Ideate Green IT

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Vol. 3 September 2011SummIT

(The Technology Cell @ NMIMS)



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CONTENTS PRESIDENT”S ADDRESS……………………………………….3

ABOUT SUMMIT ………………………………………………..4

IDEAS SEMINAR………………………………………………....6

ARTICLES

Go Green with Virtual Office …….……………………………………………..8

Consumer Buyback Programs….……..…………………...…...12 Cloud Computing, Green or Brown? …….………………………………..14

Green IT Initiatives…….…………………………………………………………..16

Implementing Green IT in relation to Hardware …….………………18 Going the Green way for Data Centers…………………………………..20

Future drivers of IT …….……………………………………………………...…22 IT BUZZ of the Quarter………………………………..…….26

FUN CORNER…………………………………………..……..

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PYLON of ISIS…………………………………………….……30

IDEATE EDITORIAL BOARD………………………….……..32



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SUMMIT PRESIDENT’s ADDRESS

Greetings from Team SummIT!

We, proudly, present you the first edition of the academic year of ―Ideate‖,

the SummIT newsletter.

Launched in the previous year, Ideate has now taken the third stride. The firstedition focused on Customer Relation Management (CRM) which had articlesfrom the industry people. The second edition targeted M-Commerce area and

had articles from the top B-schools. In this third edition, the central theme is―Green IT‖, a concept which has risen rapidly in the West and is making in-

roads in the Indian IT industry.

Thus, with these initiatives, we aim to study the industry trends and make thereaders aware of them. Since, the technology changes rapidly, we endeavourto roll out the newsletter every quarter and capture the changing scenarios.

We try our best to equip you with the necessary skills before joining theworkforce.

Wish you all the best in your future career.

Yogeshwar Kumar

Team SummIT



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ABOUT SUMMIT SUMMIT is a student body at NMIMS that involves itself with developments in the fastest changing do-

mains of world business, i.e. Ideation & Information Technology.

IT, being essentially borderless, needs to be understood at a macro level and ideation is what keeps anybusiness going, be it new business or running existing business efficiently. The rapid changes in the busi-ness environment have resulted in increased complexities and responsibilities for the information man-ager today. The club members therefore regularly bring to campus distinguished people from the ITworld & other prominent industry people to interact with students and to get broader perspectives on

pertinent issues of future importance.

Activities:

Pylon of Isis - Online Treasure Hunt

This is conducted to start off the year witha light and interesting event. This onlinetreasure hunt requires players to cross dif-

ferent levels by solving the clues on a level.

Ideas – Our Flagship Event

IDEAs is the flagship event of SummIT. This is the event where panel discussion or Seminars are con-ducted. The purpose of IDEAs is to be the only source which keeps the budding managers updated onthe industry front. Also, it is conducted at the start of the academic to enlighten the MBA students withthe career options in the IT industry. Therefore, the theme is generally: ‗The current and future trends

and the role of MBAs in IT industry‘.

Microsoft Office 2010 Workshop

SummIT cell has always stressed on adding value for thestudents and there was no better way than asking Micro-soft to conduct a session on Microsoft Office. The sessionwas conducted by Dr. Nitin Paranjape, the MicrosoftGuru. The session was a huge success. SummIT cell re-

ceived accolades from all the attendees.



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Paragana

Khoj - the online treasure hunt game is organized in November, as part of the college annual fest, Para-

gana. It also features paper presentation contest on IT case studies.

Ideate

Ideate, is the interactive IT newsletter. Every issue invites articles on various broad topics of IT. SummITlaunches this magazine quarterly to keep the students informed

on the recent developments in IT.

Zero Respect

‗Zero Respect‘ is the inter-collegiate LAN Gaming event organ-ized by the SummIT cell as part of Euphoria , cultural event at

NMIMS, Mumbai. It was conducted in 2010 in a 2-day period(March 5-6th) and featured the popular multiplayer games(―Counter Strike 1.6‖, ―FIFA 11‖, ―NFS Most Wanted‖, ―Call of

Duty‖ MW II).

The gaming room was equipped with gaming boards and LEDlights, projectors, etc. Rock music played while the gamers took on the battle. The brand new and powerful Alienware laptops onwhich the gaming was conducted added to the ambience and gave

the participants a rich gaming experience.

Manthan- the IT e-Magazine

Manthan is a unique initiative undertaken by SummIT. From last year, Manthan has gone online in e-versions. It invites articles from the top B schools of the country and publishes the best articles. Man-

than has also enabled the confluence of diverse industry perspectives on IT and business.



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“IDEAS” Seminar

IDEAS is the flagship seminar of SummIT. This is conducted specially for the first years immediately after joining the institute to give them an overview on the latest trends in IT industry. This year, the topic of theseminar was ―Careers in IT after MBA‖. It featured a panel discussion between the industry experts fromInformation Technology sector.

The guest speakers were:1. Mr. Sachin Kelkar, Head of Channels, Intel 2. Mr. Lokesh Bhagwat, Vice President, Patni-IGate

3. Dr. Nilay Yajnik, Chairperson, Information Science, NMIMS,Mumbai

Dr. Nilay Yajnik opened the panel discussion with an introduction tothe first year batch about the increasing role of IT and systems and

the importance of MBA in IT.

Mr. Lokesh Bhagwat carried over the discussion explaining the MBA

roles in IT industry in different functions as mentioned below: Mr. Lokesh Bhagwat, Vice President, Patni-IGate



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“IDEAS” Seminar Mr. Sachin Kelkar added to the discus-

sion explaining about the new trends in

IT in the future.

In year 2020, the new buzz words and the

mega-trends in the IT industry would be

as follows:

Dr. Nilay Yajnik concluded the discussion and opened the house for

questions. There was great enthusiasm among the audience and the

question answer session was highly interactive.

