The electricity consumption of datacentre servers and
desktop PCs should be a concern for any IT director looking to make
savings in their IT systems.
As Danny Bradbury points out in our feature article on page 32,
until recently, power consumption was not considered an important
issue. But anyone who has bought a desktop PC recently, whether for
home or the office, will notice that faster processors and bus
speeds plus more memory mean that modern PCs are being specified
with larger and larger power supplies.
For a single PC in the home, this may not amount to much, but
what about company-wide - the PCs on every desktop? If Moore's Law
is delivering twice the performance for the same purchase price
every two years, how much is power consumption increasing
year-on-year?
Few IT director assess this. The bottom line, until now, has
been the total cost of ownership (TCO) in terms of the cost of
hardware and the running costs in terms of maintenance and support.
But does a low TCO take into account "invisible" running costs -
the heat dissipation and power consumption of the hardware? Heat
means cooling systems, which add to overall expense and electricity
consumption.
It is time for the industry to take power consumption seriously
and for IT directors to educate end-users on why they must switch
off after they log off their desktop PCs. Without a change, any
saving the IT department has made through greater efficiency and
consolidation will be eroded.