Impact Analysis of Green Computing in Advertising Company

Abstract

Plummeting on IT energy costs, lengthening the life of the hardware, and decreasing carbon emissions are but a few of the factors contributing to green computing in diverse institutions and commercial organizations. It is popular public knowledge that global warming is a most important problem which all and sundry contribute to; nevertheless, it is not known what or who contributes the most part. Recently, it has surfaced that the ICT industry in China has a carbon footprint that is as huge as those of the aviation industry, and that IT equipment contributes about 3 to 4% of the global carbon emissions. As a result, the application of efficient and effective energy use, also known as green computing, was introduced. Five impact factors are discussed, that is, Technology, Economic, Environmental Service and Enterprise (TEESE).

Though the power use of diverse components was condensed to enable energy reduction initiatives, it would be more advantageous to rather not waste energy while it is not in use. This dissertation displays that green computing techniques can be employed in some infrastructures to switch-off nodes that are unused and power them on when required, making the possible reduction of power consumption significantly. To ensure a minimum impact to the consumer, these techniques must be applied as they use the infrastructure, and allow no interference in running applications.

Acknowledgement

To begin with, I am most thankful to God for enabling me to write this paper. I also wish to sincerely appreciate the solid and unwavering guidance and advice of my advisor who helped me to put my thoughts together and complete this project.

I acknowledge the support of our research group in providing technical support that made my project better and the moral encouragement and advice that has contributed to making this project a success. In the same regard, all my friends, relations and classmates should feel appreciated. Not to be forgotten are all the brethren from church, who took care of me during the hard times in the course of the development of the project, and encouraged and supported me throughout the entire process.

Most importantly, special thanks to my parents for all their sacrifice, love, emotional and financial support they have given in providing for most of my needs. Although it may be impractical to list all who have valuably contributed to the completion of this dissertation, all the individuals who have contributed to its success should feel acknowledged even if not mentioned (Lavine 2003).

List of abbreviations

Introduction

As the whole globe advances towards a better application of green technology, greater scrutiny will be enforced on all areas of technological advancement to reward effective green programs and do away with those that are more costly to the environment in the long term. Moreover, the role that technology accomplishes in what the public consumes must be considered. Therefore, it is incumbent on the advertising community to sustain those initiatives which concentrate on the value of appropriately integrating green technology into their operations.

Plummeting on IT energy costs, lengthening the life of hardware and decreasing carbon emissions are but a few of the factors contributing to green computing in diverse institutions and commercial organizations. It is popular public knowledge that global warming is a most important problem which all and sundry contribute to; nevertheless, it is not clearly known what or who contributes the most part. Recently, it has surfaced that the ICT industry in China has a carbon footprint that is as huge as those of the aviation industry, and that IT equipment contributes about 3 to 4% of the global carbon emissions. As a result, the application of efficient and effective energy use, also known as green computing, was introduced (Robyns 2004).

Background Review

Sustainability is specifically important in the development of computing technology in the advertising industry, as it progresses the industry’s eco-friendliness and green nature. For instance, self-sufficiency in the use of energy reduces the dependence on the environment. Information Technology (IT) can be useful in engendering a positive contribution to economic growth as well as to a better environment too.

Green computing, virtually unheard of in the recent past, has infused the modern computing world, because of the growing need for sustainable development. Moreover, it is clear that the advertising business is in a continual flux. The response to and demand for sustainable design has helped promote and demonstrate the benefits of green products. Utilizing sustainable materials, undertaking environmentally conscious choices, and applying technologies that are oriented towards saving energy have become critically important for all organizations, both big and small alike. Small and medium-sized companies, especially in the advertising industry can efficiently and cost-effectively implement simple, green computing solutions, which are sure to prove beneficial as this study will show (Gellner 2010).

IT significantly adds to the crisis of greenhouse effect, for the reason that the equipment used in its operations usually requires power which results in emissions of CO2 (about 2% of total) (Arthaud-Day 2005). The populace is conscious of recycling, reusing and disposing of aged IT products in ways that could be harmful to their surrounding, but in many instances, they neglect these practices hence damaging to the environment.

Thus, energy effectiveness has become a competitive advantage for most advertising companies especially the small and medium-sized ones, because they are numerous. In the recent past, there have been advanced technological solutions in this area, and their exploitation bears the support of organizational management (Tan 2005).

Hence, green IT or green computing has recently grown to be a most important development in the Information Technology (IT) industry all over the globe. Green IT can simply be explained as projects or initiatives relating to information technology that have a constructive effect on the environment. The said projects can have noteworthy benefits for an organization, such as saving funds, improving morale, drawing more customers, and raising efficiency. For many enterprises, cutting costs is the major priority, with 55% of them confirming that saving energy-related costs was their principal incentive for greening IT (Campbell 2009). In spite of the particular motivation, an increasing number of organizations are realizing that green computing is a beneficial venture.

Research Aims, Motivation and Objective

The major difficulty opposing the green movement, and in particular, the green Information technology (IT) movement, is that green undertakings at times call for short-term profit sacrifices (Emling et al. 2008). But ultimately, green IT can profit both a corporation’s returns and the environment. The aim of this study is to examine the way advertising companies develop their energy effectiveness and control the functions linked with it.

The overall/general objective of this research paper is to analyze the impact of green computing in Small and Medium Size Advertising companies in Hong Kong. The following are the specific objectives for the study:

• To examine Green IT and ascertain the optimal possible areas of savings for Advertising companies
• To analyze the importance of corporate social responsibility and how advertising companies can actuate themselves through green computing

Outline of the Thesis

This dissertation consists of five chapters, namely the introduction, literature review, research frameworks and methodology, research and data analysis and the conclusion and recommendations.

The introduction sets out the background of the study, and points out what the study intends to achieve, that is, the objectives of the research. The literature review dwells mostly on the green design strategies and then evaluates the five impact factor perspectives, namely Technology, Economic, Environmental, Service and Enterprise, also referred to as TEESE. The literature review finally summarizes these discussions

The research frameworks and methodology section deal with the framework used and the methodology employed in the study of the five impact factors aforementioned (TEESE), and the methods used to collect data for analysis. The research and data analysis section comprehensively covers the analysis of all the individual TEESE factor perspectives and ends with a summary. The thesis ends in a conclusion and recommendation for future research, and includes an appendix comprising references and other appendices used in the methodology (Modood 2003).

Summary

Green computing refers to projects or initiatives relating to information technology that have a constructive effect on the environment. Although previously thought to be economically challenging by corporations to effect, green computing (or green IT) can profit both a corporation’s returns and the environment. This is more so for an advertising company. This study aims to examine the way advertising companies can develop their energy effectiveness and control the functions linked with it.

Literature Review

This section reviews literature about green computing concerning green design strategies, but more importantly, it focuses specifically on the five factors (TEESE) for impact analysis that directly relate to advertising companies in general. Finally, it reviews the decision model and criteria for green computing.

Introduction

In past times, environmental matters were viewed as being at variance with advantageous operations, thus forming a platform in which an organization could only practice environmentally responsible activities at the expense of profitable financial expansion.

Green IT or green computing has recently grown to be a most important development in the Information Technology (IT) industry all over the globe. Green IT can simply be explained as projects or initiatives relating to information technology that have a constructive effect on the environment. The said projects can have noteworthy benefits for an organization, such as saving funds, improving morale, drawing more customers, and raising efficiency.

