GreenTech
Green is also the color of money
Saving money, not corporate social responsibility, is the primary driver in the green IT movement.
by Denise DiRamio
As awareness of and
support for environmentalism increase,
technology organizations are implementing
green initiatives at a rapid pace. Moves
toward greater energy efficiency, however,
and the resulting environmental benefits,
are motivated primarily by the desire for
cost savings, not the much-touted
environmental consciousness of big business.
Economic rather than
altruistic reasons have been the impetus for
green IT initiatives, according to a
PricewaterhouseCoopers survey of 148
technology company executives. The desire to
decrease expenditures by reducing energy
consumption is the main driver of the
sustainability movement in the technology
industry, the survey concludes.
Energy-saving strategies and solutions deliver the tangible benefit of smaller electricity bills.
A key reason for the
growing interest in more energy-efficient
products is the rising cost of energy.
Companies now spend as much as 10 percent of
their technology budgets on energy, says
Rakesh Kumar of research firm Gartner. Much
of this is spent on cooling, but around half
of the budget is used to run servers and
computers.
Data center managers are
especially concerned with the rapid increase
in power and cooling requirements, and the
rising cost of electricity. The Energy
Information Administration's Annual Energy
Outlook 2008 indicates that the price for
electricity increased by an average of 9.3
percent in 2006, the largest one-year jump
since 1981. Data centers in the United
States spent approximately $4.5 billion in
power costs in 2006, and are expected to see
that cost increase by 40 percent by 2010,
according to a study by Lawrence Berkeley
National Labs.
Increasing power
consumption has also become a huge area of
concern, however, as computing and storage
needs escalate.
Between 1996 and 2006,
the number of servers in use increased from
six million to 28 million, and the average
power consumption of each server grew from
150 watts to 400 watts, says Jed Scaramella
of IDC, a market-research firm. But things
are now starting to change as the computer
industry has been overcome with enthusiasm
for green computing, he adds.
Most vendors have
introduced new systems or options with
energy efficiency as a key feature.
Microsoft has reduced power consumption in
Windows Server 2008 by up to 40 percent.
Dell has developed energy-efficient servers
and desktops that consume less power than
regular models, delivering up to 25 percent
greater performance per watt, while reducing
power consumption by up to 24 percent. HP
has several solutions that cut cooling costs
in the data center by 15 percent to 40
percent. Compellent Technologies has
developed a storage solution that utilizes
automated tiered storage, thin provisioning
and advanced virtualization to cut power
consumption.
VMware has brought
virtualization to the forefront, offering
resource and memory management features that
can eliminate server sprawl and reduce power
consumption by converting physical machines
into virtual machines. Virtualization can
dramatically reduce the number of servers
needed, which provides significant savings
on power and cooling costs.
"Green IT is now being
driven as much by an element of business
strategy as by a sense of corporate social
responsibility," says Vamshi Mokshagundam,
technology analyst at Datamonitor. "Green IT
practices such as energy-efficient hardware,
hosted infrastructure and data center
virtualization have all been around for a
while now," he says. "It is only recently
that companies have begun incorporating
green IT in their core business strategy."
While saving the planet
by reducing greenhouse gas emissions,
recycling and reducing waste are fine
objectives in a green initiative, it is an
aversion to rising energy costs that is
driving change. Energy-saving strategies and
solutions deliver the tangible benefit of a
smaller electricity bill - and that is green,
no matter how you look at it.
Communications News' new column,
GreenTech, will focus on a variety of issues
concerning the Green IT movement. You can
contact Associate Editor Denise DiRamio at
ddiramio@comnews.com.