IT helps Australian bank attain carbon-neutrality
National Australia Bank (NAB), one of Australia’s big four banks, has detailed how changes to its data centres helped the organisation to become carbon neutral in a white paper (PDF) issued by the Open Data Center Alliance. The bank says it has been carbon neutral since 2010, thanks in large part to work on its data centres, which account for 43% of all energy it consumes. A private cloud is also important to the Bank’s efforts, and while the White Paper
doesn’t say just whose virtualisation or private cloud kit NAB uses, Oracle is named. It seems more likely, however, that IBM is running the show and providing servers as the document points out that “NAB is outsourcing the management of most of the company’s physical data center infrastructure to IBM.” Tim Palmer, Senior Manager, Data Centre Transformation at NAB says in the paper that this arrangement means “it is now up to IBM to try and be as efficient as they can. It’s in their best interests to increase efficiency, reduce the physical footprint of their server space, and thus reduce their operating cost and carbon footprint.” But Palmer also says, in the white paper, that technology alone won’t deliver. “You have to make this message personal for everyone,” he says. “Let them know that they are part of the process. Business units need to understand the cost of requesting test environments, for example, and need to apply due diligence to reducing their impact as much as possible. We’re looking for behavioral change. People need to internalize this message at work every day. The most effective strategy has been applying transparency to the costs generated by each business unit, providing them and their staff with continual, positive reinforcement.” Data Center Talk updates its resources everyday. Visit us to know of the latest technology and standards from the data center world. Please leave your views and comments on DCT Forum