For many enterprises, cutting costs is the major priority, with 55% of them confirming that saving energy-related costs was their principal incentive for greening IT (Post et al. 2002). In spite of the particular motivation, an increasing number of organizations are realizing that green computing is a beneficial venture. As a result of this progressive yet assiduous nature of worldwide commerce these days, competitive corporations are required to seriously regard the application of a number of green information technologies (IT) undertakings.

The green initiatives encompass a wide variety of subjects for increasing efficiency and environment-friendly utilization of natural resources. This includes control of emissions of greenhouse gas, change of climate, clean water use, and the application of renewable energy sources. This dissertation proposes to identify innovative and effective use of technologies that will be helpful and significant in the process of employing green initiatives in all aspects. The dissertation seeks to focus on computing technologies that will enable determined green initiatives by use of the five impact factors of Technology, Economic, Environmental, Service and Enterprise (TEESE) perspectives.

Taxonomy of Green Design Strategies

Green computing is a common expression describing an aspect of computing that is concerned with getting better energy efficiency and decreasing waste in the complete life cycle of computing equipment (Talebi 2008). These techniques entail altering the settings that direct their behavior, and therefore power consumption, of assorted software and hardware mechanisms. This section will deal with three major strategies applied in the green technology world: green server strategies, green workstation strategies and green policy strategies.

Green Server Strategies

Virtualization

The term virtualization generally brings up a picture of virtual reality, the capacity to simulate an environment on a computer, usually for visual experiences (Braastad 2006).

There exist two types of virtualisation; namely desktop virtualisation and server virtualisation (REEEEF). Desktop virtualisation is where a desktop computer or laptop utilizes an application that will operate as the virtualisation layer and is installed on top of the host operating system. For instance, VMware Workstation may be installed on top of MS Windows XP operating system so as to run virtual machines (VMs).

While virtualization used to be primarily a technology associated with mainframes, in 1999 the idea of virtualization was picked up from the mainframe and positioned onto industry-standard 32-bit hardware which had not been initially designed for virtualization use (Szubert 2007). Server virtualization is important in reduction of power consumption by merging or combining multiple servers onto some physical technological equipment.

Data Center

Data Centers contribute to considerable power consumption on the planet today. About 1.5% of the total electricity utilization in the China is attributable to data centers; a fact that is always overlooked especially considering all the activities that require power in the country. The standard data center has an efficiency of about 30%, with the remaining 70% of the electricity being wasted through dissipation cooling processes of the equipment (Poniatowski 2009).

Average consumption of the power server is rising, showing an increasing trend in the use of multi-core processors and memories, and packaging densities. This rise in server densities has been largely motivated by a change in customer purchase trends beginning with tower servers to rack-dense systems and conventional blade servers that have been adopted. This driving force is a product of consumers who require systems that assist their company’s workloads and need to attach the systems into select data centers as opposed to buying or building a new one. The effect is a three times enhancement in server densities at the rack level (Poniatowski 2009).

Unknown to most people who make use of and research about data center energy is that only about half or even less of the energy used in the data center is utilized in servers and storage. The remaining usually end up in other uses which may include air conditioning, conversions of power, networks, and lighting. For a circumspectly designed data center with a most efficient cooling, about fifty percent of the power is utilized (Poniatowski 2009). Consumers are increasingly concerned about the energy consumption of the data center for the reason that the electricity bill is escalating by the day, or since they are not able to avail enough electricity in the data center, or better still, because of a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) undertaking, or even more, due to all the aforementioned reasons.

By use of VMware technology, companies can decrease their electricity use in the data center by 70-80% (Poniatowski 2009). This is an even more impactful use of virtualization infrastructures. Before the idea of virtualization, software tiers were run on dedicated systems. This made the CPU utilization to be stretched to their limits as a result of the power and cooling required. As soon as VMware developed its earliest server products, consumers immediately put them to use in server-consolidation projects and the results were very impressive. The encapsulation and separation of implicit equipment from the principal physical hardware delivered by VMware excelled in flexibility, dynamism in environmental operations, improving business efficiencies, enabling automation, and standardization of operating functionalities.

Green Workstation Strategies

Under this set of strategies, the topics that will be handled are Virtualization, Cloud services and recycled materials.

Virtualization

As explained earlier, virtualization is where physical machines are replaced with virtual representations that can be teamed up into a lesser number of physical machines. During the process of virtualization, information regarding all the available physical servers that were retired should be recorded in a database. These records comprise the server hardware specifications, details about its usage, physical position, administrator accountable, and such other relevant data. There are framework models which outline how the software and hardware component requirements for building a virtualization environment are handled. The merits of using server virtualization have been pointed out (Yoon 2009) as follows:

• Only one computer server is adequate to run several other computer servers within an organization
• Any operating system can be employed, whether Linux, Windows, or Mac
• Security is enhanced by the use of only one computer server for the administrator
• The number of physical computers in the server can be reduced by conversion into Virtual machines (VMs) which would reduce the energy and cooling needs and hence lower the emissions of carbon (Yoon 2009).

Thus, using server virtualization has many advantages to all, and these advantages add up to improve green computing. The grand fact concerning server virtualization is that it is usually so well-thought-out as a green technology and therefore, as global warming becomes more of a concern, advertising corporations must begin thinking about introducing green computing strategies to reduce carbon emissions, especially since it could be only expensive to add more computer servers or physical hardware.

Cloud Services (SaaS)

“Cloud computing is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet” (Da Silva 2009, p.35). There are several benefits of cloud computing for businesses that have been realized. These advantages include the enhanced total cost of ownership (TCO), lowered infrastructural costs, better business agility, changing fixed costs to variable costs, and certainly, in reference to power, getting technological services that are not rationed but rather provided as required sometimes temporarily so as to counter peaks in IT wants, and which do not entail power capacity restrictions.

Even though businesses have been indisposed so far in undertaking cloud computing widely as a starting place of IT services, there have been pointers in which cloud computing may have been advantageous, while at the same time not bringing up the characteristic qualms about security, dependability, meeting SLAs, and other issues brought up by cloud computing that have not yet been utterly resolved (Da Silva 2009).

Da Silva again suggests that there exist four cases where the cloud could be thought of by CIOs, namely, for:

1. novel initiatives in which budgets may be very constricted;
2. business processes that have broadly changing or volatile load patterns;
3. services provided by non-central systems which are commoditized; and
4. systems in which infrastructure organization and operations expenses are lofty.

His opinion is that, even though cloud computing could presently be part of an overall strategy in management, there is a probability that it will continue playing a minor role for most businesses, with the expectation that in the meantime, the issues which prevent its use, can be sufficiently determined. There could be micro consolidation, where there is a combination of virtual machines onto physical servers inside the data center, and also macro combination, where there is the consolidation of numerous virtual machines.

Recycled Material

Recycling computing materials and equipment that have been spoilt or are old is a useful green computing practice. Apart from lessening the need for disposing of non-biodegradable and harmful materials in the environment, recycling will ensure encourage energy savings through replacement of materials or equipment that would otherwise require fresh manufacture. There are companies that are authorized to engage in computer hardware recycling and these should be contacted for such relevant needs.

