1st Edition

Green IT Strategies and Applications Using Environmental Intelligence

By Bhuvan Unhelkar Copyright 2011
    480 Pages 162 B/W Illustrations
    by CRC Press

    Bhuvan Unhelkar takes you on an all-encompassing voyage of environmental sustainability and Green IT. Sharing invaluable insights gained during two battle-tested decades in the information and communication technologies industry, he provides a comprehensive examination of the wide-ranging aspects of Green IT—from switching-off monitors, virtualizing data centers, and optimizing processes to bringing attitude change through training and the use of green metrics for reporting.

    Combining extensive research, literature review experimentation, and decades of practical consulting experience, Green IT Strategies and Applications: Using Environmental Intelligence is your complete reference for undertaking a successful Green IT transformation. The environmentally responsible business strategies described in this book include motivators and drivers, transformation phases, management of risks, measuring and reporting of carbon, compliance with the ISO14000 family of standards, and the crucial nexus between Lean and green—resulting in what can be called Environmental Intelligence.

    This environmentally conscious IT reference delves beyond the corporate responsibilities of organizations in a market-driven economy to demonstrate the importance of carbon management as an integral part of good business management. Increasing profits, reducing costs, applying innovations in business, adhering to government standards, process management, and the socio-cultural aspects of business are all masterfully intertwined with Green IT issues.

    This book is equipped with case studies from different industrial sectors, including hospital (service), packaging (product), and telecom (infrastructure). It provides a complete suite of strategies, applications, tools, and techniques that will enable you to establish company-wide environmental strategies, a green value system, and the forward thinking required to properly position your organization for the low-carbon economy on the horizon.

    PART A: STRATEGIES & APPLICATIONS

    Green IT Fundamentals: Business, IT, and the Environment
    Green IT Strategies: Drivers, Dimensions, and Goals
    Environmentally Responsible Business: Policies, Practices, and Metrics
    Green Assets: Buildings, Data Centers, Networks, and Devices
    Green Business Process Management: Modeling, Optimization, and Collaboration
    Green Enterprise Architecture, Environmental Intelligence, and Green Supply Chains
    Green Information Systems: Design and Development Models
    Sociocultural aspects of Green IT
    Green Enterprise Transformation Roadmap
    Green Compliance: Protocols, Standards, and Audits
    Emergent Carbon Issues: Technologies and Future

    PART B: CASE STUDIES

    Case Study in Applying Green IT Strategies and Applications to a Hospital
    Case Study in Applying Green IT Strategies to the Packaging Industry
    Case Study in Applying Green IT Strategies and Applications to the Telecom Sector

    APPENDICES:

    The Environmentally Responsible Business Strategies (ERBS) Research Project Survey
    Case Study Scenarios for Trial Runs
    Green IT Measurements from a CEMS
    Abbreviations
    Green Glossary
    Index

    Biography

    Bhuvan Unhelkar (BE, MDBA, MSc, PhD; FACS) has more than two decades of strategic as well as hands-on professional experience in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) industry. As a Founder of MethodScience.com he has notable practical consulting and training expertise in business analysis (use cases, BPMN) software engineering (object modeling, Agile processes and quality), Green IT (environment), enterprise architecture (including SOA), project management, collaborative web services and mobile business. His domain experience includes banking, financial, insurance, government as well as telecommunication organizations wherein he has created industry-specific process maps, quality strategies and business transformation approaches. For the past few years, Dr. Unhelkar has been actively involved in researching into Green IT and the environment - and its application in practice. He has supervised a PhD in the area of Environmentally Responsible Business Strategies (by B. Trivedi) as also set up and delivered a two day training course approved by the Australian Computer Society titled Green IT Design and Implementation (delivered around Australia through Connection Research/Envirability). He is winner of the Consensus IT professional award and the IT writer award under thebest author' category.Dr. Unhelkar earned his Doctorate in the area of object orientation from the University of Technology, Sydney, in 1997. Subsequently he designed and delivered course units like Global Information Systems, Object Oriented Analysis and Design, Business Process Reengineering and IT Project Management in the industry as well as across Universities in Australia, China and India. He lead the Mobile Internet Research and Applications Group (MIRAG) at the University of Western Sydney, where he is also an adjunct Associate Professor. He has authored/edited sixteen books in the areas of collaborative business, globalization, mobile busine

    … the strength of this book lies in the fact that it not only deals with itemized technologies, but also addresses business and user uptake, as well as changes in perceptions and processes. As a result, each of these is put in perspective with respect to the others in terms of cross-requirements and cross-impact.
    — Computing Reviews, June 2012

    For too long the carbon emissions debate has pitched good environmental outcomes against good business outcomes; when in reality, the two are synonymous. It is refreshing to see a business focused pragmatic and practical approach to delivering business outcomes through good environmental practice.
    Keith Sherringham, Independent Business Consultant & Author of Cookbook for Shareholder Value and Market Dominance

    The bottom line in being more sustainable is greater efficiency. It is no coincidence that this is also the bottom line for success in business. The two go hand-in-hand. And more often than not, it is the effective use of IT that is the key to success. That is what this book will help you do.
    Graeme Philipson, Founding Editor, MIS Magazine & A Global Leader in Green IT Consulting

    This book brings together the research on environmental sustainability with its practice in real life. The value of this book comes from this synergy of research and practice. The practical approaches in this book find support in the robustness associated with doctoral level research.
    —Akshai Aggrawal, Vice Chancellor, Gujarat Technological University, India; and Associate Professor and Interim director, School of Computer Science, University of Windsor, Canada

    The foremost reason I would buy this book is because it does not separate and thereby alienate business efficiency from carbon efficiency. That is an excellent approach to take towards carbon reduction in a market-driven economy.
    —Warren Adkins, Sydney, Australia

    Unhelkar has been on the panel of judges for the Consensus GreenTech Awards since their inception two years ago. He has also been a judge of the Consensus Software Awards for nine years. His passion for Green IT and environmental sustainability is well known - and is reflected in the pages of this book. This is a must-have book for anyone associated with efforts at reducing carbon emissions and understanding the key issues affecting the future of our planet.
    —Julian Day, MACS MAICD, Founder & CEO, Consensus Group; past Chair, Quantitative Enterprise Software Performance (QESP), Australia

    The new economy is the green economy where cost and carbon savings are unified. My own experience in leading and promoting the development of an enterprise-class energy consumption monitoring and environmental impact analysis platform has convinced me that management of carbon footprint is an integral part of business – not an add on. Precisely the theme that comes out again and again through the chapters of this excellent book on Green IT strategies authored by Dr. Unhelkar.
    —Ramin Marzbani, AMSRS, FMA, EPTS, Director, Event Zero Pty Limited (creators of Greentrac)

    This book expresses very well the basic idea that carbon efficiency is not an isolated activity but, rather, implicit in running a Lean and efficient business. The discussions on carbon efficiency of Green IT in this book span almost all the dimensions of an enterprise - strategies and policies, architecture and design, social, legal, standards and audits. A must read for any business embarking on the journey of green enterprise transformation.
    —Professor Aditya Ghose, Director, Decision Systems Lab, School of Computer Science and Software Engineering, University of Wollongong, Australia