Teblog

Will sustainability turn BT Global Services' fortunes?

The IT or, to give it it's full name, the ICT industry has led a pretty charmed life. After being a participant for over forty three years, it amazes me that it still manages to buck trends; from ever more power at ever lower prices to the potential ability to steer the planet and its occupants from environmental disaster.

At least, that's the hope and the intention of the green IT industry. Manufacturers are gleefully chomping out and selling more and more ICT equipment, while claiming that the environmental savings accruing from its use will mightily offset the environmental harm caused by its manufacture, operation and the disposal of whatever it's replacing.

Of course, IT isn't the only game in town. Cleantech industries are working hard on coming up with new things (with their embedded environmental harm) to reduce our overall environmental impact. It's paradoxical and uncomfortable, but it seems we have to do some more harm in order to do even more good.

One company that has an interesting environmental programme is BT Global Services. It also wants to be seen as "the IT provider of choice". It plans to do this by raising the level at which it consults with businesses by using sustainability as a lens. It has the IT in the form of data centres, software and services. And it has the C, because its core business is communications.

Global Services has posted some ghastly results recently and is in the middle of a restructuring. Perhaps it sees 'sustainability' as an opportunity to improve matters for itself and for the environment.

Anyway, if pretty charts are anything to go by, its Sustainability Practice has a comprehensive approach to helping its customers build sustainable organisations. Like many large companies (IBM, Cisco, CA and HP are just four examples), it has drawn heavily on its own experience to formulate its guidance for customers. For example, an early step in the process is a carbon assessment. This focuses on people, power and procurement.

People commute and travel on business and they use laptops, personal printers and mobile devices, for example. Power is used in office devices and data centre equipment, as well as heating, lighting and cooling. Procurement includes third party services, hosted equipment, print services, transport and so on. These three elements are analysed according to the three 'Scopes' of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. (Scope I is the direct burning of fossil fuels. Scope II is electricity and the carbon created in using it. Scope III is indirect activity such as staff commuting.)

When you look at it this way, it seems obvious, but that's the deceptive thing about a simple framework.

Of course BT has a range of service offerings to match sustainability needs. And, as you might expect, substituting travel with communications looms large. And 'Homeshoring' is offered as a solution for UK contact centres. (With dog-cancelling microphones, perhaps?) The data centre hosting story is the usual one of greater carbon efficiency than a DIY approach.

The individual elements of the BT story aren't particularly original, but its telephony and networking pedigree hint at good service and security levels. It has many years of implementing sustainability initiatives with resulting business benefits. The savings it boasts sound huge, but these have to be considered in the context of BT's size (£21.4bn turnover last year). It saves £37m per year in travel costs and it saved £238m in one year through conferencing. It also reports a 20 percent productivity improvement from flexible working arrangements.

BT has spent years trying to muscle in on IT's turf. Now the industry really is ICT, perhaps this is the best chance it has. And, with the inevitable build up to December's Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, now seems to be a very good time for BTGS to set out its sustainability stall.

A virtual sustainability summit, or three

Now here's an idea that makes sense: a follow up to the Copenhagen Climate Conference in December. Or, to be more accurate, a series of follow ups, none of which requires much travel. A company called G2Events is putting on a series of three online conferences which include exhibit booths, presentations (from organisations small and large), telepresence-basd panel discussions, meeting rooms and downloadable materials. Called Sustainability Virtual Summits, it is entirely digital - totally in keeping with its name.

Each event has specific focus areas in order to maximise the chance of a meaningful exchange of views. The first, in February, will concentrate on virtualisation and dematerialisation and how ICT can get its own act together (my words, not the organiser's). The second, in May, concentrates on smart motor systems and smart logistics. The third, in August, looks at smart buildings, smart grids and water and sanitation. Each event concentrates on the role of ICT in delivering sustainability benefits.

Why should we have mini-summits following the big one in Copenhagen? Well, to be blunt, you can only achieve so much at these big events. If the delegates agree on a post-Kyoto protocol and all get their pictures taken looking pleased with themselves, (preferably while standing next to Barack Obama) then that's about it. The real work takes place in all the organisations that are obliged to live up to the greenhouse gas promises that eventually get made.

