The value of having greener, more energy efficient IT departments has been well understood for the past few years, but until recently those efficiencies weren’t financially viable for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Times have changed quickly, as Deeley Harley-Davidson® Canada can attest to. With IT virtualization, the company has become much more agile and, in the process, much more efficient.

Deeley Harley-Davidson Canada is the exclusive distributor of Harley-Davidson and Buell motorcycles, Genuine Motor Parts and Accessories and Motorclothes apparel in Canada. Deeley provides infrastructure solutions that continually improve business processes for their network of 71 authorized Harley-Davidson Retailers.
 
The challenge
Brent Husband, manager of technical operations at Deeley, saw the time his team had for system enhancements decreasing because they were spending the bulk of their time maintaining their 45 Microsoft Windows servers.

“We’re not that big a company, and we’ve been experiencing tremendous growth in the last four or five years,” says Husband. “It’s always the same challenge – doing more with less. From the technology side, we were having challenges keeping pace with the demand on IT for new services and for revising existing services, and there wasn’t an interest corporately to double the size of the IT department, especially when you consider we were spending the majority of our resources just keeping things running that we’d already built and deployed. We really wanted to reinvent ourselves and become a more streamlined, forward-thinking, and dynamic type of IT organization.”

What Husband found was that the IT department as it was couldn’t meet the expectations of its client — the Deeley Harley-Davidson Canada management and internal customers. 

“When you ask people outside of IT what makes IT great, it’s that they deliver new products and new services — that’s where the perceived value of IT was for Deeley’s various departments,” says Husband. “Recognizing that we had finite resources, we really needed to adopt some more modern structure and technology to allow us to become more agile, more dynamic, and more efficient. Although there were a variety of things we looked at doing to change, the biggest strategy was to change our technology infrastructure so that we could become more dynamic and have less of a requirement to administer or maintain that infrastructure.”

The solution
Husband worked with Dell to consolidate and rationalize the IT infrastructure at Deeley. Dell not only helped Deeley increase staff efficiency, they also helped Deeley create a more robust disaster recovery strategy for the company’s Windows servers and move away from single-application servers, reducing the physical space required for back-up servers and saving significant amounts of energy in the process.
 
Deeley Harley-Davidson Canada was able to reduce deployment time for new services and eliminated 40 per cent of its physical servers.
 
“Deeley and the challenges they experienced are very similar to what a lot of SMBs across Canada would echo,” says Chris Keenan from Dell. “It keeps coming back to some common foundations. For instance, power and cooling is up front and paramount for all of our customers. While they certainly want to take advantage of the latest and greatest technologies, they’ve got to be mindful of what the costs associated with that is. That is one aspect that is very similar among SMBs. Another is that they want to take advantage of the latest and greatest technologies and trends in data centres today, but the question is how to do so using an SMB budget. This requires understanding what the technology is, how to implement it and manage it.

The Deeley IT team implemented a long-term storage and server virtualization strategy, starting with Dell EqualLogic Internet SCSI (iSCSI) storage area networks (SANs) and continuing with Dell PowerEdge blade servers running Microsoft virtualization software.
 
“Overall, Deeley had 35 servers that were a generation or two old that they wanted to replace,” explains Keenan. “What we looked at was a consolidation strategy using virtualization technologies. Using virtualization allows customers to run multiple servers on one physical hardware device. So where a company could have previously had 16 physical servers, taking up a portion of a rack, that can now be reduced to 10 physical servers, and by virtualizing it they end up working with even less.”

Keenan notes the value of working with Microsoft on this project.

“Microsoft just released the latest version of their virtualization software, and it’s a wonderful fit for SMBs,” he notes. “The other piece that was particularly valuable in this project was the storage. When you’re trying to consolidate, a lot of the times you have so many physical servers drawing so much power, they’re the vessels that hold the hard drives that contain all the data. So by putting the storage in a much more efficient space, it: a) lets customers better use the storage they need, so they’re not wasting drive space and therefore wasting physical space on the racks and power; and b) enables ease of management for data. A key pain point for a lot of customers these days is how to manage data, growth, regulatory compliance, and availability for employees.” 

Change agents
The environmental and financial benefits might be great, but Husband sees the real value of virtualization in the fact that it’s moving the company into the future. 

“The virtualization architecture really allows you to do a lot more with your resources,” says Husband. “The driver wasn’t the power savings. I agree with everybody who says that it just makes good business sense to go green. Additionally, taking a longer term view, we believe that the so-called “cloud-based” model of computing is the future. Processing is a commodity. And eventually, just like banking and hydro, we won’t build this service ourselves. This virtualization model is just a stepping-stone. We’re already dipping our toe into cloud computing. We outsource security to the cloud. Cutting our teeth in virtualization helps us cut our teeth on the idea of pooling our resources — processing and storage, cutting them up and using them as we need them. It will be interesting to see how our traditional partners like Microsoft and Dell position themselves for that, because it’s certainly going to happen and have an impact on their existing business models.”

