Green IT pays off

It might be the socially responsible thing to do, but green IT--the concept of cutting energy consumption to save the environment--can also improve the bottom line. In fact, for every 8TB of usable disk capacity saved within the storage infrastructure, companies can generate an average of $830,000 in operating expense savings over three years, according to a storage economics white paper. Opportunities for savings exist in pooling the storage architecture, because it requires less people to manage the technology and fewer storage pools. The white paper recommends storage and server consolidation combined with virtualization; storage consolidation can reduce the number of Windows and Unix servers for CFIS or NFS-mounted storage. Also, newer-generation storage systems take up less floor space and have lower power and cooling costs. However, an upcoming Forrester Research report notes that businesses won't adopt a green strategy without real cost benefits. Only 25 percent of respondents had formalized a green criteria in the IT procurement process, with many saying it's still a business decision.

Read more about green savings:
- read the article at CIO

ALSO:
- read this on why it's not easy being green
- this on green data centers
- this on going green in the data center
- and this on why the time to go green is now