The truth, though, is that we're in disarray. For example, last week I looked at ten different carbon calculators. They gave ten different results. (Choose one and stick with it if you want to monitor your progress.) But wouldn't it be better if we could all agree on some standards? This is one of the reasons these follow up events have been brought into existence. Participants get a chance to review and discuss these and many other sustainability-related issues.

Each 'conference' will be a day long, covering three time zones. After the initial three days, the live debate will continue for 30 days. After that, all the material from the whole event will be left online for a further 90 days. In theory, this could become a substantial resource for anyone seeking a genuine understanding of the issues around ICT and sustainability. It would be nice to think that some global understanding will emerge. If positions polarise, at least everyone can see what's going on and know where further effort needs to be applied. Hopefully a lot of bonding will take place among movers and shakers around the world.

The trick will be to get the right people to attend. As anyone who's visited Second Life will attest, that experience can be quite unpleasant. The virtual summits promise to be very different. They are photo-realistic for a start. A little bit of downloading takes place before you get into the conference so, presumably, a lot of  the rendering is done inside your own computer. A company called Design Reactor takes care of the technical aspects and, looking at some event work it did for Hewlett Packard, the omens are good. You can also see a dummy of the Sustainability Summit site here.

Although this is a commercial activity, its heart seems to be in the right place. It is independent. It has some good sponsoring organisations. Exhibitor booths don't cost very much. It's going for a smallish audience - around 5,000 quality visitors drawn from CSR/sustainability execs, c-level, data centre managers, supply chain, product development, finance and marketing. It seems like a good event to drop in on during the 30 day 'discussion period'. I'm guessing that this where the fun will begin. It's also where people with implementation experience will be able to contribute their insights.

Values-based messaging tackles the green gulf

Abraham Maslow's 'Hierarchy of Needs' was one of the first models that helped me make sense of life and our individual journeys through it. That was in 1975. Little did I know that an even better understanding, from Dr Clare W Graves, had been published just the year before. In its new 'Cracking the Green Code' report, Ecoalign applied Dr Graves' research to what it calls 'the green gap' - the gulf that exists between stated beliefs and environmental actions. Fortunately, the theory is more useful than that, because it can be applied in any situation where mental resistance is high and desired behaviour is low.
All manner of people and institutions are banging the green drum in the hope that they'll induce mass behavioural change. But it's not working very well. "Al Gore", the Ecoalign report says, "did a terrific job of demonstrating the horrible hell that humans will create..." but goes on to say, "Unfortunately, he spent far less time creating an inspired, credible, vision for our collective future."
Somehow the green issue has to be turned around so that, according to the report, "it occurs to target audiences as an exciting opportunity to further their own pre-existing life goals and aspirations'. And this is where Dr Graves comes in. He spent 40 years researching, then mapping, the human psyche in a way that still makes sense even as our behaviours evolve. He identified eight levels of thinking that operate in the world today. At the moment, in North America, four of these levels predominate. They are: Absolutistic, Individualistic, Humanistic and Systemic. A fifth, Holistic, is currently emerging. By understanding each of these, you understand the majority of the developed world. The others are included in the Ecoalign report.
Here's an overview of the four mentioned:

Absolutistic (20% of US)
Life theme: Sacrifice self now to receive future reward
Core values: Discipline, authority and purpose
Goal: Find peace and meaning in this world by denying impulses and upholding moral laws
Perception-shaping metaphor: Life is a test
Key messaging tactic: Call to duty

Individualistic (30% of US)
Life theme: Express self for what self desires, but in a calculated fashion so as to avoid bringing down the wrath of important others
Core values: Accomplishment, power, profit
Goal: Achieve success and influence in this life by strategically manipulating desired outcomes
Perception-shaping metaphor: Life is a game. The world is a machine.
Key messaging tactic: Call to action

Humanistic (30% of US)
Life theme: Sacrifice self now in order to gain acceptance now
Core values: Equality, honesty, relatedness
Goal: To find happiness in this life, in this moment, by relating deeply to other humans
Perception-shaping metaphor: Humans are a family
Key messaging tactic: Call to imagine. Call to compassion.