The use of harmful chemicals embedded in electronic, products prevents their safe recycling when the products are unwanted or unused. Three goals for the advertising companies in particular and all corporations, in general, include the following:

• Cleaning up their products through the elimination of hazardous substances
• Taking back and recycling their products in a responsible manner once they become obsolete.
• Reducing the environmental impacts of their activities and for their commodities

Thus, strategies of reusing, repairing, recycling and even reconditioning could be employed in the design of the commodities, including their packaging. Renewable power utilities require a unit of administration that will ensure the most advantageous power benefits. Most answers are unplanned for particular utilities using various methods. So as to provide an extensive solution choice is required which is driven through modeling.

Green Policy Strategies

IT Procurement

Strategies that are eco-effective are presented and it is thought that these strategies presuppose one another Examination of the environmental performance of an item is increasingly crucial. Nonetheless, there are problems with precisely measuring the environmental load of an individual item since the supply chains are dynamic.

Service Substitution

Within PC science, and as talked about in the review of literature, server virtualization is well thought out as a green technology (Thompson 2008). This leads to services being substituted such as operations, hardware and software in use as well as other services such as CSR. Corporate social responsibility involves mainly environmental initiatives which ensure that the environment is not polluted. Moreover, through various computing architectures, there is an assurance of better services offered, especially improved utility.

Apart from TV advertising and other internet advertising, Small and medium-sized corporations are also using social networking websites such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, MySpace, blogs, and others, for their commercial operations. IT advertisers have realized the power of these social media to improve sales, a report said. Although it has realized exponential growth in the recent past, the use of social media remains largely untapped by small and medium-sized companies in the advertising industry. From recent research, it was realized that about 30% of small businesses consider social media as strategically significant to their continual business achievement while in reality, only 61% of medium businesses apply this (Post, Lawrence & Weber 2002)

Impact Factors Perspectives (TEESE)

Technology

Socio-economic development and sustainable appreciation of an economy in the face of a rapidly increasing population can never be reality in a region if there is not the input of technologically sustainable systems that put into its forefront a consideration of the environment as a driving force to its existence. With the widespread adoption of technology in Hong Kong, green computing has had the greatest impact in the area. The development and application of green computing have brought such a significant technological impact in the Hong Kong business sector and more specifically to the Small and Medium-sized advertising companies in the largely populated administrative town.

An outstanding increase in productivity directly translates into huge profits. It is not just all about innovation, invention, renovation, and restructuring the technology systems in industries, but how effective and efficient the improvement is. The technology advancement trend is therefore focused on conservation and sustainability of its resources; recycling, reusing, power management, telecommunication, and virtualization. It cuts across reduction in hardware and software costs, a new computing architecture and ease of operation by the users.

One major problem faced by small and medium-size advertising companies was lack of enough technology to build a sustainable brand and reach out to the large population in Hong Kong. These local advertising companies faced stiff challenges from Western companies which had sophisticated technology and concentrated on building their brands. Green Computing which on the other unseen side was easier to implement and afford has been able to cost-effectively cover and reach a large number of customers through virtualization, power management, telecommunication and internet services.

Commercial companies have come up with virtualization software packages to help those companies incorporate virtualization into their IT system to have an easier and fast transition. The virtualization concept was all the original creation of IBM in 1960 with subsequent improvements to its maximization on the utilization of the available system resources efficiently. This inception of virtualization by companies has led to reduced power costs by use of one computer physical hardware to run two or more logical computers thus minimizing power and cooling consumption as explained earlier on in this literature review.

Having one data center makes it possible to store in that data center the said data using different computers hence facilitating a reliable storage and retrieval of data whenever needed, not to mention the reduced costs on power and purchase of the same computers. With a growing IT infrastructure, incurring the least possible costs is always a company’s top objective; this is achieved through virtualization as less is spent on purchase because of a central server.

Moreover, virtualization has enabled these companies to consolidate their server into a common server hence resulting in operating on reduced costs.

The use of teleconferencing, videoconferencing and telepresence used under the scope of green computing has greatly contributed to the employee motivation and increased output as translated into the increased profit margins and immense reduced costs of office space. Lighting and traveling costs, heat and greenhouse gas production have also been largely reduced. In general green computing has helped enhance the capacity of these advertising companies to an extent where they create new and wider markets and customers with the same capacity but improved efficiency.

Companies are getting more efficient by adopting green computing. With the invention and adoption of green computing by major international computer manufacturers like Sun Micro system, Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM have come together to launch the Green Grid environmental lobby, geared into reducing the power consumption by data centers by supporting the adoption of power-saving policies (Ajoy 2008).

Economic

A business’s main objective is maximization of profit which is achieved by minimizing cost centers paribus. In an advanced technological world where all business operations are propelled by use of computers, having an interest in how to reduce computing costs is prime if any business is to achieve its objective. Energy costs are increasingly being incurred by both small and medium-sized companies around the world, Hong Kong not being an exception. Escalating energy costs have a big impact on small and medium-sized companies as per the environmental credentials, of their stakeholders. This will greatly affect the computing industry as it is more prone to energy costs as disclosed above.

Inefficient use of energy, utilization of excess energy and emitting its large quantities yet consuming very little for use, have led to increased environmental harm. This has contributed to global warming which has a big impact on environment in the world at large. The result is that we may get that we are relying on gas which is economically unsteady and cannot work with computers.

The best solution is what has seen most of the small and medium-sized companies in Hong Kong adopt; green computing. They have been able to cut greatly on energy cost, little capital on purchase of computers as they apply virtualization techniques to reduce initial and operating capital costs. This has led to increased return on investment, expansion to the market and improvement of their products (Biznet magazine 2010).

Environmental

In recent years, environmental issues were seen to be in conflict with profitable operations, thus creating a platform whereby an organization could only pursue environmentally responsible service. Environmental issues have been considered to be in contradiction with revenue-earning operations hence developing a stage in which organizations could initiate corporate social responsibilities, but then at the cost of their hard-made profit which they may have intended for business growth (Friedman 1970). However, a recent discovery of the need for environmental management initiatives has been stimulated and incorporated into the daily activities of most businesses.

It has proven to be more positive against erstwhile thoughts (Klassen & McLaughlin 1996). These environmental measures attributed to the adoption of green computing have yielded such an encouraging result both to the environment and business. Improved pollution prevention through power management, reduced e-wastes and recycling of electronic gadgets. This has helped reduce the amount of pollution of greenhouse gas.

The population is rapidly increasing and in the same proportion is the energy use. Increased use of energy means increased heat emission hence more heating which is environmental pollution. Using energy efficiently is the best methodology to reduce the use of fossil fuels. Thus investing in energy efficiency is most important in reducing the amount of environmental pollution (Joseph Anthony 2008).

One of the simplest ways in energy efficiency is through green computing. The adoption of green computing techniques like turning off the computer when unused, eliminating phantom loads, upgrading the computer, and purchasing compatible devices that are efficient will greatly contribute to reduced power consumption and emission.

Technology and the environment have always been considered to have direct effects on each other. Green computing being a big advancement inefficiency of use of computing resources for advanced technology is no exception. Green computing practices are environmentally friendly. It advocates for material recycling; discovering another computer use, reusing it or taking it into pieces in such a way that its particular parts can be reused for other constructive building and repair work. Moreover, they can be donated to those who can beneficially use them, or rather disposed of through the right channels which may never be harmful to the environment. This contributes to reducing the amount of carbon footprint.

