Logging on to best practices

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: The green movement is a recent one. We have become aware of green issues only during the last few years. It’s because we have started feeling the impact of global warming. It’s a wake up call. The industry too has started responding like the rest of the society. Though the sustainability issue is a large issue, including the conservation of national resources, etc, IT industry has a role in a few areas.

There are two million people who are directly engaged with the IT industry. They are white-collared and well-meaning people. Their awareness levels have to be raised so that they can spread it further. It has a multiplier effect.

We are using a lot of space, power and computers. We use 100 sq ft per person. So, it’s important to have green buildings, particularly in the case of new buildings. Similarly, we consume a lot of power. We can bring it down. Nasscom is taking up best practices from leaders and disseminating them across the industry.

Though we don’t have big data centres in India except in the case of banks and stock exchanges, even small data centres are large consumers of power. We need to construct next generation data centres, which are more energy efficient. We must ensure that we pick up some best practices from global leaders and follow them. It’s quite simple. If you save power, you save money.

Lastly, we need to think about how can IT offer solutions to reduce energy use. We have yet to see much progress here, though. It should be the next step.