Mr. Sachin Kelkar, Head of Channels,, Intel

Dr. Nilay Yajnik, Chairperson, IT, NMIMS, Mumbai



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Traditional vs. Virtual Office

Ever tried to think about how to make your office

building or office space more environmentally responsi-

ble? This is a very common trend and/or mission in to-

day‘s traditional work spaces: changing to more eco-

friendly lighting, beefing up recycling practices, avoiding

paper copies of documents, etc. While all of these are

effective and important steps in the effort to green-up

today‘s offices, there is still one solution that offers a

completely new dimension of greening to today‘s work-

places – getting rid of them altogether.

Following are some aspects as to how a traditional officeaffects the environment.

Traditional bricks and mortar offices use electricity all day – to run lights, computers, printers and copiers, fac-similes, security cameras and alarms, fridges, micro-wave ovens and coffee machines, hot water systemsand any number of other appliances. Even outside business hours, many offices have nightlighting and armed security systems that constantly use power.

Traveling to and from a traditional office building on a daily basis causes a further impact on theenvironment. If you drive you are contributing to air pollution and using up just a little bitmore of the oil supply. If you have several employees, the environmental footprint of yourbusiness can be even larger.

Widespread use of virtual office environments reduces highway congestion and save money for

both the employer and the employee. Many companies are now eliminating the need for

physical office and thus the cost of leasing, lighting and maintaining that space. Then there are the small things we don‘t think much about – for example, if you or your em-

ployees purchase food in take-out containers at lunch time, or pick up a few cups of coffeein paper cups during the day, you are adding to that massive global rubbish pile of take-outfood containers.

At the other end of the scale the demand for bricks and mortar office space for an ever-increasing number of businesses contributes to the expansion of our concrete jungles and

the consumption and manufacture of the materials used to build them.Companies like to be responsible and maintain their ‗triple bottom line‘ performance. Byadopting Virtual Offices, companies can not only cut the costs enormously but be responsi-

ble simultaneously.

For the vast majority of knowledge workers in the world each work day begins by `going tooffice'. The office is where one's `desk' is, where team meetings take place, where one meetscolleagues, supervisors, and team members; and also where one catches up on organizationalgossip. At the same time, spatially and often globally distributed teams are commonplace thesedays with variable degrees of distribution. For example, teams may be distributed over floors,

Go Green with the

Virtual Office

By: Varun Verma

Ist year, NMIMS



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buildings, cities or countries. It is becoming increasingly com-mon for knowledge workers to conduct a majority of their in-teractions during the course of a work day electronically, usingemail, chat, phone or even video, without ever meeting face-to-face. In fact, a growing number of employees today work fromhome; some organizations have even gone to the extent of dis-pensing with the physical offices for thousands of such remote

workers.

So, why do we still `go to office'? Are we losing something byworking remotely? If so, how can innovative collaborationtechnology restore this missing 'something' for remote work-

ers and distributed teams, and perhaps even go beyond it?

Virtual Office – What it is not?Another IM tool

IM tool is not based on a spatial metaphor. Groups of people are created by usersthemselves i.e. is user driven which is not realistic.

One needs to know everyone on his/her contact list/groups which may not be true incase of an professional setup like an office.

There is no awareness of ongoing conversations between others whereas in real lifeone will hear all that is being said in his/her ‗aura‘.

Cumbersome to use, e.g. one has to initiate/join conversations whereas in an office youwould just go up to someone and start talking.

Another Virtual WorldGeneral purpose – too many updates, bandwidth heavy.Aura-based communication and presence – aura sizes too large, don‘t always know

whose listening.Interface issues – navigation by small increments, manually change window focus to

switch from chat to navigation or vice-versa.General animations and actions – may be inconsistent with domain, accidentally start

dancing or flying in office.

Virtual Office – What it is?

Enables informal interactions with employees or coworkers in a remote office.Be virtually at your desk when working from home/out of office/travelling.Manage a remote team by virtually walking around .(MBVWA)Visit a collaborator‘s office.

Housing a distributed team.Outsourced knowledge work executed in offshore office.

Interact with remote co-workers when physically in office.



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Replicates a real-world office - The virtualoffice mirrors the real office both in architec-tural and internal layout. Each employee getsthe same virtual seat as his real world seatthus maintaining the realism of the Virtual Of-fice. To develop this model we start from thefloor plan of the office and create the 3Dmodel.

Logical Location Grid - The office space is di-vided into set of logical locations which can bemapped on the X-Y plane. Range of cells is markedfor different places in the office viz. rooms, confer-ence room, seats, corridor space. The user navigatesfrom one logical cell into another as he would do in areal world.

Aura – Aura is a bounding space around him

which matches the real world aural range. Auser can see status of other users; can text-chat with them who are present in his aura.The aura changes as user moves virtually andgets the new aura information.

Navigation - Navigation in Virtual Office isincremental i.e. a user can move one cell at a time.User can use arrow keys to navigate in his aura.However if he needs to ‗visit‘ someone outside hisaura he can either find the path himself or can usethe navigation command and the system will findthe path itself. In any case the navigation is not byteleporting because that doesn‘t happen in a real

office.

Features

Floor Plan of the office

3-D Model of the Office

3-D View of the office

Navigation by ‗Walking‘



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Chat - The most important feature of the Virtual Office is the facility to chat with the colleagues.VO provides an aura based chat wherein you can chat with the users present in your aura.

However to enhance the functionality, shout mode and whisper mode are also provided. Inshout mode your chat goes to the whole office as in if you are announcing bagging a new deal tothe whole office whereas the whisper mode comes in handy when you have to gossip.