Service

Consumers are becoming increasingly interested in the amount of power that computing equipment is capable of consuming. Green computing offers suitable serviceability to the use of information technology. The desirability for power management for computer systems includes numerous reasons such as prolonged battery life, reduction of cooling requirements, noise and operating costs of business companies. Low consumption of power results in lower dissipation of heat, thereby increasing usability of the system and reduction in the use of energy. This results in savings both monetarily and environmentally.

Several practices should be considered in the use of information technology equipment that will enhance saving of power for advertising companies and hence cutting down on costs. Screen savers are a sort of a misnomer in green IT (information technology). A general misunderstanding is that screen savers make use of a smaller amount of electricity. However, in reality, this is not what constitutes the truth of the matter. Screen savers usually use up quite as much power as if one’s computer was idle. Just as the monitor’s sleep mode, a computer can put its hard disk drives in a sleep mode during times that they are not in use.

The Hibernate attribute is related to the system’s Stand by mode. But it goes one extra action than Stand by and totally turns off the computer. Before putting the computer off, the Hibernate aspect will save the memory status onto the hard disk drive to perform its process.

Terminal servers could also be applied in green computing by connecting several terminal users to a central server. In this case, the central server could be taken to be the advertising company or corporation, while the terminal servers could be used by the clients. According to research, this arrangement can result in the use of about 12.5% of the total amount of power used by a normal workstation, and in this way, reducing the costs and consumption of energy.

Enterprise

China has the largest internet market population. The World Wide Web in China is dominated by very diverse players, including advertising companies, and e-commerce is rapidly growing in the region. However, European companies are far more excellent in building brands in the Asia region than the Middle East companies themselves building brands in the same region.

As a result, local advertising enterprises could play a considerable task in the stabilization of the local economy, as well as in empowering it. The major and most critical reason for most failures in business is a lack of clientele, both with large businesses as well as small ones. (Yoon 2009, p. 97).

This means that there is an urgent need to draw more customers. Due to this, advertising agencies in Hong Kong offer a fundamental service. While larger businesses usually depend upon their heightened recognition and brand identification, small corporations time and again struggle with the necessity to attract customers from their front doors. Thus, local agencies in Hong Kong that offer advertising services can and do present suitable marketing solutions.

Review on Decision Model and Criteria for Green Computing

A decision model that consists of joint sustainability research that draws from leadership and green computing as well as providing an all-inclusive platform through which synthesis of the extant literature should be used as the criteria for green computing. Indeed, green computing relates to those practices that involve the design, manufacture, use and disposal of computers, servers, and related subsystems which, for advertising companies include monitors, networking and communication systems, printers, etc, so as to ensure efficient use of energy to minimize pollution of the environment.

With increase in computer hardware devices and computer uses, the cost of energy, the efficiency of energy and its impact on the environment have continued to receive amplified attention. Many corporations have continued to implement standards and measures which promote green computing.

Summary

The literature review has given a clear and in-depth insight into the taxonomy of green design strategies of servers, workstations, and policies. In a nutshell, green design strategies involve the application of technology that leads to reduced energy consumption and hence limits the carbon footprint that emanates from information technology computing. These strategies relate to virtualization, data centers, cloud services, recycled materials, service substitution and IT procurement. The advertising industry is swiftly changing and media also is relentlessly growing. Advertising companies are constantly on the lookout for novel and increasingly inventive methods to arrive at their customers.

Research Frameworks & Methodology

Research Questions

Leading research questions were formulated to help in guiding the research methodology and application of the frameworks. The questions were tailored in such a way that they would lead to the achievement of the set-out objectives for the dissertation. The research questions used for this dissertation were as follows:

• Will the system go on functioning appropriately after I apply the green changes?
• What is the expected improvement in performance that can be expected if the changes are adopted?
• Is the system efficient in terms of power consumption?
• Would you mind comparing, in your view, a successful versus an unsuccessful CSR initiative?
• Do you feel that your organization’s CSR programs are authentic? Why or why not?
• What are the difficulties of the current system?
• Are there any benefits in the current system?
• What should be done to improve the current system in use?

Impact Factors

Technology Perspectives

Concerning server energy, minimization may occur through various forms such as getting rid of too many servers or through ensuring that the current servers become extra efficient. An easy and accepted way of realizing this is through virtualization, whereby physical machines are replaced with virtual representations that can be teamed up into a lesser number of physical machines.

During the process of virtualization, information regarding all the available physical servers that were retired would be recorded in a database. These records comprise the server hardware specifications, details about its usage, physical position, administrator accountable, and such other relevant data considered helpful for additional activities.

Economic Perspectives

The economic perspectives were determined by the use of the linear model. The outcome that is the average server power consumption is dependent on two assumptions. Foremost, is that the supply of power consumption about the CPU use is linear. This means that if it is truly linear, then at 100% use, the server consumes maximum power while at 0% use the server consumes idle power, and all the percentages in between are consequently a proportional representation of power use that follow these limitations. The next assumption is that there is no intrinsic error in not assigning an application for a server. With this consideration the consumption of the equipment would be determined.

Enterprise Perspectives

There is a complexity involved when considering the computing aspect of advertising companies. Apart from considering the (green) technological aspect of the business, we should put in mind that the company is an enterprise. This composite nature of the venture causes an inability in evaluating and management of energy in a comprehensive way. The eventual outcome is that the enterprise can not be able to mark out nor capitalize on the Return on Investments (ROI) or Total Cost of Ownership for savings made in the hardware, software, human resources, or other data center infrastructure and facilities.

However, the enterprise does not have measures to find out power expenses related to specific infrastructure elements. The gap that exists in traceability also implies that the venture cannot end up with superior decisions about infrastructure management and investment. Hence this section considered infrastructural savings from the enterprise.

Service Perspectives

Energy efficiency was considered to be improved through various practices especially by employees and the administrators of the advertising companies. Procurement of computer equipment that is conformable to greening technology, the substitution of services and efficient use of the available technological hardware (such as the monitor) would be evaluated in this section.

Environmental Perspectives

This section involved the evaluation of the impact of green computing on the environment. As suggested by Campbell, greenhouse gas emissions in IT are caused by use of Personal Computers and monitors, the principal consumer, followed by servers & cooling, then fixed-line telecoms and mobile telecoms, then LAN and office telecoms, and lastly printers which do not consume as much energy (Campbell 2009). The weighting portrays where which areas are most economical in the Green IT landscape and the areas that have the greatest prospect for savings in energy. This would be useful in identifying the most important areas for green IT exploration using the most considerable amount of power.

Research Model

A research model was developed by use of a framework diagram presented in Figure 1 below. The research model shows the interaction between the five factors that are crucially considered in the analysis of the impact of green computing on small and medium-sized companies in Hong Kong. Once again these factors are the technological, economic, environmental, service and enterprise factors (TEESE).

The differential of Impact Factors before and after of Adoption of New Green Design

The research framework shown above shows the representation of the methodology used in this dissertation. With reference to the above Figure 1, there is a notable difference in the impact factors before and then after the adoption of the New Green Design. The application of Virtualization, Green Policy, adoptions of the cloud service and modifications of the Data center technologies form the major issues that change the Design from a Legacy Design to a New Green Design. Five impact factors form the impact analysis that is considered in the study of green computing in advertising companies. The impact factors are technology perspectives, economic perspectives, environmental perspectives, service perspectives, and enterprise perspectives.

