Simon Mingay
Research VP
13 years at Gartner
27 years IT industry
Simon Mingay is a research vice president in Gartner Research. Mr. Mingay is currently researching environmental sustainability and climate change, their impact on organizations, and their impact on IT and the IT industry. Read Full Bio
by Simon Mingay | April 29, 2010 | 2 Comments
A combination of the recession, continued focus on productivity, organizational and individual responses to climate change, changing demographics in the workplace, changing views on the acceptability of “junkets” or jollies, and Icelandic volcanoes, have created a significant change in attitudes towards business travel. I’d hesitate to talk about the “perfect storm” at this stage, but anecdotally what I am seeing is a very different attitude toward using remote collaboration systems, and to some extent social systems, to reduce the need to travel. The technology is so much better than it was even a couple of years ago, so the issue is now a social and behavioural one, and that’s what I think is showing signs of substantial change as well.
I’m going to be doing my first virtual conference in Second Life next week (http://www.technologyiowa.org/en/events_services/the_heartland_greenup/) whichI very much look forward too. There is obviously a time and place for this kind of immersive technology, but the increasing use and acceptability of remote meeting and remote collaboration technologies, immersive or otherwise, is symtomatic of the change I am talking about here. I’m very much looking forward to this experience, but must resist the temptation to play around with my avatar too much -though it desperately needs a hair cut.
As I mentioned above, the reasons for organizations and individuals to engagae more with this way of working are multiple, and vary in strength from one situation to another. Environmental performance is usually toward the top of the list, but it is in fact rarely the primary reason, even if that’s the talk track.
The world was always going to be different coming out of this recession, and I’d suggest that this might very well be one of those big changes.
Category: Uncategorized Tags: Sustainability
by Simon Mingay | April 22, 2010 | Comments Off
Earth Day is upon us again, an opportunity to pause and reflect on where the IT industry is. On the whole I’m very optimistic and boy have we come a long way in the last 5 years, particularly relative to other industry sectors. 2005 was when I started actively covering how climate change and sustainability would impact IT organizations and the industry. While the issues of toxics, e-waste, paper and to a limited extent energy and materials efficiency had been on the industry table for a few years, particularly in Europe, they were certainly not a mainstream let alone strategic priority for IT management. Not wilful neglect, mostly just bigger fish to fry. Certainly hardly anyone in IT organization were thinking about greenhouse gas emissions, few of the vendors were talking about it publicly, and only academics were talking about embodied energy and the environmental aspects of the IT supply chain.
The mindset back then was over engineer everything, and everything should be turned on full throttle, 24/7. Performance and cost was king, and no one questioned the sense of that.
While environmental health and safety (EH&S), environmental management systems (EMS) and compliance information systems had been around for along time, the ideas of explicitly thinking about the applications of IT through a lens of sustainability, climate change and energy efficiency were radical. It certainly felt like pushing a boulder up a hill, and it was certainly something one had to explain to people, once you moved beyond compliance. Now Smart Grid is a reality, we are regularly talking to clients about Smart Buildings, energy and carbon management capabilities, and the role that IT can play. Despite the hype, investment in these low-carbon solution areas is very patchy, which is very frustrating for the vendors. But there is movement and even rapid movement in some areas.
Beyond smart grid, an area I think that is particularly interesting at the moment is what’s happening in supply chains. Initiatives like the Sustainability Consortium, activities from the retail sector such as WalMart, Tesco, Marks and Spencer, Ikea etc, and even the recent announcement from IBM (see previous blog). All of which are turning the screw on the supply chain and demanding greater transparency and to a lesser extent better performance. This is a real material change that will have long term structural implications. And IT will be a key enabler to making it happen.
When we started our first low-carbon vendor assessment in 2007 in partnership with the WWF, we had to explain what we meant by many of the things we were looking for and were frequently met with glazed eyes. The response to the updated assessment we are just finishing now in 2010 is very different. While many vendors still struggle, the majority mostly get it and have responded well. Some have really thought long and hard and have some great ideas and solutions. Some are significantly more challenged than they like to think they are, but have made progress. Most still think this is just about energy efficiency rather than a much broader set of environmental issues covering carbon (of course), water, toxics, materials, and the very broad impact those have a range of environmental issues.
