PTT ICT Solution Rolls out a Green IT Policy.

PTT ICT Solution president Chaicharearn Atibaedya said under the company's green IT policy, the company has adopted server virtualisation as its key strategy to reduce energy consumption. The strategy has divided the action plan into three phases and kicked off the first phase late last year.

The first phase was rolled out at the PTT head office and the Wang Noi office. At the head office, the company has implemented a virtualised server and consolidated 41 Windows-based servers into just six servers. Meanwhile, it has consolidated 13 servers into one server at the PTT Wang Noi office.

The move has helped the company save significantly in energy costs. It has reduced electricity costs by Bt530,000 a month and reduced maintenance costs by Bt1.9 million a year.

The company has been able to save on space by doing away with six server racks, which has helped decrease rental costs by Bt270,000 a year. The company has cut down on the cost of servers by Bt12 millions by removing 47 physical servers.

The second phase was implemented earlier this year with server virtualisation expanding to include web hosting, test servers and production servers.

"The company has improved on its server-resources management. We are now better equipped to handle server utilisation and server-resource allocation. We have also enhanced our service's efficiency and made its cost more affordable," Chaicharearn said.

Currently, the company is working on the implementation of the third phase -- server virtualisation in the head office of PTT Exploration and Production (PTTEP ) and in its disaster-recovery operations.

"Server virtualisation is not an easy task. We have to design the system according to existing processes, which are running on a number of servers, to operate just as smoothly and efficiently with a reduced number of servers. PTT's work-flow system, which is quite extensive, has to be able to operate continuously without any glitch," Chaicharearn said.

As part of its hardware strategy, the company plans to consolidate all the servers of the PTT group in Thailand -- PTT headquarters' 400 servers and PTTEP's 100 servers - in the near future.

Apart from hardware consolidation, the company is also rolling out a software strategy to reduce energy consumption. Chaicharearn said, in terms of software, the green IT policy will design applications that require fewer steps for access and usage. Instead of the usual three clicks to access an application, the new applications will be designed to be accessible within just one or two clicks.

"It seems like a small thing but PTT's has more than 400 applications. If we can reduce the time needed to access them and complete an operation, we can, in turn, reduce energy consumption," Chaicharearn said.

Changing the application design requires software oriented architecture (SOA). Chaicharearn said SOA can help the company save energy because it helps cut down on programming processes. This will not only help the company save energy and reduce costs but also help it to improve work-flow processes and business applications.

"The green IT policy is a continuous project as technology wastes are likely to keep increasing. What we have done is the initial bit, which involves just energy saving. But green IT involves numerous aspects. The plan will move on to nontoxic and recycling strategies next," Chaicharearn said.