CHAPTER 3: PROCESS INTEGRATION
No process can exist in isolation and Green IT especially requires integration with other processes in order to be successful because its mission can only be achieved by working through other processes and IT functional areas.
To review how the Green IT process integrates with other processes and some defined functions, we will leverage the IT infrastructure library (ITIL®) version three process framework5:
Service strategy
This life cycle phase is concerned with leveraging IT to achieve functional area objectives. As an enabler, IT achieves success by enabling other areas to achieve and safeguard their objectives in support of the organization’s goals.
In this phase there are four processes that Green IT can integrate with:
• Strategy generation – the direction of the organization in terms of ecological impact must be understood. IT is a contributor to negative environmental impacts due to energy usage, water consumption for cooling systems and electronic waste but it is also an enabler and protector via energy and cooling initiatives in the data center and in the broader organization through telecommuting, paper reduction, and so forth. These initiatives must be defined and exist within the context of the goals of the organization.
• Financial management – by improving budgeting, costing and charge backs, there can be understanding and accountability for actions that impact the green direction of the organization. For example, many CIOs and even VPs of operations do not know how much is spent each month in terms of data center electricity or if they do, there isn’t much granular detail beyond that. There needs to be a method to tie expenditures to IT services and ultimately to business services and objectives for effective management decision making.
• Service portfolio management (SPM) – during the decision-making process around IT investments, total costs must be considered and environmental impacts must be understood and assessed along with other business requirements. Making the correct decisions is critical in today’s environment.
• Demand management – by influencing customer demand for IT services, increased energy consumption and other negative environmental issues can be either negated or at least delayed. For example, if some batch jobs can be shifted to run during off-peak times, then additional server investment can be avoided thus reducing energy and cooling demands.
Service design
This phase is concerned with creating and/or revising IT services that support the enablement and protection of functional area objectives.
In this phase there are seven processes that Green IT can integrate with:
• Service catalogue management – IT can work with other functional areas, such as sales, accounting or manufacturing, to identify technologies that can help them attain or safeguard their objectives around green initiatives in their areas.
• Service level management – service levels must include an understanding of environmental impacts. During the negotiation of service level objectives, environmental impacts need to be identified and addressed. Business leaders need to understand the impacts of their decisions and one way of influencing the demand for services is to charge for resource utilization.
• Capacity management – This is a critical process as it is concerned with providing computing resources to the organization in a cost-effective manner. Energy and cooling capacity must now be considerations when adding or changing IT services. Moreover, capacity forecasting and modeling must make a quantum leap forward in terms of providing accurate data because most IT systems run less efficiently at lower utilization levels.
• Availability management – the requirements and costs of availability must be understood. For example, N+1 redundancy requires at least N+1 power demands. Also, if there is redundancy in computing infrastructure, the facilities must be factored in as well. Imagine a server room full of 30,000 kWh high-density racks running during a power outage without any cooling support because that system wasn’t included in high-availability planning for whatever reason.
• IT service continuity management (ITSCM) – this process is tasked with providing IT services in the context of the organization’s business continuity plans (BCP). Planning for high-availability hot sites and other decisions needs to take environmental impacts into proper context. For example, each hot site may be consuming power and potentially using water for cooling. The green impacts of the ITSCM strategy need to be factored in.
• Information security management (ISM) – is concerned with the confidentiality, integrity and availability of IT services. In some organizations, Green IT will need to be involved with the data classification and security controls necessary to protect power and cooling systems. For example, if a building management system is compromised and critical computer room air conditioners (CRACs) are turned off, then service availability could be negatively impacted as thermal protection systems begin shutting down hardware configuration items.
The potential exists for sharing knowledge regarding risks to confidentiality, integrity and availability arising from climatic change or disruptions to power, cooling, etc.
• Supplier management – organizations need to assess the green capabilities of suppliers and their products and services. Care must be taken to ensure proper contractual terms are implemented to commit the supplier to the promises made during the sales cycle.
Service transition
This phase is concerned with placing the new and changed IT services into production such that their promised functionality is delivered intact. Moreover, many of the processes in this phase are integral and span the life cycle in terms of their activities.
In this phase there are seven processes that Green IT can integrate with:
• Transition planning and support – is concerned with the planning necessary to ensure there is proper capacity and resources to build, test, and deploy a release into production and that there is proper training, etc. By integrating, Green IT can verify that energy, cooling, water and other requirements are properly integrated into checklists, project plans and so on. This will improve the management of new and changed services in alignment with the green directions of the organization.
