Green IT does not mean spending heavily on equipment and applications

Bangalore-based GMR Group is one of the fastest growing infrastructure

organizations in the country with interests in airports, energy, highways and

urban infrastructure. The company has undertaken several green initiatives over

the past couple of years, and Subbarao Hegde, CIO, GMR Group, talks about such

initiatives and how the future is Green. Excerpts

What has been GMRs green IT strategy?



We at GMR have created a structured top down approach to give an enterprise

a wide push to green IT. We have formed an environment council consisting of

experts from the infrastructure industry, environmentalists and analysts to look

at green right from the conceptual stage of any infrastructure project that we

embark on. In addition, we have set up Value for Moneycross functional teams (CFTs)

headed by a business chairman. CFT gauges the RoI and long-term benefits derived

from GMRs green strategies.

Based on the recommendations of the environment council and CFTs we have

developed an action plan under which we have identified ten top areas for the

go green strategy to control expenditures; put in place metrics, tools,

techniques and measurement methodologies; address resource and training

requirements; develop benchmarks and conduct monthly MIS; and quarterly reviews

of our initiatives.

Can you list some of the green initiatives undertaken so far?



The most significant move was to put in place a measurement concept to

measure the power consumption of the data center right at the inception stage.

We placed a separate power meter in the data center to measure and monitor the

power requirements for cooling, operations, computing etc. When we discovered

that cooling took up maximum energy, we partnered with Emerson Network Power to

go in for precision cooling that dynamically adjust temperatures within the data

center depending on the load factor. We also deployed energy efficient fiber

channel network devices, SAN and switches to improve the data center efficiency.

All this led to 15% savings in power costs.

Also, before going in for virtualization, we developed a virtual lab to carry

out the server and storage consolidation; replace inefficient equipment and make

a transition toward energy efficient blade servers, and test and simulate the

entire virtualized environment. With the help of virtualization we could bring

down the number of servers (combination of blade and tower) from fourteen to

just three.

We have also put in place a separate VLAN to facilitate better usage of

unified communications, especially high definition videoconferencing,

multi-party instant chat and collaboration using Microsoft SharePoint portal,

etc. GMR has been exploring these concepts to help employees reduce travel costs

and to reduce carbon footprint.

How did you embed the green concept into your landmark, Rajiv Gandhi

International Airport?



In a way our internal Go Green strategy and the work on the Rajiv Gandhi

International Airport was rolled out simultaneously, about 2.5 years ago. We

took several measures to make sure that green as a concept was adopted within

the organization and also translated in our work right from the inception stage.

With the help of a quarterly e-newsletter covering subjects such as green

building architecture and green rating systems such as LEED, we increased

awareness about the need and benefits of green buildings.

As a result of these efforts, our maiden green infrastructure project, the

Rajiv Gandhi International Airport has been awarded the LEED Silver Rating by

the US Green Building Council. It is the first airport in Asia to be awarded the

LEED certification.

Priya Kekre



priyak@cybermedia.co.in