Systemic (10-15% of US)
Life theme: Express self for what self desires and others need, but never at the expense of others, and in a manner that all life can continue to exist
Core values: Integrity, competence, sustainability
Goal: To restore vitality and balance to a world torn asunder
Perception-shaping metaphor: Life is a system
Key messaging tactic: Call to innovate. Call to service.

From the above, you can no doubt start to slot people you know, or know of, into the different categories. It's little wonder, then, that blanket exhortations don't get us very far. Whatever we're trying to push, whether it's green IT, social computing or electric cars, we need to be able to segment our audience effectively and appeal to the appropriate inner drivers.
The report goes on to explain how it tested the theories by mapping expected values of a group of individuals against actual values by showing them some utility industry video vignettes. While this is unlikely to be central to readers of this blog, it does serve to set the research into a real world context.
But a lot of the report is about the 'what' you need to do, rather than the 'how'. But then this is probably what Ecoalign and the report's author, John Marshall Roberts, are on this earth for: to help with that bit. This in no way diminishes the insights it gives to the ways in which the people around us might be thinking and to how we might adjust our approaches to better match their internal realities.

If you're interested, this blog post by Christopher C. Cowan and Natasha Todorovic throws more light on the works of Graves and Maslow

Car scrappage and computer replacement

Well the chancellor has spoken and, frankly, I feel fairly unmoved. I'm no economist, so I'm not going to pretend I have the faintest idea how this country's going to get out of the clag it's sunk into. Nothing in the budget is going to reverse the trillion or so we've stolen from the public to give to financial institutions. As an individual, I actually fear for the future and for that of my children and grandchildren. Let's hope they find somewhere better to live.
One thing I'd like to comment on because I feel I have some understanding is the business of car scrappage. Talk of it being a green measure is claptrap, it's an attempt to bribe people into rescuing the car industry. Dealers in particular, I presume, because most people I know drive foreign cars and, even if they look British, they've probably been made somewhere else.
The problems are many, but the main one is that dealers have been offering whacking great discounts and they've not been able to shift cars. The one small temptation is that if you have a car over ten years old (with an MOT - so why change it?) that's worth a few hundred quid, it's now worth two thousand. But if you can get a multi-thousand pound discount from a car dealer anyway, why should you or the dealer go through the inevitable bureaucratic hassle associated with the government scheme?
The important thing, and this is where it impinges on IT, is that, as usual, no-one's thinking about the lifecycle carbon costs of all this activity (assuming it even gets off the ground). A new car has to be made and an old one scrapped. Has anyone considered the carbon cost of this activity? If the government really is concerned about the planet (the 34% carbon reduction by 2020 suggests it is) then why the heck is it encouraging such emissions?
I have a 12 year old car. I use it rarely, preferring my legs or the tube, but I do use it for those journeys which are impractical by other means. It has a two litre engine so it probably chucks out some carbon. But I can't justify buying a new car on the basis of carbon saving because I know that the bigger picture (making and scrapping cars) is much more damaging to the environment.
And so it is with IT equipment. So many people are pushing green this and that and talking about the carbon savings, but how many of them consider the lifecycle carbon cost of what's being bought and junked? Not to mention the raw materials, chemicals and water that go into their manufacture.
I'm not a tree hugger or a do gooder but it seems to me that we need more than lip service paid to the idea of sustainability. Or we need to be more honest - admit that we don't believe the global warming/spoilt earth stories and we're just going to enjoy ourselves for as long as we can.
Me? I'll be voting with the sustainability lot.

Align green and business strategy, or fail

Call me an idiot if you like, but I fell for one of the oldest tricks in the book this morning. A few weeks ago, a colleague forwarded what looked like an interesting invitation from Infor to watch some webinars. My response was to wonder to my colleague why Infor hadn't written to me directly since it knew me. But all this was forgotten as I finally got round to doing something about it.

Here are the opening few lines of the invite:

We invite you to learn more about Green Initiatives

Two thought provoking webinars, sponsored by CFO Europe and Infor, available to view now

CFO Europe and Infor recently sponsored two webinars addressing green issues: "Green Strategy and the CFO: At the Crossroads between Profitability and Sustainability" and "Environmental Performance Management: How CFOs Contribute to the Green Strategy".

