‘Green’ tech blooms amid economic crisis

MANILA, Philippines – Despite tight budgets caused by the current economic crisis, businesses are expected to prioritize “green” or eco-friendly technology.

Green technology largely involves energy-saving concepts such as new computer processor designs, software and hardware virtualization, lifecycle management of equipment, and new building designs – all aimed at reducing power usage.

Because of tight budgets, companies are forced to adopt energy-saving and cost-efficient strategies, according to Rhonda Ascierto, senior analyst for technology research firm Datamonitor.

For most companies, these strategies apply to data centers.

Ascierto said datacenter operators are looking or implementing software to manage certain operational requirements, as well as outsourcing through virtualization, acquiring managed service, software-as-a-service, and cloud computing.

Data centers go small

David Blumanis, data center advisor for power supply firm APC, said data centers will continue to consume more electricity, especially as demand for storage and processing increases.

“Data centers will have a role in business process outsourcing, customer relations management, supply chain management, and data security,” said Blumanis.

“Data centers will find it more challenging to continue operating as demand increases,” he stressed.

In the case of data centers, electricity is consumed at increasing rates largely due to the decreasing physical sizes of IT servers.

Blumanis noted that smaller processors result in smaller hardware products being manufactured. These smaller devices get squeezed together in small spaces that would have fitted a machine that only gave less than half its processing power.

“The issue of most data centers is how power should not be wasted. Some of these smaller equipment should consume lesser electricity but still give the same amount of processing power to justify them,” Blumanis said.

Re-designing buildings

Newer designs of buildings are an important part of green technology.

Emmanuel Samuel, regional sales director for design software firm Autodesk, noted that building construction firms are implementing better design practices using materials that are both stable and environmentally-friendly.

In addition, construction firms are also implementing the same green technologies to retrofit old structures to comply with environment requirements.

“Construction firms and architects are also simulating their designs using software so that they can make changes before laying the first brick. This makes them more efficient because they can build and construct in much lesser time,” said Samuel.

Locally, the Philippine Green Building Council is promoting new building design and construction that are more environmentally friendly.

More specifically, these so-called “green” buildings should incorporate efficient solid waste management methods and new layout systems for utility placements that save on water and electricity distribution.

The group also pushes for the use of environmentally safe materials during construction, as well as creation of a green building rating system to be followed by all property developers.

More pressure to go green

In its report, Datamonitor noted that green technology adoption is also driven by legislation to save on cost and reduce carbon emissions, particularly those based from the Kyoto Protocol.

A study by technology firm IBM showed that this pressure on corporations to go green is also coming from different sectors, including investors, business partners, consumers and environment advocacy groups.

The IBM study shows that some of the companies that adopted green technologies have better chances of surviving the economic crisis because of long-term savings.

IBM Philippines country manager James Velasquez added that other advantages of companies going green are attracting investors and new customers, and also incentives for meeting environment regulations. –Alexander Villafania, INQUIRER.net