• Change management – this is a critical control process to ensure that Green IT is properly involved with change requests. If configuration items (hardware, software, facilities) are allowed to change ad hoc then compliance to Green IT policies and standards will uncontrollably change as well. Furthermore, there will be a cascading impact on other process areas as they will not be able to rely on knowing what servers are where, their relationships, power requirements, etc. In short, if changes are uncontrolled then risks will be uncontrolled.
• Service asset and configuration management (SACM) – is concerned with providing a logical view of the world to various stakeholders. It can be leveraged to not only track configurations and relationships but also to provide data on power requirements per CI, cooling needs, etc. Coupling information about the CI with the location of the CI can allow for modeling and planning. This process very much needs change management to ensure that the data stored in the configuration management system (CMS) is accurate and timely.
• Release and deployment management – is tasked with the creation, testing and then implementation of releases into production. By integrating with Green IT, requirements and testing that support the green direction of the organization can be built in a cost-effective manner, tested to verify compliance and then be deployed.
• Service validation and testing – this involves the testing protocols necessary to identify that requirements have been met. As Green IT should have helped establish requirements, there must also be testing to validate that those Green IT requirements have actually been met. Note – many hardware vendors promise certain performance and energy consumption levels and it is important to test early on that those levels are valid in the context of the organization’s actual environment.
• Evaluation – is concerned with whether a new IT service or a change to an existing service will truly create value. This must be judged from the perspective of IT’s role in value creation and protection to establish if there is a satisfactory cost-benefit ratio. Green IT needs to be involved in the consideration of total costs over the lifespan of a service as well as the total benefits.
• Knowledge management – involves the creation and distribution of knowledge to the people that need it. Green IT must integrate with this process in order to disseminate knowledge about environmental impacts, organizational Green IT standards, and so forth.
Service operation
This phase is concerned with ensuring that the IT services in production yield the promised value by operating as defined and that users are appropriately supported.
This phase includes five processes and four functions that Green IT can integrate with:
• Event management – involves detecting and reacting to changes in state. Green IT is very concerned about changes in data center environmental factors, power consumption, and so forth. By defining the events and their associated identification criteria and responses; this will streamline the ability of IT operations, and potentially security, to respond to incidents.
• Incident management – is concerned with dealing with deviations from the standard operation of an IT service. Green IT needs to be involved with defining standards around power and cooling. It may also be involved in assessing if the standards are breached.
• Request fulfillment – is concerned with managing requests for information, access and standard changes. Green IT may be engaged in the assessment of certain requests or be involved with responding to a request.
• Access management – this process is concerned with the management of account access to IT services. Green IT may be engaged with requests for access to Green IT related services.
• Problem management – is tasked with determining the root cause of incidents and preventing future incidents from occurring. Green IT may be engaged to review data and establish how various factors Green IT is concerned with, such as temperature or power demand, could be a root cause.
• Service desk function – is a single point of contact between the organization at large and IT. Requests for Green IT services could enter through the service desk and outbound responses could be processed as well.
• Technical management function – is concerned with providing a stable technical infrastructure. Green IT will integrate with this function to influence and manage technical standards, architecture, knowledge, job skills, etc.
• Applications management function – involves providing a stable application infrastructure. Green IT will integrate with this function to influence and manage technical standards, architecture, knowledge, job skills, etc.
• IT operations management function – is responsible for the management and support of infrastructure including IT operations control (staffing of the network operations center (NOC), etc.) and facilities management, which handles data center management, and so on. Green IT needs to integrate with both groups in order to ensure that objectives are mutually met. Given the high costs of energy and cooling, these are two key groups for Green IT to integrate with.
Continual service improvement
This last ITIL® life cycle phase exists to ensure that processes meet the requirements of the business.
• Seven-step improvement process – provides the steps necessary to collect data, identify opportunities and implement corrective actions. The Green IT process will need to evolve over time and the seven-step approach provides a structure to do just that.
• Service measurement – this process collects data and provides that data needed by other service management processes. Metrics are broken into three main classifications: technology, process and service. Green IT will need to integrate with this process to define the metrics that are needed by Green IT.
• Service reporting – management needs meaningful information for command and control purposes. Green IT needs to integrate with this process to define what management needs in terms of information regarding Green IT.
The Green IT process can benefit by integrating with the aforementioned processes and functions. In the event that the processes are not present, management should implement the processes and/or determine initial stop-gap methods to achieve the desired results until the missing processes or functions can be implemented.
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