Green IT

As your computing infrastructure has expanded it has begun to draw more and more power from the electric grid and produce more and more heat in your facilities. If you haven't noticed these trends in your electric bill, you may notice it when your utility comes to you to say they have no more power to give you. If power consumption isn't an issue yet, cooling may be

Reduce power needs. Older data centers / server rooms may literally be running out of power capacity and power costs are rising fast.

Feature. IBM servers and advanced power management software automatically place systems on standby or reduced power consumption mode when possible. IBM virtualization technologies allow few physical servers to run applications.

Benefit. Lower power consumption with IBM technologies mean older data centers / server rooms can contain more compute capacity; lower hear output, cut cooling costs (greater compute performance per watt).

Meet Green IT objectives. Both legislation (e.g. WEEE) and corporate objectives demand that older IT systems be recycled or disposed of responsibly.

Feature. IBM Global Finance Global Asset Recovery Service

Benefit. Complete package of system recycling including system removal and disposal, and IBM will even offer credits against returned assets, re-use components and destroy confidential data.

Where you can be more efficient through green IT solutions:

• Diagnosing the cause of excessive energy consumption.
  A lot of of businesses in the United States discovered that they do not know how much their IT systems contribute to overall energy costs. Close examination of existing systems can help you decide which systems may be ready for retirement.

• Constantly measuring energy usage.
  Power-monitoring products now available on the market allow you to measure how much electricity is being used in servers and server racks, and some of these solutions automatically detect servers not in use and put them in standby mode.

• Building new facilities intelligently. The old real estate adage about the importance of location should also be applied to computer rooms and data centers.

You should know that "energy efficiency" is no longer a back office issue. Energy efficiency is one of the top 5 concerns for leaders of public sector institutions, government officials, and for CEOs. And this is true for companies and institutions of all sizes. If an IDC installed base forecast through 2010 holds, the cost to power and cool servers in the data center will increase 54%. And that is not even counting all the chillers, humidifiers, UPS, Switchgear/generator and lighting required by servers and storage units in order to operate a peak performance.

We understand the range of energy issues that you face in running expanding IT infrastructure. With decades of experience building high performance, efficient systems and installing them in data centers around the world, we have built best practices in energy efficiency and cooling that we can put to work for your business.

As you analyze the energy usage of your IT infrastructure, you may find that one of the key contributors of energy inefficiency is older technology which was not designed for energy efficiency. As you start upgrading your infrastructure an additional problem will arise, what to do with the old equipment. IBM can help with Asset Recovery Solutions for mid-size businesses that provide an easy and comprehensive range of buyback/disposal services for secure and environmentally compliant IT removal.

Reducing your energy usage will not only lower the operating costs of your IT equipment but you may be eligible for a rebate from your local utilities and/or state/government energy funds. In net, you can improve the efficiency and reliability of your data center, free up data center space and capacity for future growth, reduce costs and take actions which helps your commitment to a better environment.