How UK Organizations Are (Still) Going Green

For the last two years Forrester has presented and most recently partnered with the Tech:Touchstone event management company that produces the Green IT 2009 Conference & Exhibition in London. Despite one year in passing and a challenging economic environment, green IT is still top of mind in 2009. Forrester found that 43% of UK IT professionals have a green IT action plan in place, with an additional 43% developing or considering it. Unchanged, the driving motivations for green IT continue to be "reducing the impact of energy consumption" and "extending the life cycle of IT assets."

So what has changed since last year? More so than ever, the economic woes in 2009 are requiring IT professionals to get smarter about proposing and funding green IT initiatives. As one IT operations leader in the telco industry explained, “Costs speak to our management, so identifying the financial cost and operational returns before-hand are key to gaining support and continued funding on green IT activities.” Likewise, using green IT to achieve corporate social responsibility (CSR) goals is becoming a much stronger motivation. And conference attendees identified CSR teams as an increasing source of funding for IT projects with demonstrable green outcomes. For example, here is an anecdote from a CIO in the retail industry:

“We had a server virtualization project that was stalled due to funding. We approached our corporate CSR team once we heard they had resources available for projects with demonstrable green outcomes, specifically energy efficiency and carbon emission reduction. Based on the project’s green benefits — it would significantly improve the organization’s carbon footprint by removing power-hungry servers from the data center — we were able to secure funding and appreciably accelerate the project's timeline.”

Stay tuned for a more complete summary of our findings from this year’s Green IT conference to be published in the coming weeks on www.forrester.com. In the meantime, I encourage you to read the blog post below from fellow Forrester Analyst, Chris Mines, who attended this year’s event. You can also review our 2008 findings here if you haven’t already.

By Doug Washburn

Check out Doug's research

You should follow me on  here

---

I had the privilege of hosting the Green IT 2009 conference in London back in May and wanted to share a couple of observations about that terrific event. I often tell clients in the U.S. that I am taking "a trip to the future" when I go to Europe; in particular, UK public sector organizations are probably the most advanced anywhere in terms of green IT behaviors (or should I say behaviours?).

Two statements I heard from IT procurement people at the conference that should be on the radar screen for vendor strategists looking to anticipate the next wave of enterprises' green requirements, and for IT planners looking to get more aggressive about their company's green IT initiatives:

• Requirements for longer-lifecycle IT equipment. Planned obsolesence is going to become obsolete. Expect your customers to require longer warranty periods, modular/upgradeable designs, and lifecycle-based carbon footprint analysis from you and your gear. Companies are realizing that, as one conference attendee put it, "we puts lots of bodies in motion" when they order new equipment.
• Increasing demand for green/renewable energy. No matter how efficient a data center is, it can't really be green unless it's powered by green energy.

Forrester's latest survey data on enterprise adoption of green IT practices, including differences across geographies, is summarized in an archived teleconference. My next trip across the pond will be in November and I look forward to connecting with our UK and European clients again then.

By Christoper Mines 

Check out Christopher's research

How Will Green IT Evolve? In Short, From 1.0 To 2.0

In many of my recent conversations with CIOs and IT infrastructure and ops professionals, I’m noticing an increasing interest in understanding how green IT will evolve.

Why do IT leaders want this vision? In the short-term, IT leaders want to ensure they’re not missing out any easy opportunities for savings they haven’t thought of yet. And over the long-term, IT leaders developing their green IT strategies want to strive for a broad scope of projects that reduce the environmental impacts — and of course costs — within and outside of IT.

Forrester expects green IT to evolve from 1.0 (“green for IT") to 2.0 (“IT for green"). 1.0 is about reducing the environmental impacts of owning, operating and disposing of IT assets; 2.0 is about using technology to enable greener business practices. My recent “TechRadar™ For I&O Professionals: Green IT 1.0 Technologies, Q2 2009” discusses 1.0 technologies in depth (InfoWorld offers a great recap of the seven technologies that we believe are poised for the most success). And a framework with examples of green IT 2.0 in action can be found in my “The Rise Of The Green Enterprise: A Primer For IT Leadership's Involvement.”

