Green Computing: Characteristics, Significance, Opportunities and Challenges

This document provides an overview of green computing, including its characteristics, global significance, and the opportunities and challenges it presents to organizations. It also explores proposals for reducing environmental impacts through the reuse and recycling of computing resources, and how these initiatives can contribute to a business strategy. The case study focuses on Virgin Media, a leading telecommunications company.

Business Information
Systems

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
Task 1.....................................................................................................................................1
Characteristics and global significance of green computing........................................1
Task 2.....................................................................................................................................2
Organisational opportunities and challenges by green computing...............................2
Task 3.....................................................................................................................................4
Overview of your business, the app, the BIS solution(s) and performance objectives.4
Proposals to address reduction in environmental impacts of computing resources......4
Proposals to address reuse of computing resources......................................................5
Proposals to address recycling of computing resources................................................6
Explanation of business strategy and analysis of how application of the above proposals
will contribute to the business strategy in terms of improved social, economic &
environmental impacts..................................................................................................6
Task 4.....................................................................................................................................7
Explanation of theories.................................................................................................7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................9
References:.....................................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
Business Information System assist with an information that any firm utilizes to manage it's
operational activities efficiently. It mainly involves advanced technology and computer systems.
Primary equipments that includes are people, process, data, hardware and software. It's process
consist documentation, designing and development. It essentially contains four key components
that are decision making, transaction and processing, flow of information and involvement of
function of an individual (Business Information Systems, 2020). The following discussion is
based on green computing, it's features and importance, challenges faced by a firm through
green computing, it's solutions, overview of the business, reusing and recycling of computing
resources, how these can impact a business strategy, theories to justify such elements and finally
the conclusion and findings. All these analysis is based on the firm, Virgin Media, it is one of the
leading international telecommunications company which is founded in 2006 in UK. It mainly
deals with telephone, internet services and television.
MAIN BODY
Task 1
Characteristics and global significance of green computing
Green computing is defined as the usage of computers in an environmental and ozone-
friendly manner. In other words, it is also referred as designing, engineering, manufacturing,
disposing or using of devices of computer in such way that decreases it's negative environmental
impact (Aithal, 2020).
Characteristics: Storage and creation of renewable energy: It generates and stores the energy which is
being to be renewed. Because generally computing devices are not that much
environment friendly but green computing has this feature which can prevent negative
environmental affection. Existing materials recycling: It allows recycling of already existence materials that saves
the environment from being affected in any way. Efficiency in energy: The energy which it is consuming to develop the materials and
manufacturing, it is characterised to use that energy in an efficient and effective manner.
1

It's energy includes product distribution, manufacturing, installation, maintenance and
construction. Awareness: It helps in creating awareness of it's raw materials that it is using so that it
may not harm the nature in any way. It also includes the awareness of education and
compliance.
 Natural manufacturing: It tries at it's maximum to manufacture their product naturally
so that green computing can be manageable by them (Al-Somali, 2018).
Significance: It saves cost: Green computing use it's energy at it's minimal point and lowers it's
consumption. This makes the IT more efficient by usage of low electricity, system
designing for longer life, lowering the amount of waste and cost of components
purchased which can be a positive benefit to the environment. Reduction in environmental problems: It manufactures products using non toxic raw
materials such as lead, bamboo and copper. Controlling of E waste can be done by
repairing and up-gradation on time leads to easy and cheap way of manufacturing. Old
computer are being reused with the help of formal recycling.
 Reduction in energy consumption: It mainly focuses on efficient energy consumption
like they had replaced more power consumption to the OLEDs and had avoids E waste
putting into dumps (Couckuyt and Van Looy, 2019).
Task 2
Organisational opportunities and challenges by green computing
Opportunities:
 It is benefited to an organization as sustainable computing lowers the usage of green
house gas emissions, fossil fuel and energy consumptions which results in low cost
production and revenue generation in a more friendly manner.
 Organization has opportunities because it is cost effective due to cooling needs and less
energy usage, budget is managed in a firm because of less expenses due to green IT.
 Firm can be eco-friendly because it assist in effective and efficient utilization and
preservation of natural resources. Now a days people are more conscious about their
2

