Print

Comment

Email

Digg

Del.icio.us

Reddit

Twitter

Greener business, healthier bottom line, was the tagline of the recently concluded three-city Dataquest CIO summit on Green Strategy. But one thing is still not clear, whether the scores of people that attended the event in Mumbai, Bangalore or Delhi, were more interested in green, as in environment, or greenback, as in cost savings. Nonetheless, it can be safely said that there is a lot of interest in green in India at the moment, evident from the fact that most of these venues were jam packed and brimming with people.

The other interesting discovery was that companies in India are pursuing the green agenda in small, disjointed but a purposeful way. For instance, Alok Kumar, VP (IT), Reliance Industries, spoke about how his company was looking at various ways to save power, even to the extent of trying out new models of employees working at home. S Sridhar, CTO, Vodafone Essar, spoke about how his company was concerned about energy and energy saving. He said From looking at ways to conserve energy in our operations to encouraging our customers to opt for e-bill rather than the paper bill, we are going the full hog when it comes to energy conservation. Meanwhile, Anand Kumar, head (IT), Monsanto India, shared the nitty-gritties of going green. Recently, Monsanto has received Leed Certification due to its energy efficient processes.

Brocades Gerald Penaflor talks about the steps involved in greening the data center at the Bangalore seminar	CyberMedias Prasanto K Roy introduces the subject at Mumbai, and explains how Dataquest plans to specially focus on green tech in 2008

Meanwhile, Sanjay Agarwal, partner, Adigstudio touched upon how important architecture was when it comes to saving power. He also mentioned that glass buildings could go in for nano-tech film and generate small amount of power themselves. Six thousand square feet of glass face can generate 108 kw of power every day. Not much, but can be useful nonetheless, he stated.

Expert Panel at Bangalore: Vodafone CTO S Sridhar, Adigstudios Sanjay Agarwal, Monsantos Anand Kumar, moderator Prasanto K Roy; HP BPOs Rahul Biswari, and HPs Kallol Hazra

Panelists share their green experiences at Delhi: (L-R) Raman Bansal of CRIS, Sumit Goel of Connect gaia, Welcomgroups Niranjan Khatri, Prasanto K Roy of Dataquest, Rajendra Kathal of Tech Mahindra, and HPs Durgadutt Nedungadi	Sharad Shrivastava of Western Digital talks about power saving hard drives and how they can reduce power consumption in Bangalore

Durgadutt Nedungadi talks about how adaptive infrastructure can help enterprises	Delegates registering at the Bangalore event

At the Mumbai event, Reliance Industries Alok Kumar touches upon the many ways Reliance is working toward a greener IT	Monsanto Indias IT head, Anand Kumar, talks about the companys green initiatives

At the Mumbai event, (L-R), KK Raman, Kallol Hazra, Alok Kumar, Prasanto Kumar Roy, Ritu Madbhavi, Anil Jhala, and Suresh Shanmugham of Mahindra & Mahindra Finance

Kallol Hazra makes a presentation on how HP is working at green solutions, at the Mumbai event	FCB-Ulkas CIO, Ritu Madbhavi, highlights the importance of green IT

Anil Jhala of Idea Cellular talks about his experience and commitment to energy saving	S Sridhar in conversation with a delegate at the Bangalore event

But the most interesting aspect of the event was the interactive question and answer sessions, wherein Prasanto Kumar Roy, president and chief editor, Cybermedia, invited delegates to pose their queries or share their experiences. For instance, in Mumbai there was much discussion on how instead of paper, event organizers should look at pen drives as an eco-friendly substitute. Meanwhile in Bangalore, delegates spoke about the small ways in which power could be saved. For instance, there was a suggestion made that CIOs should look at putting up plants inside the server rooms to keep them cool. There was also this discussion on how with every 3 meter of depth, the average temperature falls by 5 degrees centigrade, thus it makes sense to have a data center in an underground facility.

The Dataquest Green Strategy was aimed at raising pertinent questions on green strategy and, going by the responses received from the delegates and the sponsors, the event has been a roaring success. 2008, if not anything else, promises to be a greener year and that is a good start.

Team DQ
dqmail@cybermedia.co.in

Page(s)   1