Back in 2005 enterprises rarely asked detailed questions about the environmental performance of a product (beyond asking for Energy Star) and even less about the environmental performance of the vendor. In 2010 that is so very different. All the IT vendors are now having to put significant resources into responding to these questions in RFIs and RFPs. Many enterprises are confused by how to interpret those responses, but they are at least asking and demanding improvements.
Transparency and real meaningful data is now found in many of the vendors CSR reports, not all, but its getting better. Of course there is still much vacuous PR, but there is more substance overall.
The industry was plagued by piecemeal PR led environmental initiatives being stitched together to create the illusion of a sustainability strategy. That still exists, but much less so. In recent weeks we’ve seen a flurry of stories in the media about “coal fired data centers” targeting the mega data centers of the internet and cloud service providers. This focus of the media reflects the changing stakeholder expectations, poor communication and transparency from the companies concerned, and the risks of half baked sustainability strategies.
In 2010 we are at the beginning of the end of what I refer to as Green IT Phase 1. Phase 1 was about the low hanging fruit in the data center and at the desktop. There is still much that many IT organizations need to do to improve the environmental performance of their IT services, even just to exploit that low hanging fruit – so we are far from done. But a significant enough proportion of enterprises have blazed the trail, established the good and best practices, such that it is rapidly becoming business as usual, and has sufficient momentum to continue. One area I thought that would have moved on, but really has not is the desire to over engineer, and run everything full bore 24/7. I regularly see IT organizations sweating over the most energy efficient server, but then massively over specing with regards to capacity and turning off the power management capabilities..
Green IT phase 2 will be harder because the low hanging fruit have gone, and the business case is less clear cut. But as the price of energy continues to rise far ahead of the rate of inflation, as IT continues to be in the climate change spotlight, and as other environmental aspects that touch IT come to the fore, so the need to go further will emerge.
Expect to see much more effort on dynamic energy management in the data center, better instrumentation of the data center in particular, both of which will help address the issues of everything being left on full power 24/7. Energy efficiency for storage and the network, much better capacity management, and if I was feeling particularly optimistic I might even say cleaning up applications. Interestingly I’ve been asked about the efficiency of code a couple of times recently, and of course there is plenty of opportunity there – but precious little real activity. So I would not expect that one to move very far anytime soon.
Having said all of this, don’t think for a minute enterprises or the IT industry have come over all ethical. The driver behind all of this is efficiency, reputational risk, branding, exploiting commercial opportunities and to some extent compliance.
So on Earth Day 2010 I’d give IT organizations and the IT industry collectively a “B-“ with comment to the effect of “while teacher is watching frequently tries reasonably hard, concentration has improved massively, but still under achieving, should spend less time admiring himself in the mirror, expect great things next year, keep up the good work”. I could have come up with a few reasons to be pessimistic, but today I’m feeling optimistic.
Category: Uncategorized Tags: Green IT, Sustainability
by Simon Mingay | April 19, 2010 | Comments Off
Last week IBM announced (http://asmarterplanet.com/blog/2010/04/smarter-sustainabilityold.html) that it was requiring all its’ supplier to put in place an environmental management system (EMS). Here’s what they are asking suppliers to do :-
We’re asking them to establish voluntary environmental goals and measure performance for at least three topics applicable to virtually all businesses: energy conservation, greenhouse gas emissions, and waste management/recycling. In addition, we’re asking them to publicly disclose their results. We’re also asking that these requirements be cascaded down to any of their suppliers who perform work for them that is material to what is ultimately supplied to IBM.
Importantly this is regardless of the nature of the business, albeit commensurate with the nature of its business. So whether the supplier has what it might previously have considered material environmental aspects or not, the supplier now needs to have a formal EMS.
The retail sector has also been turning the screw in the supply chain over the last year – Walmart being a good example. So this is just one more piece of evidence of the screw being tightened, albeit gently.
This is not overly demanding, it only talks about “voluntary” environmental goals, it seems to lack some specificity around the EMS, so it is clear IBM wants to take a softly softly approach. But it is non-the-less significant. Not least because it says regardless of the nature of your business you have environmental aspects that you need to manage and report. And it requires them to cascade this further down the supply chain. IBM’s ability to verify that is very limited, but it is establishing an important principle. The effects of which will be felt far and wide.
Others will do similar things, so expect increasing pressure cascading down the supply chain.