This also creates a new role and relationship for IT with senior management and customers — that of a change agent.

“We’re sharing our view of the future with senior management, and we’re also talking to our suppliers about it, telling people this is what we think the future looks like, this is a stepping stone towards it, you’ve got to start thinking about how this is going to impact your departments or our business relationship, and anyone working in IT — some of the things they are doing in IT today probably won’t be done at all, or at least not how it’s being done today.” 

Part of the reason why IT is able to take on this role is that management is a lot more tech savvy than it may have been five or 10 years ago. “Technology is more mainstream than ever, so our executive is hearing terms like virtualization and the cloud,” says Husband. “They may not understand the details, but the terms aren’t alien.”

Selling to senior management
Husband still had to properly sell this new IT structure to senior management, which required understanding the business in a way that the IT department wasn’t used to doing.

“First and foremost, we had to demonstrate an understanding of what the business leaders’ vision of the future was,” says Husband. “We had to demonstrate that we were aligned with what they wanted to accomplish. And if we didn’t have that, it would be very difficult to get buy-in. Then we had to articulate that alignment from an IT perspective and sell the notion of virtualization. The jargon doesn’t mean anything to management, but operating more cost-effectively, more efficiently — building that framework that will allow them to be where they want to be in the future — does.”

By creating a roadmap for senior management to explain how the IT department was gradually changing to suit management’s needs, it also gave Husband a useful tool to manage future projects.

“Now, when someone comes to us and says they want a new CRM system, we can look at the roadmap and determine if it fits into the business framework,” says Husband. “The roadmap is the framework for that discussion. It focuses everyone’s perception of the business.”

The ripple effect
The energy savings and environmental impact of the changes happening in IT is also having an influence on the rest of the company.

“It is generating a lot of enthusiasm,” says Husband. “We have a green committee in our organization, and it has expanded — we’re seeing all sorts of things like more recycling, proper waste management, energy consumption, and more. In our organization, we don’t have a telecommuting policy, but we are doing a lot more video conferencing. Once again, it’s green friendly, but we’re saving a lot of money doing it by not flying across the country. We’ve now got the technology and the experience to be comfortable doing it.” 

The cost
Any big change has to come down to dollars and cents. Keenan notes that SANs and virtualization had a price tag in the hundreds of thousands a few years ago.

“Now, if SMBs look at the total all-in costs with the servers, storage, virtualization software and some training, they can get that starting from about $30,000 to upwards of $100,000, depending on their size,” says Keenan.

“The challenge with Deeley and a lot of other SMBs is there’s no cookie cutter approach, and I think that prebundled packages have been a problem in the past — that’s never the way they look when you’re done,” he notes.

The ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ mantra gained a lot of currency in the 1980s. Since then a large number of organizations have been aggressively pursuing 3R policies, from paper usage and disposal practices to energy usage and water consumption. There is one additional area however, that demands equal consideration: managing data and documents.

Companies will often hold information in a variety of different electronic formats and in different physical locations to meet different requirements. In many cases, like with PDF files, those formats consume inordinate amounts of storage space and drive up associated costs.

With industry observers predicting that by 2011 the digital universe will be magnitudes larger than what it was in 2006, the time has come to apply reduce, reuse and recycle thinking to electronic business information. Embracing a more strategic, ‘green’ approach to information management delivers a number of benefits, not the least of which is a dramatic reduction in the cost of document storage. 

Transform and repurpose to reduce
There are a number of specific technology offerings that can help to reduce storage demands and improve real time access to business critical information. These include server-based solutions that reduce storage by de-duplicating redundant print and graphic resources across high volume transactional content, such as customer statements, invoices and personalized direct mail. Others enable the storing and on-demand conversion of smaller print stream formats to much larger sized, more visually appealing formats such as PDF in real time for online presentment (ePresentment).

On-demand conversion of print stream to PDF or Tiff formats eliminates the unnecessary storage of large format documents, and lessens internal network congestion during the retrieval process. For some organizations, this “on-the-fly document and data transformation and repurposing” approach has effectively reduced storage requirements by as much as 90%.

The three Rs in play
Document archival and retrieval solutions enable the principles of reduce, reuse, recycle to be applied to data and document management today. To demonstrate how these solutions work, let’s look at the example of a leading financial services institution that recently upgraded its customer service technology infrastructure to provide its 2.5 million online customers with easy access to mortgage statements and offers.

