Jonny Harrison is sailing to Australia from the UK via the Panama Canal before he starts work in Sydney on a secondment at his firm PricewaterhouseCoopers »
Andrew Hebden is Assistant Editor (Business) of The Journal »
Katie Pringle has started her own business, Rock, Paper, Scissors »
Andrew Mernin is the Digital Journalist for nebusiness »
Matthew Rippon is an IP lawyer for BHP Law »
Formerly editor of a national business lifestyle magazine, Jez Davison is a business writer for the Evening Gazette in Teesside »
Ross Smith, Head of Policy and Research at the North-East Chamber of Commerce »
Julian Christopher from Footprint Public Relations, on media and marketing »
Norma Foster from the North East Regional Portal writes about e-business »
Ian Brown, Northumberland farmer and businessman writes about the agricultural industry »
Accessibilty Champion Steve Wilkinson on the importance of inclusion »
Andrea Wilkinson of Shared Interest is visiting Rwanda to deliver business training »
Jonathan Wheatley from Stokesley-based MC Ware writes about IT matters »
Paul Williamson from Deloitte »Waterstons' technical director Andrew Kershaw talks about how IT can make a positive impact on the environment around us...
With climate change becoming a reality the importance of operating in an energy efficient way is becoming increasingly accepted. Up until recently energy efficiency in IT meant how long would your laptop battery last whilst away from the office. This attitude is clearly changing and leaders are starting to emerge to demonstrate what is possible. Two key areas in which IT can make a difference are reducing power consumption, and enabling flexible working.
IT globally is a major consumer of power. A recent study suggested that worldwide server infrastructure alone consumes 1.2% of global power usage. Typically half of this power is consumed by auxiliary items like power conversion and cooling. Cooling is a massive problem for IT infrastructure, so represents a good place to start making improvements. Are you reading this in heated space, but have air-conditioning running 24 hours a day in your computer room?
Alternative technologies exist, but it is accepted that they are currently not as widely available or as easy to implement as air-conditioning. BT as part of their 21st Century Network (21CN) project have invested in technology to replace traditional air-conditioning with fresh air cooling, yielding substantial benefits.
Another new technology which can impact power consumption is Virtualisation. This can be used to reduce considerably the number of servers you need to operate your business, a 10:1 reduction target is not unachievable in most cases. Clearly one server will consume significantly less energy than ten.
However, all of these benefits might be eclipsed by the steady advancement of the communication revolution, in particular by reducing the number of trips to the office or to meet with each other. Technology is facilitating this. It is now possible at negligible cost to use the internet to hold a multi-participant meeting, where each participant is in a different location. For a little further investment each participant can provide and receive a video feed showing the other participants. It is possible for remote workers to operate all the systems available on their work network when at home. Is the experience the same as coming into the office? No it is not. Does it require a trusting employer? Probably it does. But is it worth embracing? That is up to you.
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