The following was posted to the Green Alliance Blog...
By Jim Cavan
In the “Green IT” section of their May Newsletter, Jenaly Technology Group introduced many on the Seacoast to “Granola”.
Not the oats and berries variety, mind you. More of the circuits and chips variety.
Released in January by MiserWare, a Blacksburg, Virginia IT company specializing in green and intelligent software management systems, Granola is a free software program that can help reduce your PC’s energy use by up to 30%.
Granola saves energy by applying dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) to the CPU of a system – sort of like a "dimmer switch." When a user is browsing the web or working on a document, Granola scales down the power needed; when the CPU is running at full blast for creating charts and graphs or other computing-intensive processes, the software draws more power.
While certainly a novel and welcome idea for anyone interested in reducing their individual carbon footprint, for Portsmouth-based Jenaly Technology Group, such advancements are par for the course.
Jenaly boasts a number of green approaches and programs that set them apart from others in their industry. Their Virtual System Administration (VSA) management services remotely service your computer to keep it running at maximum efficiency, cutting down on frequent updates, travel and maintenance time, and subsequently reducing e-Waste. Their Disaster Recovery service removes costly and wasteful tape media from your computer’s backup, reducing waste and making your backup capabilities more reliable.
Jenaly also boasts an impressive paperless filing and billing system, as they work towards their long term goal of being 100% digital. They work with several e-waste recyclers to help people dispose of their used computer parts responsibly, and they often encourage employees to work from home in order to reduce carbon emissions and needless travel time.
Then, of course, there’s the “Green IT” section, published in every monthly FY I.T. newsletter. The section provides readers with easy, common-sense solutions and alternatives to help them reduce their energy use, particularly with respect to their computer. Some past tips have included: encouraging downloading of software instead of having a CD delivered; showing how to convince suppliers to ship your equipment with minimal packaging; and providing guides to the country’s greenest electronics companies.
For Jenaly’s Customer Advocate Ellen Sargent, such initiatives reflect an ethos that everyone at Jenaly is proud to rally around. “In a nutshell – and this can be applied to a lot of industries – even the little things you do can make a huge difference,” says Sargent, who among other things is tasked with publishing Jenaly’s FYI.T. newsletter. “And because they are effective solutions that are also green, it’s a win-win.”
What are these “little things”? It can be anything from switching to online data backup, uploading as many as five servers onto one physical server to save energy, or even something as seemingly benign as single-spacing your documents. In the end, they all add up to a smarter, more efficient computer, while subtracting energy and waste from the equation.
They’re also making bigger moves to bring awareness to their ever-greening portfolio. In 2009 the company joined the Green Alliance, a Seacoast-based “green business union” and discount member co-op that helps raise the profile of local green businesses.
While many of these measures fall under the heading of common sense, Sargent maintains that everyone at Jenaly is encouraged to “think outside the box”.
“I remember one of the employees was fascinated with combining server spaces and really wanted to run with the idea,” Sargent recalls. “MJ told him to go for it, like he does with a lot of ideas that don’t necessarily fit into the current program. It’s that sense of experimentation that I think really makes our office unique.”
But for all the specific examples of how Jenaly is greening the face of IT, and for all the reasons they provide for doing so, the company’s commitment can perhaps be best summed up with the first eight words on their website’s Green IT section: “Simply put, it’s the right thing to do.”