• Reduce – When the organization moved to personalizing customer statements, the size of each document exploded from one-twentieth of a megabyte to between 5MB and 9MB, for a conventional statement. Monthly archiving would have demanded 12.5 terabytes of storage per month. Instead, the monthly storage footprint was reduced by 97 per cent to 375 gigabytes.
• Reuse – Their customers can now retrieve mortgage information with embedded messages and attached marketing collateral pieces via conventional mail, email, or through a Web portal. Customers also have direct access to historical statements and year-end reports, as well as reprints – all of which can instantly be reassembled on demand.
• Recycle – The mortgage service provider is “recycling” content data to personalize cross-sell offers to the right customer at the right time. Statement data can be analyzed and decisions can be made about the most effective way to market to a particular client.

Given that many large enterprises are spending a significant amount of their IT budgets on their storage infrastructures, there is a bigger push than ever to apply 'reduce, reuse, and recycle' thinking to information management needs.

Start today
Here's how you can start applying the “3 Rs” to your document management practices today:

• Reduce Unnecessary Storage Demands — Store native print streams in your corporate Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solution and then transform “on the fly” to readable formats such as PDF for presentation to internal stakeholders or online for customers. This “on-demand document transformation” approach can reduce storage requirements by as much as 90% for highly composed documents.
• Eliminate Duplication — Implement a “Resource Versioning” strategy and eliminate the need to store repetitive content resources such as logos, fonts, overlays or graphics for each document, multiple times, within an ERM (Enterprise Report Management)/ECM system. Common resource elements can be stored once and then assembled on demand when a document is printed or presented electronically resulting in massive storage reduction.
• Rethink the Value of Paper — Think about reducing unnecessary paper waste well before the “blue bin” recycling stage. Organizations can significantly cut the cost of physical print and delivery by implementing contemporary electronic archive solutions that provide real-time information access and multi-channel online delivery (eDelivery) capability to internal stakeholders and customers.

Stuart Butts is a founding member and director of Xenos Group Inc. A successful entrepreneur and creative leader, he has founded a number of leading-edge technology companies in both Canada and the US. He is a graduate of Trent University and the University of Toronto Law School and a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada.

Upper management's approval? Check. Green IT baseline? Check. Green IT strategy? Check. Engaged employees? Not quite.

This is the scenario of many organizations implementing green IT programs. Employee engagement is one of the most critical components to your organization’s green IT program but it’s often overlooked.

“I see a lot of situations where employees learn of their organizations’ green IT initiatives after the fact, through a memo or newsletter,” says Jessica Vreeswijk of Terrabytes, a green IT consulting firm. “It’s a huge missed opportunity for the specific initiative and the entire organization.”

However, says Vreeswijk, with some time and thought, you can not only achieve true staff engagement but you can impact your business positively in a number of other ways.

Workforce surveys consistently demonstrate companies that value corporate social responsibility (CSR), including environmental programs, have an easier time recruiting and retaining employees. MonsterTRAK, for example, conducted a survey of college students that found 92 percent would chose working for an environmentally friendly company. Further, the Kenexa Research Institute found employees are also more likely to believe that senior management supports and practices high standards of ethical conduct in companies with strong CSR programs.

Green initiatives rely heavily on employee engagement to be successful and green IT is no different. Green IT often challenges the status quo and requires looking at IT management differently. It is critical you recognize the cultural and behavioural challenges you will face and create a strategy to engage employees across your organization. Following, are seven tips to help you successfully inform and engage your company’s staff.

Know your audience
You’ve probably heard the phrase “know your audience” before – maybe, like me, your mother spouted it at you when you requested cookies for breakfast. The point is: when trying to effect behaviour, you must understand the people you are targeting.

Consider bringing in an outsider to hold a focus group with a representative sample of staff. This will arm you with an understanding of how best to engage them – from what messages they need to hear, to what communication tools you should be using (ie. Maybe they are sick of corporate memos from the CEO and would be more receptive to a grassroots campaign).

Develop a communications plan
Experts recommend starting with a communications plan to identify the many ways you can communicate with staff and keep them motivated. Here, you will explore the corporate culture and establish the best tone for your messaging. Some organizations will role their green IT communication strategy into their larger environmental communications strategy. It’s hard to say whether this is the ideal method without knowing the scope of the project and company. If your green IT project requires considerable staff support, then a dedicated engagement campaign is probably required.

You communications plan will force you to think about how you want your employees to participate. What do you want them to do? Turn off computers and peripherals when not in use? Print less? Your goals will determine the best messaging and communication tools.

Inform
Ongoing, repeated, consistent communication internally will ensure that your employees care about and participate in your initiatives. There are many strategies, including hosting lunch and learns, holding competitions, and launching fun campaigns.

When you are communicating your efforts, remember that employees value honesty and transparency. Don’t be tempted to announce your IT is suddenly ‘green’ when in fact you have a ways to go. Instead, talk about your diligent research, your goals and the current steps you are taking. This will help convince them that your efforts are worth their support.

