A Hint of Green

A day before this PCQuest issue was to go to press, we had a power failure.

Nothing that doesn't happen three times a day in Gurgaon. This time around, our

central UPS tripped and started emitting smoke. Our Cyber House network and IT

infrastructure shut down. The bypass didn't work, and we were effectively out of

action for a half day.

Along with all the insight such an incident gives you (an external secondary

bypass would've helped...), there was also the revelation about how critical power

management has become, and how little attention is given to this area in India.

Like most midsize businesses, we largely use CRT displays with PCs. They're

half the cost of LCDs, but draw four times the power directly, and take three

times more power to cool.

On the face of it, energy efficiency isn't a big deal for Indian businesses.

There isn't a lot of worrying about the environment. The cost of utility power

is often a small part of operating costs.

Prasanto K Roy,Chief Editor

Gurgaon has hundreds of all-glass buildings-they look good. The glass lets in

sunlight, which is blocked with shutters and curtains, and electric lights are

used anyway. It lets in and traps heat (heard of the greenhouse effect!), which

is zapped with extra air-conditioning to bring the workplace down to 22 degrees,

so employees wear sweaters and shawls in summer. Stupidity?

Energy management and the environment haven't been top-of-mind for most

Indian businesses, barring a few with CSR (corporate social responsibility)

initiatives. Few IT users would have considered energy efficiency a top

parameter helping them choose a brand, in a survey such as the one featured in

this issue (PCQ Most Wanted IT Brands). Now that is just about beginning to

change.

The first driver of the changing awareness is Mobility. In an increasingly

mobile world, people are increasingly dependent on (wirelessly) connected

devices. And the last frontier for these devices is power. They last as long as

their batteries do. Those batteries haven't kept pace with the feature explosion

in smartphones and PDAs. And even if laptops appear to last longer-six hours or

more on a charge-their batteries deteriorate. People readily pay a premium for

energy-efficient portable devices.

The second driver is what we encountered when our UPS failed: backup power.

For instance, if 300 PCs had used TFTs instead of CRTs, we'd saved over 15 kW of

power, allowing for a lower-capacity UPS, and requiring way less cooling-both

for displays, and UPS.

Data centers are a perfect case for energy planning. They're power guzzlers,

the racks, and all the air-conditioners that cools them. With low-power systems,

there's also the benefit of more efficient power-backup.

Even some small businesses are beginning to figure this out. Using laptops

instead of desktops, they save on power-backup: UPS, generator. And using

wireless networks, they have the flexibility to rearrange, expand, or move base,

and they often do.

Already, the processor battleground has moved from raw clock speed to

performance to performance per watt, driven by mobility as well as the cooling

and power needs of densely packed server racks.

Businesses, small and large, will be forced to walk that path: if not by

concern for the environment, or legislation, then by economics and common sense.