The majority of green IT initiatives are in the 1.0 world — often starting in the data center and moving into distributed IT assets — with 2.0 picking up speed:

• Although most green IT initiatives start within the data center... According to the US Environmental Protection Agency ENERGY STAR Program, in 2006, "US servers and data centers alone accounted for 1.5 percent of total US energy consumption," and by 2011, "US energy consumption by servers and data centers could nearly double again representing a $7.4 billion electricity cost." Beyond increased energy consumption, which translates to increased carbon emissions, data centers are also running out of space, power, and cooling. In a 2008 survey of more than 300 IT professionals, The Uptime Institute found that within 12 to 24 months, 33% would run out of space, 42% would run out of power, and 39% would run out of cooling. Green IT tactics in the data center that increase utilization and improve energy efficiency — such as server virtualization and localized cooling — allow organizations to reduce their energy-related carbon emissions and costs, while freeing up space, power, and cooling capacity for the future.
  
• ...organizations are shifting focus to their distributed IT assets. While the data center is ripe for green IT opportunities, organizations are quickly shifting focus to distributed IT assets like PCs, monitors, printers, and phones. Why? Because more energy-related carbon emissions — and therefore costs — are likely being consumed by all of these assets outside of the data center. According to a recent Forrester survey of more than 300 IT professionals, the data center consumes 45% of total IT energy consumption — while 55% is consumed outside of the data center. Organizations are employing green IT tactics like PC power management software, which powers down PCs and monitors when not in use, or thin clients, which can be a more energy-efficient computing architecture than traditional workstations, desktops, or laptops.
  
• Green IT 2.0 will pick up speed in the future. The positive environmental and financial benefits of green IT 2.0 — or using IT as an enabler of greener business — can be much more profound than just focusing on the IT asset life cycle. According to a report issued by the Global e-Sustainability Initiative, greenhouse gas emissions from the IT industry will account for 2.8% of global emissions by 2020 — but if deployed in smarter ways, technology can cut global emissions by 15%. As a real-life example, international retail giant Tesco found that IT's contribution to the company's total carbon footprint is only 4% — but that IT has the enabling potential to reduce total carbon footprint by 20%. And this translates into major cost savings. Tesco expects automated building management systems to reduce electricity costs by 20% and telemetry that monitors delivery driver behavior and routing to reduce fuel costs by 17%.

By Doug Washburn

Check out Doug's research

You should follow me on  here

What Do Green IT, The Economic Crisis, And Best Selling Author, Thomas Friedman, All Have In Common? Poor Accounting.

Consider the following questions posed by Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist and author of The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, and more recently, Hot, Flat And Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution - And How it Can Renew America:

“Was it an accident that Citibank, Iceland’s banks, and the ice banks of Antarctica all melted at the same time?”

“Was it an accident that Bear Sterns and the polar bears both faced extinction at the same time?”

In Friedman’s eyes, no, the recent economic and environmental woes are not accidental or coincidental. He explains that what the “great recession represents, if that what we can call this economic moment, is that both the market and Mother Nature hit wall at same time.” How? Because, according to Friedman, we’ve been using the same accounting system in both worlds that has massively under-priced risk, privatized gains, and socialized losses:

• In the financial world, credit default swaps were sold without having adequate collateral behind them, gains were privatized to the financial institutions that sold them, and losses were socialized onto tax payers when the credits actually defaulted.


• In nature, we’ve under-priced the risk of rising CO2 emissions in the atmosphere, privatized the gains from emitting carbon to the institutions that emitted them, and socialized the losses by “charging them all on our kids Visa cards” (i.e. negatively impacting the world for generations to come).

Check out Friedman’s recent interview on his upcoming revision to “Hot, Flat And Crowded” with environmental news and commentary hub, Grist.org:

What should IT leadership takeaway from this?

In short, connect Friedman’s notion of a poor accounting system — that has caused financial and environment woes — to how you account for your own IT.

