Reducing energy consumption to build a sustainable future

• New LinuxONE servers increase IBM’s capacity to assist clients in several industries
• IBM LinuxONE is made to optimize data centers by cutting energy use and raising energy effectiveness

The creation of electronic devices and connecting them to the internet has a large impact on waste production, non-renewable resource usage, and global warming. In order to prevent this from wreaking even more havoc, is to rely on green computing – which attempts to create an IT system that is eco-sustainable using new technology and best practices. In essence, creating a sustainable future.

Green computing is required as a foundation for a sustainable future as sustainability rises to the top of global CEOs’ objectives and challenges lists, according to the IBM IBV study.

​

Between 1.8% and 3.9% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions are attributable to the information and communication technology (ICT) industry, with data centers using 3% of the world’s energy annually. That represents a 100% growth over the last decade.

As sustainability is fast emerging as a business priority, IBM has just unveiled the next generation of its LinuxONE server, a highly scalable Linux and Kubernetes-based platform, designed to run thousands of workloads in the footprint of a single machine. With its features, IBM LinuxONE Emperor 4 can help clients use less energy. For instance, running Linux workloads on five IBM LinuxONE Emperor 4 systems as opposed to running them on comparable x86 servers under the same conditions can save energy usage by 75%, space by 50%, and the CO2e footprint by over 850 metric tonnes yearly.

A sustainable future lies in the hands of technologies

The study highlighted that 48% of CEOs across industries say increasing sustainability is one of the highest priorities for their organization in the next two to three years. However, 51% also cite sustainability as among their greatest challenges in that same timeframe, with lack of data insights, unclear ROI, and technology barriers, as hurdles.

“When comparing the sustainability efforts in APAC and the rest of the world, we discovered that there are different types of CEOs, including those that simply comply with regulations, optimize their enterprises to do so and become more efficient, and embrace sustainability as a transformative topic. What we observed is that the share of CEOs in Asia Pacific who have already accepted sustainability as a transformative topic lag behind the share of CEOs globally,” stated Agnes Heftberger, GM of IBM ASEANZK.

From IBM’s perspective, this indicates that there is still an opportunity for C-Level decision makers and business strategists in Asia Pacific to embrace sustainability, not just as a must-do and must comply, and to become more efficient, but actually as a topic that can drive sustainable growth from a business point of view.

In addition, data centers are a significant source of energy use and carbon emissions, according to Marcel Mitran, IBM Fellow and CTO of Cloud Platform, IBM LinuxONE. Data and technology, however, can assist businesses in putting sustainability goals into practice.

“Reducing data center energy consumption is a tangible way to decrease carbon footprint. In that context, migrating to IBM LinuxONE is designed to help clients meet their scale and security goals, in addition to meeting sustainability goals for today’s digital business,” explained Mitran.

IBM LinuxONE Emperor 4 is an engineered scale-out-on-scale-up system, that was created to let clients run workloads at sustained high density and grow capacity by turning on unused cores without increasing their energy consumption and related greenhouse gas emissions. Additionally, clients can use IBM Instana Observability on LinuxONE to monitor energy use.

Solutions to develop, build, and manage energy-efficient infrastructures and innovations using a hybrid cloud approach are part of IBM’s portfolio of sustainability technologies. One product in the portfolio, IBM LinuxONE, is made to optimize data centers by cutting energy use and raising energy effectiveness.

Furthermore, with the metaverse being the talk of the town lately, even though LinuxONE isn’t specifically designed as the focal point, Francis Goh from IBM Technology Sales, Asia Pacific did note that LinuxONE has some relevance to it.

“People will need to use services, such as making purchases, as they interact in the metaverse. All of these has got to do with digital assets and even cryptocurrency. These are all adequately protected and guarded by LinuxONE. So, that’s truly where LinuxONE [fits into this space], with its ability to secure digital assets and protect data,” explained Goh.

On September 14, 2022, IBM LinuxONE Emperor 4 will become generally available worldwide. Entry-level and mid-range systems will follow in the first half of 2023.

---

---

---

---