Screen Sharing - Screen sharing facility is incorporated to deal with collaboration over docu-ments, reposts and codes and remote management. Any open source solution like VideoLAN(VLC) can be used for this purpose.

Meetings in Virtual Office Conference Rooms

There‘s a common saying that a good boss is known by the number of meetings he attends. A

typical meeting in an office includes everyone going to the meeting room, choosing a seat to sit,presentations, interactive sessions between the audience and the presenter and maybe an Au-dio/Video in some cases. A Virtual Office solution will be incomplete without this feature. Thesalient features of Virtual Meetings are as under:

1. A document is shared among all the audiencewhich will be used for the presentation. All theusers have to navigate to the conference roomeither by ‗walking‘ or using the command basednavigation whatever suits them .

2. Speaker- Initiates the presentation for all by using the

appropriate command.- The webcam video and 3D audio is being streamed to all the audi-

ence.3. Audience

- Moves to the conference room and choosewhere to sit depending on the availabilityof the seat.

- Can raise hand to ask a question or to seek aclarification from the presenter.

- The presentation document can be independ-ently navigated or can be synced with thepresenter.

Virtual Office offers almost all the functionalities as would a real world office. For the above men-tioned merits more and more companies are adopting this solution. It clubs the Green IT and‗something‘ which someone misses when working from home/travelling. Virtual Office is a completepackage and has a bright future.

Speaker View

Audience View



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The next time you buy a laptop how would you like an up-

front discount for your next purchase and what if that discountis for taking part in a cause? Yes it has been a reality for quite

some time in the United States of America.

Electronics buyback programs have been present in the US forquite a number of years. Usually large retailers partner withthird party firms who take ownership of the recycling or re-use of old PC or laptops. The consumer generally ships theproduct to a third party vendor in exchange for cash or otherincentives. These are then sold, refurbished or recycled by thevendor.

Why buyback?As the consumer electronics industry grew rapidly the mainconcern for consumers and companies alike when going for

electronics product upgrades is the generation of e-waste. USAalone discards an estimated 30 million computers each yearand an estimated 70 per cent of heavy metals in landfills comefrom discarded electronics. A major portion of this is exportedto China and Nigeria. In addition to making money by recycling was difficult and therefore there arelack of options to safely dispose electronics.For consumers who upgrade products frequently to keep abreast with the latest releases would findbuyback program the most convenient. Not only does it help gadget lovers to continue with frequentupgrades but also encourages upgrade to consumers who are sitting on the fence because the currentproduct is still functional. The latter form a large portion of the untapped target consumer segment andhence providing them an incentive to upgrade would increase sales.A lot of companies have approached different strategies for recycling. Some approach it from a pure

perspective of recycling while others view it as an opportunity to lock in customers for future pur-chases. Let‘s have a look at few of them:

HPIn January 2009, HP started the Consumer buyback program in collabo-ration with Market Velocity, Inc. (MVI), an independent third party. HPcalls its new program the HP Consumer Buyback and Planet PartnersRecycling Program. The program offers money in exchange for anybrand of PC, monitor, printer, digital camera, or Smartphone that HPdetermines still has some sort of value. The unique feature of this pro-

gram is that it is not restricted to HP consumers.

The website has given users facilities to provide the configuration of the old laptop and a quote will beprovided. For corporate, HP offers Asset Recovery Services to safely dispose of old, unneeded ITequipment irrespective of the manufacturer. This program also takes care of the crucial aspect of datasecurity that corporations face when disposing old equipment. HP also has pre-owned equipment solu-

tions for servers, storage and workstations.

AppleThe company until recently offered only recycling option for old apple products that had to be dis-carded. On August 9, 2011 Apple announced its buyback program in partnership with PowerOn. Userscan use the preliminary evaluation tool online to estimate the valuation of the phone and then ship it.PowerOn also securely erases user data before reselling the devices. An iPad in good condition canfetch $165 and an iPhone 3G (16GB) can fetch $65.

Consumer Buyback

Programs

By: Raghavendran R

Ist year, NMIMS

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Dell Dell has partnered with Techforward, Inc. to offer buyback program. However, this program works on aslightly different principle. The consumer has to enroll for the TechForward Guaranteed Buyback Planfor a fee. On enrollment, Techforward Inc. provides a guaranteed rate for the user. The consumer is

eligible to receive up to 50 per cent back if the product is returned within six months of purchase, 40per cent for up to a year, up to 30per cent for a year to year and half and finally up to 20 per cent fortwo years.The unique feature of the program is that consumers know upfront the amount they can redeem. Thecompany has designed algorithms that could predict the future resale value of electronics for this pur-pose. TechForward also started a trade association called Ownership 2.0 with other companies based onsubscription-based services or temporary ownership models, like temporarily owning textbooks. It alsorelieves the consumers the hassle of throwing away a fully functional product just because one does nothave a use for it any longer. TechForward resells goods from its customers, rather than actually breakingthem down into their component parts.

BestBuy

Similar to Dell, BestBuy launched its buyback program this year and the consumer is eligible to receiveup to 50 per cent back if the product is returned within six months of purchase, 40 per cent for up to ayear, up to 30 per cent for a year to year and half and finally up to 20 per cent for two years. UnlikeTechforward, BestBuy has a flat fee chart for all consumer electronics items and the fee structure istransparent to the consumer.

However, before jumping onto the bandwagon, spend a few minutes on checking on the points givenbelow:

Program features: Is the program enrollment fee attractive enough for one to realize sufficient dis-count and are there any riders for buy back?

Sales tax: The consumer is triple charged for tax. First for buying the initial product, then for return-ing the product and receiving the gift card and finally when using the gift card.

Accessories: If all the accessories are not returned then the buyback policy guaranteed value re-duces.

