Interop: 'Green computing' is growing pervasive

Although computer companies were among its earliest adopters, "green computing" is quickly spreading roots into a range of other industries, judging from comments raised today by CIOs at the Interop trade show in New York City.

NEW YORK CITY (BetaNews) - At the Interop conference today, a panel of CIOs from Liberty Mutual, KPMG International, and the UMB Group all said that some sort of "green computing" initiative is already underway at their organizations, even though other aspects of IT management -- such as degrees of standardization and centralized control -- vary greatly across their environments.

"I'm not a tree hugger," acknowledged Rowan Schneider, CIO at KMPG. But he added that he wrote on a thesis on a weather-related topic while still in school, long before becoming an enthusiastic member of a green computing committee at KPMG.

In conducting a study, Schneider said, KPMG found that while a company data center only consumed one-tenth of a building's floor space, it produced one-quarter of its emissions.

Schneider said KPMG's network architecture is highly distributed -- something he favors because of the capabilities provided to end users, but a situation he also believes is on the risky side.

For its part, Liberty Mutual has just opened a "green" data center in New Hampshire, said Joanna Young, CIO for Corporate Information Systems and Enterprise Services.

Liberty Mutual now uses a "federated" CIO model, in which CIOs for various businesses within the company report to one central CIO. Although the insurance firm has long stipulated to all employees the vendors that can be used for PC purchases, for example, Liberty Mutual allows a lot more latitude in high-end application software, she said.

Media company the UBM Group -- the company behind the Interop show -- has now launched a task force to reduce its carbon footprint, said David Michael, the group's CIO.

Although UMB is "getting away from [running] data centers" itself, the company requires the outside data centers it uses to be "green," Michael told the Interop audience.