By Ranaj Biswas, AVP Engineering, Amadeus
In the recent years, India has positioned itself as a prominent global force driven by its expanding economy. Given that we are in an era of environmental concerns, the country has remained steadfast in endeavors towards mitigating the adverse impacts of climate change and leveraging sustainable practices across sectors. While traditional approaches are critical, we must seek to understand sustainability from every lens. Amongst this, as the technology sector grows by the second, it is imperative for it to embrace sustainable methods. The Indian Government has set a goal of making technology 20-25% of the country’s GDP by 2025 and as this happens, green IT will become imperative to support India’s sustainability goals. In such a scenario, the kings of the tech world – ‘Software Developers’ are required to be the frontrunners of the movement and understand how they can ensure Green IT practices in the sector.
Citadel of Public Cloud and Resource Utilization
Cloud computing has revolutionized the way businesses manage data, applications, and infrastructure therefore its importance is paramount. Software Developers can learn to leverage cloud with minimal environmental impact by utilizing public cloud. Public Cloud Platforms are known to have the highest levels of infrastructure utilization, resource sharing & sustainability practices in place. This translates into developing with resources on cloud would be more efficient than having a dedicated server which would result in wasted resources when not in-use.
While public cloud platforms offer sustainability benefits, it is important to not get carried away by its ‘elastic’ storage capabilities which could lead to wastage of storage resources as a result becoming highly unsustainable. It is important to define clear guardrails and perform audits to ensure frugality.
Exploring ‘Greener’ Programming Languages
Software developers have to learn programming languages and be an expert in it which can be challenging task. The decision to be environmentally conscious can begin at this level itself with budding developers choosing the language they want their expertise to be in at parameters such as syntax, learning curve, its usability and how sustainable it is. Basis an interesting study comparing the energy efficiency of various programming languages, it is found that C, Rust and C++ were the top three programming languages with lowest energy consumption at 1, 1.03 and 1.34. The usage of these resources could prove to be a game changer in the sustainability practices within the IT domain.
Magic of Just-In-Time Processing and Efficient IoT
Serverless models are the go-to when it comes to sustainability. They can reduce the amount of on-demand compute consumption time and thus help optimize emissions allowing companies to only use the resources that they need.
In addition to this, IoT based software development finds its place in a lot of traditional Industrial, Manufacturing, Power, Transportation, Supply Chain, Travel, Hospitality Domains. It is common to have software features catering to optimization of energy/resource consumption that goes a long way in fulfilling sustainability & Green IT goals.
Software developers form the basis of everything we know in the IT world, holding significant power that, when channeled toward sustainability, can yield immense benefits. Green IT isn’t merely a buzzword; it must evolve into a tangible reality to foster greater innovation within the technology sector. As responsible developers, it is also important to realize that their responsibility doesn’t end at innovation, it begins there. Therefore, it becomes important to ensure that each initiative is an extension of the larger Green IT mission. Green IT should be a nationwide agenda to prepare for better innovation, development of the sector and more responsible utilization of technology.