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6 6 P a r t I : a r t I : T r e n d s a n d R e a s o n s t o G o G r e e nr e n d s a n d R e a s o n s t o G o G r e e n

It’s becoming more expensive to run an IT department, strictly from a power consumption
standpoint. International Data Corporation (IDC) notes that ten years ago, around 17 cents
out of every dollar spent on a new server went to power and cooling. Today, it’s up to 48
cents. Unless things change, that number will get as large as 78 cents or more—IDC, 2007.
Solutions
Conserving power can be realized via technologies such as virtualizing servers. That is,
removing the physical server from service and offloading its duties onto another machine.
Such a practice saves an organization—per machine—approximately $560 annually in
electricity costs.
Another issue isn’t so much the planetary impact, but the inability to grow any more.
Gartner estimates that by the end of 2008, 50 percent of the datacenters in the world might
not have enough power to meet the power and cooling requirements of the high-density
computing gear that vendors are offering—Gartner, November 2006.
The point is this: If you have less equipment, you use less electricity and you have less
impact on the planet.
There are two ways you can rely less on fossil fuel–based sources of electricity:
• Virtualization Virtualization takes multiple physical servers out of operation and
offloads their duties onto a single machine. Specialized software makes it possible
to run dozens of servers on one physical machine, thus reducing the amount of
power consumed. We’ll talk more about this in Chapter 12.
• Generate your own power Many companies are striving to be completely carbon
neutral. One way you can cut your electrical bill and make a move toward carbon
neutrality is to generate your own power. This is typically done using solar cells or
wind turbines. Also, if you generate more power than you need, you can sell it back
to your electrical utility. We’ll talk about this more in Chapter 3.

Heat
The energy you consume to cool that equipment is also an issue. The more equipment you
have (and the less efficient it is), the more heat it generates and the more electricity you use
to cool that equipment. We’ll talk more about cooling issues in Chapter 4, but the crux of the
matter is this: You need less equipment that is more efficient, and you need to employ
creative cooling strategies to make the least impact you possibly can.
Consider the Swiss datacenter owned by CIB-Services AG. In 2008, the Uitikon, Switzerland
company started using the hot air removed from its datacenter to heat the nearby public
swimming pool. What would normally be vented into the atmosphere, and thus wasted, is
being utilized for a productive purpose.
Equipment Disposal
The issues go beyond power consumption. Computers and other devices are routinely
discarded once they become obsolete. Gartner estimates that 133,000 PCs are discarded by
U.S. homes and businesses each day. In 1998 alone, more than 20 million PCs became
obsolete in the U.S., but fewer than 11 percent of them were recycled—Gartner, 2003.
Old computers don’t need to be looked at like they’re infectious materials. Simply by
virtue of the fact that they are old and at the end of their life doesn’t mean that they are
going to hurt you. If they are properly disposed of, they can be a great source for secondary