As the vice president of Symantec Corporation for Asia (south region), Eric Hoh is responsible for leading the regional teams in the security and availability lines for Symantec. He is tasked in spearheading growth and developing new business opportunities in the Asia (south region), which includes Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, India, and emerging countries in Asia. Hoh joined Symantec through the company’s merger with VERITAS Software. Hoh graduated with an honours degree in Computer Science from the University of Winona, Minnesota.

Environmentally friendly corporate actions are gaining momentum across businesses around the globe, and organizations are looking at committing to minimize their environmental impact whenever and wherever possible.

In such an atmosphere, CIOs have a unique opportunity to strengthen their companies’ green efforts through a variety of measures. After all, one of the biggest expenditures for a company is IT assets, and those IT assets consume a great deal of power. What’s more, disposing of these assets requires careful consideration to ensure that they do not poison landfills. The IT industry is one of the biggest producers of carbon, emissions, and waste, so good corporate responsibility calls for CIOs and their organizations to take steps to minimize their environmental footprint.

WHERE TO START

The good news is there are many paths to becoming a more earth-friendly company. CIOs can start by putting pressure on vendors to use less toxic substances in their PCs, storage, servers, and other devices in order to make it easier to properly dispose of these devices. Clearly, vendors respond to their customers, and customer requests in one quarter can make their way onto a vendor’s product roadmap not long thereafter.

Similarly, organizations can leverage third-party reclamation firms to aid in the company’s disposal strategy. In many cases, the reclamation company does not even charge for such a service because it is able to make a profit on the silver, gold, and other valuable elements it recovers before disposing of batteries, monitors, and other IT components.

Computer recycling in the form of donations can also be very beneficial, not just for the company and the environment, but for communities. Many school systems have computer and peripheral equipment donation programs to which businesses can give their surplus laptops, desktop systems, and associated components and accessories. These devices, in turn, are placed in area schools for the benefit of elementary through high school students in the region. Donating surplus equipment is a mutually beneficial activity that can increase, improve, and enhance education while shrinking an organization’s environmental footprint.

Another potential piece of low-hanging fruit in a corporation’s strategy to reduce its environmental impact involves IT asset management. End user systems can be configured to use settings that reduce the power consumption of that device by default – perhaps the hard drive shuts down after a period of inactivity or the monitor goes dark. These settings can become part of the standard image that is placed on all desktop and laptops throughout the company. Of course, the user can always opt to override the systems when necessary, but many users will actually choose green practices when they understand their positive impact on the environment.

BE COOL

Data centers are another potential area for proactive energy conservation. In the data center, it’s all about staying cool. A growing number of hardware providers are now offering energy-saving products that use far less power than more traditional devices. Some consume less power, others utilize power more efficiently. Either way, a green data center should ideally allow increased efficiencies in energy usage, power consumption, space utilization and reduction of polluting energy sources.

In fact, a growing number of organizations are focusing a portion of their green efforts on data center power itself. According to the findings of Symantec’s worldwide Green Data Center report, respondents revealed that most data center managers are at least planning to implement power management products, with 30% implementing on selected equipment, 13% on equipment throughout the data center, and 34% either planning to use or currently evaluating.

SOFTWARE, A TOP STRATEGY TO BE ENERGY EFFICIENT

Today, data center professionals are increasingly turning to software solutions, including those to manage server consolidation and virtualized environments as they develop and implement their green initiatives to better manage and reduce costs.

Data center managers indicate that software designed for server consolidation and server virtualization are the most popular solutions in creating energy efficiencies, with 51% and 47% indicating plans to consolidate and virtualize servers, respectively. In fact, 68% of respondents indicate that reducing energy played a role in their decision to implement virtualization and server consolidation.

The bottom line is, good corporate responsibility must include an environmental strategy and initiatives aimed at doing as much as possible to protect and save the planet for future generations. Environmental responsibility also makes good business sense, since reducing power demands results in concrete savings. What’s more, customers demand it, which makes taking the green path an effective tactic for retaining customer loyalty and trust.