In a time when wringing out every unnecessary cost counts more than ever, the majority of us are still guilty of not accounting for IT’s true cost of ownership. According to Forrester’s findings, only 4% of North American and European firms pay for the energy-related operating expenses of IT, not to mention the energy-related carbon emissions. And as a result, opportunities for cost- and carbon-thrifty behavior are being overlooked. While the financial benefits might flow to someone else’s bottom-line (e.g. facilities, real estate), your overall organization will profit.

Viewing your IT through a “green” lens can help expose many of these hidden costs — financial and environment — that IT incurs but are paid for by someone else. IT leadership should take advantage of the challenging economic environment to employ guerrilla-style cost-savings tactics today that will lay the groundwork for a culture of responsibility to eliminate unnecessary spend into the future.

To help IT leadership get off on the right foot, my recent research — No Capex, No Problem: Eight "Guerrilla" Tactics To Reduce Facilities Costs Without Capital Investment — highlights a number of low-cost tactics to reduce the financial and environmental impacts of operating IT. Here is a sampling of a few of these tactics:

• Power down idle but energy-drawing PCs and monitors. The problem: In short, idle computing wastes money. This is when PCs and monitors are drawing energy but no useful work is being performed, such as nights, weekends, holidays, and workday breaks. Assuming a 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. workday, five days a week, an unmanaged PC will spend just more than 75% of its time in this idle, energy-wasting state. And the energy costs add up. Consider an organization with 2,500 desktop PCs, each drawing 89 watts, and 2,500 monitors, each drawing 30 watts. With zero power management, Forrester estimates that this will cost approximately $246,537 per year. But by instituting PC power management policies, such as putting monitors into standby after 15 minutes and PCs into hibernate after 45 minutes, this organization can save $177,357 per year. Washington Mutual, General Electric, and Dell boast savings of $3 million, $2.5 million, and $1.8 million per year, respectively, by simply turning off their PCs when not in use.


• Enforce duplex printing. The associated costs of printing — including equipment, ink, copying, printing, faxing, postage, storage, disposal, and recycling — have been estimated to be as high as 31 times the cost of the paper itself. And despite the introduction of technologies to encourage the "paperless" office, demand for office copy and printing paper has increased. For example, it's estimated that the introduction of email into the office environment has increased paper consumption by 40%.


• Optimize temperature and humidity in the data center. According to the industry consortium The Green Grid, only 30% of a typical data center's energy consumption goes to powering its IT equipment, with the lion's share going to chillers (33%), computer room air conditioners (CRAC) (9%), and humidifiers (3%). And in many cases, these environmental systems are not optimized. Cooling is a prime example, with most data centers being too cold — operating cold aisles at 65° to 68°F (18° to 20°C) — even though manufacturers of IT equipment have set the allowable high-end temperature at 80.6°F (27°C).

By Doug Washburn
View all research by Doug Washburn

What's Your Green IT Baseline? Introducing Forrester’s Online Green IT Baseline Calculator

You've heard it once and you'll hear it again: You can't manage what you can't measure. This adage is relevant to any IT project — especially if you're getting serious about green IT. Forrester advises that before investing a single dollar, measure your green IT baseline — an annual estimate of the energy consumption, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and financial costs of operating your IT within and outside of the data center.

With that in mind, I would like to introduce Forrester's online green IT baseline calculator — an intuitive, online tool to help IT professionals calculate their green IT baseline.

The tool walks you through the key green IT baseline assumptions, including the number of IT assets, energy draw, and hours of up-time. For additional accuracy, you can customize your price and CO2 emissions per kilowatt. The tool will then automatically calculate your green IT baseline for your review. From there, you can email the results to yourself for future reference (and you can also help guide our research agenda).

Why should you calculate your green IT baseline? My complimentary  green IT podcast and report "Is Green IT Your Emperor With No Clothes?" offer answers and much more. Here's a start:

• Guide your greening efforts with solid data. Avoid guessing about what to green first by referencing concrete statistics on energy consumption, CO2 emissions, and cost per IT asset.
• Create realistic goals. Measuring IT's energy consumption will help you estimate the possible environmental and economic benefits of going green, ensuring your green-related goals are realistic.
• Quantify the benefits over time. Once you have implemented green upgrades to your IT assets, compare your new energy consumption to your baseline, highlighting both environmental and economic savings.