Data security: Ensure the third party vendor has a good record of wiping out data in used devices.Can you do it yourself: Although buyback offers the convenience, they are not the most profitable

options. If you can do it yourself on eBay or craigslist then give buyback program a pass.

What can one do about e-waste in India? In India, very few products come back for recycling. In the 8million computers and 35 million cell phones used today, the number recycled is less than five per cent.There are not many options available for consumers to dispose e-waste responsibly let alone get somemoney for doing it. However, few companies are providing corporate solutions for handling e-waste.

Attero is one of the few players in the Indian market catering to e-waste recyclingneeds of individuals and corporate. All one needs to do is call 1800-419-3283 toschedule a free pickup for an old monitor or pc that needs to be thrown away.Recently the company launched a new service http://www.atterobay.com/ to han-dle mobile phones reselling and recycling. It works similar to TechForward whereusers can send in mobile phones for vouchers, cash or plant trees for the equiva-lent amount.So the next time you are left electronic product that is no longer required,

Think green and recycle and sometimes it pays!

http://www.atterobay.com/





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Cloud computing is certainly a hot topic at the mo-

ment as more and more organizations are opting forCloud based services for varied reasons. The vast ar-ray of web based shared computers known as ‗Cloud‘

has become a top priority for most of the companiesbecause of its flexibility (as it is easily scalable) and eco-friendliness. By transiting to Cloud, the company re-duces the cost on its facilities and also helps in mar-ketability of its services to customers by reducing car-bon footprints and hence being a responsible Corpo-rate Citizen. In current global scenario, the heavyweights like IBM, HP and SAP are ready to lock hornswith existing players like Amazon, Salesforce and Mi-crosoft whose offerings have matured over a period of time. More and more research has been carried out tomake the Cloud data centers more energy efficient. Areport from Cleantech market intelligence firm PikeResearch has forecasted that the adoption of cloudcomputing will lead to a 38% reduction in worldwide

data centre energy expenditure by 2020.

But what accounts for these significant energy savings? Think of cloud computing as being likea mass transit system. The data centre is essentially getting computing applications to carpoolor take the bus instead of sitting in their own individual servers. However, unlike mass transit,there is no sacrifice in convenience or performance with this move. Consider the disappointingfact that a typical server in a company often runs at about 10% of capacity, meaning there arelots of servers out there drawing power without doing much computing. Like single-occupancycars, those servers use up much of the same energy than they would if they were running atfull capacity. Scalability is one of the key feature of cloud computing. Resources don‘t have tosit around consuming power when underutilized and can be (virtually) spun up when required.This greatly reduces the under-utilization of the resources as seen in the traditional data centreservers. One of the most popular example is How the Cloud computing aced the AustralianOpen website. The site attracts more than 10 million visitors every year, a huge cluster of those visits only during January while the event is on. For the rest of the year, activity is muchlower. In earlier years, servers had to be deployed to cope with that expected peak demand,

but that isn‘t necessary now thanks to the intelligent use of cloud systems.

A company's move to the cloud may reducethe direct carbon footprint of that company, asit has shifted a portion of its energy consump-tion (and therefore carbon emissions) to thecloud provider. In most cases, there will alsobe a net carbon reduction, due to the greaterenergy efficiency of the cloud provider's ICT

Cloud Computing –

Green or Brown!!

By: Alok Bugde

Ist year, NMIMS



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infrastructure and datacentre. As a matter of fact clouds also differ interms of Green efficiencyi.e. some clouds aregreener than others.Greenpeace points outthat eBay‘s new flagshipdata centre in South Jor-dan, Utah, is loaded withenergy efficiency features,but Utah derives over81% of its electricity fromcoal. The cloud, in that

case, says Greenpeace, isbrown. Alternatively, amajor U.S. data centre service provider has located all of its data centers near the ColumbiaRiver to take advantage of hydroelectric power. That‘s a truly green cloud. But there‘s catchhere, an overzealous demand for low latency (reducing the number of connections betweenCloud data centers and clients) may mean that large data centers still need to be located inmetropolitan areas where the environmental impact is high. Thus a call must be taken between

business efficiency and green efficiency.

Also the availability of cheap resource would prove to be a costly affair in the long run and would

itself go against the cloud computing. Availability of cheap resources results in poor optimizationof resources. By cost based analysis, it is cheaper to add another server than to optimize the cur-rent solution for data storage issues. Hence defeating the green purpose of Cloud computing.Over-processing of the cloud server would result in over-utilization of cloud based data centers,by allowing things that may never have been processed before to be processed without an impacton performance, for example, selecting a very large set of data for analysis because you can liter-ally process the data in an hour where previously it could have taken days. So, hypotheticallyspeaking we are using more resources, not less. Thus by Jevons Paradox, it may mean that in theend we end up using much more of a more efficient resource, paradoxically increasing energy

consumption, which is definitely NOT Green.

Thus there are many "it depends" moments when we talk about the greenness of cloud comput-

ing. But none of the big cloud providers such as Amazon, Microsoft or IBM are publishing metrics

at all. It solely depends on these cloud providers to become more transparent around their utili-

zation and consumption numbers, which will help us to gauge the energy efficiency of cloud com-

puting. Until then whether cloud computing is Green or Brown it is still a subject to debate.



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The picture of our Earth as seen from the moon is

bound to hold anyone awestruck. It looks like abeautiful blue lamp, hanging in space, obviously alive.

Although, in the first glance, it seems to be made upof innumerable separate species of living things, oncloser examination, every one of its working parts,including us, is interdependently connected to all theother working parts. In a way, it is the only trulyclosed ecosystem that we know about. To put it inanother way, it is an organism that came alive, bil-lions of years ago.