health and environment so they can prefer product of that firm only which can maintain
the external environment in a safe zone.
 Firm has an advantage in recycling and reusing that ultimately leads to reduced number
of digitalized wastes. This affects an organization to operate properly with it's smooth
functioning.
 Opportunities to a firm is that it mainly uses non toxic elements which cannot harm the
end users so it can help firm to maintain it's brand image. Firm can easily gain customer
loyalty through green computing (Druffel and Wulf, 2018).
 Employees in the firm can also be safe due to less amount of heat produced from
machines only with the help of green computing devices. This can help a firm in
employee engagement and reduction in employee turnover.
 Brand can make the usage of green computing to inspire people of reusing, reducing and
recycling which can improve the reputation of a firm in a market. People are more
concerned about environment now a days so it can bring more attraction and attention of
customers.
 Green IT execution in an organization can help the firm to maintain it's stand among
people and can gain loyalty through them. It can build new as well as existing customers
towards firm's products and services.
Challenges:
 Initial execution is expensive because installation of such computing devices is very
costly and due to changing technology it needs to be modified again and again so as to be
updated every time for the purpose of security and advancement.
 Pressurises an individual to be innovative and creative in using this technology because
without any unique idea it's implementation is quit difficult. Moreover, There is not much
awareness in general public of this green IT so most of the people can face to understand
the environmental technology (Kennedy, 2019).
 Green IT can be considered as underpowered as it is not approved to be much successful
in real time implementation and executions. Moreover, it takes time in adoption which
directly affects the succession of business.
 Still experiments are going on in green computing, it is in an under developing process
and not fully technically and environmentally proven to be good. Moreover, high skilled
3

knowledge is required, specialised skills are needed in a person to operate such systems
and therefore hereby increasing the cost of staffing also.
 Difficult to accomplish profit goals in an organization because green computers are
attention gaining systems so instead of focusing on company's targets, employee needs to
focus on operating these systems. Moreover, it leads in reduction of computer networks
as these devices puts load on networks so it hinders other computing networks also
(Kharchenko and Illiashenko, 2017).
 Employee acceptance can be low because can decrease the performance management of
the workers and it is less understood by most of the people. Moreover, small business
cannot manage such technology due high skilled persons and high cost implementation.
 Maintenance is difficult because technology always works on high end advancements and
regular updated technologies is requiring at every level of operations management.
Moreover, there is a difference in understanding among various organisations as this
technology stands at completely new pace and acceptance from various firms is difficult
due to it's challenges towards organizations.
Task 3
Overview of your business, the app, the BIS solution(s) and performance objectives
Virgin Media is a subset of Liberty Global Plc, one of the largest television and
broadband international company in the world. It interconnects approximately 22 million
customers by operating in ten countries including Europe taking more than approximately 46
million television, telephony and internet services. It is having an app which is a comfortable
way to be updated about the technical items like virgin fibre, phone account and TV. Moreover,
there is a facility of instant access to package details, bills, status of services and the issue related
to it. It's performance objectives includes the improvement in performance sustainability of new
product, training to the employees for high skilled working and growing business without much
involvement of carbon footprint (Kuppusamy, 2019).
Proposals to address reduction in environmental impacts of computing resources
There are various technologies which addresses the green computing to reduce the
environmental impacts. Some of them in context to Virgin Media are carbon-free computing, it
4

includes VIA technology which takes the responsibility to lowers the carbon, carbon dioxide and
electricity consumption. Another technology is solar computing , VIA technology is partnered
with solar making companies so that they can produce more and more things which can mostly
save the environment from the emission of polluted gas. Last is energy-efficient computing
which mainly relates to the low energy consumption so that it could not affect the environment.
The main focus is on how to create green environment, some of the solutions can be low energy
consumptions, reduction of emission of greenhouse gas, reduction of cost of operations,
virtualisation which means using more than one computer systems on one hardware or software
resources can save the environment by minimal usage of resources and IT products and eco
labelling approach says to promote green computing with IT labelling on the products who are
using the green products and companies has also started adopting the same. Moreover, there are
steps to go for green computing that are firstly, developing the green computing plan sustainably,
secondly, recycling the used resources as much as possible, thirdly, purchase decision must be
sound environment friendly, fourthly, reduction in the consumption of paper or reusing it and
fifth is conserving energy either in the form of electricity or in terms of harmful gas emissions
(Machado, 2018).
Proposals to address reuse of computing resources
There are various techniques of reusing the computing resources software, they are
developing cloud services, the firm reuses their projects which are developed through black box
reuse and if the services or projects which are developed by cloud used by another firm then it
can be used through reverse engineering with the help of cloud computing and then it is further
updated by white box reuse. Another technique is reverse engineering, cloud development and
service generates dirty source code, which is then used to perform to find the document
cleanliness, meta data and style of coding. Further process is done for the analysing it for the
further use to check it's feasibility and if it is feasible then identification of reuse process can be
done. After the validations and verifications, reuse process can start for the data resources
(McGibbon and Ophoff, 2018). Next is cloud component repository, this helps in retrieving large
amount of data from other cloud application development. Some methods includes in doing this
tasks are informational retrieval methods, operational semantic methods, denotational semantic
methods, descriptive methods, structural methods and topological methods. These are used for
5

