Greening Indian Datacenters, Canberra, 19 November 2009

Professor Anand Sivasubramaniam, Vice-President R&D, Tata Consultancy Services India, will be speaking on Greening of Datacenters: Opportunities and Research Challenges, at the ANU in Canberra, 19 November 2009:

Greening of Datacenters: Opportunities and Research Challenges
Professor Anand Sivasubramaniam (Vice-President R&D, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India)

DATE: 2008-11-19
TIME: 11:00:00 - 12:00:00
LOCATION: CSIT Seminar Room, N101

ABSTRACT:
The power consumption of datacenters, together with the growing concerns on climate change, have created a buzz around Green IT. Hardware vendors, software developers, vertical integrators, service providers, and IT administrators are talking about their green offerings, capabilities and transformations. Green IT spells cost savings and efficiency for organizations of all sizes, and is also critical for environmental compliance with the growing number of environmental policies across diverse geographies.

While there are many current products and technologies to address 'point' solutions for reducing power consumption in the datacenter, a whole range of challenges arise in real world settings which offer a rich set of research problems that we need to be address. Apart from discussing these problems, we will also discuss the need for looking at Green IT from a wholistic perspective mandating cross-disciplinary expertise and a rethinking of how we build and manage IT infrastructures.

BIO:
Professor Anand Sivasubramaniam is a Vice-President of R&D in the Corporate Technology Office at TCS (Tata Consultancy Services). He received his BTech in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, in 1989, and the MS and PhD in 1991 and 1995 respectively from Georgia Tech, USA. He has been a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Penn State between 1995 and 2007, where he spearheaded several research projects in large-scale infrastructure management and power-aware computing.

Professor Sivasubramaniam's research interests are in computer architecture, operating systems and high performance computing, and he has made several contributions in resource management techniques for data centers, computer architectural mechanisms for high performance, low power, and high assurance, and in tools for evaluating computer systems.

He has published over 150 research papers in reputed journals and conferences, and has served on several editorial boards of journals and conference program committees. At TCS, he heads the Innovation Lab in Chennai, leading research projects on IT infrastructure management and Green IT initiatives. [TCS is the largest IT services company in India and among the top ten in the world. It is also the largest private sector employer in India. It has an active operation in Australia headquartered in Melbourne.]

Make IT Green- The TCS Way

Table of Contents
1. What is Green IT? …………………………………………. 3
2. Green Business Drivers…………………………………… 4
3. Mitigating Environmental Impact of IT Growth….………. 5
4. Enhancing the Environment with IT………………............... 7
5. Holistic View of Green IT………………................................... 11
6. Summary……………………………....................................... 12
7. References………………………………………………... 12
What is Green IT? …………………………………………. 3

...

What is Green IT?

Information Technology (IT) has, without doubt, substantially improved business productivity and enhanced the overall quality of our lives. Consequently, there has been a proliferation in the number and size of IT facilities, the equipment and people working in these facilities. This growth is placing a tremendous burden on our environment, both in the consumption of natural resources such as fuel, water and other raw materials as well as in greenhouse gas emissions and the waste that is generated. This phenomenon is raising several red flags in the minds of corporate executives, governmental organisations, environmentalists and the broader public, thus leading to green IT initiatives. At TCS, we classify these initiatives into two broad categories, which together capture our view of Green IT:

How can we mitigate the environmental impact caused by the growth in IT? Solutions for reducing the power consumption of IT equipment, e-cycling, environmentally friendly buildings and other related elements fall in this category.

How can we use IT to enhance the environment and to mitigate the environmental impact of other industrial, logistical and business processes? Technological solutions for telepresence/telecommuting, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for environmental studies, engineering design of industrial processes with computational models for energy efficiency and waste reduction fall in this category.

TCS has many internal initiatives as well as customer engagements in both these categories. There are several corporate social responsibility and cost efficient green initiatives, which are not necessarily pertaining to IT. Many such efforts are in progress at TCS, and some of these are explained below. Please refer our Corporate Sustainability Report [1] for more details.

From: Make IT Green- The TCS Way, Anand Sivasubramaniam, TCS Innovation White paper, Tata, 2008

TCS Corporate Sustainability

• TCS Environmental Policy
• TCS Waste Reduction, Reuse, Recycle, and Green Purchasing Policy
• Targets for 2007-08
• TCS Environmental Status Report 2007-08
• Codes of Conduct for Non-Executive Directors and TCS Associates
• Green Procurement Policy
• TCS Corporate Sustainability Report 2007 (4.44 MB PDF)