Essential Aspects to Achieve Green IT

It is said that India has the potential to come up as the center for datacenter hosting services for close by markets. However, the biggest challenge lies in the shortage of energy supplies in the country. Mulling over on the scenario, Gartner recommends that Indian companies should now adopt the concept of Green IT and move towards IT transformation such as virtualization and other innovative technologies.

Research and reports highlights the potential of the Indian datacenter capacity. As per the Gartner projections, the overall datacenter capacity would reach to approximately 5.1 million square feet by 2012. This capacity is expected to increase in the next two years, with hosted as well as captive data centers flourishing at comparable charges. It is a fact that IT has remained unsustainable for quiet some time. There are massive data centers that feed on electricity and cases where numerous computers burn up the processor power while carrying background methods. All this leads to piles of documents and mails that are unnecessarily printed off but hardly read.

Factors such as these are paramount enough to opt in for a Green ITsystem into work along with other reasons. There are numerous EU and UK campaigns and regulations opt in for a greener business. Today employees are becoming extremely “Green aware”, wants to look at their organization as a solution provider than pondering for long hours at a problem. Therefore, it is essential to incorporate a more organized work culture and IT infrastructure that would help an organization to contribute environmentally.

The best way to define Green IT is by following methods and procedures that would increase the energy efficiency of IT Datacenters and IT hardware and other systems. Owing to the fact that IT consumes huge quantities of renewable and non-renewable sources, for instance platinum and silicon, a greater part of Green IT includes minimizing the electronic parts wastage. Simply put Green IT refers to the reduction of datacenter footprint over environment.

Datacenter virtualization is one of the means to work towards Green IT that most companies are adopting. IT experts and practitioners accept the fact that Datacenter Virtualization enhances the performance as well as the IT efficiency, helps in quick disaster recovery and brings down the cooling and power expenses. In addition to that, Datacenter consolidation is yet another step towards Green IT when your organization is not equipped enough to launch a virtualization project. In such a case, you can simply consolidate your present server and can attain a Green IT workspace.

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The Green IT Environment Era

Much has being talked about Green IT these days. To begin with, let us try to understand the concept. Unlike popular opinion, Green IT is not at all about purchasing a suite of jazzy green hardware and or other IT paraphernalia. Rather the concept is all about holistic efficiency and that is what leads to more sustainable IT transformation.

In the recent past, there have been several concerns about global warming, corporate social responsibility and energy conservation issues that are resulting in an unmatched amount of media coverage about the importance and requirement of a Green environment. Apart from heavy press coverage, environmental protection concerns are gaining prominence even with the IT managers.

Therefore, adopting Green IT measures would mean to be environmentally accountable as well as adopt a cost-effective approach. A successful and efficient Green initiative increases the accessibility of IT infrastructure as well as minimizes the enterprise expense. Furthermore, it can be a platform for generating a fresh level of discipline in IT management and provisioning.

 The Why of the Green IT concept 

According to researchers and IT experts, IT has been thriving on an unsustainable path for some years. There are massive data centers that are feeding on electricity and millions of computer burn up processor power conducting background processes most of the time when users are in discussions. All these result in excess of documents and emails printed unnecessarily that remains unused.

 These above mentioned causes are the reasons as to why there is a need for Green IT infrastructure today. Other than this, there are other reasons too. Majority of EU and UK campaigns and regulations demand greener business. Today employees are becoming “green aware” and aims to see their respective organizations playing an active part in any solution than deteriorating any problem. Eventually, there will be someone or something, for instance a client, your boss or a government body, who would demand you to be aware of what you are practicing to comply with, advance or assist your organization’s attempts in becoming more environmentally accountable.

 Today there are numerous service providers offering Green IT solutions by increasing the efficiency of the IT hardware, IT Data Centers and other allied fields. Datacenter virtualization and Datacenter consolidation are two essential elements contributing towards a Green IT environment. In fact, it is estimated that virtualization is going to be the most influential trend-changing infrastructure throughout 2012. For the ones not prepared to undertake virtualization the best option is to consolidate the existing server.

However, the key in being able to address and manage the various aspects of a Green Datacenter is to adopt a holistic approach. The organization needs to take into consideration of all the environmental impacts rather than concentrating only on the obvious factors.

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Information Security- A Top Priority

With every success a business aspires for even more meritorious achievements. It expands its network and develops business alliances with various sources and this leads to an increase in information. This mass of information containing vital and confidential business essentials is the lifeline that helps the business to sustain and claim new achievements. Thus it becomes a delicate situation where the information becomes a vulnerable target for malpractices and devious tampering.

Many a successful business has been a victim and become extinct due to internal grudges amongst the existent employees, ineffective security measures like weak passwords and even external attempts of security breaches. To continue steadily on the path to success your business has to take some precautionary measures to avoid meeting with the same fate like the others. It has become a necessity to employ robust and results-oriented solutions for information security purposes.