Man has evolved over thousands of years. Everystage has resulted in several inventions and discover-

ies. One of the most significant inventions was thatof the computer. With the advent of computers, so-cieties all over the world have become greatly influ-enced by them and now computers form an integralpart of our lives. In the current age, almost 70% of our daily chores are carried out by machines. Tech-nology is developing by leaps and bounds. Technol-ogy has penetrated completely into our life and now we have even started segmenting it, sothat each branch can be developed further. One such branch is Information technology.We are living in an information age where information is the key factor to sustained growth.

Information technology is surely a needful and identified sector which can be leveraged for op-timization of computation, automation of repetitive tasks and, furthermore, to have an edge inthe globalized economy.

Information technology has its own pros and cons. Uneven growth pattern, as a ripple effect of the bulge in Information technology sector has caused the mass inflow of people, in and aroundthe IT establishments, mostly to the cities which causes the cities to expand unevenly, creatingconcrete jungles by deforestation and loss of self sustenance to villages. The imbalance pro-duced in the ecosystem needs to be addressed in a comprehensive manner. The following ini-

tiatives can be implemented to bring harmony in theecosystem and minimize the harm that can occur be-

cause of the development in IT sector.

Tele-work and Virtual meetings: We need to main-tain a proper mix and match of face to face teaming andvirtual teaming. This will reduce transportation costs andhelp us conserve fuel thus reducing the carbon foot-prints of a company. Proper planning and breakup of projects into independent logical units will ease teams towork at their own locations, resulting in optimization of work as a green IT initiative.

Green IT Initiatives

By:

Vudayagiri Ganesh Samvaran

Ist yr ,NMIMS



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Cooling and Powering: Cooling and powering of data centers consume a huge amount of energy. IT

Corporate groups with the help of political bodiesshould turn their investments towards pure pollutionfree energy sources like solar energy. This will reducepollution and help us in saving our non-renewable re-sources.

Optimized Processes and Procedures: IT groupsshould implement green IT initiatives to reduce the car-bon prints by encouraging ERP implementation so that,a paperless enterprise can be established.

CSR: The Information technology segment should take up social responsibility and build somesupplementary programs with help of political systems to rebuild self sustained green villages.This will prevent the mass exodus from the villages and gives a boost to the green IT initia-tives.

All the employees should adopt a positive lifestyle through proper connect points to naturalecosystem so that the positive energy in and around them is reinstated which will indirectlyimprove the interdependent environment.

E – Waste Management: IT groups should follow e-waste management and handling rules. E

-waste collection centers should be established so that the unused and obsolete electronicproducts do not sit idle at homes, where one does not know what to do with the waste asthere is no systematic mechanism to dispose it. E-wastes are considered dangerous, as certainelectronic components contain toxic metals, biologically active materials and plastic additives.These should be disposed in a proper way to minimize the hazards due to toxic waste.

This in a nutshell, is the great challenge of our time to create sustainable communities i.e. so-

cial and cultural environments in which we can satisfy our needs and aspirations without dimin-

ishing the chances of future generations. Being ecologically literate or ‗ecoliterate‘ means un-

derstanding the principles of organization of ecological communities (i.e. ecosystems) and using

those principles for creating sustainable human communities. IT sector, which forms a majorpart of the world economy in the present day scenario, can contribute immensely towards the

promotion and implementation of the green IT initiatives. We need to revitalize our communi-

ties – including our educational communities, business communities, and political communities

– so that the principles of ecology become manifest in them as principles of education, manage-

ment, and politics.



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Green IT refers to the environmentally sustainable

process of manufacturing, using and disposing of com-puter hardware efficiently and effectively with no or

little environmental degradation. This is also achievedby minimizing the usage of toxic components like mer-cury and lead while manufacturing hardware and alsoby making the products more and more energy effi-cient. An energy efficient hardware product wouldminimize the usage of electricity while running and this

would lead to less environmental degradation.

The very concept of designing efficient hardware is im-portant in today‘s world as IT is progressively taking

on increasing roles in the business world, which is lead-ing to data centers becoming larger and the increasedusage of desktops and laptops. The problem is evenmore aggravated with hardware becoming more af-fordable and the rising cost of energy, which is a scarceresource. Implementation of energy efficient hardwarewould lead to decreased running costs and increased

profits.

Also, the heat generated by computing equipment, especially large data centers has a multi-fold

impact. First, a large amount of capital needs to be spent in running the cooling equipment.Secondly, the heat from these IT equipment is discharged in the environment, leading to in-creased global warming. Thirdly, heat being a by-product is essential a waste of energy. Design-ing and manufacturing energy efficient IT hardware would reduce the impacts of these prob-lems. Utilization of LCD monitors instead of CRT monitors have helped reduce energy con-

sumption and heat generation to a large extent.

Many organizations in the IT hardware manufacturing industry havetaken initiatives to ―go-green‖. The initiatives range from educatingand making conscious the end consumer to incorporating efficiencyin their manufacturing process and making their products energy

efficient.

MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY-

Initiatives taken by Lenovo-

Various manufacturers have incorporated the ―Green-IT‖ theme intheir manufacturing processes in order to save the environment and

Implementing

Green- IT in Relation

to Computer Hardware

By:

Chiranjib Banerjee

Ist year, NMIMS



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portray their image as that of a caring brand.

Lenovo portrays its range of computing prod-ucts as the easiest way to ―go green‖. Its entire

product range is manufactured from recycledplastic. For example, its Thinkpad L seriesnotebooks contain 85% recycled plastic con-

tent.

In terms of energy saving, Lenovo produces IThardware which is ENERGY STAR 5.0 compli-ant, which translates to upto 60% decrease inenergy utilization and costs. The company hasalso devised a software (Thinkpad Power Manager), which it bundles along with its range of products. Using this utility, the energy usage per desktop per year can be reduced by upto

69%.