The low-carbon and environmental leadership assessment of ICT vendors and service providers that we will soon publish in partnership with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), clearly shows that the supply chain is an important area of differentiation between suppliers.
There is a very long way to go, and many hurdles to cross, but the days of environmental performance being unimportant and opaque are numbered.
Category: Uncategorized Tags: Sustainability
by Simon Mingay | April 19, 2010 | Comments Off
This news item from the BBC related to the UK’s global water front caught my eye this morning.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8628832.stm
Water footprints are different to carbon footprints for a number of reasons. With carbon/GHG emissions it’s the balance between carbon input vs that output in a process/cycle, and a tonne of carbon produced in the UK is the same as a tonne in the US. With water the absolute footprint can be deceptive in that a high water footprint may or may not be bad and likewise for a low footprint. It depends on a number of factors including, where and when that water is used, the source of that water (lake, river, reservoir, precipitation, grey water etc.) and of course any water contamination or temperature change that occurs in the process.
The graphic in this news item rightly highlights the incredible water footprint of some of the everyday items we consume. But having the number itself is not very helpful on its own. To give an ICT angle, although I have not seen a recent number for a PC/monitor, for the purposes of understanding the order of magnitude, it used to be around 1500 litres
There is very little doubt that water is going to be one of the most stressed resources we have to manage over the next few decades. And exactly like carbon, ICT has a dual role to play. From the low-carbon and environmental ICT vendor assessment we are about to publish it is clear that while there are some shining lights in the industry in terms of managing water, its an area the industry could get a lot better at.
ICT is already playing an important role in managing water resources, and that role will get more critical. Particularly in understanding, analysing and managing the water impact of the enterprise supply chain. While transparency (no pun intended) around water use will impact enterprises with a significant supply chain most, it will touch every organization. As a number of soft drinks companies know, there is significant reputational risk involved here. If you are not already tracking water consumption in your enterprise and starting to understand where the big water issues are in your supply chain, and taking appropriate commensurate measures then now would be a good time to start.
Although the BBC news items relates to a country and the footprint is calculated at a very macro level, this will cascade down to the enterprise level and will increasingly demand a more granular perspective. So within the IT organization, make sure the information and process architecture will support water management, and take every opportunity to start building that in. Because if you have not been asked already to produce water data related to your own operations and increasingly related to the supply chain, then you will soon.
Category: Uncategorized Tags: Green IT, Sustainability
by Simon Mingay | April 16, 2010 | Comments Off
There is a good business continuity story here of course. But also an interesting sustainability perspective (I’ve always said the cloud would be good for sustainability).
ICT remote collaboration tools will never replace travel, but it can certainly reduce the need for it significantly. You can be sure that a lot of those people grounded and unable to travel will be making extensive use of everything from the trusty phone, through personal video conferencing, telepresence, desktop sharing applications and every other remote collaboration tool you’d care to think of.
Hopefully this won’t last for long, but there is a great opportunity here to familiarise people with the power and richness of the remote collaboration tools that are available. Don’t waste this opportunity to get some of the road warriors in your organization to use these tools, particularly the ones that would rather get on a plane than step into a video conference suite.
If you have responsibility for tracking usage make sure you capture this data during this period and report it. And very importantly talk to those affected, get their stories, find out what they thought, how might it change their future behaviour, how could it be made better. Were they disappointed at how little they could get done, or impressed by how much they were able to get done.
Good opportunity, don’t lose it.
Category: Uncategorized Tags: Green IT, Sustainability
by Simon Mingay | April 6, 2010 | 2 Comments
As a number of blogs and articles have observed the recent report from Greenpeace http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press/reports/make-it-green-cloud-computing.pdf has some technical flaws.
The main issue for me, is that they seem to conflate “the cloud” and “the internet” and “information technology”, and then don’t really address the potential environmental benefits of real cloud computing. If they had simply referred to “IT” instead of “cloud” they would have been on firmer ground.
The potential environmental benefits of cloud will come from the massive efficiencies achieved through a shared infrastructure which dynamically reallocates resources to where they are needed. And while none of the cloud providers have actually proven it yet, and of course much of the benefit will depend on how it is implemented and operated, nevertheless the potential is clear.