The solutions should have exceptional qualities to address all issues related to information security effectively and should provide innovative strategies to ensure a compliant environment. The architecture should be resilient and deploy stringent identity and access management services to allow access to only users after rigorous authentication procedures. It should regularly provide auditing services and vulnerability assessment services to identify and intercept any suspicious activities.

The information security solutions must demonstrate responsible and accountable actions by consistently monitoring the online activities and send alerts if any threat is detected. The integrating nature also has a major role to play in prevention of security breaches as a collaborative effort between the existing and new applications builds up a stronger force against these threats. The solutions should have support service provisions and provide simplified access and controls to the users. It should strictly enforce the user privacy regulations. The solutions provide the users with a unique experience. Wastage of time and cost is reduced, and resources are optimally utilized resulting in leveraged performances.

As the world is making efforts to use environmentally friendly strategies there have been admirable contributions towards the use of green IT. The green IT policy ensures the best usage of resources and its disposal without causing any detrimental effects on the environment. This has helped increase the energy efficiency levels remarkably and lowered the costs for enterprises. Adopting and practicing green technology is an encouraging step towards an inculcation of healthy practices in the future with long lasting benefits. Your business is in good hands with the information security solutions.

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Remote IT Infrastructure Outsourcing Strategy - MSP's The Real deal Breakers

IT infrastructure outsourcing is the practice wherein organizations contract services and tasks related to the organization's IT infrastructure and operations to a service provider. They may outsource one or more specific services or may simply decide to supplement the capacity of its existing IT department.

If you want your business to grow you need to focus on customers and business innovation—and IT must do its part. When it comes to the IT infrastructure businesses need to become more agile, ready to take risk and ready to spend more on innovation. In the present day scenario businesses are looking beyond cost savings and looking to IT infrastructure operations outsourcing.

According to Gartner, ”After a setback in 2009, in which the global market for IT outsourcing fell 2.8% to $231 billion, the market rebounded in 2010, growing 2.8% to $237 billion with forecast growth to $254 billion in 2011, a growth of 7.1%.”

With the advent of cloud computing there is a lot of change in the infrastructure outsourcing space. IT outsourcing service provider is responsible for some or all of an organization's hardware and software components, including firewalls, servers, computers, desktop and laptop PCs, handheld devices, printers, operating systems, and e-mail management.

IT infrastructure outsourcing can also include infrastructure facilities, system security, data storage, backup and recovery management, help desk support and maintenance. It is the responsibility of the service provider to take proactive measures to maximize the uptime and availability of an organization's IT infrastructure.

As CIOs increasingly work with remote infrastructure management tools for configuration, testing and distribution of software, more and more engineers are being empowered to remotely manage data centers, storage, networks, desktop support, help desk and security.

Remote infrastructure management outsourcing, or RIMO—is emerging to help buyers gain many of the hoped-for benefits of asset ownership transfer without the exorbitant costs and risks associated with that older model.

RIMO is becoming increasingly popular form of outsourcing in which a solution provider assumes responsibility for managing specific or all IT/network functions. The organization contracts for a solution provider to continuously monitor its systems; identify potential problems and remediate and resolve real events from a remote location.

In an RIMO scenario, a Managed Network Service Provider(MSP) commonly provides remote network, desktop and security monitoring, patch management, remote data backup and other technical services, monitoring a client’s IT infrastructure and resolving any issues that arise within it. Most MSPs charge either a per-month fee, on a time-and-materials basis, or per deployed device (e.g., per server or network device). RIMO is particularly important for the small-to-medium-sized business (SMB) market, giving businesses a relatively cost-effective way to manage their IT without having to hire on-site staff.

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Green Datacenter - The Modern Day Green Datacenter Services

Recently there has been an increase in the demand for data centers, which in turn need a lot of power to operate. The modern day datacenters are being set up with a capacity of 300 watts power per square feet. This range is considerably greater than what it used to be couple of years ago, which was a mere amount of 60 watts per square feet, that used to be enough for most installations. Contrary to popular belief, setting up a green data center does not require heavy investments in the beginning, provided adequate research work is done. Green technology and green building products has witnessed a considerable decrease in the recent past, and along with the appropriate research and plan, a green data center can be set up with the same fund akin to that of one without any green specifications.

Today, leading IT companies have come up with innovative Green Datacenter solutions that provide sustainability to the business flow and are cost effective. Some of the integral components and value added services offered along with these solutions are discussed below-

Assessment stage

During this stage, the service providers establish a baseline for the carbon footprint and usage of the platform to be used for the assessment framework that in turn is utilized for auditing the present environment. This is followed by a Feasibility study and Gap analysis to recognize the transformational movements, evaluate cost structure and conduct impact analysis.

Planning and Design stage

This is the stage where the service providers offer a detailed route map for particular Green IT initiatives such as DC optimization, resource planning, financial planning, recycling, and procurement.

