Security as a Strategy (SaaS)

Why Should Companies Pursue Green IT?

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Recently I was asked by a manager of a local mid-sized company what I thought the benefits were for a business to pursue Green IT.  After all, it cost a lot of money to buy new software and equipment, was his point. This got me thinking about just how much we don't understand the impact of "going green".

I think for most people "Green IT" means just two things: saving electricity and helping the environment.  For me, Green IT is much more than that. It has the same impact on a business as trickle-down economics has on our economy.

Let's focus on power management and reducing hardware through virtualization.  Aside from the fact that reducing hardware means less energy usage because there are fewer devices (and therefore reduced operating expenses), what other expenses can be reduced as a trickle-down effect of this one Green initiative?  First, with less hardware you need fewer uninterruptable power supplies, and you need less cooling because fewer machines means less heat being generated in your server room. Both of these reduce energy requirements but can we take it even further? Let’s think about fewer maintenance contracts on equipment we no lower need. And then there's the intangible benefits that some companies realize such as no longer needing to relocate a data center to gain more space or even freeing up some floor space to expand a different department. 

So when we look at the trickle-down effect of using virtualization alone as a starting point we end up with:

Power consumption for unneeded servers: Eliminated

Need to purchase new servers for every app: Eliminated

Maintenance contracts on unneeded servers: Eliminated

Rack space consumed by servers: Greatly Reduced

After-hours maintenance: Greatly Reduced

Time spent on new server procurements: Greatly Reduced

Cost for server operating systems: Greatly Reduced

Cost/time spent for restores and migrations: Greatly Reduced

Cost of cooling IT equipment: Greatly Reduced

Faster disaster recovery time: Greatly Enhanced

The fact is that most data centers use up to 1000x the power of same-sized office space. Studies have shown IT equipment can account for 9-10% of all energy consumed by businesses. So the trickle-down effect of this one Green IT initiative impacts the cost of doing business in so many levels. The ROI for such an initiative is estimated to be 3-12 months by some companies. In many cases it is almost immediate. I haven’t even touched all the "going green" cost-saving potential of virtualization, and virtualization is only one aspect of Green IT.