faster searching and updating of the data from one device to another. It's process includes the
checking of compatibility in architecture, interfaces and functionality of cloud components. If it
founds compatible to each other than it can be reused as a black box otherwise white box reuse
can be done through modification of the components that can be integrated with the help of cloud
application and then send them back to the cloud component for further use (MUSLIM, SIM and
HEE, 2019).
Proposals to address recycling of computing resources
There are various steps including in the recycling of computing resources, First step is
collection of the useless or unwanted hardware or software devices from the owners or from the
places where specially waste computing materials are grouped together. It is mainly used for the
reduction of footprints that affects the environment, recovering items for reproduction and
advertising the selling of new systems. Second step is sorting which is done of all the parts of the
systems in which cathode ray tubes are sorted in one group and other are processed in other
groups. Third step is testing which is done with the whole systems or some parts, if there is a
chances for reusing then they are sent to the reusing process otherwise recycling is done of
hardware and software devices. Fourth step is disassembly of the items which is not qualified in
the testing of re-usability, major components which are disassembled are graphic cards, speakers,
DVD drive, circuit boards and others. This function is carried by the highly skilled person so that
efficiency could be maintained. Some are dismantled and converted into CRTs for recycling and
production. Fifth step is destruction of data, this is done by shredding and crashing the
processors and hard drives so that it can be used into automotive industry ( Nanath and Pillai,
2017).
Explanation of business strategy and analysis of how application of the above proposals
will contribute to the business strategy in terms of improved social, economic &
environmental impacts Reduces waste cost: These proposals benefits firm in lowering the cost of E waste, as
reusing and recycling is done mainly because of this reason that it leads in the reduction
the of cost which ultimately results in the production in the minimal cost of resources.
6

 Savings: This is another point or advantage to business of reusing and recycling of
computing waste. Most of the expenses are deducted and it leads to the savings. These
savings can better be used by the firm in research and development part, in expansion or
in some good investment process (Paul, 2018). Improved image: Due to reduction in cost and in lots of savings, company can produce
more for it's business operation and it's goodwill part, as it leads to the brand image and
customer loyalty, which is necessary for the every business to maintain it for more sales
and revenue generation.
 Environmental benefits: There is a relation between business benefits and environmental
benefits. If business operations leads to the positive impact on the environment then it
can also result in the positive business reviews around the world. So reusing and
recycling have double benefits in both context business as well as environment.
Task 4
Explanation of theories
Fundamental Behaviour Theories
Behavioural theory tries to justify an examination of upcoming consequences exist in the
respective situation and the knowledgeable associations people has gained through past
experiences. Behaviourism, also better-known as behavioural psychology, is a theory of
acquisition which says that all behaviours are lettered through fundamental interaction with the
environment by a operation called conditioning. Thus, behaviour is merely a outcome to
environmental reflexes (Raisinghani and Idemudia, 2019).
Theory of technology acceptance model
The technology acceptance model is defined as an information systems theory that how
model users must accept and use the technology. The actualized system use is the ultimate-point
where people make the usage of technology. Behavioural purpose is a cause that results
employees in utilization of technology. In other words, TAM model describes that how people
can use and accept the advancements in technology. It explains two concepts. First, the sensed
utility reflects the expectable benefits from using a definite technology. Second, the sensed
easiness of usage indicates much of the similar thing as the detected behavioural power in the
theory of behaviour that is planned.
7