Finally, we all know that IT is perennially challenged to reduce cost and do more with less. When approaching green IT, do yourself and your business a favor by investing your time and capital wisely by first measuring your green IT baseline. Not only will this data offer a practical green IT starting point by exposing your most eco-taxing assets, but without it you cannot accurately quantify and report the benefits of your greening efforts to senior management.

Place this on your own Web site by cutting and pasting the following code into your HTML.

<iframe height="400" frameborder="0" width="540" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" src="http://www.forrester.com/green_it_embed"> </iframe>

Helpful? Copy, Paste, then Tweet it!
What's Your Green IT Baseline? Introducing Forrester's Online Green IT Baseline Calculator http://snipurl.com/c73mz-forr #ForrGreenIT

Make sure to let us know how the tool works for you: Is it useful? Has it helped frame your thinking about energy consumption and costs? Leave a comment and join the conversation.
By Doug Washburn
View all research by Doug Washburn »

What Cisco’s EnergyWise Technology Means To Green IT

To date, IT pros have given very little attention to the “greening” of the network. Why? Three words: follow the money. According to recent Forrester research, the top motivation for pursing Green IT is to “reduce the energy-related costs of operating IT.” And when compared to other IT energy-drawing assets – like servers, data center cooling or PCs – the energy consumption of the network falls at the bottom of the list, meaning that the ROI to reduce energy use is less compelling.

But the launch of Cisco’s EnergyWise technology is likely to raise the “greening” status of the network. EnergyWise is a free software upgrade to Cisco’s entire line of Catalyst switching gear. The technology allows customers to monitor, manage and ultimately reduce energy consumption of anything “connected” to the network. As Cisco describes, EnergyWise will evolve over three phases, adding new functionality with each iteration:

In the first phase (February 2009), Network Control, Cisco EnergyWise will be supported on Catalyst switches and manage the energy consumption of IP devices such as phones, video surveillance cameras and wireless access points.

In the next phase (Summer 2009), IT Control, there will be expanded industry support of EnergyWise on devices such as personal computers (PCs), laptops and printers.

In the final phase (Early 2010), Building Control, Cisco EnergyWise will be extended to the management of building system assets such as heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC), elevators, lights, employee badge access systems, fire alarm systems and security systems.

So what does Cisco’s EnergyWise technology mean to the network’s role in Green IT? A few things:

-Position the network as foundational to Green IT. The “greening” of the network has typically focused on eco-friendly manufacturing practices and designing more energy efficient equipment. What’s unique about EnergyWise is that it goes one step further by positioning the network as a pillar of Green IT, in particular energy conservation. So in addition to buying more energy efficient networking equipment, IT pros also receive the tools to manage the energy consumption of any asset connected to the network.

-Encourage IT’s role as the Energy Czar. While the rampant growth in IT's energy use needs to be addressed, it pales in significance when compared with that consumed by office buildings and industrial facilities. This bodes well for energy management technologies, like EnergyWise, that help IT pros optimize energy use across buildings and facilities. To borrow a term coined by The Uptime Institute and McKinsey & Company, awareness and access to these types of technology might start to encourage IT’s role as the “energy czar” to reduce companywide energy consumption.

-Foster the Green IT 1.0 to 2.0 transition. Most Green IT projects fall into the Green IT 1.0 category – reducing the environmental impacts of IT itself (e.g. sourcing more energy efficient equipment, powering down PCs at night, e-waste recycling). But there is mounting interest for Green IT 2.0 – using IT as an enabler of greener business practices. Early examples of this include Nike's "Considered Index" desktop application, which empowers designers to make more eco-friendly decisions when designing shoes, and UPS's "package flow" software that eliminated left-hand turns from delivery routes, saving $8.4 million in fuel costs and 32,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions in 2007. Forrester’s “The Rise Of The Green Enterprise: A Primer For IT Leadership's Involvement” discusses this in-depth. And Cisco’s EnergyWise is a great example of Green IT 2.0 technology that allows IT pros to extend their sphere of “greening” influence to the business, not just IT itself.