The technological perspectives factors involve consideration of hardware and software power reductions, new computing architectures, and a consideration of the user usabilities. Economic perspectives delve into issues of cost-benefit analysis, the payback period and return on investment (ROI). A consideration of the possibilities of power-saving, lowering the carbon footprint and use of low-impact material contribute to the environmental perspectives. The service perspectives consist of a consideration of possibilities for service substitution, strategies in IT procurement, and methods of using energy efficiently. Finally, the enterprise perspectives involve creation of cordial customer relationships, an appropriate public image and the establishment of corporate social responsibilities (CSR) (Werbner 2003).

Data Collection

Two types of data were used in the study namely: secondary and primary data, whose descriptions are as follows:

Primary Data Collection

This is data collected first hand from the study area considered. Data collection involved finding facts of the activities being carried out in the various advertising companies, especially on how the businesses were then carrying activities. The techniques applied in gathering data were:

• Questionnaires
• Interviews

Interview and Survey Data

I used oral interviews to get vital information regarding the corporation’s processes and operations from the staff working in the IT department in the advertising companies. The staff gave information on how they performed their duties, systems used in coming u with advertisements and in the procurement of infrastructure. The interviews provided in-depth information about the organization’s preferences and expectations in relation to the green technology application.

Senior Management Group Data

Questionnaires were designed and were issued to the staff and the people working in the Information Technology department of the corporations. I administered ten questionnaires by giving them to respondents and leaving them to fill at their own time. A sample of the questionnaire used to gather the information is included in the appendix.

Existing Infrastructure Environment

An evaluation of the infrastructure existent in the companies was also done in order to evaluate the technological requirements for green computing and the potential application that can be effected in the business for maximum profitability both for the enterprise and for the environment.

Secondary Data Collection

Part of the methodology used in developing this study project was research, mostly on the Internet, because the topic of the project is very dynamic and subject to continuous and constant change which not many books may immediately offer. Moreover, the subject under study is technologically oriented and therefore demanded that technology play a crucial role in its exploration. Although there has been plenty of written material about green computing, it is in areas such as business management or history of business or economics. The IT world has a modest of information written about the topic, though in the recent past, diverse individuals have explored it as an important topic.

In seeking out the previous exploration of the subject by other researchers, the internet was used to locate papers, journals and reports. There were limitations in using the internet because some sites required a fee or subscription payment in order to access the whole document, with only the abstract available to the public. Several online computing magazines which included Computing & IT Week and Networking Plus were found to be handy in the exploration of up-to-date material on the subject.

Additionally, apart from the worldwide web information on green computing was also sought from technical books as well as information on advertising companies. The bibliography cites all the research materials used, including various dissertations, numerous journals, technical books, and papers that were useful in gathering information for this research dissertation.

Company Report

The company reports for the advertising agencies were evaluated to get an insight into the profitability of the companies, their return on investment (ROI), their commitment to corporate social responsibility (CSR) and other relevant information regarding the company. The report was obtained through a visit to the company and obtaining the relevant permission. This information was obtained as secondary data because it was not obtained firsthand.

Company Operation Record

The record of operations for the company was also obtained from the company as a part of the secondary data collected for the study. This was useful in determining the advertising company’s enterprise operations and its public image as well as customer satisfaction from its services.

Purchased from Secondary Source

There were no materials purchased from secondary sources for use in the study since the information available from the already determined secondary sources was found to be adequate.

Summary

The research frameworks and methodology involved a look into the five impact analysis factors of technology, economic, environmental, service and enterprise factor perspectives through a framework diagram in Figure 1, as well as the collection of relevant data that would provide required information that will be necessary for the study. The data to be collected would involve both primary and secondary data. The methods of drawing conclusions from this data were also evaluated, including their relevance to the study. This data would then be used in the analysis section.

Research and Data Analysis

Introduction

Research and data analysis in this dissertation dwells on the review of the data collected in the methodology and analysis of all the information thus gathered in order to draw relevant conclusions that would lead the study to achieve its objectives. Present-day information technology systems depend upon an intricate mixture of hardware and networks, and people and thus green computing must encompass all these issues.

Impact Analysis: Technology Perspectives

Hardware & software License

By use of resource allocation for the provision of an alternative power source, it is possible to construct power consumption models for individual server types. The information gathered from such models is used to provide information with business value and the information of the server so as to allocate, in a resourceful way, specific virtual machines to physical ones.

As pointed out by Campbell (2009), greenhouse gas emissions in IT are caused by Personal Computers and monitor use (39%), servers & cooling (23%), fixed-line telecoms (15%), mobile telecoms (9%), LAN and office telecoms (6%), and printers (6%). Such a weighted representation of the consumption as this is tremendously shrewd when contrasting various Green IT projects. For example, a decrease of 50% in printer power usage may appear enormous, but an 8% reduction in computer and screen usage would have a bigger overall greening effect. The weighting portrays where which areas are most economical in the Green IT landscape and the areas that have the greatest prospect for savings in energy.

Thus, the two most important areas for green IT exploration are PC and monitor usage and the servers and cooling consumption, which devours about two-thirds of the entire power.

Moreover, data centers have been highly criticized because of using ridiculously high amounts of power, and are therefore a primary focus of green computing.

By use of virtualization, a company can integrate multiple physical machines or systems into virtual machines (VMs) in one single and powerful system, and use only a solitary system administrator and hence lessening off the original hardware required and simultaneously decreasing the consumption of energy and cooling. (Yoon 2009, p. 99)

In this project, before the application of green strategy (virtualization), there were 30 servers, but after the application of green strategy (virtualization), only six servers were in use by running the VMs. Moreover, before the application of the green strategy (desktop virtualization), there had to be a software license for each workstation, but thereafter, when desktop virtualization was applied, there were four users for each license.

New Computing Architectures

In the recent past, there have been virtually no new computing architectures although there has been an exponential increase in computer applications. In this dissertation, common computer architectures were employed, which included arithmetic logic units. Before their application, the time taken for data processing was very long, but after application of the new green computing architectures, a short time was realized.

User Usability

User interfaces created by the advertising companies must offer an easy-to-use quality. For effective usability, the designing process should ensure the five qualities of easy learnability, efficiency in the performance of the user tasks, quick memorability, minimal errors, and user satisfaction. Before the application of green computing, users took a very long time to learn and use the workstation, but after the application of the green strategy, only six users could handle what five users used to handle because of improved usability.

Impact Analysis: Economic Perspectives

With increase in population, so has been the increase in the demand and use of energy. The expansive use of technology, chiefly computers, implies that the power consumption of computers is a crucial issue since the cost of energy increases, and pollution becomes a huge challenge.

Cost-Benefit Analysis

Projects can have noteworthy benefits for an organization, such as saving funds, improving morale, drawing more customers, and raising efficiency. For many enterprises, cutting costs is the major priority, with 55% of them confirming that saving energy-related costs was their principal incentive for greening IT (Carroll & Buchholtz 2003). Although investment in green computing was not a popular idea in the recent past, this study has proved the great benefits of green computing because of the large energy savings involved. Through the application of green computing strategies, there was a considerable reduction in power use because of the reduced number of hardware that would use a lot of energy. Moreover, operational costs were reduced since only six users were required for the six VMs as opposed to 30 users before the green computing strategy.

