Adopting Green ICT in Business

Information Communication Technology (ICT) is playing an increasingly important role in professional and private lives worldwide and is thus also increasingly becoming a significant energy consumer and CO2 emitter. Green IT benefits the environment by improving energy efficiency, lowering greenhouse gas emissions, using less harmful materials, and encouraging reuse and recycling. The explosion of information and communication technology (ICT), including personal computers, servers and data centers, handheld and telephonic devices, and printers, over the past few decades has led to a particular focus on ICT’s environmental impact. Green computing refers to the practice of using computing resources more efficiently while maintaining or increasing overall performance. IT services require the integration of green computing practices such as power management, virtualization, improving cooling technology, recycling, electronic waste disposal, and optimization of the IT infrastructure to meet sustainability requirements.

CAMCE

There is a growing need to collaborate at national and European level for solutions connected with risks and problems due to climate changes. This need is leading to creation of Web platforms in which experts, stakeholders, decision-makers and overall citizens can collaboratively share information. This common information space on the Web can be used for planning, managing, evaluating and using services devoted to the protection and safeguarding of critical infrastructures (i.e. the supply of energy and water, sewage system maintenance). Keeping this purpose in mind, the chapter proposes a framework that provides a web-based collaborative opportunity for decision support, program management and collaboration for climate adaptation, mitigation and citizens’ education.

Balancing Green ICT Business Development with Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

The debate over green ICT has been triggered by media during the climate change summit in Kyoto in 2007. This was when the industry tried to build up a clean and non-polluting image. While the Copenhagen summit on the environment failed to produce a conclusive decision, it is now clear that its carbon footprint is a remarkable factor in all business decision making. Governments around the world have set up defined programs and targets that companies have to reach. ICT is aimed at achieving reduction in the 2% of CO2 emission levels. The advantage of the positive impact of Green ICT initiatives would be seen in the clear results in management‘s decision making. However, the adoption of green ICT programs gives the opportunity to fully rethink over current business process and develop new solutions. The benefit of environmental friendly companies can also affect the overall performance and deliver measurable results in terms of customer‘s preference, brand value, ROI, not to count the needed change of behaviour at individual and personal level (such as waste disposal). The chapter wants to outline those topics and properly address the issues behind what the author considers as equivalent to the next industrial revolution.

Application of a Composite Process Framework for Managing Green ICT Applications Development

This chapter presents the use of Composite Process Framework for Green ICT Applications Development. This framework for software development, as its name suggests, integrates different elements of software development processes such as waterfall, iterative-incremental and agile approaches to software development. The chapter explains and provides details on what comprises a Composite Processes Framework and how it can be applied to develop a Green ICT application.

Smart Software Applications for a Low Carbon Economy

There are changes underway in the world energy and power systems because of climate change, which will result in smart and intelligent infrastructure for the new energy management and power system. Smart grid software will play an important part in making this new infrastructure intelligent. This chapter investigates software applications that have a potential to be developed for a new low carbon economy. In addition, this paper explains what the standard bodies and user groups driving the development of these new smart software applications. The chapter will also discuss the control points where software can be added to smart grid infrastructure for a low carbon economy.

Green Semicondoctor Design Techniques and Challanges

The large emission of Carbon dioxide (CO2) is not only affecting our ecology but also affecting human life. In schools, offices, factory and crowded railway/bus stations i.e crowded places with insufficient ventilations CO2 affects human life most. In a closed environment like school, If CO2 level starts raising above 700 parts per million (ppm) people will feel objectionable body odors and as it increase further people will feel very uncomfortable, dizzy and have headache etc. Our goal is to reduce CO2 emission and lower global warming. In Semiconductor Industry as the digital technology grows, the functionality of our electronics devices (For example: - Mobile phone, PC’s, home appliances etc) is constantly improves and mean while the demand for electronic devices to be more environment friendly is increasing. So we have to design systems with Low power consumption to curtail down green house gas emission as well as low power design are also a requirement of today’s market. The usage of mobile device in all kinds of applications is increasing day by day. These applications and corresponding devices also have their power requirements. The demand for mobile consumer device has made the power management the number one consideration in today‘s system design. To increase battery life, system chip designer needs to adopt an aggressive power management technique which includes multi voltage Design Island, power gating, dynamic voltage, frequency scaling, clock gating etc in the system. Adding all these greatly complicates the verification for the chip. Normally the designer neglects the implementation of power saving techniques due to the tradeoff between power reduction and verification costs. The costs become more important in terms of business, which leads to more power consumption. Those details can still be implemented provided we use right kind of tools & techniques that are also combined with design experience. In this chapter the focus is to firstly describe low power design techniques, its verification challenges and its solutions followed by the case study. It also guides for the selection of programmable device & RTL Core design criteria. To make green electronics devices we have to design system with low power design techniques.