I'd taken a briefing from one of the speakers in January and thought this was a chance to catch up. All was going swimmingly until I noticed a spelling mistake on one of the slides, the very mistake I'd pointed out in the January meeting. Then it dawned on me, the 'recent' webinar was no such thing. It was recorded last November.

Oh well. In for a penny, as they say...

If you're interested in nailing the business drivers for green initiatives and you're fairly new to the subject, you'll get some value out of watching the webinars. There's a little bit of subtle selling but, in the main, the speakers play with a straight bat. (I didn't watch the second, but I assume the quality is similar to the first.)

A key learning is that organisations which treat their green, or sustainability, strategy as somehow separate to their business strategy are probably setting themselves up to fail on both counts. The two need to be integrated for the best overall results. In fact, we're really talking about integrating corporate social responsibility (CSR) which should incorporate green strategies.

The CFO was chosen as the focus because they are the custodians of corporate information. They own the budget, they have influence in all departments, and so on. They are well placed to provide or withhold funding according to the likely impact on the balance sheet of any investments, green or otherwise.

When the audience (at the original webinar) was asked what practical impact green awareness had on their organisations, most identified 'process improvement' as the major impact. This suggests that existing processes were improved rather than 'rip and replace' major investments made. Very few - around three percent - identified 'cost cutting' as a benefit, a fact that astonished the speakers. They couldn't see how reducing energy use could fail to cut costs. One of the speakers suggested that the 'either/or' polling mechanism might have been the cause of the surprise.

When it comes to implementing an environmental strategy, the key is to link it to organisational objectives - financial returns or benefit to stakeholders, for example. Gross margin could link to energy use or market share to customer perception.

Failure is usually either the result of lack of funding or lack of communication. If the funding is tied to specific actions which result in future success then it will be, itself, sustainable. Effective communication to employees and stakeholders needs no expansion here.

The audience was asked to vote on barriers to success. Way out ahead of all others (at 63 percent) was 'other competing priorities', which simply reinforces the need for linking investments to organisational goals. One of the speakers warned about starting too many key initiatives. Twenty to thirty would be plenty. Definitely not hundreds - this is the sort of thing that results from attempting to implement every 'good idea', rather than filtering out all but the most impactful.

Legislation is coming, it's still a bit muddly, but this will change the business case because, although voluntary in the early stages, it will eventually impact the bottom line, for better or for worse. This is expected to bite within four years.

The one thing that always bothers me about these presentations is that the supply chain is largely ignored when it comes to the question of equipment replacement. One of the speakers mentioned first year write downs of certain conforming equipment purchases: a fine incentive to invest in green equipment. But no-one ever seems to address the embedded environmental footprint of the new equipment and that of disposal of the old. It seems to me that, by using the business as the boundary of environmental calculations, totally wrong decisions can be made in the context of the planet as a whole.

Or am I missing something?

Gloomy outlook from BT/Independent's SustainIT forum

Yesterday's forum run by BT and the Independent was a culmination of a 'multi-channel media campaign' called SustainIT. The forum promised to 'explore the potential of ICT solutions to help businesses reduce their environmental footprint'. And it promised to talk about 'how to empower the developing world.'

What it actually did was frighten the audience witless and provide it with some virtual hatches to batten down.

Frightener-in-chief was Tony Juniper, environmental activist, ex-director of Friends of the Earth and the Green Party's candidate for Cambridge. As you might imagine, from someone who's been beating the environmental drum for many years and who had a major hand in creating the Climate Change Act, we have no time to lose.

Among other things, he pointed out that the temperature-rise effects of our behaviour take 30 years to show up in the atmosphere, which means we're already deeply in the clag. Later in the session, Michael McCarthy, the Independent's environmental editor, reckoned our actions to date have already committed us to a 1.4 degree rise. Juniper pointed out that the most recent records show that the past three years have been even worse than the worst predictions.

He showed a chart from the Stern Review of the consequences of temperature rises on various elements of our environment. If the predictions are correct, everything starts going pear-shaped at two degrees:

The next speaker, Charles Leadbeater, is author of We-think and was introduced as "Tony Blair's favourite thinker". Not something designed to go down well with an audience whose politics were unknown. Despite this, he struck an encouraging note, suggesting that technology (including the web) could be mobilised to tackle some of the issues raised by Juniper: dematerialisation in the form of eliminating travel and using screens to collaborate/meet; and, sharing knowledge about solutions online so that the physical work can be done locally using indigenous materials.