Payback Period

Although previously thought to be economically challenging by corporations to effect, green computing (or green IT) can profit both a corporation’s returns and the environment. However, as discussed in this dissertation, the payback period for green computing takes much longer because of a large requirement in the inputs. Before the application of the green computing strategy, the payback period was shorter than after the application of the green strategies.

Return on Investment (ROI)

The composite nature of the advertising companies, as evaluated in previous sections, causes the inability in evaluating and management of power in a comprehensive way. However, the enterprise does not have measures to find out power expenses related to specific infrastructure elements. The gap that exists in traceability also implies that the venture cannot end up with superior decisions in relation to infrastructure management and investment.

An all-inclusive management methodology would do good to the venture by:

1. extending the existence of the data center;
2. improving the productivity for the venture by optimizing the return on investment (ROI) for the data center;
3. decreasing the power utilized by idle servers;
4. contributing to profitability by enabling the enterprise to enhance the leverage of the capacity of its data center assets;
5. ensuring “free-riding” within the venture is prevented by enabling the development of an enhanced chargeback model, that additionally and correctly charges business units for the capacity that they consume; and
6. supporting a greener data center, that will have better civic relations and professed corporate social responsibility advantages (Marquez & Fombrun 2005).

Although the payback period was found to lengthen after the application of green computing strategies, the return of investment was maximized. This is because, before the application of the green strategy, there were losses through inefficiency in the use of energy and operations, but after the application of green computing strategies, there was improved efficiency which led to maximized return on investment (ROI).

Impacts Analysis: Environmental Perspectives

Power Saving

Using server virtualization has many advantages to all, and these advantages add up to improve green computing. The grand fact concerning server virtualization is that it is usually so well-thought-out as a green technology and therefore, as global warming becomes more of a concern, advertising corporations must begin thinking about introducing green computing strategies to reduce carbon emissions, especially since it could be only expensive to add more computer servers or physical hardware.

Data centers have been highly criticized because of using ridiculously high amounts of power, and are therefore a primary focus of green computing. Virtualization will enable a corporation to employ only a single system administrator and at the same time integrate several physical systems into a powerful yet solitary system, thereby reducing the initial requirements of hardware and energy.

From the review below, it is well shown that before the application of green computing strategies, the power use was overwhelming, but after the application of green computing strategies, the power saving was well over 138,079 kWh per annum.

Power usage effectiveness (PUE)

One of the elements for determining a server’s full power utilization is the “cooling, lighting, The metric used in this dissertation is called the Power User Efficiency (PuE), which is defined as the ―Total Facility Power/IT Equipment Power‖ (Anderson 2008).

The computer used for the research has the following hardware specifications:

Intel P4 2.7 GHz CPU

1.5 GHz DDR3 memory

80 GB HDD

Intel 82875G on-board Graphics Controller

Two-State Desktop Power Model

Idle% = 80% Load% = 20%

Using the technique set out in this research paper, the energy savings related to this endeavor was the kilo-watt hours per year can be calculated. Using the current price of electricity, the amount can be computed.

Table showing O.U. Server Virtualization Savings.

1. Includes PuE
2. O.U. electricity cost used in the calculation: $0.04743 / kWh.

Data center infrastructure efficiency (DCiE)

There consist of five key green computing strategies for data centers that use computer servers which are described in table (Computing, 2008, p. 23).

Data center performance efficiency (DCPE)

With the need to operate costs and cut expenditures, as well as address energy costs and green environmental initiatives, especially greenhouse gas emissions, there is need to reduce data center power consumption and cooling energy requirements. This will help improve the performance efficiency of the data center. “DCPE evaluates an information technology (IT) equipment by considering the useful and effective work that it can perform and the data center per energy consumed” (Yoon 2009, p.101).

Carbon Footprint

Before the application of the green computing strategy, the carbon footprint was very large due to the use of 30 physical machines. But after the application of green computing strategies, the resulting energy footprint was found to be tiny enough to be sustainable by many of the prominent energy hunting techniques, such as body heat and ambulation; thereby making it more ready for eco-friendly technology.

Low-impact Material

Companies are recognizing the prospect of winning more customers through programs that help the community improve the environment. Through the use of low-impact material, many advertising companies are able to achieve this. Before the application of green computing, materials used in advertising companies included very harmful materials or those that included harmful materials such as lead. But after the application of green computing strategy through the application of new computing architectures where arithmetic logic units were used, the use of low impact materials was realized.

Impacts Analysis: Service Perspectives

IT Procurement Strategy

The procurement of services and equipment for IT companies has a significant impact on the sustainable future of the company and affects both its environmental and financial aspects. Integrating sustainable principles into the procurement processes by ensuring environmental considerations are put in Priority will ensure needed value for money. For example, with reference to technology, it would be imperative to obtain IT equipment that is indeed needful and useful to the company both in the short term and in the long term (Al-Saleh & Talebi 2009).

Through the application of green strategies by the advertising companies, the procurement process was not only shortened but was also made more efficient. This is because before the application of the green computing strategy, many workstations needed to be sourced (30 of them), but thereafter, only six would be sourced.

Service Substitution

Green technologies attend to both the flaws in the present situation as well as the expectations of further improvement. Considering environmental issues while making business decisions is critical success factor for any company in the present world.

From the analysis carried out in this paper, seven targets were identified for small and medium-sized advertising companies to strategize and attain superior profitability. The aims are as presented hereunder:

1. Explore reasonable and beneficial uses of renewable power.
2. Crucially regard business decisions as critical in responding to global consumer expectations
3. Ensure the recognition of presently inefficient systems.
4. Improve infrastructures to diminish energy use and get better energy efficiency.
5. Make plans for power management at all stages of the corporation – from the casual worker to the management employee.
6. Explore the available advantages of digital substitutes to physical processes.
7. Develop a future-oriented approach that will integrate upcoming technologies which are conformable to the company’s strategy.

From the application of these strategies, green computing was realized through the use of principally TV and internet advertising, especially advertising through the use of the social networking sites, which was after the application of green strategies.

Energy Efficiency

The computer power consumption benchmarking toolkit consists of benchmarks for diverse computing uses such as web browsing, gaming, distributed computing, and various computers power states including Idle, Stand by, Hibernate, and Off modes (Talebi 2008). Letting the monitor get into sleep mode after idling for a given time period is a good beginning point in encouraging energy efficiency.

Through the application of these energy efficiency green strategies, there was a lot of savings in the use of energy, but before then, a lot of energy was being wasted. Moreover, because there was a considerable decrease in the software, hardware and operational needs, there was, again, a realization of energy efficiency.

Impacts Analysis” Enterprise Perspective

Customer Relationships

Companies are recognizing the prospect of winning more customers through programs that help the community improve the environment because CSR can offer the clientele a superior corporate image. It was realized that after the application of green computing strategies, the number of customers for the advertising companies soared hence more value was realized.

