Though reducing 'Carbon Emissions' has been perceived more from a sustainability angle, it can have a major impact on reduction of the company's cost structure and increasing revenues.

A number of countries have regulations in place that mandate carbon emissions. The National Action Plan on Climate Change in India, is a policy that has just been formulated but has not yet come into effect. In due course of time, enterprises at all levels will have to prepare a roadmap for reducing their carbon footprint. However, there are a few that have already begun working on carbon reduction programmes. Although, carbon emissions from computing resources constitute 2% of the overall emissions globally, the number is expected to rise rapidly in the near future, especially in emerging economies such as India and China.

So what are companies in India doing to slash their carbon emissions from an IT infrastructure standpoint?

Virtualisation to Cut DC Carbon Footprint

"We are working with major Oil and Gas Companies in India to reduce their carbon emissions. Currently, there are many companies that have a practice of drafting sustainability reports with information on the company's carbon emission programme," said Atul Bhandari, VP, Value Engineering and Industries, SAP Indian Subcontinent

"We were able to reduce the carbon emissions in our own data centres, increasing the utilisation from just 10% to 60%, using techniques such as virtualisation," said Bhandari.

Essel Propack has also opted for server and storage virtualisation across 13 countries and 21 locations. "The initial CAPEX for the company reduced by $ 40,000. We have also realised a reduction in operating costs by 40 percent," said Zoeb Adenwala, CIO (Global) at Essel ProPack.

Mindtree also has a 10 physical server environment, supporting an active 250 virtual server. All new sites run production servers on a virtual platform.

According to Satish Joshi, Executive Vice President, Patni, virtualisation has benefitted the company on many fronts. For instance, Patni’s datacentre power consumption reduced by 30%, rack space by 30% and server provisioning time was cut from half a day to 30 minutes. In addition, virtualisation also ensured zero downtime during physical machine upgrades.

Cut It Where it Matters The Most

Post recession, virualisation has helped CIOs make the most of the current IT infrastructure. The real potential in being holistically ecological, is in reducing the environmental impact of the company's business operations, its supply chain and products and services.

Gartner had come up with a one of it's kind report on how leading ICT companies have strategised to cut the inherent carbon footprint including the innovative solutions to cut the carbon emission percentage.

In a report released by Gartner, the research firm has highlighted how leading ICT companies have adopted two approaches to cut the inherent carbon footprint. The first approach targets 2% of the carbon emitted from the ICT infrastructure (including all computing devices, data centres etc). The other looks at the larger picture of business operations (including business lifecycle operations, transportation etc) that accounts for 98 percent of the carbon emission footprint.

Measures To Reduce Emissions from Sources Other Than ICT

Here’s looking at some innovative ways in which Indian companies are cutting down on their carbon emissions. Though these initiatives may not come under the CIO parlance, however, as SAP's Bhandari said, "Companies must develop a system to measure, manage and report on its carbon footprint and IT organisations will have to enable this". These solutions have to be responsive on a real time basis.

For instance, carpooling is an initiative that has been undertaken by organisations to cut their carbon output.

Mindtree runs a carpooling network of 60 cars. SAP also encourages employees staying close to the workplace to use bicycles to commute. In fact, SAP has reduced their diesel consumption in Bengaluru and Gurgaon by 40% and 60% respectively by running a shuttle service. "We are working at a very micro-level to slash carbon emissions. The cafeterias have begun using sugar cubes instead of sachets. Paper cups have replaced ceramic cups and we have reduced the overall paper usage by about 40% by encouraging scanning of documents rather than printing," said Bhandari.

Patni has employed a set of measures such as, Usage of energy efficient equipment in the day-to-day running of the business such as CFLs; Internal power handling and distribution equipment/UPSs that are energy efficient; Motion sensors for automatically switching off lights and ACs; And a software for automatically hibernating or switching off computing equipment during long idle periods.

Enterprises are increasingly switching to virtual meetings, using Unified Communications technologies that can have a huge bearing in reducing their air travel budgets, said Mohammad Saif, Deputy Director - Consulting, ICT Practice, Frost & Sullivan, South Asia & Middle East.

"In 2009 we reduced our carbon footprint by 15% with the help of virtualisation as we cut down on the frequency of air travels," said Bhandari.

Industry players at all levels have begun working on various grounds to reduce their carbon footprint. Additionally industry bodies should come up with innovative solutions like a smart grid that offers a plethora of services that enterprises can share.

"Companies need to build smart networks and grids and this will be of paramount importance when they work in tandem to deliver the services / products efficiently," concluded Saif.