Lenovo also implements the concept of bulk shipping in which the company ships many prod-ucts packaged together. According to Lenovo‘s estimates, if it ships 5000 desktops together, it

helps in saving 10,000 kgs of packaging material.

The Asset Recovery Service which caters to the end-of-life products is provided by Lenovohelps in data destruction, proper recycling and cash-back credit for next Lenovo purchase. Thishelps Lenovo in retaining its customers within its own brand and being environment friendly at

the same time.

Initiatives taken by Dell-

Dell India has also taken initiatives to encourage green behaviour in consumers by launchingdiscount coupon in 2010 to encourage PC recycling. Under this program, consumers who sendtheir old PC‘s to Dell for recycling were offered discounts on their next purchase of Dell sys-

tems.

Dell also had launched the ―Go Green Challenge‖ in 2010 in an effort to raise awareness andcommunity involvement in green initiatives in India. The company invited citizens to submitphotographs and videos of related to concerns and thoughts on green technology, online. The20 entries which received the most votes from the community were given recognition onlineand were also given gifts to motivate them to further their ideas related to environmental pro-tection. The challenge had received 627 green ideas, 108 green pledges, over 2900 online regis-

trations and built a community of over 21,000 fans in Facebook.



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Today‘s enterprise data centers are running into a

―power and cooling wall‖. Significant increases in thebusiness demands are fueling the growth in the size

and complexity of data centers. This, in turn, is in-creasing the total power consumption and heat gen-eration in data centers, pushing the limits of today‘s

electrical and cooling systems.

How green is your data center?

If you don't care now, you will soon. Most data cen-ter managers haven't noticed the steady rise in elec-tricity costs, since they don't usually see those bills.But they do see the symptoms of surging power de-

mands.

―Every year, as we revise our standards, the powerrequirements seem to go up," says Forbes, seniorvice president and manager of mainframe technologyat Regions Financial Corp. in Birmingham, Ala. "It creates a big challenge in managing the data

center because you continually have to add power.

To address this challenge, designers must take a holistic, systems perspective and determine:

(1) How each component of a modern data center — including processors, servers andblades, storage, racks, and cooling systems — should be designed to do its part in achieving

power-efficiency?

(2) What policies and mechanisms are required to piece together the power-management capabilities offered by individual components to create a power-efficient

―green‖ data center?

Consolidation, and consolidation of some more

Consolidation of servers is the best way to start when you want to make a few basic changesand yet achieve substantial savings. In many DCs, at a time around 10-30% of the servers aredead which could be turned off. Going Virtual is one of the best ways to go in for this initiative.

This not only saves direct energy cost but also helps in increasing the utilization of the Servers.

Power management

The potential savings of leveraging power management with the latestprocessors are significant. AMD's newest designs will scale back voltageand clock frequency on a per-core basis and will reduce the power to

memory, another rapidly rising power hog.

Also, Just taking full advantage of power management features and turningoff unused servers can also cut data center energy requirements by about

20%.

Apart from these, its often argued that turning on power management can actually increase

reliability and uptime by reducing stresses on data center power and cooling systems.

Going the green Way

for Data Centers

By: Arnab Malick

Ist year, NMIMS



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Moving up to the energy-efficient

servers

As newer architectures and designs

evolve, they are much more energy effi-cient than their predecessors. "Intel'sXeon 5100 delivered twice the perform-ance with 40% less power," says LoriWigle, director of server technologyand initiatives marketing at Intel. Movingto servers based on these designs

should increase energy efficiency.

High-efficiency power supplies showing the way

―Every watt of energy wasted by the power supply requires another watt of cooling system

power just to remove the resulting waste heat from the data center‖

In spite of this, achieving cent percent efficiency is out of bounds as there is a certain amountof tradeoff between efficient and cost premium. Power supplies are available today that attain80% or higher efficiency -- even at 20% load -- but they cost significantly more. High-efficiencypower supplies carry a 15% to 20% premium. So optimum power supply efficiency should be

chosen which suits the best.

Internal business barriers — the bane

In most organizations, IT functions (load generator) are separated from the facilities (power billpayer) group. Breaking down those barriers is critical to understanding the challenge -- and

providing a financial incentive for change. The line between these groups should blur as it canbe the smallest of things that can affect your power bill. It can range from simple room-level airconditioning to targeted cooling systems that move heat exchangers up to -- or even inside --

the server rack.

Standards to guide you

There are several certifications and standards in place which should be able to guide organiza-tions into buying the best energy efficient IT equipment. For Servers, the Energy Star certifica-tion is in place. Another group called the SPEC (Standard Performance Evaluation Corp.) onperformance per watt benchmark for servers that should act as a baseline for energy efficient

customers.

Change for the future

IT equipment manufacturers won't design for energy efficiency unless users demand it. So or-ganizations need to take it upon themselves, to push these initiatives forward. Greater Energy

efficiency should be the long term goal towards which all should be working on.

With the above simple paradigms in place, the Datacenters of today can move towards the

GREEN Data Centers of tomorrow. It will not only be beneficial for the society but also for

the Organizations where they will be able to cash in on its benefits and rake in moolah. Its af-

ter all money that speaks.



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The turbulence in the current economic scenario hasforced organizations to resort to cost minimization in allaspects. With developed nations like the U.S and manyEuropean nations drawing flak for their thriftiness, manag-ers are now more conscious of how much is being spentand the question which often comes to limelight is ―What ismy Return on Investment?‖ .Very often the return on ITexpenditure is subjective and it is the budget of CIO that

comes under the hammer.

