“The IT industry as a whole is responsible for 2 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.” That statistic came up in a recent conversation with Francois Ajenstat, Microsoft’s director of environmental sustainability. He continued, “You might think 2 percent is not a big number, but the airline industry is responsible for 3 percent.”

That comparison puts the issue into context. As you can see by watching the video of my conversation with Ajenstat (click http://platformvision.com/GreenITandCostSavings.aspx for the video), sustainability can help IT reduce cost. Ajenstat says that sustainability and cost are synergistic. “Sustainability is an opportunity for IT to play a leadership role in driving efficiency and helping organizations. IT can be a catalyst by making themselves more efficient, saving costs, driving down power usage but also enabling the business to reduce its carbon footprint.”

Ajenstat quoted a study (see www.smart2020.org) that shows how IT can help drive solutions for the 98 percent of greenhouse emissions for which IT is not directly responsible. “This study looks at opportunities for IT to drive savings in transportation, buildings, energy grids, supply chains, etc.,” Ajenstat pointed out. “On average, they found IT could alleviate about 15 percent of that 98 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions . To give you context, that’s more than all of the emissions of the US or China.”

In the area of transportation, an example of how technology and IT can have this impact is in the use of Unified Communications (UC). Ajenstat explained that by deploying UC, IT can help organizations reduce travel costs. “You can use UC instead of flying on a plane or even using your car to go to work."

In a real-word example, Ajenstat says, "Volvo is a great case study. Their IT department is saving 900 tons of CO2 every single month because of UC, and they’re using it so people don’t have to travel so much.”

How can IT departments start making a difference? “I have one simple tip for every IT pro,” Ajenstat said. “Get your energy bill. Less than 15 percent of IT pros know their energy bill. If you do all the great things like virtualization, power management, group policies, etc.,” Ajenstat noted, you still can’t measure their effectiveness. “How do you justify your savings if you don’t know your baseline? Get your energy bill, know where you’re starting, and then start measuring over time what you’re going to be able to save.”

The term “green IT” is not one that Ajenstat or Microsoft prefers. Sustainable IT, according to Ajenstat, is a better term because it covers “how you source your IT equipment, how you use it, how you dispose of it.” Ajenstat says that Microsoft looks at sustainability in 3 core areas: reduce, manage, and rethink.

Reduce: In the first area, the idea is to reduce the amount of energy consumed by technology by taking advantage of features such as power management and virtualization. Ajenstat notes, “As soon as you power on a server, you use 60 to 70 percent of the energy of the server—even if it does nothing. Most organizations have an average utilization rate of between 8 and 15 percent. That’s a lot of waste.” But, Ajenstat continued, virtualization enables consolidation so that “you can increase utilization of the machine without increasing energy.”

Utilization is not the only benefit, according to Ajenstat: “I look at it as a triple benefit: You turn off machines so you save energy. You also save cooling in your datacenter because you don’t have as many machines to cool. Third you save acquisition or capital costs because you have fewer machines to purchase and more floor space.”

Manage: Microsoft is interested in “enabling IT to have the tools to manage the environmental footprint of the business.” Ajenstat says Microsoft wants to “provide dashboards, or reporting tools, to show what they’re consuming in facilities, or travel, etc. Microsoft has released a sustainability dashboard for Microsoft Dynamics so you can look at the energy consumed through your supply chain. As the organization starts setting goals, KPIs, you can manage that through the dashboard.”

Rethink: The third core area challenges IT to rethink the business. For example, companies can use UC as an alternative to travel. Ajenstat says this is a “great thing to reduce emissions, costs, and increase productivity”

In a slow economy, sometimes cost is a more immediate concern than doing something for the environment. However, Ajenstat says you can do both. “90 percent of what you do around sustainability saves money. Looking at all the hot opportunities to save money, the two biggest ones are UC and virtualization. Those two save a lot of money.” Ajenstat says sustainability is good all around:  “Saving money, saving energy, saving the environment.”