While this is all well and good, culture and budgetary ownership still stand in the way of a more energy efficient, network-enabled world. As Kenneth Brill, founder and executive director of the Uptime Institute explains in a recent Computerworld article on the topic of IT’s role in energy efficiency, "It's been a lot of talk but little action." And because most IT shops today are not responsible for paying their energy-related operating expenses, there has been little incentive to make the investment in time or capital to minimize energy consumption within or outside of IT.

But there is a bright spot. First, recent Forrester data reveals that, while less than 10% of IT organizations pay for their electricity costs, 63% have responsibility for managing and reducing energy costs. And second, IT budgets are aligning to this. Recent data from Forrester’s “Making I&O Investments To Save The Business” shows that “reducing facilities costs” is the top category where IT pros are revising spending as a result of the current recessionary climate.

By Doug Washburn

Check out Doug's research

Five Reasons To Consider PC Power Management

The rolodex of Green IT projects available to IT leadership is seemingly endless. But at some point, prioritization is necessary, and IT professionals tend to gravitate to those projects that produce an acceptable financial return with the path of least resistance. And in recent interactions with Forrester clients, it's becoming clear that PC power management -- the act of powering down PCs when not in use (e.g. nights, weekends) -- is one of those projects IT leadership are willing to act on.

Do I agree? In short yes. And here’s why: PC power management can reduce costs, cheaply and effectively, while at the same time help justify more strategic IT investments and improve your green "credentials." Let me elaborate:

1. Save money -- and lots of it. The top motivation for pursuing greener IT is to "reduce the energy-related operating expenses of IT." And PC power management can do this very effectively. By powering down PCs during periods of inactivity, Energy Star estimates that firms can save $25 to $75 per PC per year. Take AT&T as a real-world example. By powering down their 300,000 PCs during non-working hours, AT&T expects to save more than 135m kilowatt hours of electricity --  assume an average U.S. price per kilowatt of $.095, savings top $12.8m per year.


2. Reduce costs without capital expenditure. While more energy-efficient equipment and computing architectures (e.g. Energy Star-rated PCs and monitors, thin clients) are a surefire way to reduce energy costs and environmental impact they require capital investment. So if you're seeking effective cost-saving tactics with zero to little investment, get familiar with PC power management. There are a variety of tools to assist in implementing power management organization wide. Many of these tools are free while some are license fee based, but include added features, such as reporting or advanced provisioning and power management settings.


3. Address your most energy-consuming environment. What consumes more energy: your data center, or the IT assets outside of your data center? According to a recent Forrester survey, IT professionals report that more electricity is used outside the data center by a margin of 10%. While every organization is different, recognize that your energy reduction efforts in the PC environment might offer a larger payoff than in the data center.


4. Justify investments in client management suite technology. One of the biggest challenges IT ops professionals face is managing an increasingly distributed and heterogeneous client environment. Client management suite technology can help by automating software distribution, patches, and general systems management. And some vendors -- such as 1E, BigFix, LANDesk, and ScriptLogic -- are even starting to offer PC power management capabilities. So if you're struggling to justify budget, reallocate the dollars saved from PC power management to improving the ROI on client management suite investments.


5. Demonstrate your commitment greener business practices. While the primary motivation for Green IT is financial, the second most popular driver is to "doing the right thing for the environment." And curbing the energy consumption of your PC environment in turn cuts emissions related to global climate change. To paraphrase the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, the average desktop PC wastes half of the energy it consumes and by turning on energy-saving features you can reduce your CO2 emissions by nearly half a ton.

As a final thought: PC power management should be on every IT professional's checklist of low-hanging fruit to reduce costs -- regardless of whether or not IT owns the electricity bill. As a first step, define and optimize your approach to PC power management to estimate potential savings, then determine if your client management suite or PC outsourcer can offer power management functionality. My report "How Much Money Are Your Idle PCs Wasting?" and teleconference "Saving Money While Greening Your IT With PC Power Management" walks you through this in detail.

