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Surveys show that while CEOs and CIOs may be championing rates were. Sun is one of the companies walking the walk, announcing
green IT, the reality is that many companies are still in the in August that it had just completed a consolidation of one of its data
‘talking’ phase or merely evaluating a business case for centres which had seen 5,000 old servers, network switches and
action. Tony Sceales, Celona Technologies CTO, looks at the storage devices being switched off. ONStor’s Bob Miller says: “While
key findings and examines what this means for business and the vendors appear to be taking this issue seriously the overall end user
wider communities. community is some way behind.” But green issues are gaining wider
recognition according to The Corporate iT Forum, which represents
W
e’ve heard so much about green IT initiatives recently you’d
150 large organisations. It recently surveyed its members to discover
be forgiven for thinking that everybody had this under
their views on green IT and found that 81 per cent of their membership
control. You might be surprised to learn that storage vendor
said that Green IT was moving up their agenda, although they said cost
ONStor found that 58 per cent of the companies they surveyed were
was one of the main inhibitors of further action.
either still talking about what they were going to do, or still have no
plans as yet to do anything. This corroborates a similar survey of 124 So what encourages end users to do something about this? Well
IT professionals in North America, undertaken by Forrester in early according to OnStor’s survey 48 per cent of organisations felt that
2007, which revealed that while 85 per cent believed environmental a drying up of energy supply would drive a reduction in power
factors are important in planning IT operations, only around 25 per consumption at their data centres; while higher power bills were
cent had written green criteria into their purchasing processes. driving business decisions in 66 per cent of companies. “Ultimately,
if energy costs continue to rise, more businesses will be forced to
Green IT hasn’t had the headline profiles of recycling carrier bags,
look at this by their shareholders. Longer term we can also expect
or not using your car, but the fact is that IT is a major contributor to
regulators and governments to use big sticks to drive better efficiency
CO2 emissions. In the UK, the Department of Trade and Industry
in the name of environmental protection,” notes Simon Sherrington,
(DTI) estimated last October that the country’s PCs and servers were
founder of Innovation Observatory, a company that specialises in
already consuming 14 per cent more power than the entire power
tracking opportunities in green technology markets.
consumption of Luxembourg, and of course the figure is still rising. All
this power is also costing businesses dearly. IDC’s John Humphreys, There is little tree hugging involved in green IT initiatives. The drivers
for example, estimates that power, cooling and other operational for adopting green IT policies are all about managing risks and costs.
costs account for 70 per cent of a server’s lifetime cost. Yet all too And costs are only likely to get higher for businesses, as can be seen
frequently this has not been taken into account when servers were most obviously by the fact that oil prices recently breached $100 a
bought. barrel. At the same time, many businesses are carefully listening to
the noises being made by both national and regional legislators. Draft
The penny is dropping though. A study by Sun Microsystems
legislation from the EU, for example, states that the most polluting
showed that since the first quarter of 2006 more than three-quarters
industries must cut their emissions by 21 per cent by 2020. This is
of executives involved in buying decisions for data-centre equipment
most likely to take the form of a carbon-trading scheme, which could
in enterprises have prioritised energy efficiency; although 63 per cent
see the cost to utilities and other power-hungry or polluting industries
admitted they didn’t know what their energy costs or carbon emission
rise by tens of billions of euros a year. Some enterprises therefore see
initiating a green IT strategy as risk mitigation against the inevitable
legislation, and part of good corporate governance.
Green IT is a very wide umbrella that covers a range of strategies
to reduce environmental impact. Popular early measures range from
switching off equipment when not in use to paying closer attention
Acumen: FIRST PERSON
to energy consumption when purchasing new equipment. The
Tony Sceales
Corporate iT Forum says that common green initiatives among its
Celona Technologies CTO
members were recycling data centre heat (15 per cent) and carbon
offsetting (19 per cent). Another early strategy is server consolidation.
According to OnStor’s statistics, 55 per cent of respondents stated
ecoexecutive | 16
Acumen Business.indd 16 18/4/08 15:20:32
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