Green IT: Why Now?

Should IT Embrace Energy-Conscious Computing In An Economic Downturn?
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Key Points
• More energy-efficient computing means lower power bills and lower energy costs.
• There’s a competitive advantage in promoting green computing across a company.
• Even if some of the more expensive “green” decisions must wait, some are easy to implement now.

In a poor economy, green computing often moves from an interesting idea and a popular buzzword to a budget category that’s easy to remove. It’s true that there are obvious environmental factors, and combating global climate change is important, but the perception is that going green—especially in a data center—can be a major expense. And, in most cases, a wholesale replacement of power-hogging servers, changing over to a completely new air-cooling system, and embracing virtualization as a way to reduce power usage are all cost-prohibitive. Yet, the eventual savings from “going green” are often a compelling factor that motivates a small to medium-sized enterprise.

“Businesses of all sizes are still focused on green—the difference now is that the primary focus is on green as in money,” says Steve Grobman, the director of business client architecture at Intel (www.intel.com). “While many businesses still realize the importance of the environment, it’s taken a secondary position to simply staying in business. But the two are not mutually exclusive. SMEs that ‘go green’ can also save money, which helps the bottom line.” Grobman encourages small to midsized enterprises to consider the financial benefits of better power efficiencies in a data center. Grobman admits that spending money in a downturn doesn’t always make sense, but green computing has a particular advantage in often paying for the investment in a short period of time—it has a higher ROI than other infrastructure decisions, such as consolidating storage.

Is Now The Right Time?

Even when an IT manager agrees that more efficient computing makes sense, there’s still a lingering question about whether right now is the best time. One reason to still consider green computing, says Nathan Coutinho, a solutions manager at CDW (www.cdw.com), is that some local power companies are offering credits for pursuing emerging technologies such as virtualization. As the economy worsens, the incentives are sometimes greater depending on where the data center is located. Coutinho says a good first step is just to call the local power company and find out if there are rebates available.

Virtualization is one of the key technologies for companies moving to a green computing environment because it means using fewer servers to provide more IT power.

“Customers who virtualize are able to reduce power, cooling, network, and SANs [storage-area networks] and keyboard, visual display unit, and mouse [KVM] ports that are required to run the business,” says Coutinho. “Reduced hardware also means reduced warranties to manage and renew.”

A second “why-now” factor has to do with the competitive advantage of investing in more efficient systems. Bob Woolery, a spokesperson for green storage provider Nexsan (www.nexsan.com), says that current SATA drive technology is actually twice as fast as the Fibre Channel drives from a few years ago, yet they run about 30% more efficiently.

Christophe Peretou, the VP of operations at WAN optimization company Streamcore (www.streamcore.com), says that a corporate initiative on green computing provides advantages that go beyond just the dollars saved in energy efficiency. A company can champion energy consciousness in IT and expand that mindset to the entire company. IT can lead the charge in creating energy policies on reducing power consumption that can catch on and make an entire company more aware of energy usage. That, in turn, can lead to a distinct competitive advantage, as well.

Easy Changes For Greener IT

Even if a company has decided to forego a major investment in green computing, there are still some easy changes to make that can save money and promote better efficiencies. Lawrence Webber, who wrote the book “Green Tech: How to Plan and Implement Sustainable IT Solutions,” suggests that some of the energy-conscious decisions that IT can make are easy to implement and do not cost a dime. For example, he says that companies that have normally decommissioned hardware when the warranty has expired can consider extending contracts or using the equipment longer. Another approach: Companies can start using tape backup systems for more efficient data archives instead of using hard drives that are constantly spinning. This requires a change in mindset: Not all data needs to be readily available.

Weber also says that current desktop and server systems already offer the ability for data centers to be more energy-efficient. “Operating systems support complex power management that can turn off the PC, printer, and monitor when they have been idle for too long,” says Weber.

Toby Velte, co-author of the book “Green IT: Reduce Your Information System’s Environmental Impact While Adding to the Bottom Line,” which was published last October, says the first place to start in considering green computing is to analyze and monitor usage, which often does not require a major investment. Even in a poor economy, companies can determine where they have inefficiencies and create a plan to deal with those power-usage problems. “It’s important to get a handle on what you consume in terms of energy, hardware, paper, water—including space costs and management costs. You must start with a baseline usage and costs associated with those resources,” says Velte. “That way, you have gained the experience and confidence to take on more challenging green projects.”

In the end, being more energy-conscious in IT does make sense in the long run for better sustainability. Yet, making decisions now about green infrastructure can pay dividends in better performance and better server utilization. It may be a buzzword, but even in a poor economy, it pays off.

Green IT Ideas
There are a few steps managers can take to give data centers a green tint. Consider these options.

• Virtualization can save energy by making more use of the physical server to run multiple operating systems and lowering overall costs to run the data center.
• Data center consolidation can reduce energy usage and increase overall performance.
• Policies regarding energy management on desktop systems can promote green computing.
• Monitoring and analyzing energy use is usually a good first step toward green computing.

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BY John Brandon
Source：Processor

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