Public Image

The advertising companies will shape their public image through a well-furnished customer relationship, and through offering relevant CSR services hence creating the companies goodwill. Before the application of green computing strategies, some advertising companies would be slandered especially by the media, hence distorting their public image. But after the application of the green computing strategies, the company’s image was increasingly improved. This is further explained in the section below.

Corporation Social Responsibilities (CSR)

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a phrase that encompasses the entire ethical and legal requirements and duties, both national and global, which originate from the developments that an organization causes through its activities in society. Earlier on, companies did not concern themselves with marketing or quality; but were only engrossed in their own principal objectives. Lately, however, businesses need to integrate techniques to be responsible socially, as part of their business strategy (Kim et al. 2010).

Sustainability is at the heart of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), and involves conducting responsible business activities that are conformable to social needs. This trend is gaining popularity in the corporate world, and various companies have different ways of approaching the issue. But it is imperative to develop indicators that then measure performance in areas such as economic, social and environmental aspects. Consequently, this led to the formulation of key performance indicators (KPIs), which are included in the table shown hereunder. The table shows issues that are of relevance in considering corporate social responsibility activities for a company. There are three major areas identified in which a corporation may consider reaching out to society:

These factors are crucial in determining a companies rating in terms of its realization of corporate social responsibility to the society. From computations of CO₂ emissions of a company, a required donation of charity per their revenue should be determined to ensure that what is given to society is commensurate or greater than the damage generated.

Presently, there are companies seeking to reduce their power consumption, since they want to be accountable. Google, for instance, is a company that constantly seeks to decrease its power consumption in its use of data centers. One of the major challenges in the emissions of CO2 is the application of obsolete technology (Garriga & Mele 2004). However, there exists available technology which can effectively serve to aver this situation. Business companies in the present day require paying keen attention to subjects concerned with social responsibility which have been incorporated into the strategies of most modern businesses (Vaccaro 2009).

Although most corporations are meeting a rising demand to take into consideration environmental issues, both in their company strategies and operations , and are trying to act in response to progressively more strict demands for environmentally conscientious business activities, many have ignored the crucial responsibility played by information technology (IT), both in the way it contributes to present environmental concerns, and also in its probable advancement of sustainable practices (Jerkin 2009).

This shows that, before the application of green computing strategies, there is little that a company could boast of in terms of green computing. However, after the application of green computing strategies, most companies found that they could well give back to society.

Describing, Classifying, Interpreting of Interviews

A framework that consists of joint sustainability research that draws from leadership and green computing as well as providing an all-inclusive platform through which synthesis of the extant literature was employed. This framework provides an instrument to look at Green computing as a crucial, yet often ignored, the component of Corporate Social Responsibility activities, particularly with regard to the business environment initiatives. It can be useful at manifold levels of analysis (e.g., technological, societal) and outlines

1. the encouraging forces energizing corporate environmental practices
2. the environmental sustainable strategies that corporations come up with in response to the drivers, and
3. the staff’s environmental mind-sets, cognitions, and behaviors.

Insofar as it provides guidelines for assessing Green IT issues about the extant research on sustainability, I bring out this framework to enlighten this research (see Figure 1).

Quantitative Analysis

An analysis of the qualitative data based on in-depth interviews with employees in advertising companies was then conducted. To analyze the data, it was important to begin by identifying every portion of the transcript which pointed to environmental issues as a central part of CSR. Afterward, so as to assess the prevalence of computing-related issues contained by employee evaluations of the organization’s environmental initiatives, the NVIVO software was used to code and analyze these environment-related portions of the records according to the Green computing research framework presented in Figure 1.

Questionnaire and Interviews

The findings imply that the corporations are yet in the initial stages of understanding and taking up information technology greening. Therefore this dissertation concludes by suggesting that future research should narrow in on organizational education and social marketing premises to assist in aligning employees’ mindsets, cognitions, and behaviors and to enhance environmental transformation (Murugesan 2008).

Senior Management Group Meetings Data Analysis

Weighting Table

The following weighting table was used to summarize Data collected from the administrative workers of the organizations.

Priorities of Impact Factors

While all the impact factors complement and relate to each other, it is clear that some factors have greater priority over others. From figure 1 which shows the framework diagram for the research, the factors are prioritized in order of importance: Technological, Economic, Environmental, Service and then Enterprise perspectives. Even though laying out the strategic course for environmental responsibility is critical, implementing administrators’ visions at the member of staff level and motivating them to wholly take on the relevant actions that challenge the administrators most. In exercising, encouraging and predicting pro-environmental activities, it has been very not easy since people’s environmental attitudes are sometimes in sharp contrast to their behaviors (Ohtomo & Hirose 2007).

Composition Index for Adoption of Green Design

The first intention of this research was to inspect Green IT and ascertain the most optimal areas of savings. To achieve this, the following equations were applied:

Average Server Power Consumption Equations

1. 
2. 
3. 

Idle% = 74% Util% = 5% (Katsushi 2001).

Summary

Computer power consumption is fetching a more essential role as electricity prices rise and as toxic waste is increasingly turning into a problem in the world. In this paper, I have presented five impact factors of applying information technology (IT) resources in an environmentally friendly way that will not only help in saving resources, but further engender constructive corporate goodwill. Additionally I address several potential issues often encountered by corporations pursuing a green IT strategy.

The problem that mostly hinders the execution of green computing is more often than not the dread of high costs. This is usually because of misconceptions, which include the idea that renewable energy sources are usually more costly than the ones we are used to. Other troubles comprise such issues as the greening of a complete system and trying to discover the customer perceptions that the company may be prone to (Castillo & Chung 2004).

Conclusion and Recommendation

Introduction

Kneale, et al., (2004) points out that there are four general problems that the advertising companies will encounter during the search for greener computing:

• The challenge of initial financing
• A lack of physical space and cooling
• A lack of a secure and manageable environment
• A requirement for skilled and informed labor

Thus the advertising companies in Hong Kong working on Green IT, reducing its carbon footprint, and decreasing their data center energy consumption, while designing energy-efficient techniques.

Contribution of the Thesis

This empirical research of Green computing relates to a widespread study framework to present an in-depth study into the present state of practice. Specifically, this research proposes that advertising corporations do not have an awareness and knowledge regarding

1. the considerable influence of computing on the corporation’s environmental footprint,
2. how Green computing can be incorporated into their environmental programs, and
3. how to converse to staff members so as to significantly progress their sustainability practices.

Society always remains aware that the IT world is a suitable avenue to implement Corporate Social Responsibility programs, which will be useful to many other organizations, since these days, all companies apply technological computing in their daily jobs.

Conclusion

Green computing is a technological advancement that all small and medium-sized advertising companies need to adopt so as to maintain a competitive edge in the industry. Information technology developers need to keep abreast both with changing legislation and new technological advancements in the computing and advertising industries. This can be done best through educational programs, informational newspapers and magazines on the internet and through attendance of conferences and publications which give information on novel materials and technologies which will enable them to make vetted decisions. Moreover, companies which purpose is to maintain a competitive edge as technology progresses have to ensure that their systems are as closely abreast with the state of the art as possible.

Limitations

Time was the major limiting resource during the advancement of this task, passing the survey questions to respondents and waiting for the responses was costly. For this cause to do this project as it was originally scoped would require much further time, but optimistically the task has increased awareness of what green computing is about.

