Going Green: Start with the Data Center

by | Mar 24, 2010

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tang, helen, hpOnce a lofty goal, “going green” is becoming a mainstream practice. The growing environmental crisis and impending changes in legislation are reason enough to focus on sustainability and green issues, but the business case for implementing this change is even more compelling. Green initiatives can drive business efficiencies and cost savings and help organizations gain a competitive advantage.

Many organizations struggle to find a starting point for their green strategy and are regularly in search of solutions that can quickly be implemented to deliver the most impact.  One key answer lies within the hub of any business – the data center. Businesses are beginning to realize that environmental benefits quickly translate into business benefits, as a green infrastructure can significantly reduce energy costs and extend the capacity and life of the data center.

Transforming the data center is an essential starting point to greening the business.  Data center transformation lowers the overall cost to build, maintain or expand the data center, resulting in a reduced carbon footprint through energy efficient server and storage solutions, power and cooling software and critical facilities services.

Companies that focus on greening the data center can identify dramatic business, regulatory and technology outcomes resulting from an energy-efficiency focused data center strategy. For example, data center transformation can allow CIOs to reduce power and cooling costs by 40 percent, helping to drive sustainable business growth.

Beyond reducing environmental impact, green initiatives are key components to building a next-generation data center that can meet rapidly changing business needs, drive cost savings and achieve better business outcomes. A next-generation architecture can be achieved through an integrated roadmap of data center projects and initiatives such as modernization, consolidation and virtualization. By blending these initiatives, energy savings alone can be as high as 20-30%.

HP has taken steps to transform its own data center and create an energy efficient infrastructure. By utilizing virtualization and energy-efficient technologies, HP was able to decrease the number of servers by 40 percent while increasing processing power by 250 percent. HP has also seen substantial business outcomes including reduced operational spending from 4 percent to 2 percent of revenue, reduced annual energy consumption by 60 percent and reduced networking costs by 50 percent.

Greening the data center delivers long-term impact that helps businesses not only meet current environmental goals, but also guide additional energy efficient initiatives. In the long term, this can allow employees to focus on innovation rather than maintenance and more easily prepare for growth. With a broad range of available solutions that deliver bottom line benefits, reductions in waste and improved energy efficiency – being sustainable is now about achieving both environmental and business goals.

Helen Tang is worldwide director for Data Center Transformation solutions at HP, focused on helping customers transform their data centers into strategic assets that support business growth and innovation. Her team helps customers adapt new infrastructure, modernize applications and implement service management practices.

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