Free PC Power Management Webinar: As an additional resource, I'd like to call out the IT Power Management Summit -- a free webinar hosted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Climate Savers Computing Initiative. The intent is to get IT professionals educated on the benefits of PC power management, but most importantly overcome implementation obstacles. There are a number of excellent presenters, including yours truly. I strongly suggest attending to help you move from PC power management awareness to action:

IT Power Management Summit

March 30, 2009, from 12:00-2:00pm EST

Click here to register

By Doug Washburn

Check out Doug's research.

Is The ‘Green’ In Green IT Dead? No, Because It Was Never Really Alive.

In a number of recent client interactions with both enterprise IT end users and vendors, the question of “Is the ‘green’ in Green IT dead?” has come up. Primarily driven by the current economic climate, IT end users want to understand how relevant the environmental benefits of Green IT should be to their strategic planning; likewise, vendors want to know how palatable green messaging of their products and services is to their customers.

First and foremost, technology is not green and never will be. The design, manufacture, operation and disposal of IT equipment generates tremendous upfront and ongoing environmental impact (read more about this in my “Is Green IT Your Emperor With No Clothes?” research). A recent – and very primetime – example of this is the 60 Minutes "The Electronic Wasteland" segment. David Berlind from InformationWeek offers a great follow on to this in his “An E-Waste Story That'll Make You Want To Quit Tech” story.

Secondly, the ecological benefits of Green IT take a backseat to the business benefits – namely cost reduction. In other words, IT leadership’s driving motivation for Green IT is financial, not environmental. This shouldn’t be a surprise. At the end of the day, corporations – even those with the greenest of intentions – make decisions to effectively manage risk, costs and revenues to deliver profits which ultimately drive shareholder value.

While corporate social responsibility and environmental sustainability is on the rise, these practices are being employed to ultimately achieve an economic goal. And a green strategy can be an effective means to this financial end. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s “Doing Good: Business And The Sustainability Challenge” identifies a positive correlation between green efforts and financial performance: “companies that rated their [green] efforts most highly over this time period [the past three years] saw annual profit increases of 16% and share price growth of 45%, whereas those that ranked themselves worst reported growth of 7% and 12% respectively.”

The key takeaway is that Green IT is no different. Because corporate IT operates within the realm of the corporation, financial obligations come first. While Forrester’s own research from April 2008 shows that “doing the right thing for the environment” is a top driver for IT professionals pursuing Green IT, these motivations must also deliver tangible business value – from reducing IT’s energy-related operating expenses to mitigating data center out-of-space or out-of-power concerns. So when setting Green IT strategy – especially in volatile economic times – I suggest IT leadership take a similar approach to Google’s Commitment to Sustainable Computing which explains: “Sustainability is good for the environment, but it makes good business sense too… It is this economic advantage that makes our efforts truly sustainable.”

By Doug Washburn

Check out Doug's research

PC Power Management Heats Up

As the PC power management space is heats up, it’s quite fitting that today is “Power IT Down Day” – a participatory event put on by Hewlett-Packard, Citrix Systems, and Intel to encourage governments and businesses alike to reduce their IT-related energy consumption by powering down computers, monitors, and printers at the end of the day. Other recent examples also highlight the attention directed to the reducing energy consumption across PCs:

• PCs are consuming more energy than data centers! The Climate Group’s June 2008 “SMART 2020” report estimated that in 2007, PCs and related peripherals consumed 41% of the information and communication technology’s global footprint – telecoms infrastructure, data centers, and printers consumed 37%, 14% and 8%, respectively.

• Free PC power management offered by Microsoft and Verdiem. On August 8, 2008, Verdiem launched a free version its PC power management software called Edison. Verdiem and Microsoft are touting the software as a way for individual computers to play a role in the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, which aims to reduce the overall emissions from global IT by 54 million tons in the next two years.