IT organizations thus need to streamline their businessprocess by enhancing capabilities which gives them the agil-ity and flexibility to respond quickly to changing businessopportunities. The task of building capability should be cen-tral to the organization performance and a systematic man-agement approach is essential for incorporation of learningand development of the IT workforce. With new technol-ogy gaining traction every day, it is crucial to impart theworkforce with competency and confidence to work in

these new arenas.

Organizations need to build a comprehensive planto find avenues to fill parity of demand and supply that ex-ists with the current market. The demand that exists issomething that has come up recently in the innovationspace. Inflexibility creeps in into workers who remain stagnated in a specific technology for along period of time. So when these workers come up with anything new they tend to be reluc-tant to take up these activities. It is only through the development of competencies that work-ers would be more comfortable to groom themselves into the requirements of the changingbusiness world. The channelization of talent into the training should be done only after a care-

ful study of the upcoming technologies in the market.

Management of workforce over great distance is another aspect which is very impor-

tant. With escalation of prices in real estate it is becoming by the by crucial for diversificationof offices from location of prime costs to cheaper working locations like the Tier 2 and Tier 3cities of nations. It is thus imperative for companies to endow appropriate management skillsto leaders so that teams with members dispersed over different locations can work in tandem.To achieve such synchronization team members not only need to have a great understandingamongst them but also needs to have a higher degree of trust in each other capabilities. Anexpedited method of dissemination of information is crucial to build high performing teams un-der such circumstances. Fortunately technologies such as Microsoft Unified Communication

proved to be a one stop solution for all communication in an office.

Of the innumerable strategies that can be adopted by IT organizations we shall discuss a

Future drivers of IT:

Building capabilities

and devising com-petitive strategies

for tomorrow

By: Anubhav Mishra

Ist year, NMIMS



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few of them which will impact the way IT organizationsoperate in the current business scenario. IT companiesrely heavily on the capabilities of the workforce for

producing revenues. The workforce relies on a knowl-edge base to enrich those using searches which can betermed as knowledge mining. Formation of an indige-nous repository of information and a common platformfor sharing of information can be of great help to theworkforce. It may be a mistake on the part of the or-ganization to quantify the value that search for informa-tion contributes to the profits of organization. The in-house knowledge centers would prove to be more use-ful as it would have the resources contributed by peo-ple having common goals. The repository should be

powered by efficient search engines to give better matches for helping the workforce to lever-age on the work and ideas of other workers. Workers can troll for information to gain insights

which could guide them make business decision.

With the evolution of cloud computing the perspective of IT companies has changed vastly. ITcompanies should be more aggressive in acquiring business form Medium scale enterprises.Some of the most renowned cloud services are the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, theGoogle Cloud Connect (imagine how we are able to open office documents in Google Docsover the web without having the requisite application in our local systems), Microsoft Win-dows Azure. Creation of private clouds would be an efficient way to woo such customers who

have shoestring budgets at their disposal. Clouds would eliminate the capital expenditure of such clients as infrastructure costs would be minimal. This ropes in the concept of SaaS(Software as a Service) which is other known as on-demand software which is hosted centrallyand is accessed by a thin client through a web browser over the internet. Such software is of-ten maintained by experts and the hardware required to perform voluminous transactionswould be furnished by the cloud service provider. Designing of the architecture and planning of which cloud services are to be made available is to be done judiciously. For the internal opera-tions of the IT organization and delivering projects to customers decision needs to be made onhow to leverage on public clouds. Delivering ready to use applications would not only reducethe expenses of customers in quantitative prospects but also would give the IT companies a

recurring profit depending on the volume of data that is transacted over the cloud. Availingapplications hosted on private clouds would help customers to be more tolerant to faults andalso enhance their capability to be more continuous in their business operations. IT companiesshould thus equip themselves with appropriate infrastructure to create their private clouds andthereby be ready to showcase their capabilities to potential customers. Modularization of cloudservices where they are divided into components parts like the operating systems, applicationsand middleware is another offering which IT companies can think of to gain the competitive

edge.



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Web 2.0 brings in the concept of ―Wisdom of Crowd‖ where an organization can reapbenefits from the interaction of social capital.Collaboration and creation of mashups are

some of the other avenues which Web 2.0offers. Mashups are the most important con-cepts involved in building of dashboard appli-cations which are used by Insurance compa-nies and various banks which seek data fromvaried data sources e.g. an insurance managermay want to track the performance of theagents who report to him and at the sametime he may want to check the workflow of certain requests that he had raised. The offer-ings of Web 2.0 being vast thus give IT com-panies to contemplate and concentrate their

efforts around the concept.

Virtualization is another space where IT companies need to concentrate. Virtualizationhas transformed the architecture of computing. With extensive growth in data volumes and de-clining budget to address the maintenance of datacenters it has become essential to optimize theutilization of resources. Server virtualization has brought in higher efficiency and building agiledatacenters where resources can be started or stopped as per requirements. The advent of vir-tualization has given IT providers a solution which fills up the inadequacy of Storage Area Net-works (SANs). Virtualized Machines are much more capable as far as scalability, manageabil-

ity ,sharing operation are concerned in comparison to their counterparts (SANs).

With the intensification of price challenges IT companies in the Service Sector shouldtransform more towards a product oriented approach. In India where majority of the IT compa-nies are service oriented, the vision of the management should be towards the development of products so that it caters to the needs of the current and future market demands. Customizationof such products needs to be done to meet the requirements of clients belonging to differentspheres of business. The management should be able to visualize future in a time frame whichothers find it difficult to see and the management should be willing to invest at that pace. Theconcept may seem to be far-fetched but it has been observed that some service based IT compa-

nies are investing heavily in e-commerce applications to get the desired results.

