Towards Energy Aware Operations of ICT Systems

Beyond energy efficiency, the debate on sustainability of ICT needs to consider ecologically-aware usage of ICT systems. This implies user awareness of energy consumption and <tex>$\text{CO}_{2}\mathrm{e}$</tex> emissions caused by the service execution, including nonlocal service parts and transport. Unfortunately, most of the current methods in the area of sustainability of ICT target domainspecific optimizations, only considering the service provider and letting the inter-domain aspects and the user out of the picture. In this paper, we tackle this problem by proposing an architecture for service ecodata reporting along a service chain. Usable by both service providers and service users, it implements the first out of three pillars, on which our more general approach to energyaware ICT services resides: measure, optimize and incentivize. Concretely, we briefly present a gap analysis for the state-ofthe art regarding energy consumption and <tex>$\text{CO}_{2}\mathrm{e}$</tex> impact from ICT systems, and based on these gaps propose a functional architecture for the measurement and inter-domain exchange of ecodata. We then briefly evaluate suitability of building blocks for this functional architecture, via tests in a lab environment.