For a long time we have seen increased computerisation as purely positive. It has allowed us to increase productivity, improve our quality of life and work, and has freed us from the most laborious tasks. Unfortunately, further progress may be at the expense of the environment.
Computer hardware and the infrastructure that is closely linked with it, such as cooling systems, demand a huge amount of energy that is continually increasing to the point where today it has become a major driver of global energy requirements. According to recent research, it will increase dramatically – by up to 40 per cent – by 2020.
But technologies do now exist that will allow us to continue to benefit from
computers without incurring the environmental risk. During the opening of a recent conference on climate change Prince Charles talked about Reed, a recruitment company, that has reduced its
PC energy consumption by 80 per cent simply by replacing 4,500 PCs and 400 laptops with 'thin clients'. “It is bewildering! I have never heard of it before. What is ‘it’, this revolutionary method about to improve the fate of our planet?" he asked.
Thin client computing is about deploying an infrastructure based on the centralisation of processing power with the virtualisation of applications, all of which are at the disposal of end users. Applications are no longer installed on workstations. Instead they are deployed within a
company's data centre and easily accessed both within and from outside the office environment. The effect is a dramatic reduction in power consumption.
So what is new?
Desktop virtualisation (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) is the latest technology and seems to be the most promising for the planet. It is not only the applications that are hosted by the servers within a single datacentre, but the whole package, including the operating system that is usually installed on a physical workstation.
As an example, take the case of two similar companies, each with around 2000 employees. The first, like most companies today, is based on a classic PC and server architecture. The second has opted for a virtualised infrastructure.
A worker from the first company turns on her PC, which costs approximately £350 and uses about 75 watts (100 watts with an LCD display). She goes off to drink a coffee during which time her windows-based system, an older version, but the only version that still functions with her hardware, will be ready for use.
Meanwhile, a worker from the second company turns on his thin client, costing only £90, and uses only three watts. He waits just a few seconds while his desktop, the next generation operating system – Windows 7 – boots up.
Our friend from the first company finds herself at another office where she has to access a specific corporate business application.
On arrival, and after having settled down in front of a
dedicated workstation, she has to wait for the weekly application upgrade to complete, which unfortunately, failed during the night. Usually, the system administrator assures the successful completion of this operation, but there are always some PCs that fail. Finally, our example user connects, waits for her profile upgrade before starting to work.
The user in the second company also has to go to a remote office. Before leaving his desk, he simply clicks on 'Disconnected' and his
Windows Seven ‘virtual PC’ is conserved in its current state on a server with all his selected corporate business applications still open. He can easily access his virtual PC from any terminal in any location. It is also up to date and centrally maintained with all the latest application upgrades, installed once a week by the team that supervises the datacentre.
In his company these updates are installed on the 100 servers and generally take place without any problem. This process saves massive amounts of time because the upgrades no longer have to be installed on 2000 separate workstations throughout the company’s 30 sites.
In addition to the simplification of administrative tasks, the use of
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure results in a significant
reduction in IT costs in general, and offers complete flexibility for end users.
The good news for the second company is that it has succeeded in reducing its annual IT budget and its energy consumption by 50 per cent despite an increase in the number of servers in the datacentre. At the same time as reducing cost and increasing efficiency, the
company’s carbon footprint also improves.
Desktop virtualisation is one example, amongst others, where IT can become a positive force in improving the environment. In most cases, it also offers economic savings and an improvement in the quality of service to end users. After a difficult period and a negative impact on the environment, IT can once again become a positive source of progress.