Virtualisation shoots no green silver bullets

Beverley Head
Monday, 19 October 2009 03:54

IT Industry - Market

Riegert sheets home the blame for some of this inertia to the uncertainty about what the Government will do. This is especially the case given the currently brouhaha within the Liberal Party regarding its approach to an emissions trading scheme.

“The main compliance issue at the moment is the NGERS (National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting System).” While generally only the largest emitters are required to file reports under NGERS, some smaller subcontractors to large companies could find themselves caught up in the scheme by having to provide emissions reports to their large clients.

Riegert said that “Most people are doing that in an ad hoc fashion through spreadsheets. I wouldn’t want to be an auditor trying to validate them. The collection of data is the toughest item.”

He said that before deciding where to attempt to reduce their carbon footprint, especially with regard to IT systems, organisations needed to perform rigorous cost benefit analysis to determine where best to spend any budget intended to help reduce emissions.

“Historically people look at it from a resource perspective – that is their use of energy. But if you look at it from a process point of view it might change your thinking.

“You can improve the process to reduce the consumption of resources.”

Milroy believes that over time this will be come an even more pressing consideration for firms which seek to differentiate themselves through their green credentials.

“For example a utilities firm might invest in developing a smart grid, not only to manage costs over a period of time, but also to differentiate its customer offerings from competitors’. A utilities service that can provide information about energy user per device can differentiate that service and offer additional value to customers.”

He believes the advent of the NBN will also allow a number of new smart services to be delivered over the internet – for example selling content over the internet rather than as physical products which might have a greater carbon footprint.

“The move to cloud computing together with server virtualisation will also create greater efficiencies and economies of scale in the datacentre,” according to Milroy.

Riegert agrees that there is a role for virtualisation – but that it ought not to be considered as some sort of green silver bullet.

“Virtualisation is an extremely good thing to do for emissions and data management. But organisations should not take it for granted that it’s the best thing to do.”