Implementation Stage

This is the phase where a user gets to select and deploy particular technologies related to datacenter virtualization, cooling and power management, consolidation and IT infrastructure management.

However, it is imperative that the total framework for your company’s Green Datacenter needs a thorough research along with energy efficiency. The IT products and services that are involved in the data center are gradually becoming green and using these products your datacenter would be more eco-friendly.

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Bring Down Your Power Consumption by Datacenter Consolidation

With advancements in computer technology, one of the concepts that have gained prominence is datacenter consolidation. However, it was mentioned in an article in Federal Computer Week highlighted that "golden source of data around cost savings, around every data center that agencies own [and] a very specific road map for which data centers will be shut down by 2015."

There have been numerous analysis on the future of datacenter consolidation by various people. However, one thing is certain that process of datacenter consolidation is not so easy and simple as it appears. To derive the required results and benefits it is essential to choose an appropriate service provider for yourself.

Why do we need datacenter consolidation?

One of the crucial reasons for consolidating datacenters is to bring down the power consumption. This is based on the principle that lesser servers in lesser buildings need less electricity.

The new age service providers datacenter consolidation solutions needs to encompass well defined objectives, set up after carefully studying the client infrastructure requirements. Some of the objectives that are considered are listed below-

* Enhance service levels and lower expenses

* Support systems added in a merger or acquisition or merger

* Align systems with the enterprise's organization more appropriately known as segmenting

* Make strategic moves to or away from certain platform types

* Helps in relieving business managers from the accountability for server management, so that they are able to focus on business and other allied architecture and engineering issues

* Brings down staff levels and avoid further hiring

The Datacenter Consolidation Methodology

Renowned service providers of datacenter consolidation solutions follow a methodology that is based upon easy concepts of:-

* Assess

* Architect

* Implement

* Manage

Apart from these four stages, it also consists of short business based assessment in the front end. This serves as a feasibility study that enables the users to evaluate whether the consolidation is at all feasible or not. In addition to that, the service providers also offer efficient solutions in datacenter virtualization and datacenter hosting or collocation services. However, market analysts are of opinion that the need for datacenter consolidation will increase through 2011 and 2012.

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End User Computing – Be More Productive at a Reduced Cost

Your network is only as secure as your end points connected to it. Securing your endpoints is vital and keeping them updated with the right security firewall and patches is important. End-user computing (EUC) is one of the most significant phenomenons to occur in the IT in the last decade.

With the increasing use of IT, end consumers are becoming more demanding, requiring anytime, anywhere access from an ever-growing selection of applications and devices. The support services for end-user form a vital part of Infrastructure Management services and there is need to provide a one point solution for complete management of the computing environment, to secure and manage the end point that people are using from desktop/laptop/Mobile devices and net books, balanced by a dedicated service desk.

Collaborate with the Right Tools

To move businesses forward each person in the organization from customer service executive to CEO need the right tools to help these end users to work efficiently and collaborate effectively.With enterprises having large footprint across the world, with much diversified end user base one will need to deliver a predictive, highly optimized and standardized end-user computing experience.The right tools empower individuals to work efficiently and teams to collaborate effectively, so they can get more done, in less time, at a lower cost.You can boost productivity while protecting the data and the systems. The end point management solutions can help IT manage the lifecycle of endpoints automatically and keep everything secure, while making sure IT can meet the high service levels that the business demands.

Thus End-user Computing Management solution allows IT teams to:

* Provision & deploy desktops rapidly

* Manage workstation images

* Deliver virtualized applications to desktop and other mobile devices

There is a synergy between End User Computing services and other IT infrastructure domains, and thus there is need for services like Enterprise Help Desk, Centralized Desktop Management, Application Support and Project Support to its customers.

Enterprise Help Desk– IT Service Desk and integrated infrastructure and application operations support team should act as one single entity instead of silos which also leads to standardization across enterprise operations. Provides support for logging, tracking, Resolution and reporting of help desk incidents and service requests.

Centralized Desktop Management- Lowers operational costs and reduces security risk. Network traffic is greatly reduced because it now only needs to provide the changes.Whatever updates are implemented on the parent server can be recreated on to any number of virtual desktops in minutes, greatly simplifying deployment and patches.Backups become efficient and non-intrusive because only the user data is backed up.

Application Support– Application roll out, software distribution, automation, customization, repository building, image building and roll out, patch management ensuring interoperability, performance and availability of the enterprise application and its ecosystem.

The major advantages attribute to end user computing include:

* Increased productivity

* Provision user friendly systems

* Overcome application implementation problems

* Overcome shortage of qualified personnel’s

* Secure Network

With End User Computing solutions you can build the strongest possible boundary around your valuable IT assets without compromising user productivity and performance. Thus end user computing delivers a powerful and secure environment that meets quality, risk mitigation and cost objectives of the enterprise.

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