He likes the way that the web can make lateral connections in new ways. He does, however, see that the creative solutions that will be invented to sort ourselves out will cause significant change and turmoil. He believes that we need to look both backward to pre-industrial times, at our old ways of organising and commmunicating, as well as forwards to a different kind of future.

The other speakers - Chris Tuppen, BT's Chief Sustainability Officer, and Hamish McRae, the Independent's Chief Economic Commentator, tried to focus on the positive but the backdrop of gloom was fairly palpable. They talked of efficiencies and savings that were possible but, overall, the sense was that bad things were happening and good things, in the sense of proper political leadership, weren't.

Everyone saw the upcoming Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December as a crucially important meeting. The hope is that the participants will lay the foundation for a low carbon recovery from our present financial woes. But this requires political will of a high order.

Reading between the lines, it would seem that many senior politicians still haven't realised that their previous, perhaps lifelong, concerns have been trumped by this new reality. When our own government cut VAT, it sent out a signal to 'buy more' which wasn't a remotely environmentally friendly message. This futile gesture did nothing for sales but it cost the government billions in lost revenue. Imagine if that money had been targeted at home insulation, or something else that would have cut energy use and, for the beneficiaries, their electricity bills.

Hope flickered intermittently, as speakers talked about intelligent grids, cutting consumption rather than increasing generation, electric cars and carbon capture. But, without the drive from the top, as in that shown by a Churchill or a Kennedy (and a corresponding willingness by businesses and the public to be led), then we would appear to be facing a very uncertain future.

Technology will undoubtedly play its part but what's really needed is a dramatist to write a new script. And quickly.

Green IT for Dummies: HP/Freeform Dynamics special edition

If you were one of the early readers of this post and you had trouble downloading, please try again. HP has improved the download process. You can just answer section 1 then skip to 3.

Eleven months ago, to the day, Freeform Dynamics and Wiley put the wheels in motion for a green IT for Dummies mini book. Somewhere along the line, Hewlett Packard offered to sponsor it and we're delighted to say that it's now officially available as an online download.

Or, to quote from HP's forthcoming announcement, "Copies of the book were already handed to out to people at the European Sustainable Energy Week and due to the positive success and feedback HP is making a limited number of pocket books available online to download."

Physical copies of the book will continue to be given out at appropriate conferences and exhibitions and, indeed, Freeform Dynamics has its own small stock. But, given that this is a book on environmental sustainability, the idea of downloading it and reading it online has a certain resonance.

The pocket book's very readable, 'Dummies-style', 28 pages look at how IT can reduce its own environmental impact and that of the organisations it serves. Apart from the main story, it also contains case studies, checklists and helpful links.

The chapter headings are: Gearing Up to Go Green; Cleaning Up IT; Greening Your Organisation; Changing Staff Attitudes and Taking Action; and, Ten Greenspirational Links.

If you're wondering whether it's for you, perhaps these assumptions about the readers will help:

You hold a senior position in an organisation (whether large, medium or small) and are wondering how to maintain or even improve performance while following a more sustainable environmental agenda.

You hold a senior position in the IT department and are wondering how to reduce your energy consumption, your general environmental impact and help the organisation meet its environmental goals.

You’re a concerned employee who feels that your organisation could do more for the environment.

The book was written by three analysts (me, Martin Atherton and Tony Lock) from Freeform Dynamics to ensure a comprehensive and pragmatic coverage of the subject. HP was very supportive but the book was independently written.

We hope, if your own profile matches one of those above, that you will find this guide a useful starting point for your own journey towards environmental sustainability.

Cisco and NASA to save the planet?

