Research company IDC today released it latest study on Green IT. For the second year in a row IDC has found IT managers’ leading reason for adopting Green IT technologies has to do with reducing energy cost. Even though recent economic issues have reduced oil prices back down to $80 a barrel, energy cost are still a major concern for data center managers.
Other interesting finding from the study are that most IT managers expect to pay more for Green IT products. This makes sense as IT managers will get a better ROI from a high capacity virtualized server, than several lost cost dedicated servers. In the end the IT manager can reduce the number of servers and related IT hardware in the data center. This leads to reductions in real estate, power and cooling requirements, resulting in significantly lower IT costs. This is good news for the IT vendor community as well because a high end virtualized blade servers has a higher margins.
Other reason IT manager are looking to “go green” with their IT planning is from pressure from upper management. This may have a lot to do with the fact that “being green” is good for a company’s reputation. More and more customers are looking for green suppliers of their goods and services. There is also a concern that governments will regulate a companies carbon foot print and use of renewable energy.
The advise to IT managers is look to your IT suppliers for Green IT technologies and support around topics like virtualization hardware and software, cloud computing and renewable energy solutions. Also get an understanding of your suppliers hardware disposal policies and ways they can help you with your IT asset disposal. If you have not done so begin monitoring and measuring your companies CO2 aand set reduction targets that are in-line with any pending regulations in your state.
The good news is Green IT can be about improving your technological advantages while saving money and improving the company’s reputation. If you have any case studies showing how a green IT project saved your company money drop me an email (KevinNormandeau(at)aol.com) or comment below as these are achievements we should share for the good of the environment. Look out, now I am turning green.
Posted under Cloud Computing, Data Center Virtualization, Green IT, Hardware Virtualization, Server Virtualization, Virtualization Case Studies, Virtualization News, Virtualization Software, Virtualization Strategies
This post was written by Kevin Normandeau on October 21, 2008
