There is no doubting the steady ascendance of CIOs up the ranks as drivers for some of the key organisational agendas, green being one of them. But, what also cannot be denied is the fact that more often than not they are relegated to the periphery. With IT becoming one of the major contributors to an organisation’s carbon footprint, the role of CIOs in the green battle has became more prominent than ever. And, while they might never become the all-encompassing harbingers of all initiatives green, it’s about time CIOs became the organisation’s ‘Green Crusaders’.

Making A Difference Beyond IT

As per some industry estimates, IT contributes to around 4-5 % of global emissions. Hence, CIO as the IT leader does and can play a key role, be it consolidation, virtualisation, green datacentres, optimising efficiency of IT assets, or even disposal of IT waste. Over next 2-3 years, as proliferation of IT expands even further, CIOs will be seen as playing an even greater role.

For some experts, IT’s role today is not restricted to its immediate domain alone and extends to touch upon and make a difference to the other domains. As Vijay Sethi, VP– IT, Hero Honda points out, IT can play a crucial role even in non-IT areas to help organisations reduce carbon emissions. He cites a few examples - to make a two wheeler even more fuel efficient the design simulations of the same are done using IT based systems. Similarly, to help reduce emissions during driving, IT based training, simulators and tips can tell drivers about better driving habits. While these areas may not directly fall under its purview, IT does play a key role in these today. Similarly, for operations within the organisation - IT plays a key role in reducing paper by workflows and automation, reducing travel by introducing collaboration software, video conferencing, tele-presence, etc.

Not Alone

As CIOs start reaching out to organisational areas that were traditionally beyond their control, their contribution to the green drive has intensified and their position within the organisation as the driver for green initiatives has surely moved a few notches up. But, the CIO is yet to be seen as the primary force. For VK Bansal, Group CIO at Luminous Power Technologies, the CIO is becoming the primary driver for green initiatives within an organisation to some extent but not fully.

According to Suneel Aradhye, CIO, Essar Steel, if one only considers the office environment then definitely the CIO is the key driver to initiate a green approach in the organisation, but at a manufacturing plant the scenario is completely different, where there are factors like energy and water consumption where the CIO is not directly involved. “In a plant we do help with setting up the right tool for capturing of data. But, in an office the CIO has a bigger role to play and can make decisions to initiate green IT by taking appropriate measures,” he explains.

On the other hand, Sethi believes that CIO is a key driver but not the only driver for green initiatives in an organisation. “Being green is not just about Green IT. It has to be all encompassing and every senior leadership member has to take ownership of this. One of the members of leadership team (and it can be the CIO) can be the co-ordinator of activities but each member has to be a driver, and only then such initiatives succeed,” he adds.

As a result, in many cases the CIO might not be the first and foremost point of contact for the top management for all green related issues, including those extending beyond the purview of IT. The environment, heath and safety, sustainability officers are some of the most likely candidates for that. Having said that, it will not be wrong to add that there has been a sea change in the top management’s recognition of the CIO’s efforts and role. “As regards accepting CIO in driving the initiatives, it varies from organisation to organisation and is a collaborative effort in most organisations,” says Sethi.

The Evolution Continues

It’s not only about evolving perceptions, but also about the evolution in the nature of the CIOs’ role. According to Naveen Mishra, Principal Research Analyst at Gartner, CIOs are definitely driving more critical green initiatives as opposed to earlier and there is a shift in the CIO’s perspective when it comes to green IT and reducing carbon footprint. “This began from being socially responsible and moved on in bringing sustainability in the organisation and reducing cost,” he explains.

Lessons From The Green Book

So, what are some of the areas where IT is already impacting or has the potential to bring about significant impact. For a majority of CIOs, datacentre forms the fulcrum of the green initiatives.

“Organisations today have large datacentres, so clearly if a CIO manages to reduce its power consumption, the cooling requirements they can really minimise their overall power consumption for their environment,” says Mishra. Efforts on the datacentre side include virtualisation.

However, as Vivekanand Venugopal, Vice President & General Manager, India, Hitachi Data Systems, points out CIOs are following the old norm of just consolidating the datacentre by controlling the cooling and saving the power consumption and that they should change the method of tackling this situation by making an efficient inventory, which includes power saving, physical security, operational procedures and storage configurations of the datacentre.

Cloud computing is another emerging area that can help maximise the impact. According to Bansal, offloading IT workloads to a cloud can help organisations gain significant efficiencies. Other initiatives include mobility, Unified Communications, transitioning from CRTs to TFTs, moving towards paperless office, and so on.

Mishra believes that while CIOs have implemented smart technologies like cloud computing, virtualisation and mobility, what they need to do is make a strategic plan to use these services for a longer term, and also initiate some rules and regulations within the organisation as code of ethics to encourage green IT.

According to Sethi, an area which is nascent today is disposal of old equipment, batteries, etc, but as IT and device proliferation increases further this will become critical While organisations have started working on this there is still some way to go.

Future Relevance

The moot question is whether these initiatives undertaken and planned by CIOs today will be relevant 5-10 years down the line as well. The initiatives would continue, though nature and focus will change as regards specific areas to be targeted, believes Sethi. As we progress in future, these technologies are going to be much more relevant. Today there is no regulation of maintaining a certain level of power consumption or carbon emission in India, but in the near future such a scenario is possible and CIOs need to be able to support this in the future.

What CIOs Are Doing

Here is a look at some of the initiatives already undertaken or underway by CIOs to help reduce the carbon footprint for their organisations.

Essar Steel:

• Desktop / Laptop Power Optimisation Policies

• Eco-friendly disposal of Electronic Waste

• Printer Solution for reducing Paper Wastage and Power Optimisation.

• Server Virtualisation

• Refresh of CRT Monitors with TFT Monitors in Vadinar and Hazira

• Implementation of Energy Efficient Air Conditioners in Hazira Datacentre

• Replacement of Comfort AC with Precision AC in Mahalaxmi Datacentre.

• Avaya VOIP and Video Conferencing Bridge implementation, thereby reducing travel

• Replacement of Desktop with Thin clients

• RightFax: all fax machines are replaced with RightFax via Fax over IP. RightFax helps achieve corporate objective of going green, reducing the paper and harmful chemicals from ink for fax machines.

Hero Honda:

• Green IT is a focus area in the company’s IT policy

• New and Energy Efficient Datacentre with Power Management Features

• Virtualisation and Server Consolidation

• TFTs in place of CRTs

• Reduction of Printers

• Replacing old inefficient equipment with energy certified equipment,

• Increasing usage of Video Conferencing / Collaboration Tools to reduce travel

• Usage of e-learning to reduce trainee or trainer travel

• New IT initiatives to cut paper consumption, like digitisation of Hero Honda passport programme, digitisation of workflows needing approvals, electronic fund transfer, E-fax to get fax on e-mail rather than on paper.

Usha International

• Server and Storage Virtualisation

• No desktop printers. Only network printer is used and it prints both sides by default

• All the CRTs have been replaced with TFTs.

With inputs from Priyanka.