Set goals for your green IT strategy

There's a lot of talk about green computing these days, but implementing energy-efficient IT is about saving greenbacks as well as trees.

"Green IT is primarily about saving money," says Bryan Rood, director of Internet data center services at Quantros, a healthcare software provider in Milpitas, Calif. "If you want to have green IT, reducing the electric bill is one of the best ways to do it."

The reality is simple: Data centers use a lot of energy. In fact, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that data center and server energy use has doubled in the past five years and will nearly double again in the next five years, to a cost of about $7.4 billion annually.

CIOs can cut their ballooning electric bills if they build a strategy to help lower IT power costs. The key is tailoring a strategy to specific company needs, says Aaron Hay, research consultant at Info-Tech Research Group, a technology research company in London, Ontario, Canada.

"You have to look at two things: what your goals are versus what you think the organization can reasonably accomplish," he says. For example, in a company with 1,000 PCs but only 15 servers, the PCs are using more collective energy. Upgrading to energy-efficient flat screen monitors would cut the energy bill more than server consolidation. On the other hand, a company with a 1,000-server farm in the data center should focus more on consolidation, he says.

CIOs should start with small, attainable projects and build a history of success. "Inventory what you have, and take the low-hanging fruit to get it out of the way," says Mark Wood, director of data center infrastructure at Highmark Insurance in Pittsburgh, Pa. For example, easily installed software will automatically turn PCs off at night and on in the morning. "In a 1,500-PC company, you're looking at about $30,000 to $40,000 in energy savings per year," says Hay.

Data centers are also ripe for energy efficiency programs. Vendors such as HP and IBM offer energy-efficient data center design and optimization services, but CIOs can also effectively retrofit existing resources. One popular implementation is server virtualization, which enables CIOs to use existing server capacity more efficiently. By doing so, they can consolidate their server farm, cutting electricity usage and cooling requirements. Wood, for example, wants to decrease his 329 servers by 30 percent, which should help him reduce power consumption by 10 percent this year.

CIOs should also build energy efficiency requirements in to future RFPs and equipment upgrades. Chip makers such as AMD have energy-saving technology in their processors, and many hardware vendors such as Dell and Sun Microsystems have embraced the energy efficiency mantra. Hay recommends looking for products that comply with the IEEE's electronic product environmental assessment tool (EPEAT) environmental standard. "There are many models available, and most are no more expensive than traditional models," he says.

Rood of Quantros participates in an energy reduction program of local utility Pacific Gas & Electric Company that rewards his use of VMware virtualization software and eGenera's energy-efficient servers. The program compares the total energy savings of a new server with the old models and will cut a check based on the savings over the life cycle of the new server.

Rood estimates that the virtualization, in combination with the energy reduction program, should yield a 35 percent power savings overall and hopes to be able to grow his data center while keeping energy consumption low. It's good for the environment, but even better, it helps his company. "It's really just good business," he says.

Get Started: 4 Steps to an Energy-Efficient IT Infrastructure

1. Define your goals.
2. Build a strategy that focuses on your company's needs.
3. Start with a small project, and build on your success.
4. Build energy efficiency requirements into future RFPs and equipment upgrades.

Carol Hildebrand is a freelance writer based in Wellesley, Mass. A former senior editor at CIO magazine, she has written on business and technology topics for more than 15 years.