E N V I R O N M E N T
Voltaire Ltd found
“Keeping more of the
that, although cios
and senior IT executives
intelligence and actual
overwhelmingly believe that
a green data centre will become
content within the network
mission-critical, many lack the cash to
implement this type of facility.
will reduce the complexity
Nearly 90% of executives surveyed said
they believe that greening their data centres posting
of the devices in the home
will be crucial to meeting their companies’ on his
business objectives in 2009, and 57% said company’s
they believe going green gives them a ‘Straight Talk’
and remove the need to keep
competitive advantage. Yet, 76% do not have service, attempts by
a committed budget for a greening policy. consumers to reduce the
them on to access content
amount of power they use
Voltaire has developed what it terms a runs counter to the trend that
and applications”,
‘50-50-300 Pledge’, which states that IT sees the proliferation of electrical
executives, working with the company to and electronic communications and
deploy a Voltaire unified fabric, can save entrertainment devices in the home. Again,
50% on power/cooling related to server the notion of ‘always on’ isn’t always very of
interconnections and 50% on hardware eco-friendly. large
allocation/usage, while delivering up to a servers
300% increase in application performance. “This 'always on' state has come about with will be more
Voltaire has also developed an Efficiency the drive for ubiquitous connectivity. For efficient than
Calculator (www.voltaire.com/calculator) to content and applications to be available millions of small
help IT executives estimate their network anywhere and at anytime, access to content ones.”
energy and cost savings and justify the (whether stored locally, remotely or via the
necessary investments. Internet) must also be available at anytime
and from any location,” points out Philpott.
Preaching to
“It appears from these findings that senior “Hard switching such sources (or access
the (should-be)
IT management is still in the planning to sources) to ‘off’ goes against the whole
phases, and they will need to prioritise concept.”
converted
funding for these important greening
initiatives,” reasons Patrick Guay, executive Whilst admitting that for some devices But not all ICT service and solutions
vice president Global Sales and general ‘always on’ is not such a big deal in terms providers are themselves presently toeing
manager of Voltaire Inc, the U.S. subsidiary of energy consumption/cost, for others it is. the greener line.
of Israel-based Voltaire Ltd. “We help them Nor is ‘off’ always good. “One IPTV set-
with the analysis and data collection in order top box that Ovum tested didn't actually In November Gartner Inc presented the
to validate the savings they will achieve. register any difference between active and results of an assessment of 24 global ICT
Our numbers show that for enterprises, standby modes,” says Philpott. providers on their commitment to tackling
the return on a green data centre fabric climate change within their own company
infrastructure using currently available Ovum reckons industry could do more and their capabilities in innovating and
technology is in the millions of dollars. For – say, producing devices that are able to developing solutions that will help them
example, a Fortune 500 company with five automatically switch on and off as and and their clients thrive in a low carbon
data centres worldwide, and 3,000 servers when required. And there may also be economy. The assessment was done in
per data centre, can save approximately an opportunity for telcos here. “Keeping partnership with the World Wide Fund for
US$7.4 million per year.” more of the intelligence and actual Nature (WWF).
content within the network will reduce the
Meanwhile, in the consumer sector, there’s complexity of the devices in the home and The survey revealed the emergence of
a couple of potential contradictions at the remove the need to keep them on to access several low carbon ICT leaders that are
heart of the green/greener telecoms mantra. content and applications,” reasons Philpott. innovating in environmental and climate
As noted by Ovum consumer telecoms “From an environmental point of view this leadership and other providers that are
analyst Michael Philpott in a mid-year should also make sense, as a small number maintaining the status quo. However, the
CW LITE
03

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