Future Research

With a lacking of this knowledge and the awareness of ways to capitalize on Green computing opportunities, corporations will find it difficult to surge in the direction of sustainable practices. In undertaking this first step towards comprehending how, and if, corporations have integrated issues of Green computing into their environmental management activities and, more in general, their corporate social responsibility (CSR) agendas, I suggest that researchers draw on organizational education and social marketing theories to enable have an effect on this change (Yilmaz 2009).

Further, while the use of virtualization technology is greatly useful in promoting green computing, it has led to creation of security issues and system vulnerabilities through the use of this technology. Moreover, it has led to introduction of some complexities on the environment such as scalability, management of resources, administration and security, which should all be attended to in further research inquiries.

Lastly, given the narrow view of Green computing presently held by employees and apparently nominal level of organizational dedication towards the support of environmental strategies with Green computing applications, future research should develop a better off comprehension of the present barriers, either subjective or objective, that hinder advertising corporations from adopting Green computing applications (Sagasti 1999).

Summary

A framework that consists of joint sustainability research that draws from both leadership and green computing as well as providing an all-inclusive platform through which synthesis of the extant literature was employed. This framework provides an instrument to look at Green computing as a crucial, yet often ignored, a component of Corporate Social Responsibility activities, particularly about the business environment initiatives. It can be useful at manifold levels of analysis (e.g., technological, societal) and outlines

1. the encouraging forces energizing corporate environmental practices
2. the environmental sustainable strategies that corporations come up with in response to the drivers, and
3. the staff’s environmental mind-sets, cognitions, and behaviors.

Insofar as it provides guidelines for assessing Green IT issues about the extant research on sustainability, I bring out this framework to enlighten this research (see Figure 1).

Bibliography

Appendix

Appendix A: References

Arthaud-Day, M.L., 2005. Transnational Corporate Social Responsibility: A Tri-Dimensional Approach to International CSR Research. Business Ethics Quarterly, 15 (1), pp. 1-22.

Anderson, B., 2008. Green Grid Datacenter Power Efficiency Metrics: PUE and DCIE. London: Verso.

Campbell, G.L., 2009. Virtualization as a green IT technology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Thompson, J., 2008. Five green computing approaches to consider. Sci. Tech., 42 (8), p. 23.

Carroll, A.B. & Buchholtz, A.K., 2003. Business and Society: Ethics and Stakeholder Management. 5th ed. Australia: Thomson South-Western.

Castillo, R. & Chung N.C., 2004. The value of sustainability, Center for Integrated Facility Engineering. Web.

Al-Saleh, Y. & Taleb, H., 2009. The integration of sustainability within value management practices: A study of experienced value managers in the GCC countries. Project Management Journal, 41 (2), pp. 50-59.

Da Silva, R.A., 2009. Green computing – power efficient management in data centers using resource utilization as a proxy for power. Web.

Emling, M.V., Switzer, L.M. & Merhout, J.W., 2008. Green is good implementing green information technologies to pursue strategic business opportunities. Web.

Garriga, E. & Mele, D., 2004. Corporate Social Responsibility Theories: Mapping the Territory. Journal of Business Ethics, 53 (1), pp. 51-71.

Gellner, E., 2010. Green information technologies. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Jerkin, E., 2009. Green information technologies and systems in organizations. New York: New York Times.

Katsushi, L., 2001. CSR – Impact on the IT world. Los Alamitos: CA IEEE Computer.

Kim, J., Kwak, G., Koo, Y., 2010. A note on corporate social responsibility (CSR) in city branding and design. Asian Journal on Quality, 11 (3), pp. 251-265.

Kneale, B., Horta, D. & Box, H., 2004. VELNET (Virtual Environment for Learning Networking). Sixth conference on Australasian computing education – Volume 30 (pp. 161 – 168). Dunedin, New Zealand: Australian Computer Society, Inc.

Lavine, A., 2003. Australasian computing education. Sydney: Elsevier Sciences.

Marquez, A. & Fombrun, C.J., 2005. Measuring Corporate Social Responsibility. Corporate Reputation Review, 7(4), pp. 304-308.

Modood, P., 2003. B2B green marketing and innovation theory. London: Zed Books.

Murugesan, S., 2008. Harnessing Green IT: Principles and Practices. IEEE IT professional, 10 (1), pp 24-33.

Ohtomo, S. & Hirose, Y., 2007. The dual-process of reactive and Intentional decision-making involved in eco-friendly behavior. Journal of environmental psychology, 27 (2), pp. 117-125.

Poniatowski, M., 2009. Foundations of green IT: consolidation, virtualization, efficiency, and ROI in the data center. Boston: Pearson Education.

Post, J.E., Lawrence, A. & Weber, J., 2002. Business and Society. 10th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill.

Robyns, C., 2004. Systems and Information Technology. Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag.

Sagasti, F., 1999. Improving network lab environments. Ottawa: International Development Research Centre.

Talebi, M., 2008. Computer power consumption benchmarking for green computing. Web.

Tan, S., 2005. Consumption benchmarking for green computing. England: Ashgate.

Vaccaro, V., 2009. B2B green marketing and innovation theory for competitive advantage. Journal of Systems and Information Technology, 11 (4), pp.315-330.

Werbner, P., 2003. Corporate Social Responsibility Theories. London: Zed Books.

Yilmaz, H., 2009. environments using virtualization. Int. Environ. Appl. Sci., 4(1), pp. 86-91.

Yoon, K., 2009. Improving network lab environments using virtualization. NDT&E International, 42 (3), pp. 97-105.

Appendix C: Questions for Interview

Below are the questions that were asked during the interviews:

• Is the system efficient in terms of power consumption?
• What are the difficulties of the current system?
• Are there any benefits in the current system?
• What should be done to improve the current system in use?

Appendix D: Questionnaire Survey

Interview Protocol

The interviews were largely unstructured, allowing the participant to determine the flow of the discussion so that key topics could emerge. The discussions began with casual questions to build rapport followed by a grand tour question to frame the discussion. The interviews were steered in large part by the participant’s initial responses and simple probing questions were used throughout the discussion to guide the flow of the conversation and delve into certain responses that seemed to touch on interesting and important points.

Introduction

1. Standard opening conversation: introductions, the general purpose of the study, how are you, nice weather, etc.
2. Explain the process: present letter of information, consent form, reiterate that the interview would be recorded, emphasize discussion-based interview style.

Grand tour question (to begin the discussion and frame the interview):

How important is CSR to your organization?

Critical questions

Authenticity-focused

1. Would you mind comparing, in your view, a successful versus an unsuccessful CSR initiative?
2. Do you feel that your organization’s CSR programs are authentic? Why or why not?
3. Do you think authenticity is important in developing successful CSR programs? Why or why not?
4. How do you feel about your organization’s CSR programs?

Outcome-focused

1. How does your perception of CSR authenticity influence your view of the organization?
2. What does it mean to be part of an organization that engages in CSR activities?
3. What do you believe motivates your firm’s involvement in CSR?
4. What does it mean to be associated with [insert organization name]

Final Question

Do you believe that the views you’ve expressed today are representative of those held by other employees in this organization? Why or why not?

Prompts

1. Could you please tell me more about that?
2. So what I hear you saying is….?
3. What are some of the reasons that make you believe this?
4. Could you provide an example of…?
5. What stands out in your mind on this topic?