Thierry Van Landegem
Chairman, GreenTouch
Vice President, Global Operations, Bell Labs
Year-End Blog by GreenTouch Chairman
Where are we now
The end of the year is traditionally a time to reflect on where we stand on our journey, be it personally or professionally. The same is also true for GreenTouch. As we know, this consortium was announced with great expectations and a very ambitious goal in 2010. Therefore it was great to see us start off this year – the midpoint of our five-year journey – by reaching the second critical milestone of the consortium. The breakthrough Bi-PON technology demonstrated the capability to dramatically improve energy efficiency in fiber to the home (FTTH) networks and in other potential applications such as wireless backhaul. This demo attracted many interviews with key major trade journalists and analysts, and generated a good amount of positive reaction.
What most of us tend to forget is that this demo should be considered as one element of the technology roadmap we have been building. To that point, the consortium this year publically released the initial Strategic Research Areas and Project Portfolio document, highlighting our major research activities and projects, and bringing attention to promising research areas of critical nature that require further in-depth investigations. This document really is a precursor to a comprehensive GreenTouch roadmap that will comprise a network reference architecture; the portfolio of research projects and activities; the end-to-end network architecture; and a progress measurement towards improving the network energy efficiency by a factor 1000 compared to 2010.
It is also important to recognize that the research results the consortium attains can only find their way to the market if we socialize and, in some cases, push our results and thought leadership in standardization groups and policy committees. Supporting that goal, this year GreenTouch created a new Services, Policies and Standards working group that is very much driven by our operator members. Through this group, GreenTouch is able to bring more value to its members as they start to seek commercial avenues to complement the consortium’s ongoing research activities.
This year, GreenTouch saw its membership grow to more than 60 members with over 350 individual scientists, engineers and researchers from 23 countries, an expansion that truly demonstrates the importance of our work and goals. In addition, we continue to expand our collaborations and partnerships with other organizations in the Green ICT industry and in key policy areas, including the Global eSustainability Initiative (GeSI), the World Economic Forum and the Climate Group. These collaborations further enhance our position as thought leaders and put the consortium in the mainstream green corridor. For example, GreenTouch was one of the key contributors to the newly published SMARTer2020 report by GeSI which shows the important role ICT can play in reducing humanity’s carbon footprint.
As chairman of GreenTouch, I was recently invited to become a member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council (WEF GAC), and more specifically its newly formed council on Governance for Sustainability. We all know the WEF as a forum where business, social and government leaders meet and discuss the world’s major challenges. The GACs, on the other hand, represent a smaller group of individuals who are experts in their particular fields. During the GAC’s first face-to-face meeting in Dubai a few weeks ago, the GreenTouch initiative was extremely well received by the sustainability GAC and other councils. In fact, the consortium and its basic operating principles will now be incorporated as a best practice for collaborative industry-wide action. This should be no surprise to us: GreenTouch is a terrific example of how to bring key stakeholders together in a collaborative fashion with a common interest, purpose and action
As our consortium continues to mature, I am fully energized and ready to drive our exciting initiatives that will demonstrate further results and milestones in 2013 and beyond. This includes:
- The ongoing demonstration of key technologies
- The build-out of the end-to-end network architecture combining the different technologies and solutions
- The mapping of those technologies and solutions to their relative energy efficiency contributions to the 1,000 factor
Beyond those measures, we will increase our efforts to engage other relevant key stakeholders in the industry, including consortia, research and policy organizations. We will also strive to have a more prominent presence at industry events, trade-shows and technical conferences. The next face-to-face member meeting is already set for May 2013 in Shanghai, China, and is testament to the strong contributions by our Asian members. Through these various goals and actions, I am confident that together we will advance the consortium’s thought leadership position even further and be a role model for the industry and society as a whole.