Green SOA
What happens when the one of the world's largest retailer invites its partners to a forum and ask them to share equally the great responsibility to go real environment friendly and greener? Plan was laid for co-development of a sustainable product index with the idea that this index will provide customers with the transparency into the quality and history of products that they don't have today with the focus on following four areas: energy /climate, material efficiency, natural resources and people / community.
This phenomenon is referred as corporate social conscience. What followed is an avalanche of PR from vendor after vendor claiming that they were greener than their competitors
Let me open a Pandora's Box on how SOA is enabling the green IT infrastructure.
Out of many definitions of Green SOA, in simple words - a green SOA allows us to blend green concepts psychologically and in a symbiotic manner into enterprise business processes, a win-win for the corporations. Green SOA allows a corporation to minimize economic demand (such as rising cost for energy, raw materials, and waste disposal), satisfy customer and stakeholder demand (such as environmental, social, competitive or market scenario) and compliance (such as regulatory requirements or legal constraints).
Here IBM as one of the industry leader in innovation seized upon the business concepts of carbon emission management for policy and linked it to a metric called a KPI (key performance indicator) as a base for what it calls Green Sigma. KPIs are metrics used to help organizations define and measure progress toward organizational goals. Apply this concept to carbon management, and way to go green SOA.
IBM's Green Sigma is five-step process that begins with the definition of KPIs till finally to track and account for carbon credits, also known as green currency. Carbon Credits then can be exchanged (for example, to finance carbon reduction between global trading partners), bought/sold on developing international markets at the prevailing market price.
Until sometime back, the concept of carbon emissions management was limited to Pen & Paper. With the arrival of green SOA tools and concepts into the marketplace, corporations can begin to develop, implement, monitor, manage, and govern everything from green business processes to green IT infrastructures. Not only business costs will decrease, but process improvements will occur through increased compliance and improved performance.
Have you witness Green IT around you and how it is benefitting. How other technology vendors are doing? Please do share your experience.
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