There is little connection between corporate plans to
introduce"green" policies and what is actually happening in IT
departments, according to a survey of 800 datacentre managers
bySymantec.
The "Green Datacentre" survey showed that although 56% of
organisations have a green policy in place, only one in seven have
implemented a green datacentre.
"One of the main reasons for this disconnect is the fact that
datacentres are run by IT managers who do not see the power bills,"
said Alex Rabbets, managing director at Migration Solutions.
Rabbets said there was a need for a much more holistic approach
to green datacentres, where managers of IT, facilities and finances
all work together on a co-ordinated programme to reduce
environmental impact.
"The problem is everyone is working in their own silos, and
while individual initiatives such as more power efficient servers
are good, they are not joined up enough to have an overall positive
effect," said Rabbets.
He said that with 3% of UK power being used by datacentres, and
despite various green initiatives, the overall power consumption by
datacentres continutes to increase.
"Business has got to stay ahead of regulations and the only way
to do that is by taking action now to look at the overall picture
and co-ordinate efforts to measure, benchmark and reduce power
consumption," said Rabbets.
He said although saving the planet was the long term goal of
making datacentres more power efficient, companies could save up to
20% in costs by looking beyond the servers at the whole
operation.
"Many do not realise that they need to look at things like power
efficient lighting, using lighting only when necessary,
consolidating and rationalising storage, not running test and
development environments when not needed, and a bunch of other
things," said Rabbets.