The fundamental point they are trying to make is of course that the IT sector, and cloud service providers in particular, have an opportunity to help drive change to a low carbon economy by choosing locations and energy supplies that enable low-carbon highly efficient use of energy. And Greenpeace’s frustration is partly the hypocrisy of an industry rightly positioning itself as part of the solution to climate change, and partly that while there is little doubt about the cloud service providers focus on energy efficiency, there is in reality not much focus on low carbon. Greenpeace are simply trying to bring pressure to bare on the sector to a be a catalyst for change.
There are of course many factors that go into deciding on where to locate a new data center, not least the tax and other fiscal incentives made available by various authorities to locate in a particular place. The availability of a stable reliable, cheap energy supply, big fat reliable telecommunications infrastructure etc. Low-carbon comes a long way down the list. But I would add that judging the carbon intensity of a data centers power supply based on its location is way to simplistic. The renewable component of that power will likely already have been sold off using Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) or their local equivalent. Though of course not all fossil fuels are as bad as each other in terms of carbon intensity per kWh, so the fuel source is important.
The service providers need to recognise that energy efficient is not “green” on its own, and is no longer enough. NGOs, and increasingly customers will demand more. There are things that these service providers can do to mitigate the carbon issues, and there is an awful lot more they could do to mitigate the brand risks they are running, not least by being much more transparent.
HP recently opened a new data center in the UK at Wynyard which uses a range of efficiency solutions, notably free cooling, which they estimate will only require the of the chilling plant for 20 hours a year. It’s PUE is around 1.16 (I understand the limitations of PUE). So it’s got the potential to be very efficient. But they also have a renewable energy contract and buy RECs to go some way to cover the carbon issues. Which makes for a much more sensible strategy if you want to avoid the criticisms coming the industry’s way.
We have not seen the last “coal fired data center” story for sure. And while the criticism is rarely entirely fair, the industry could do a lot better in its communications, transparency and carbon mitigation strategies.
Category: Uncategorized Tags:
by Simon Mingay | December 22, 2009 | Comments Off
In the melee that was the last few days of the Climate Summit negotiations in Copenhagen many things fell down the cracks, including information and communications technology (ICT). No sign of the text that the ITU and others were trying to get added. Nothing binding or definitive for the enterprise carbon management software providers or any ICT solution provider to get their teeth into and use as the catalyst for investment by enterprises in such solutions.
While business in general had no direct part in the negotiations, there were lots of side events going on that presented opportunities to get points over and network. The main thing being that the industry was visible and vocal at the Summit. The industry put itself in a position where it could be heard by the media, by other industries, and by the limited number of policy makers/influencers that had the time and inclination to listen. It was visible, vocal and engaged. Not as much as it could have been, not as effective as it could have been had it been speaking with more of a consolidated voice. But a step forward.
The actual influence such engagement has had is difficult to judge, but will emerge over the next 2 years as we see debate and negotiations continue, and as the inevitable changes to policy start to emerge.
If we see investment and fiscal measures emerge at the national, regional and State levels over the next 2 years that directly puts money into ICT enabled solutions or encourages investment by public and private sector organizations in ICT that addresses energy efficiency and greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction, then it will have been a success for the industry.
Regardless of your views on climate change, as an IT professional this is important because any such policy related fiscal measures over the next 5 years will shape investments in ICT by organizations as we see the role of ICT increasingly being focused on energy and material efficiency.
My favourite slide of the fortnight was one of Chris Tuppen’s (BT’s Chief Sustainability Officer), showing the nature of the transformation to a low carbon economy. It highlighted the areas of the UK economy where efficiencies would need to occur (see slide 4). That being mostly industrial processes, heating buildings, transport and energy generation.
http://www.itu.int/themes/climate/events/images-cop15/docs/tuppen-bt.pdf
Energy and material efficiency as topics are going to stop being pretty dull, and are going to be become very interesting (again).
Category: Uncategorized Tags: COP15, Green IT, Sustainability, UN Climate Conference
by Simon Mingay | December 16, 2009 | Comments Off
Towns and Cities, the buildings that they consist of, the infrastructure and services that support them, will all play an important role in tackling climate change. Yesterday the Climate Summit for Mayors started (http://www.climatesummitformayors.dk/). From a distance, compared to what we seem to be witnessing in the Bella Center in Copenhagen this seems an oasis of collaboration and sharing. Cities around the world compete with one another, and climate change and the low carbon economy will add another dimension to that competition, but it is encouraging to see this collaboration and similar such as the C40 Climate Leadership Group. There are some really interesting things happening in Cities such as Amsterdam in the Netherlands (http://www.vancis.nl/en/news/klimaattafelovereenkomst).