You can't beat a good slogan for grabbing attention. And, to prove it, here I am writing about Cisco's and NASA's 'Planetary Skin', a global monitoring system to look at environmental conditions around the world, with a particular focus on carbon and climate change.
The idea is to grab real-time environmental information from every form of sensor, space-, air- and surface-based, and digest and deliver it in a way that will help companies, governments, decision-makers at the international level make better-informed decisions about climate change and about the development of a decarbonized economy.
The project rang loud and horrible bells in my head. Didn't I write about something similar some 20 years ago? Yes, it was a column in PC Dealer about the United Nations Environment Programme which was establishing a Global Resource Information Database (GRID) to 'gather and analyse information from space and ground stations about changes in climate and renewable natural resources.' On this occasion, IBM was whacking in millions of dollars' worth of equipment and software.
Sound familiar? So what's different? Well, it appears that the 'Planetary Skin' is primarily focused on carbon. It aims to look at both carbon emissions and carbon sinks across the globe. Simon Willis is Cisco's VP for public sector practice in the internet business solutions group which is leading the project. In a podcast, he pointed out that rain forests are being cut down at a rate equivalent to an area the size of England each year, a rate that is speeding up. He suggests that this is "probably the second-largest contributor to global greenhouse gases." He adds, "probably the most urgent task facing us globally at the moment, when looking at how to tackle climate change, is to reverse the incredible decline in rainforests."
This is the not unreasonable justification for starting the project there. It also happens to be technically easier than tackling urban or semi-urban environments, which are lower down the agenda.
What bothers me, more than a little, is that Cisco and NASA are bolstering their own businesses to give us a finer-grained view of what we know already. And have known for many years. Otherwise, Planetary Skin wouldn't have known where to start. Isn't the issue the horribly practical one of getting people on the ground to change their ways? This requires political and financial manoeuvring of a very high order.
We can cloak the earth in all these marvellous technologies, and inform people to the nth degre. But isn't it a bit like an obese hospital patient being told exactly what's going on in their body and being told how they should change their lifestyle yet, on leaving hospital, they head straight back to the kebab shop?
We actually know in our hearts that living a sustainable life is in the best interests of humankind. We have more than 20-years'-worth of evidence about what's going on, environmentally speaking. My fear is that this project will end up as a re-run of the Strategic Defence Initiative (Reagan's son of Star Wars). A fantastic idea, plugs into the fears of the day, gets masses of funding, but fizzles out as reality bites.
Can someone tell me I'm wrong?

CA sets out its sustainability stall

Imagine my joy when a 3.1MB pdf from CA landed on my digital desk. When I realised the filename was sustainability-report.pdf,  I got interested. As a fairly avid supporter of sustainability (I won't bore you just now, but you might want to look here and here) I thought, "Great, CA is another vendor which is taking this environmental stuff seriously." Either that, or I had to brace myself for a big bucket of greenwash.

At first glance, I was disappointed. It starts off as a conventional report about the company and doesn't give environmental sustainability a proper look-in until page 50. I thought this odd, but then remembered that sustainability is not just about the environment. If you can't sustain your business, then you can't do much for the people in it, its customers, the community or the wider world. Or, as the report summarises, "sustainability incorporates environmental responsibility, economic prosperity and social accountability."

The details of the report matter little here (you can read it yourself). Suffice it to say that CA is looking at its own business and it has taken some actions, reported some of its behaviour to the Carbon Disclosure Project and others and is planning further actions. It is also applying what it learns to the development of products and services for its customers which will start to become available in the spring.

This is the first time that CA has 'come clean' on sustainability issues. Unlike many other companies that have been banging the environmental drum for a while now, it was either watching and waiting or it couldn't see the point of publicising its fifty or so existing environmental initiatives. Then, just over a year ago, it decided to create an overarching sustainability strategy for the company world-wide. The report is the first major public evidence of the journey the company has taken, although the subject did get a couple of airings at CA World in November.

(At this point, a small confession. As a journalist, I was conditioned to be primarily interested in new and different stuff. In this previous life, I would have been tempted to ignore CA for being so late to the sustainability party. Now, in my life as an analyst, I realise that everyone turns up to any particular party at a different time. This doesn't make them less welcome. Lesson learned.)

So, back to CA. Perhaps because it arrived at the need for a cohesive sustainability strategy later than others, it has been able to take a more holistic approach than most. Steve Boston, VP of sustainability strategy, explained to Freeform Dynamics that his primary consideration was to "protect and nurture all resources needed to stay in business." This covers: environment - air, water, power for the data centre, and so on; social - the people needed to build, sell and buy; and economic - top line, bottom line and governance. Only after taking care of the business can global citizenship be addressed.

