,000 1 hour flights).  

A more directly obvious metric is the T5000 servers, which 10 years ago would need 128 servers in three racks, consuming 120 kW. Now it is one box using 1kW. More relevant still for many large businesses is the Sun Ray thin client, which has 5% of the energy use of a PC. With no moving parts it also has a lifecycle of 20 years or so – and all the intelligence is back at the server. And server technology is allowing significant growth in power and performance coupled to a reduction in footprint, cooling requirements and energy consumption. This combination can actually deliver growth in business service with a reduction in both energy costs and TCO, for there are also lower maintenance costs. 

For example, if a thin client uses only 5% of a PC’s energy, a large company with several thousand of them can afford to re-invest in newer, faster servers every five years, with each new server running more thin clients than the server it replaces? If the lifecycle of the thin clients is 20 years, that is four iterations of server development, each one capable of handling more client workloads than the last. Now the energy running cost per server is more than the cost of buying them, this is a model that allows users the flexibility to choose between a future of fewer servers delivery the same workload and the same number offering real growth potential.  

A specific example comes from Sun lifecycle management specialist partner, Bell Microsystems, and its customer, Rightmove. They replaced old servers with T1000 units which now deliver 500K page impressions/month with a energy saving of 92%, a similar saving on the physical footprint, and a saving of 9600 kgs of carbon/month. All must be useful at a time of a downturn in the housing market. 

What about road warriors and their need for laptops? Well Sun staff already come equipped with smart cards for Sun Ray clients, which is a model that can – with sufficient security and engineering – be extended to every hotel room at the very least. So there is a need for some new metrics for both users and vendors to work with. The ultimate figure, of course, is the overall cost of delivering relevant processes and services that are of definable value to the `user’ (business, organisation or individual) set against the cost of constructing the systems in the first place (ideally including the social costs of the impact on the raw materials excavation and processing), the costs of using and the increasingly important costs of disposal and savings of re-use. 

The need to change from bangs-per-buck to bangs-per-carbon/Kg. Define the relationship between CPU cycles/sec and what is being delivered. This is a lifecycle management issue every CIO is now facing - what application is used to meet a business requirement, how well is it written, how well the infrastructure is architected and implemented.