Hot Ideas: Cut Energy Usage and Costs
You know the IT department is sucking up a lot of energy and is responsible for much of the company's energy costs. But there are several not-so-obvious ways you can save energy, cutting costs and reducing your company's environmental footprint at the same time.
Switch to flat-panel monitors
Georgetown University’s IT department started replacing its old monitors with flat-panel monitors in 2003. The effort saved $50,000 per year on electric bills and reduced electricity by 82 percent. Pablo Molina, Georgetown’s Campus Chief Information Officer and Associate Vice President, conducted the study to show how flat panel monitors saved costs for the university in the long run.
"More efficient desktop systems use less power," Molina said. Flat-panel monitors have built-in technology to conserve energy when they’re not in use. Molina emphasizes the importance of configuring the power-saving function — default settings aren't usually optimal.
Employ a third-party network center
For a small-scale IT department, power and utility costs can be reduced by using a third-party network center.
Rackspace and Amazon EC1 are two examples of inexpensive third-parties, according to Chris Snyder, a Network Engineer at Atlantic Broadband. Large data centers utilize air conditioning and power fail-safe techniques more efficiently.
"Using this sort of hosted server solution can be less expensive than operating the hardware directly," Snyder said.
The only downside, however, is depending on an outside source for physical security and maintenance.
Turn off and unplug machines
Leaving on devices such as computers, printers and monitors uses excess power and amounts to higher electricity bills. But, simply turning off the machines is not enough; they should be unplugged to save the most power.
"Even monitors that have an on/off button can still draw power when they are connected to a power outlet that is switched on," said Keith Alabaster, head of IT architecture at the United Kingdom’s Civil Aviation Authority.
Alabaster admits it may seem trivial to remember to shut down monitors and printers while not in use, but this simple action, he said, reduces power consumption, reduces carbon and results in cost savings which can be applied to making more green technology elsewhere in the business.
Virtualize and move to the cloud
Consolidating physical machines and using a private cloud eliminates machinery and cuts power costs.
EMC, a company that helps small or large businesses use cloud computing to manage their IT departments in a more agile, cost-efficient way, switched its own company from physical storage to a private cloud and increased its storage utilization rate from 68 percent to 80 percent.
"By 2008, EMC had consolidated from 1,250 to 250 servers," said Patrick Cooley, spokesperson for EMC.
Cooley said the transition has reduced space requirements by 60 percent and power and cooling costs by 70 percent. The company also saved $104.5 million by using a private cloud initiative along with the virtualization of 75 percent of its critical server storage. Cooley says that due to the company's virtualization and consolidation efforts, EMC will save $3.5 million in power, cooling and data center space saving over the next five years.