I think you need to do a bit more research as far as IT goes. In the last 7 years, I have worked for two companies as a network engineer. In both companies, TOTAL cost of ownership was taken into account for ROI purposes. This included capex and opex. We calculate cooling loads and energy expenditures.

In fact, my company is currently building a massive datacenter. We are putting special air handlers on the roof so in the winter, when the air outside is cold, we will bypass the cooling system and pipe in outside air to save money on electricity.

As a whole, the technology industry has been looking at energy conservation. Not for "green" purposes either - it's for knocking down energy costs as energy has been steadily becoming a larger percentage of our opex budgets. Some examples are: chip manufacturers are looking at designs to minimize heat; datacenter designs are changing (as mentioned above); software is used to ensure efficient use of each server instead of just tossing more machines at a problem. With the long lead times on chip design - it does take a while to get things changed. Chips have to be designed, then products have to be designed around those chips.

I would suggest doing a bit more research before cutting down an industry you have no knowledge about.

Large enterprises are looking at this since they have to build and maintain the data centers anyway then every little bit saved adds up. Its the small businesses that don't have the time or resources for these studies, they just buy the cheapest hardware they can.

Hi Brian,

Thanks for posting. Looks like I'm going to be a pinata for this one.

First, it's great that your company is going this! Great!!! Good for you. That's exactly what needs to happen, and you are absolutely right, it is happening more and more.

You say that your company is not looking at energy efficient for 'green' purposes, I would propose that they are one and the same - efficient means less stress on the environment. All the examples you mentioned I have wrote about extensively at TH and ecoIron, and we are completely in agreement.

But this post is about methodology and courage - the realization that you actually have to run the ROI numbers, and having the courage to stand up in a IT management meeting and say "I think this project is valid even though it only saves one quarter of one percent of our budget". These items do not happen with regulaity, and they need to.

mark

A pint is only a pound in America. i.e US Pint = pound, but UK (home of the Imperial measure) a pint is 20 floz - so is is " a pint of water, is a pound and a quarter".

The other thing is - everything cost effective should be done, but also prioritised with waht has the greatest effect...

In business, nickles typically get prioritized lower on the list than dollars. Companies have limited resources. Highest bang always gets priority:

1. Decrease costs 10%, but not green
2. Decrease costs 5%, again not green
3. Decrease costs .5%, green

If there are only enough resources to complete two projects... #1 and #2 get done. The environmental impact does not get taken into account. "Green" gets converted into dollars and cents, then all the dollars are mashed together... then prioritized from highest return to lowest return... that's just how business works.

I tell you what will make a big difference to IT. Develop a power generation technology that's got better returns than solar (i.e. ones that financially make sense). Datacenters are power-dense facilities. We usually run out of power before running out of space. If there were a method to create power onsite that was cost effective... we'd deploy it in a heartbeat.

There's a reason several large corporate datacenters are being built in Washington state - hydro power is cheap there.

How about virtualization, which I'm a big fan of

Decrease operating costs by 40 percent, decrease server purchases by 80 percent, decrease switch and router purchase by 30 percent, decrease eWaste flow by 90 percent, cut energy use by 50 percent, etc, etc

Virtualization is a very cool concept - agreed. I personally haven't seen it work very well. At my last company, we were looking at buying larger, multi processor systems with tons of memory to build multiple "virtual" servers - but ultimately didn't deploy it. Long story, but let's say that power was factored into the ROI calc... and it was ultimately determined to not be deployed. Not all applications scale as well as their marketing people would lead you to believe.

Your numbers make me think you work for a Virtualization company. :) 80% decrease in server purchases? I find that very hard to believe. Maybe the raw number of servers... if you buy larger servers with more processors in them... but I highly doubt that most companies could do with 80% less CPU/memory.

I did just an interview for a east coast vmware installer which I am going to write up, their average consolidation ratio is 10 to 20 to 1, and average savings is about 40 percent. vmware also emulates swtches as well, I'll write it up in a few days.

thanks for posting.

mark

I'm a little unnerved by the argument that business does what is most profitable, be it green or not, and that is just the way it is. Yes, that is how businesses work. In a capitalist economy, a company is in business to make profits and so must make decisions that help lead to financial profitability. If they don't, then the competition will and they will lose customers, revenues and more profits. And if being ungreen is what is necessary to remain profitable, than that is what will be done. Unfortunately, that is how unregulated capitalism works. But businesses don't just look at how to reduce operating costs to remain competitive. They look at a number of operating factors - including customer demands. The more customers demand that they reduce their negative environmental impacts with the threat of customers boycotting there anti-green operating practices, the more these companies will decide that it makes sense to implement new operating procedures that are down the list in priorities and only save .5% in costs. Green NGOs and other green organizations have as an important responsibility to find out what 'ungreen' things companies are doing, informing the general public about these things, and pressuring these companies through negative PR of these companies to change this environmentally negative aspect. Greens change the financial equation in the companies books - the company decides that that thing being demanded by the greens, which WAS way down the list of priorities because its financial impact was so puny, suddenly becomes a top priority necessary to maintain customer loyalty/satisfaction and therefore revenues. So I basically agree with Mark's basic argument. And Brian, if you are indirectly saying that your company is not doing the green thing because it is not financially profitable to do so, please let me know what company you work for and I will try to do my bit to change their calculations.