• U.S. federal government expedites PC power management. On August 12, 2008, the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) announced a partnership with client management suite vendor, BigFix, to expedite PC power management through out the federal government. Through the GSA’s SmartBuy program, the federal government can deploy BigFix power management for $3 per year. The technology expects to save up to $40-50 per year per computer in electric power costs by shutting down computers during non-business hours.

So what are the financial benefits of PC power management? By turning off or at least powering down your PCs during periods of inactivity – such as at night or over the weekend – Energy Star estimates that firms can save anywhere between $25-$75 per PC per year. And this is backed up by high-profile case studies. For example, PC power management is helping Washington Mutual, General Electric, and Dell boast savings of $3m per year, $2.5m per year and $1.8m per year, respectively.

Forrester’s take: while the data center oftentimes receives much of the Green IT and energy-efficiency spot light, don’t forget about your PC environment. Build your business case for PC power management since the environmental and economic benefits may be substantial. This has been a hot topic for Forrester clients, so stay tuned for a more in-depth report.

By Doug Washburn

Check out Doug's research

As the PC power management space is heats up, it’s quite fitting that today is “Power IT Down Day” – a participatory event put on by Hewlett-Packard, Citrix Systems, and Intel to encourage governments and businesses alike to reduce their IT-related energy consumption by powering down computers, monitors, and printers at the end of the day. Other recent examples also highlight the attention directed to the reducing energy consumption across PCs:

• PCs are consuming more energy than data centers! The Climate Group’s June 2008 “SMART 2020” report estimated that in 2007, PCs and related peripherals consumed 41% of the information and communication technology’s global footprint – telecoms infrastructure, data centers, and printers consumed 37%, 14% and 8%, respectively.

• Free PC power management offered by Microsoft and Verdiem. On August 8, 2008, Verdiem launched a free version its PC power management software called Edison. Verdiem and Microsoft are touting the software as a way for individual computers to play a role in the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, which aims to reduce the overall emissions from global IT by 54 million tons in the next two years.

• U.S. federal government expedites PC power management. On August 12, 2008, the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) announced a partnership with client management suite vendor, BigFix, to expedite PC power management through out the federal government. Through the GSA’s SmartBuy program, the federal government can deploy BigFix power management for $3 per year. The technology expects to save up to $40-50 per year per computer in electric power costs by shutting down computers during non-business hours.

So what are the financial benefits of PC power management? By turning off or at least powering down your PCs during periods of inactivity – such as at night or over the weekend – Energy Star estimates that firms can save anywhere between $25-$75 per PC per year. And this is backed up by high-profile case studies. For example, PC power management is helping Washington Mutual, General Electric, and Dell boast savings of $3m per year, $2.5m per year and $1.8m per year, respectively.

Forrester’s take: while the data center oftentimes receives much of the Green IT and energy-efficiency spot light, don’t forget about your PC environment. Build your business case for PC power management since the environmental and economic benefits may be substantial. This has been a hot topic for Forrester clients, so stay tuned for a more in-depth report.

By Doug Washburn

Check out Doug's research

Making Green IT Palatable For The Business: Should You Call Green IT, “Green IT”?

In many of my recent interactions with both enterprise IT end users and vendors, the notion of calling Green IT something other than “Green IT” occurs with fair consistency. Some of the variations to Green IT that I’ve come across purposely call out an environmental agenda, i.e. Greener IT, Sustainable IT, and Eco-Efficient IT. While others are purely business such as Efficient IT, Energy Efficient IT, or Lean IT.

This very debate came up during a panel I hosted at last week’s Next Generation Data Center Conference, and it reminds me of a book I came across called the “The Sneaky Chef: How To Hide Healthy Foods In Kid's Favorite Meals.” The premise is that parents can encourage healthy eating habits in the children by “hiding” healthy foods in meals that kids already love — without their kids’ knowledge. For example, brownies spiked with spinach or chocolate pudding laced with avocado.