We talked about Al Gore - big tick for raising awareness, big cross for the nebulousness of the climate change challenge, which makes CEOs and CIOs feel relatively powerless. A tick for carbon trading and a cross for carbon taxes. Steve Boston has spent a year closely engaged in the subject and has emerged with some clear ideas of what he thinks will work in the business world and what will not.

CA starts its thinking in its traditional area, the data centre, but don't expect it to stop there. The goal will be to create automated management systems that can react in real time to current conditions. In September, it introduced a solution internally called CA Green Governance, "to help prioritize our sustainability initiatives, keep projects on track and monitor risk, compliance, cost, timelines and measurement." It's early days for the company, but its intention is to refine the product in the light of the company's own experiences then make it a customer offering. You'll find details on page 60 of the report.

While the company's individual green initiatives detailed in the report are interesting in themselves, the more important aspect of the CA story is that it is focusing on sustainability in the round. While the drivers for its own actions and its planned products and services are strictly commercial, the benefits are intended to accrue to both the business and to the wider environment.

Greening the data centre

In the process of digging around the 'greening' of data centres (no, don't laugh), I ran into the boss of Migration Solutions, one Alex Rabbetts. By a weird coincidence, his Surrey office is more or less exactly on the spot where my computer department was in the early seventies, when I first started taking 'sustainability' seriously.

In those days, I was inspired by E F Schumacher's "Small is Beautiful" book. I was further motivated by the country's oil supply shortages, not to mention the fact that my company made stuff from hydrocarbons. And then, to put the tin hat on it, Ted Heath forced us into a three-day working week.

It made me dream of a better world in which we consumed less and thought more about our environmental impact. I embarked on a journey which, due to a number of side-tracks, took 29 years to bring me to a meaningful destination, environment-wise: involvement in a huge sustainability project, primarily with the Science Museum.

During the past fifteen months, I've been applying this experience to the IT world through my work with analyst firm, Freeform Dynamics. We knew from the start that IT was both a contributor to environmental damage and an enabler of savings elsewhere. We also knew from our research that companies are not turned on by doing green things for their own sake. They are primarily interested in money, appearances and regulation.

Alex Rabbetts not only came to the same conclusions himself, but he added an environmental assessment service to his data centre building, consultancy and operations company. If you have a data centre of less than ten thousand square feet, his firm will conduct a fixed price assessment for £2,500, an amount he would "normally" expect a client to recover in three or four weeks. The assessment looks at 120 different factors which have an environmental impact.

He knows that no data centre can be green, but most of them can be greener.

Unlike hardware vendors, whose natural instinct is to get you to replace kit, Migration Solutions is independent of vested interests (apart from its own) and can usually find plenty of improvements without touching the hardware. The company looks at the whole environment, including things like noise, light and waste, as well as power. It triages its findings into things which can be done for nothing, things which require a bit of expenditure and things which can wait until the next refurb'.

He takes into account regulations, both current and upcoming and warns that companies with over, say, 50 racks* could be pushed into the arms of the government's upcoming Carbon Reduction Commitment legislation. Initially, this will apply to any company on half-hour metering that uses more than 6,000MWh of electricity per annum.

DEFRA's website currently claims that companies spending more than £1M on electricity could find themselves subject to this regulation. Both Rabetts and I remember the figure being £500,000 just a few weeks ago. And a quick Google of '500,000 crc site:www.defra.gov.uk' brings up bunch of pages with the old number on it.

It very much looks as if the government has taken the pétard of fluctuating energy prices and hoisted itself with it. Either that or it realised that, at £500,000, its catchment would overwhelm the regulatory system.

But, whether you're liable or not, it might be worth taking a look at Migration Solutions' service. It is pragmatically focused on environmental principles with the by-products of potentially saving money, looking good and being prepared for regulations when they head your way.

*My calculations went something like this:

Assume a rack is 5KWh
Double it to 10KWh for cooling and other infrastructure energy costs
Now multiply by 24 then by 365 to give an annual 87.6MWh
Approximately 68.5 racks would put you in reach of the CRC regulations

I said 50 because your organisation is bound to have non-IT energy bills too.