Papia Lahiri, Ishta Vohra, Durba Ghosh New Delhi IN the wake of global warming and concerns over environmental degradation, companies are integrating green agenda into their business models. The concept of Green-IT is awakening India Inc to IT's responsibilities IT towards environment conservation. More than 500 million computers became obsolete worldwide by the end of 2007, while energy consumption from data centers touched 123 kWh. "The concern is now to make IT infrastructure energy efficient,'' Suresh Menon,head, storage business, Dell India, observed at the IT conclave. In a green data center, mechanical, lighting, electrical and computer systems are designed for maximum energy efficiency and minimum environmental impact. The construction and operation of a green data center involve advanced technologies and strategies. Large data centers are one of the most significant energy consumers in an organization's IT infrastructure. Following pressure from environmentalists, IT operations are ensuring the delivery of environmentally sound solutions. He commented on the indifference of users and pointed out that power consumption wastage can be brought down from the current 60-70% to 20-30% by simply keeping systems switched off. "The solution is to optimise energy utilisation, reduce desired emissions through reasonable strategy and reduce fossil fuel based electric use," pointed out Mr Menon. Well designed and optimised racks of servers at green data centers can save up to 28,000 watts of energy per year and reduce CO2 emissions by up to 18 tonne. He stressed on 'the Lifecycle approach to green' that encourages steps towards energy efficiency at each level of company operations. Simple methods such as cost reductions, better management and judicious planning can help the organisation in becoming eco-friendly. There's a need to devise ways to increase component optimisation- in terms of design, software to monitor and implement operational policies, he added. Nearly 60% energy is consumed for power delivery and cooling systems at the data centers in the country. Responsibility of CIOs, he emphasised, is to reduce this wastage by 25% through rapid and exhaustive innovation. Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) analysis is an effective method of gauging the specific cooling required by various components of data centers, thus avoiding energy wastage. With carbon trading taking center stage, CIOs are increasingly modifying their business models to reduce the carbon footprints of their respective organisations. Next generation data centers and environment culture at business organisations have evolved to address such concerns. He pointed out the need to phase out systems, which are more than five years old and adopt newer systems to reduce emission levels. Realising the need for efficient systems, desktops are being designed with enhanced power efficiency and less wastage. Moreover, by reducing the number of servers, the power consumption can be brought to as low as 45%. He optimistically pointed out that power supply efficiency can be maximised to 80% from current 60-65%. Hopefully companies will pay more attention to this sensitive area as they play out their next growth strategies.