So how should you decide to message your Green IT initiative? My standard response is that it depends on your audience:

• Use “Green” if your organization has stated green ambitions. If your organization has a broad sustainability initiative in place, using Green IT — or another derivative highlighting the environmental angle — is worthwhile since it confirms alignment to broader business initiatives. Your conversation should go something like this: “Since combating global climate change is a company priority, our Green IT Strategy is expected to reduce our annual CO2 emissions by (fill in the blank) pounds, and at the same time saving us (fill in the blank) dollars annually.”

• Consider deviating from “Green” if your organization has not stated any green ambitions. If your organization does not have a formal sustainability platform in place, adopt the mentality of the “Sneaky Chef” by focusing on the economic benefits — such as cost savings or cost avoidance — since you know it will resonate with the business (the equivalent of brownies and chocolate pudding to kids). Your conversation should go something like this: “Our Efficient IT Strategy is expected to save (fill in the blank) dollars annually, while at the same time reduce annual CO2 emissions which contribute to global climate change by (fill in the blank) pounds.”

As a final recommendation, regardless of what you decide to call Green IT, ensure that you back yourself up with solid measurement and reporting. Whether your goal is to save the environment or improve the bottom line, quantify these savings — be it pounds of CO2 emissions avoided or a reduction in energy related operating expenses.

By Doug Washburn

Check out Doug's research

Is The “Green” Data Center The Next Generation Data Center?

Yes, but the shade of green will vary. While it’s clear that the next generation data center will be an energy efficient data center, incorporating other green data center features — from reduced water usage, to sustainable site planning, to sourcing IT gear manufactured in a more eco-responsible fashion — are not likely to happen at the same pace.

Why? Reduced energy consumption in the data center offers tangible and immediate environmental and economic savings, but also goes hand-in-hand with alleviating out of space and out of power concerns — challenges, that for now, trump purely green motivations.

At last week’s annual Next Generation Data Center Conference held in San Francisco, I had the opportunity to discuss the role of “green” in the data center by moderating a panel on the topic of “Greening of the Data Center — Practical Steps That Can Be Implemented Today With Real World Savings.” The panel consisted of major industry hitters — including Jack Pouchet of Emerson Power Network, Joe Prisco of IBM, Michael Patterson of Intel, Christian Belady of Microsoft, and John Pflueger of Dell — with all panelists having a stake in enacting green and or energy efficiency strategies within their organizations. Here are some key takeaways from the session:

Breakdown artificial barriers. Don’t let artificial barriers or bad habits inhibit you from greening your data center — such as “meat locker” temperatures in the cold aisle temperatures, avoiding the use and extent of virtualization, or low server utilization thresholds.

• Measure first, green second. Measure your data center’s energy consumption before enacting any green or energy efficient projects. One hundred percent accuracy isn’t required — walking the floor with a pencil and clipboard can give you a rough estimate that will help you prioritize where to start and then report benefits over time. I will be hosting a teleconference in October to discuss how to do this.

• Green benefits extend beyond energy cost savings. The benefits of the green data center extend beyond just saving some coin. If you’re experiencing out of space and out of power concerns in the data center, consolidation and virtualization can increase available floor space while reducing energy consumption simultaneously. This will help you continue to the meet increasing needs of the business for IT services and defer the costs of building a new data center.

• The green data center is “resource” efficient, not just energy efficient. Our panelists were quick to point out that Green IT extends far beyond just reducing IT energy consumption, and therefore, the green data center is more than just an energy efficient data center. While most agreed that this is where most firms are starting, data centers also need to be “resource” efficient — such as reducing water consumption, incorporating sustainable building practices into new construction, and sourcing IT gear manufactured in a more eco-responsible fashion. Examples of this include Citigroup’s water management techniques and Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shields use of recycled building materials.

As a parting thought, the best way to green your data center is to make the most out of what you have versus building a new one. With that in mind, don’t wait to incorporate green features into your data center today. For example, if your goal is to reduce energy consumption, simple steps — from raising the temperate in your cold aisles and installing blocking plates improve air flow, to energy efficient power supplies, and improving utilization with virtualization — can be done today with minimal to no investment.

By Doug Washburn

Check out Doug's research