Network equipment vendors who address the issues of
energy efficiency earliest will have significant opportunities to
develop competitive advantage in their respective markets,
according to anew report by
In-Stat.
The market research believes that
power consumption and green issues in general are fast becoming
the information technology industry's biggest challenge.
It regards it as inevitable that as power consumption concerns
grow, the spotlight will fall on
LAN switches which have the unenviable reputation for being
among the most power-hungry of all types of IT equipment.
In its report, In-Stat suggests that switch vendors who address
energy efficiency earliest will be best placed to take full
advantage of what it predicts will be continuing growth in the
switch market. What complicates matters is that even among
similarly equipped switches, capable of performing identical tasks,
there are significant vendor-specific differences in energy
efficiency.
"As many businesses develop green initiatives using best
practices published by organisations like the Green Grid, IT
managers will be forced to absorb some degree of responsibility for
their organisation's power usage," predicted In-Stat analyst
Victoria Fodale. "The role of energy efficiency will grow
considerably in importance for future equipment purchases."
In-Stat research also found that shipments of power over
Ethernet ports, which can consume more than 10 times the energy of
standard ports, have tripled since 2005.