Better PC, server usage key to going green in IT

The year 2007 has marked a tipping point in how the technology industry needs to address the issue of excess power consumption, greenhouse gases and other environmental issues, according to an analyst from Gartner Inc.

Gartner research estimates that the IT industry is currently responsible for about 2% of global carbon dioxide emissions. Mingay said that while that amount appears to be small, it is actually equal to that of the entire aviation industry, in which a single jet burns through thousands of gallons of fuel with every commercial flight.

"If IT [companies] did nothing, carbon dioxide would grow 5% to 10% [annually]," Mingay said. "It's a mistake to assume IT will be allowed to continue with this growth rate." — Simon Mingay, Gartner analyst

Mingay called the technology-services industry "the biggest contributor" to carbon dioxide emissions, mostly due to inefficiencies related to lackadaisical power use practices.
"Right now, IT power bills are costing more than servers, and data centers and power grids a struggling as a result," he said.

The largest culprits in terms of power use are data center servers, which make up 23% of the IT industry's power consumption, and workplace PCs and monitors, which use 39% of the power in the IT sector. Other sources include fixed line and mobile telecommunications, local-area networks and printers.

"It's death by a thousand cuts," Mingay said. "The sheer volume of 880 million PCs drives those numbers."

The resulting environmental impact equates to more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, increases in hazardous and electronic waste and continued used of non-renewable resources, he said.

However, Mingay believes that all is not lost in terms of the IT industry addressing the matter of wasteful energy use. The issue will cause many corporations and technology product suppliers to launch more green IT programs in 2008.

"There's so much low-hanging fruit that the business case is relatively straightforward," Mingay said.

Mingay believe that more companies, and the businesses that supply them with IT products, will have to develop more clearly defined policies and strategies for power use and how to cut down where possible.

Mingay said there needs to be a trend toward measuring and analyzing power consumption and carbon dioxide emissions, if companies and their equipment providers aren't already doing so. Among the steps he is supporting is a changing the philosophy of corporate data centers as being "always on" to "always available," and integrate server virtualization to cut down on the actual amount of servers necessary to run certain data center applications.

But the easiest step Mingay said that businesses can take involves the desktop PC that sits on nearly every employee's desk. Mingay said that between 9% and 15% of office power use comes from standard office equipment, and that failure to turn off PCs is responsible for an unnecessary amount of that power use.

Mingay said that about 60% of PCs are left on after employees have finished work, and that not using things such as active screen savers, and either turning the PCs off or setting them to low-power states can cut businesses power bills in half.

"We're not going to see a biodegradable PC any time soon," Mingay said.

src: http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/analyst-sees-better-pc-server/