The general public is becoming increasingly cynical about the environment claims of businesses and with much bad press around data centers, information technology (IT) is in the front line. But data centers are actually the easiest bit of IT to control and consolidating infrastructure into them can help reduce the overall energy usage of IT and, if used well, IT itself can help businesses reduce their overall carbon footprint.
QUOCIRCA BRIEFING September 2007 In defence of data centres Contacts: The positive role IT can play in the greening of business Bob Tarzey The general public is becoming increasingly cynical about the environment claims of Quocirca Ltd businesses and with much bad press around data centres, information technology Tel +44 1753 855794 bob.tarzey@quocirca.com (IT) is in the front line. But data centres are actually the easiest bit of IT to control and consolidating infrastructure into them can help reduce the overall energy usage Clive Longbottom Quocirca Ltd of IT and, if used well, IT itself can help businesses reduce their overall carbon Tel +44 118 948 3360 footprint clive.longbottom@quocirca.com The office is IT's wild frontier where power usage is out of control PCs, printers, branch office servers, IP phones etc. are all deployed in hard to regulate and manage office spaces. But much of this infrastructure could be consolidated into data centres The data centre is an easier environment to control and monitor Much can be done to reduce power usage in data centres, but it may be BRIEFING NOTE: justifiable to increase this by consolidating as much IT infrastructure from those This briefing has been hard to tame office spaces in to the data centres where it can be better managed written by Quocirca to address issues faced by Where consolidation into the data centres is not possible, standardization businesses as pressure and remote management can be used to minimise the impact of office based grows to demonstrate their environment credentials. IT equipment Thin client computing means less PCs deployed in offices and consolidating The report draws on branch office servers into the data centres can actually reduce network traffic. Quocirca's knowledge of the technology and But printers, phones and other peripherals needs to be near users, applying green business issues faced by standards and remote power management can reduce their energy usage organisations in this area and provides advice on the Relying more on data centres means data centres need to be even more approaches that can be taken to create secure and reliable robust data centres that IT resources being unavailable is less and less acceptable to any business and enable future growth with consolidating into data centres can lead to single points of failure. The risk of an environment edge. data centre outage can be mitigated if good management tools and procedures During the preparation of are in place this report, Quocirca has spoken to a number of end IT has plenty to give back in the overall greening of business users, service providers It is not just the hot air produced by data centres that can be harnessed. and vendors and is grateful for their time and insights. Collaborative applications can help reduce travel, business processes driven by IT can make supply chains more efficient and intelligent building management Quocirca would like to thank Symantec for its can save on other energy costs sponsorship of this report. However, any claims that IT is actually helping to reduce a business's carbon foot print need to be substantiated It is not enough to make vague claims, they must back backed with measurable and auditable facts, such as real decreases in executive air travel, employee mileage claims and office heating bills
An independent briefing by Quocirca Ltd. www.quocirca.com In defence of data centres Page 2
The sceptic's view of business, IT and the greening IT needs to start outside and not within environment the data centre. As one business after another Indeed, if you took all the devices deployed claims it has achieved carbon around the offices of the average business; PCs, neutrality, there is increasing telephones, network routers, printers, scanners, scepticism among the general departmental servers etc and piled them in one public as many of these claims room, the data centre itself would suddenly are underpinned by investment appear a paragon of structure and organisation in tenuous carbon off-set relative to the unmanageable pile of junk you had schemes. now assembled. T... [download for more]