Most organizations and  business decision makers today are familiar with the catchphrase “Unified Communications (UC),”  because of the reduction in communications costs that UC has introduced over the past few years. This technology has gained acceptance and transformed enterprises—especially with the ability to provide presence information—and helped them do business more. UC is now evolving and moving towards open standards so that it can be integrated with any line of business (LOB) applications, mission-critical decision tools, any hardware, software, PBX equipment, video conferencing equipment, and Web utilities. These capabilities can help organizations stay ahead of competitors. Unified Communications is now truly becoming Integrated Communications (IC).

Let me give you a real account of my experience to show how IC can transform an organization’s communications system and business productivity and drive business benefits across the company. I was working for a global media enterprise with operations around the world. The company was organized into several regions, with each region representing several offices, joint ventures, and strategic partners. We had people working in different time zones at different places. Keeping the global workforce engaged, informed, and involved was the biggest challenge.

The priority of the CEO and the shareholders was to implement an efficient and effective communications system that would allow intra-regional and branch offices to communicate and collaborate with each other and with strategic external partners and agencies. The objective was to drive cost efficiency by eliminating redundant workloads, drive innovation by allowing employees in several regions and countries to participate through an effective communication and collaboration framework, and deliver unique value to clients and customers through the company’s global presence.

An agile and federated approach was taken to quickly build and integrate all the communications components, including messaging (with  different technologies), instant messaging, presence, voice and voicemail, calendaring, Web presentation (Windows Live Meeting), Voice over IP (VoIP), and PBX into a single user interface that was compatible with various operating systems and  mobile devices and was accessible through the public Internet. This approach allowed the organization to let all employees, third-party vendors, joint venture partners, and other agencies communicate with each other from anywhere at any time. We added local language elements in the user interface where English was not the primary language. All these capabilities were implemented in a highly secured environment to eliminate vulnerabilities and prevent misuse.

There were several challenges, especially in the countries where voice and video communications are highly regulated and the use of VOIP is not allowed. Even the encryption level to access any network from outside the country is regulated and monitored by governments in these countries. However, thanks to the open standards and interoperability of the IC infrastructure, we were able to meet the challenges. Separate dedicated circuits and devices (authorized by government telecom regulations) were used to carry VoIP traffic and this solution was allowed to work strictly in a dedicated group of users and integrated with PSTN gateway that was regulated by government telecommunications agencies. This regulation was meant to ensure that the organizations were not misusing VoIP for long-distance calls.

With customized training and a robust network infrastructure, all the regional offices and branches gradually started communicating and collaborating with each other more frequently and efficiently than ever before. Voice, video, and Web conferences were just a click away on the desktops, mobile devices, and even on unsecured home devices. Web meetings and Webcasts started happening frequently and in real time.

Communication and collaboration became more and more frequent and effective, transparency was greater, employee productivity increased, and travel costs decreased significantly. The IC infrastructure transformed the entire culture of the organization

The next stage was the integration into the IC infrastructure of LOB applications (which were strategic to the business), KPI’s, dashboards, video streaming, and alerts. This helped the CEO and senior management across the globe to monitor the health and performance of the enterprise at all times and to make decisions that would help keep the enterprise ahead of the competition. The CEO’s office was more accessible for regional players and branch offices that fostered effective and prompt decisions.

Because this organization was a media company, it benefited significantly from integrating video-streaming (content) into the communications infrastructure (through Web conferencing tools) and from making video available to employees, external vendors, and production houses anywhere across the globe with greater participation. Innovation reached new heights as experts around the globe began to communicate and collaborate more often and efficiently. IC also allowed the organization to leverage low-cost production houses in other regions and save millions in shipping a video codex to customers, agencies, regions, and branch offices around the world.

Efficient and effective communication is the key to any organization’s success, and IC, if implemented with meticulous planning and a well-defined approach, can benefit the organization beyond the conventional ROI and can transform and accelerate the business productivity of the organization.