Theory of Reasoned Action
The theory of reasoned action focuses to explain the relation between mental attitude and
activeness within human mind. It is chiefly used to interpret that how peoples can act based on
their existing mental attitude and behavioural goals. In other words, it advises that how the
people's behaviour is discovered by their goals to perform the behaviour and this purpose would
explain a role of their mental attitude toward the subjective norms and their behaviour (Sedera,
Lokuge, Tushi and Tan, 2017).
Theory of Planned behaviour
The theory of planned behaviour is defined as a theory that connects people's behaviour
and belief. It states that knowledge, behaviour control and subject norms, collectively forms an
individual's behaviours and their intentions. In other words, it initiated as the Theory of
Reasoned Action in 1980 to interpret an individual's psychology to act in a behaviour at a
specified place and time. The theory was supposed to justify all behaviours through which
people have the power to apply self-command on themselves.
IS success Model and individual performance
The information systems success model is defined as an information systems theory
which desires to give a broad understanding of IS attainment by explaining, identifying and
describing. The relation between six of the most captious magnitudes of success along which the
evaluation of information system is done. Those six factors are measurement of system quality,
measurement of information quality, measurement of service quality, measurement of use,
measurement of user satisfaction and measurement of net benefits. In other words, the target of
the proposed information systems theory is to develop a structure between the generic systems
theory's philosophy and the world of data and information application, handling with
modification of information as a ordinary non-material physical entity, whose models are in
states of programs and computer algorithms (Syidada, Wahyuningtyas and Pratama, 2019).
These theories are the justifications with the proposed work in context to the green computing.
Because it is important to study about the human behaviour before introducing the new
technology in the firm. It is necessary to know about the attitude that can the employee accept
the technology or not, can they be trained properly to use the advancements or not. Reasoning is
important to the workers of green computing in a firm so that they can participate in the planning
8

of decision making. Moreover, information success model is the most essential part in building
up the green computing in the firm for the deep study and analysis of it.
CONCLUSION
It is concluded that the green computing has it's various benefits, opportunities and
demerits as well. In context to Virgin Media, it is observed that the implementation of green
computing includes several things like types of technology used, it's feasibility, costs, reuse,
recycle and different types of theories. Looking over the disadvantages, one can easily believe
that not to apply this technology, but if advantages are studied and analysed through deep
scanning of materials and resources required either hardware or software, one must go for it.
Various steps are also discussed to execute the whole process with all needs and cost estimation.
Therefore, it can be said that firm must take a step for green computing so that advancement can
be done which results in the improvement of brand image and loyalty.
9

References:
Books and Journals:
Aithal, P.S., 2020. Environmental Informatics: The Foundation, Allied & Related Branches—
Analytical Study. International Journal of Social Sciences. 9(1). pp.01-07.
Al-Somali, S.A., 2018. Understanding behavioural intentions to use green ict at tertiary level
education institutions: Influencing factors and extending the theory of reasoned
action. International Journal of Green Computing (IJGC). 9(2). pp.27-45.
Couckuyt, D. and Van Looy, A., 2019. A systematic review of Green Business Process
Management. Business Process Management Journal.
Druffel, K. and Wulf, S., 2018. PROMISE AND PRACTICE: GREEN IT AND
BYOD. JBET, 1, p.27.
Kennedy, M.I.L., 2019. Conceptualizing and Defining Green Information System Capabilities.
Washington State University.
Kharchenko, V. and Illiashenko, O., 2017. Concepts of green IT engineering: taxonomy,
principles and implementation. In Green IT Engineering: Concepts, Models, Complex
Systems Architectures (pp. 3-19). Springer, Cham.
Kuppusamy, P., 2019. Green Cloud Architecture to E-Learning Solutions. In Emerging
Technologies and Applications in Data Processing and Management (pp. 358-384). IGI
Global.
Machado, P.D.A., 2018. Green information systems adoption: a theoretical framework based on
design science research.
McGibbon, C. and Ophoff, J., 2018. Green Information Systems: Building Competences in
Students.
MUSLIM, A.A., SIM, T.H. and HEE, M., 2019. ORGANIZATIONAL GREEN
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (IT) ADOPTION THEORETICAL
FRAMEWORKS: A SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW. Journal of Theoretical
and Applied Information Technology. 97(3).
Nanath, K. and Pillai, R.R., 2017. The influence of green IS practices on competitive advantage:
mediation role of green innovation performance. Information Systems
Management. 34(1). pp.3-19.
Paul, P.K., 2018. The Context of IST for Solid Information Retrieval and Infrastructure
Building: Study of Developing Country. International Journal of Information Retrieval
Research (IJIRR). 8(1). pp.86-100.
Raisinghani, M.S. and Idemudia, E.C., 2019. Green information systems for sustainability.
In Green Business: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (pp. 565-579).
IGI Global.
Sedera, D., Lokuge, S., Tushi, B. and Tan, F., 2017. Multi-disciplinary green IT archival
analysis: A pathway for future studies. Communications of the Association for
Information Systems. 41(1). p.28.
Syidada, S., Wahyuningtyas, E. and Pratama, F., 2019. IT Environment Analysis to Design
Smart Campus System for Private University in Surabaya Based on Green
Computing. Available at SSRN 3486762.
Online:
10

Business Information Systems. 2020. Available through
<https://www.business.msstate.edu/academics/department-management-information-
systems/business-information-systems>./
11