The tools you choose to use will depend on the culture of your organization. For the Fairmont’s green IT program, the VP of technology recruited the company’s existing green team to help him inform and engage the chain’s 92 hotels. Whatever methods you use, note that consistently and repeatedly delivering your message is important.

Empower
In addition to providing information to the employees, it’s important to empower them to monitor their behaviour. Engaging them with targets and empowering them to monitor their consumption are very effective strategies. Tools like printing controls, which track who is printing, how much, to what printers, and if they are printing double-sided help to change users’ behaviour.

Recruit
Literally engaging employees in your efforts will make sure your campaign is supported from not only the top down, but the bottom up. Recruit a green IT team with representatives from various departments. This will give you a thorough understanding of opportunities and challenges across the organization. You will not only receive ideas, support and feedback from the green IT team but the team members will likely receive informal feedback from their colleagues.

Set targets
Metrics drive awareness and commitment. They prove that the employees’ efforts are making a difference and that the initiative is worthwhile.

An assessment of your current operations is the best way to start because so it will give you a baseline to measure your efforts against. Armed with hard numbers and targets, you can set goals for the organization and employees. This will be one of the most effective engagement strategies you use.

Celebrate success
Finally, when you have started to see results, celebrate! Encourage and thank employees by rewarding them. Intel, for example, has just implemented a corporate employee bonus metrics around sustainability and incorporated green IT. This, they figure, will motivate Intel employees to participate in green IT and other environmental initiatives. With a bonus at stake, I’m sure they are right. If your organization can’t write cheques, a simple thank you email or Friday afternoon BBQ can go a long way.

Consider a tiered level of rewards tied to performance. The better the organization performs on the green IT campaign, the better the celebration.

Britt Burnham offers communications services through Terrabytes, a leading green IT consulting firm that helps organizations measure and reduce the impact of their IT operations (www.terrabytesconsulting.com).

Earth Rangers is a non-profit organization that teaches hundreds of thousands of children through school and online programs about what they can do to protect the environment. For this reason, it’s important to them that their headquarters have as little impact as possible, which is why they’ve built the Earth Rangers Centre in Woodbridge, Ontario, to a LEED Gold standard. It is now one of the most energy-efficient facilities in Canada, using 79 per cent less energy than similar buildings its size. Recently, they decided to take a step further by upgrading their IT systems with a virtualized environment. Doing so has meant saving about 90 per cent on data centre space and 90 per cent on IT energy use costs.

As often as we talk about how much greening a company’s data centre can save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, there aren’t that many resources that offer a step-by-step approach to really tackling the issue. Terrabytes Consulting’s new online Green IT Guide fills that gap quite successfully.

Sometimes the lowest of the low-hanging fruit of energy conservation can seem insurmountable. I know, I’ve been through quality improvement sessions and numerous process management workshops. It often turns out that the most basic office processes are handled in the most inefficient manner. Print management is a bug-bear of so many offices, and still it’s rare to see a company get it right.

Technology can be a key component of any green strategy. Beyond the effective management of your in-house IT infrastructure, it can also cut your carbon footprint and your general energy use. Replacing out-of-town meetings with video or teleconferencing technologies, for instance, is one example of how some companies like BMO Financial Group are attempting to shrink their carbon footprints.

As director of environment at Telus, Joe Pach knows the ins and outs of the value of such a strategy. Green Business caught up with Pach via telephone after he did a presentation - via videolink - to a green IT conference in Toronto. 

By Jacob Stoller

Information technology does its bit to mitigate carbon emissions and natural resource depletion. The purchase and operation of a single PC can spare an individual thousands of kilometres of driving annually. That said, more could be done to reduce IT’s own environmental footprint.

Green marketing can be a differentiator for both your clients and your employees. Nortel has been pushing the message to both audiences.

Differentiating yourself from your competitors is always a challenge. What is that one value that is going to make you look more appealing? This is a challenge that Nortel has faced as it has tried to pull market share from giant Cisco Systems.

Recently, they commissioned a study to determine how the energy efficiency of their systems compared to that of Cisco, and the results came out in their favour. The company has since turned this into an engaging advertising campaign that has raised eyebrows and created a debate.

Critically, it got Nortel into the public eye, if only briefly, in a positive way. While obviously not an out-and-out success as a strategy, it created a discussion around what "green" really means in the industry, and demonstrates how a company can use multiple tools to reach its customers and its employees.

By Corey Copping
 
It seems "green IT" is on everyone’s minds - and in their advertising - these days. Although there’s considerable confusion about what that term means exactly, there’s also widespread agreement that environmental responsibility should be part of every IT teams’ goals. But is your company doing all it can?