Kaiser Permanente, Fujitsu Lead Green IT Rankings

by | Oct 25, 2011

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Kaiser Permanente, KPMG, State Street and Allstate lead this year’s Computerworld rankings of the top green IT users, while Fujitsu, HP, Accenture and Microsoft top the list for green IT vendors and data center suppliers.

Fujitsu retains the top vendor spot from last year, while last year’s green IT user winner, PricewaterhouseCoopers, drops off the rankings.

The Green IT rankings, now in their fourth year, aim to identify organizations that are implementing smart, efficient strategies to green their IT. Computerworld used a survey to gauge such factors as data retention policies, server virtualization, product purchasing, LEED and Energy Star certification, equipment recycling, use of videoconferencing, goal setting, executive commitment, and programs to measure, benchmark, analyze and lower energy consumption.

The magazine says the top 12 users have integrated energy-saving programs fully into their IT strategies, and are using technology to reduce power consumption not only in their IT equipment but elsewhere in their operations.

Kaiser Permanente’s efforts saved 7.2 million kWh of power from data center operations, and over $770,000 from energy budgets, Computerworld said.

Although use of the PUE metric was one of ComputerWorld’s measures for judging companies, Kaiser came up with its own metric for cooling system efficiency, called computer room functional efficiency. The company said that more standard metrics such as PUE and DCIE were “not granular enough.”

Kaiser said that unlike many companies, its data center facilities team operates as a part of IT, and this collaboration helped it to find savings. The IT team virtualized Unix and Windows server infrastructure while the facilities group re-engineered the data center’s under-floor cooling system.

Kaiser’s IT group predicts that it will cut overall energy consumption by six percent this year. The company is continuing its efforts by installing water- and air-side economizers at its Napa data centers, and virtualizing more servers. Currently 65 percent of Unix servers and about 20 percent of Windows servers are virtual.

Meanwhile, KPMG’s green IT projects have included migrating to blade servers, raising the temperatures in the data center, using telepresence and installing solar panels on buildings.

The full lists are:

2011 Top Green-IT Users

  1. Kaiser Permanente
  2. KPMG
  3. State Street
  4. Allstate Insurance
  5. NBC Universal
  6. Baker Hughes
  7. Northrop Grumman
  8. Citigroup
  9. Nixon Peabody
  10. Raytheon
  11. Prudential Financial
  12. JM Family Enterprises

2011 Top Green-IT Vendors

  1. Fujitsu
  2. Hewlett-Packard
  3. Accenture
  4. Microsoft
  5. Qualcomm
  6. IBM
  7. Intel
  8. BT Group
  9. SAP
  10. Internap Network Services
  11. Dell
  12. Avnet

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