The design of enterprise applications should consider the small gadgets and gizmos of themodern era which includes the mobiles, palmtops and laptops used to access the web. Withheightened compatibility of such applications they are more prone to get attacked. But that is thecost which application developers have to incur to find a greater traction in the market. Key log-gers, viruses, malware and Trojans are some of the programs which can lead to the pilferage of valuable information present in these devices. The only remedy to the maladies is to build appli-

cation with higher level of encryption and using digital certificates created by trusted publishers.





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Recent IT news of the quarter The Google Motorola deal

Google‘s acquisition of Motorola Mobility for$12.5 billion is for a lot more reasons than

just access to over 17,000 patents and theintellectual property. Google with this acquisi-tion has vertically integrated hardware-software ecosystem like Apple for betterprofit margins. Motorola Mobility also has asignificant set box business which Googlemight be very interested to leverage after the

lukewarm response received for Google TV.

Infosys plans to redefine BPO services

Infosys views the current global slowdown as an opportunityto move up the value chain and feels organizations operatingon traditional BPO models will be left behind. People arecrucial to a firm‘s success in BPO industry and the other im-portant factor is ability to address future client needs in thepresent. Anantha Radhakrishnan, vice-president and head –

Business Transformation, Technology Services and CustomerServices at Infosys BPO said that HR, new operating modelsand innovation are top priorities. It is leveraging on cloud ca-pabilities to deliver business processes to client. Infosys istrying to sell business-outcome based end-to-end servicesleveraging the cloud model. That means a client can buy abusiness service from Infosys BPO, which is offered on apoint solution created by Infosys on SAP, run on AmazonWeb Services infrastructure. The client will only pay Infosysbased on business outcome and not for the application or licensing of SAP or for using Ama-

zon services. Infosys would take care of that in the backend.

Infosys has also launched "Infy-on-the-go" a mobile service using Infosys‘ proprietary mConnectand MS Outlook frameworks. Supervisors and managers can use this service to approve work-flow requests real time using Blackberry and also have Outlook for offline access. After thedeployment more than 5000 travel approvals (around 20 % of overall approvals) have hap-pened using BlackBerry over the last 5 months. They have also achieved about 32% reduction

in ticket cancellations due to on-time approvals.



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Apple to go on without Jobs

―I have always said if there ever came a daywhen I could no longer meet my duties andexpectations as Apple's CEO, I would be thefirst to let you know. Unfortunately, that

day has come.‖ – Steve Jobs

On August 24, 2011 Steve Jobs announcedthat he is stepping down as CEO and TimCook as his replacement. The visionary willcontinue to serve as Chairman of the Board,

director and Apple employee.

Product roundup

Apple loses iphone5 prototype.Amazon to release a tablet.Sony debuts android powered Walkman player prototype.

Samsung tries an extra large screen phone with Samsung Note (5.3 inches).

HP to exit PC, mobile and tablet business

HP the world‘s largest PC maker an-

nounced its intention to sell or spin off its

PC business. The reason behind it is stag-

nant revenues, stiff competition and the

future of PC is not too bright in the world

of mobility. It also announced premature

discontinuation of its tablet Touchpad

which triggered an immediate stock clear-

ance sale. The tablets were sold for $99apiece, a full 75% discount on the original

price of $399. In continuation with its shift

in focus to software business, it acquired

British company Autonomy for about $10.2 billion. Autonomy‘s enterprise software specializes

in database search and the company is also looking to move into Saas.





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1 . M i l l i o n I n s t r u c t i o n s p e r S e c o n d 2 . S a n j a y J h a 3 . M e n l o

P a r k , C a l i f o r n i a i n J a n u a r y 1 9 9 6 4 . I n t e r n a t i o n a l B u s i n e s s

M a c h i n e s 5 . V R A M 6 . K . V . K a m a t h , I C I C I B a n k 7 . $ 1 2 . 5 B i l -

l i o n 8 . I B M a n d C o m p a q 9 . G a g a n N a r a n g 1 0 . C o a l I n d i a

ANSWERS of Quiz

Old Computer ads



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Pylon of IsisIt is an online treasure hunt organized by Team SummIT for the first year batch of NMIMS.In this game, the participants have to cross the different levels. The clues to the next level are presentin the existing level and one might have to change the url, click an item or answer questions or explore

the map page.

The person completing all the levels earliest is the winner.

Around 90 teams (180 members) participated in the event. 37 teams were able to crack the treasure

at the end. The blog page http://labyrinth2010.blogspot.com was hyper active and attracted over 1000

page hits in a span of 3 hours.

http://labyrinth2010.blogspot.com/





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Editorial Board 2011

Ideate is the SummIT‘s quarterly newsletter. The main objective of these newsletter is to make the peopleaware of the latest trends in IT. Every issue focuses on one theme which is generally one of the new buzz

words in IT industry. The newsletter consists of articles on various topics related to the central theme.

This Ideate‘s theme has been ―Green IT‖. We sincerely hope that you enjoyed reading this issue.

Best Wishes

Team Ideate 2011



Team SummIT

Faculty-In-charge: Dr. Nilay Yajnik(Follow him at http://nilayyajnik.blogspot.com )

Yogeshwar Kumar Ankit Jain

Venil Shah Rajat Anand

Samir Sethi Mayank Golcha

Anusha Bonda Bijo Mani

Anshul Mahajan Roshni Bansal

Tarun Gupta

Contact Us at [email protected]

Website: http://summit-nmims.co.in/

Address:

Narsee Monjee Institute of Management &Higher Studies (University), JVPD Scheme,

Vile Parle (W), Mumbai 400056

Tel: 26134577/26143177 Fax: 26114512

http://nilayyajnik.blogspot.com/


http://summit-nmims.co.in/




Documents

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