A Taxonomy of Green Information and Communication Protocols and Standards

Due to increased awareness of human’s adverse effect on the environment, many new technologies to mitigate the environmental damage are under development. Although innovative, many of these technologies are often developed in isolation and consequently incompatible with each other. From the viewpoint of Systems Engineering, this presents an enormous challenge since compatibility among different elements of a system is crucial in achieving an optimal operational state that minimizes energy consumption. Therefore, standardization in the form of protocols is a key to accomplishing the goal of green Information and Communication Technology (ICT). In this chapter, the authors examine the existing green ICT technologies and their protocols to identify both obvious and subtle strengths and weaknesses. Particularly, the authors scrutinize the interoperability of the existing green ICT protocols and provide insights on how to improve the status quo. In addition, information on emerging governing bodies of green ICT protocols is provided.

Role of Mobile Technologies in an Environmentally Responsible Business Strategy

This chapter aims to investigate and expand the role of mobile technologies in an Environmentally Responsible Business Strategy (ERBS). An ERBS with mobile technologies can help organizations achieve socially responsible goals of reducing green house emissions, reducing physical movement of men and materials, and recycling materials – to name a few. Organizations are electronically collaborating globally through the medium of the Internet and by employing service-oriented architectures. This electronic collaboration amongst large number of globally spread businesses creates a collaborative business “ecosystem” that is also virtual. Virtual collaborations between businesses create further challenges for environmentally responsible strategies as they make it difficult to identify the precise contributors to green house emissions and pollutions. This chapter delves deeper into the role of mobile technologies in creating and enhancing what can be considered as Environmental Intelligence (EI) – extending business intelligence with mobility for a Green enterprise.

Business Processes Management for a Green Telecommunications Company

The concept of Green ICT has been in consideration in almost all industrial sectors. The Telecommunication (Telco) sector in one such major area where Green ICT plays a crucial role. Telcos have opportunities and treats due the Green ICT initiatives. This chapter outlines these implications and proposes a Green Telco business model to match with Green ICT initiatives. This chapter then proposes the way and methodology to achieve Green Telco business model through the Business Processes Management based on more practical aspects. The concept of Business Processes Management (BPM) framework is initially discussed in its four stages. This is then followed by the use of this BPM framework to transform and manage business processes for a Green Telco. The business transformation to Green Telco is discussed as part of a BPM framework made up of the Strategy stage, Design stage, Realization stage and the Operational stage. This chapter finally concludes that the Green Telco business model is not a destination but a continuous journey and the BPM framework provides an excellent basis to achieve those Green Telco goals.

Decision Criteria for Green Management Information Systems

The emphasis on climate changes and their consequences is moving to the front line agenda of government agencies, business organizations, industry, and research institutions. While the existence of beneficiary and/or regulatory considerations tends to be the main motivator, the perceived growing impacts of climate change on objectives and strategies is emerging as a new attention driving force. However, the perceived impacts and “pressures” felt have resulted into different interventions, analytical approaches and operational pathways. This growing attention has also been accompanies with the establishment of specialized organizations such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, specialized programs at other UN agencies and dedicated research programs at educational institutions. While Greening ICT continued to be one of the major themes, emphasis tends to be made on technological and technical methodologies. As a result, there have been many shortcomings with regards to the understanding and appreciation of the impacts of climate changes at different landscapes. The basic aim of this chapter is to investigate and discusses the context of ICT greening from another dimension by looking at the impacts of “greening” procedures on the capacity of management Information Systems to facilitate the realization of corporate objectives. The chapter advocates an approach for viewing the impacts of greening procedures on MIS by focusing on its entire architecture, information processing capacity and knowledge management considerations.