On the one hand one is left with a sense that tangible action will come mostly from cities, but they are almost all struggling for funding right now, more so than usual. So the focus, more so than usual, is on cost cutting. Unless ICT can demonstrate the cost saving potential, as well as its transformational potential, its application in “smart” cities to reduce GHG emissions and improve environmental performance, may be slow, and certainly too slow to help reach some of the GHG reduction targets set by some of these cities.
Category: Uncategorized Tags: COP15, Green IT, Sustainability, UN Climate Summit
by Bettina Tratz-Ryan | December 15, 2009 | 2 Comments
For the past days, different scientific reports being presented during the COP15 conference in Kopenhagen, with mounting pressure on the ICT industry to bring out solutions to curb the impact of climate change.
It becomes clear that communications infrastructure, while contributing to 2 percent of carbon footprint, has the opportunity to mitigate climate change through its connectivity, applications and services capabilities. The Global eSustainability SMART 2020 report showcases that ICT as a tool could reduce alone 15 percent carbon footprint of other sectors by 2020. This could be summed up to US$800 billion in energy costs. However, other studies suggest that due to the forecasted growth of real time video over 4G networks as well as the exploding growth of new mobile connections in emerging communications markets, the energy requirements and green house gas emissions will skyrocket.
From a technology point of view, there is good news. New platform solutions for base stations and the radio access network, based on open server standards, require up to 60 percent less energy then the current versions. This allows new mobile network deployments in off-grid locations to be run with solar and wind power. As a result, Gartner expects a reduction of the GSMA’s forecasted US$14.6 billion diesel cost, as well as a decrease of the average 60 tonnes of carbon footprint an off-grid base station is currently producing.
Secondly, energy efficiency tools will come into play. Luckily, those are not only communications networks specific. They will be deployed in various forms to serve powering and energy performance monitoring and optimization goals also in smart cities or smart building projects. It will be important to be able to identify and evaluate the energy efficiency per megabit delivered through mobile and fixed communications networks and to be able to manage and adjust the efficiency key performance indicators in real time. In addition, the deployment of energy efficient broadband networks will also enable applications and services such as videoconferencing, webhosting and tools to streamline travel and route management. The technology industry has just started to develop the tip of the iceberg of “smart” opportunities and applications and will be driven, and inspired, by the pressure of the discussions at COP15
Category: Uncategorized Tags: COP15, Environmental Sustainability, Green IT, UN Climate Conference
by Simon Mingay | December 14, 2009 | Comments Off
The goal of those representing the information & communications technology (ICT) industry at the Climate Summit in Copenhagen is to get “recognition” amongst policymakers that ICT has a significant role to play in tackling climate change. The ITU (a UN agency which among other things is charged with developing standards in ICT) is pushing for ICT to get a mention in the text, and given every other technology is fighting to do the same, it’s good that the ITU is fighting ICT’s corner.
I am certainly not privy to all conversations going on with Policymakers and those that influence policy, but during the first week of the climate summit in Copenhagen most of the ICT related sessions I have seen, had feedback on, or at least seen the slide decks for are not clear on what it is policymakers should do.
The messages from the ICT related sessions are basic and consistent. But they are also somewhat dull, repetitive and uninspiring. The message is we’re good guys fixing our business and our supply chains, and we’re here to help, so please recognise the potential of ICTs. And of course plenty of references to Smart2020 as evidence of the potential.
Though many policymakers have recognised the role of ICT and the information society in tackling climate change, and improving environmental sustainability, many policymakers have not reached that point of understanding yet. So I don’t deny the need for some flag waving.
But at least from the public sessions and where the materials are available on the web it really does not look like many have put much effort into saying anything new or refreshing.
The closest I have seen to actually suggesting what policymakers need to do is Stephen Harper’s session (http://www.itu.int/themes/climate/events/images-cop15/docs/INTEL%20-%20ITU.ppt).
The ITU is working on a standard framework for calculating and reporting the benefits of ICTs in reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions – it can’t arrive soon enough. That should help us move on… please.
Category: Uncategorized Tags: COP15, Green IT, Sustainability, UN Climate Summit
