The demands on information technology continue to rise at an increasing rate. To keep up with the demand, IT departments are increasing the use of computing and associated resources. The demand on energy is also reaching epic proportions, and power grids are showing signs that they are struggling to meet demand through higher consumer energy costs and power usage caps for corporations. As a major consumer of power, IT departments are being challenged to find innovative ways to reduce power consumption and reduce the companies overall carbon footprint. IT is now facing overall economic and socioeconomic pressures to reduce costs and go green.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), energy consumption from servers and data centers has doubled in the last five years and will continue to double again in the next five years.

Green IT, by most accounts, is not a frontline initiative by corporate IT departments, but rather a positive side effect of what IT departments are already being tasked to do given current economic conditions. In fact, the slowdown in the economy and overall IT spending presents ideal conditions for moving towards more efficient use of technologies, which supports corporate Green IT initiatives.

In the early stages of distributed computing, the focus on cost saving was primarily centered around hardware, with a much lowers emphasis on the total cost of ownership across the entire lifecycle. This era produced a wave of over-provisioning of server and desktop hardware which resulted in vast complexities and inefficiencies, which significantly drove up overall costs. Today's trend in IT management shows undeniable proof of the benefits from server optimization through the use of virtualized and automated environments, which include efficiency in overall server utilization. Furthermore, IT leadership is being tasked, and challenging their teams, to find innovative ways to stretch their budgets through increased efficiency.

Hardware manufacturers continue to drive towards greater efficiency around power consumption and total heat output (which lowers cooling costs), and increasing capacity within their server, network and device technologies. These advancements allow IT management software to play an even greater role in taking advantage of those achievements to increase IT efficiency and moreover measure progress against stated goals. However, IT management software can also make better use of existing equipment and reduce the need for purchasing new hardware.

According to Echo research, companies are budgeting for changes to their IT infrastructure to manage energy consumption, with virtualization and consolidation leading the way. The Echo Research findings also confirm that software solutions are very important to energy efficiency for 80% of US respondents and 72% of UK respondents. The emphasis on software to manage the change and enable efficiency paves the way for more innovative thinking in the application of efficient practices throughout IT management software.

An example of how management software can help support Green IT initiatives involves client hardware such as laptops, desktops and PDA's. With the low acquisition costs of PCs and laptops today, PC sprawl is a very real concern. The increase in the number of desktops dramatically increases the power load for an organization without the necessary productivity gains. IT management can dynamically discover and categorize client hardware to give companies a complete view of how these machines are being used throughout their business environment. Power related configurations can then be enforced to save on overall energy costs and power consumption. For those machines that seem to be supporting the business in any particular way, appropriate action can be taken to pull them offline and dispose of them according to proper guidelines. Perhaps some of those machines require upgrades based upon the applications that they need to run.

With certain IT management software, organizations can specifically determine the client machines that require upgrades to control costs and hardware waste. Furthermore, client machines that are not really being used can effectively be repurposed based on the roles within the organization. This involves determining if those client machines are not being used to their fullest capacity. All of this goes towards maximizing the use of existing hardware and avoiding new hardware purchases when possible to support employee productivity, cost saving and energy impact as it relates to the business and the environment.

IT management software capabilities contribute to efficient management, directly furthering Green IT goals. New and improved infrastructure alternatives such as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) allow the user to avoid the cost of infrastructure setup by renting the software on demand for use as a service.

Going green represents a companies mission to support environmental sustainability. Whether it's socially inspired or economically driven- it simply makes good business sense.

References

Echo Research, Inc., The Future of Green IT: Implications for Software Solutions, November 17, 2008. (accessed December 11, 2008).

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Report to Congress on Server Data Center Energy Efficiency Public Law 109-431, August 2, 2007. (accessed December 10, 2008).