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A Shared Service Center can be established as a distinct organization to provide shared
services to business groups using a customer/supplier model. Services provided are defined
by the needs of internal customers and delivered by the Shared Service Center.

Hardware Costs
When it comes time to buy new computers and servers, you’re looking at a lot of specifics—
the speed of the machines, how much RAM they have, the size of hard drives, and so forth—
not the least of which is cost. When you look at new hardware with ecological responsibility
in mind, you should also be looking at how much power is consumed and what components
you absolutely need.
If you are performing a virtualization project that needs thin clients, you can save
money there. However, if you are still putting a tower in every cubicle, that’s fine, but
maybe you don’t need computers with DVD drives. If you send software updates over the
LAN, you needn’t spend the extra money per machine for DVD drives.
Also, consider your server needs. As we talked about in Chapter 11, get your servers
tailored with the correct size of power supply. It may cost more up front, but you’ll save money
in the long run because less power is wasted, less heat is generated, and less cooling is
required.
Wherever possible, be sure to look for low-power models of monitors, servers, towers,
and thin clients. Also, look for Energy Star, RoHS, and EPEAT certifications. This ensures
that the hardware meets some sort of environmental standard.

Cooling
You can look at the issue of cooling—and reducing your cooling bills—from two perspectives:
You can cool more efficiently, or you can reduce the overall need to cool. Actually, both
approaches should be pursued.
If you cool more efficiently, you do things like we discussed in Chapter 4. You can
organize the physical layout of your datacenter to accommodate cooling. This means making
sure cabling is routed so that airflow isn’t restricted. This means laying out your servers to
follow the hot-aisle/cold-aisle philosophy. This means adding supplemental coolers that use
cool outside air as much as possible.
But in addition to striving for more efficiency, you should reduce the need to cool as
much as possible. This means using power supplies that are appropriate for the load being
supplied. Too much extra power turns into heat. Remember that 1 watt of unused power
turns into heat that requires 1 watt of power to cool.
Will you ever find a Zen-like balance between your power supplies and the exact PART V
amount of power you need? Likely not. But get as close as you can.
Now that you’ve greened the various aspects of your IT department, you want to make sure
you keep making progress—at the very least, you want to make sure you don’t take any
steps backward. In the final chapter, we’ll talk about how you can keep checking up on your
IT department’s green initiatives and what you can do if you start to slip.