Green Data Cabinets Feature Editorial

An industry report released this week finds that cost savings, along with the economic downturn, have emerged as the main catalysts in green IT initiatives.

 

The economic downturn has emerged as an unlikely driver for the adoption of green data centers, according to Frost & Sullivan’s (News - Alert) “Green Data Centers: Emerging Trends and Developments” report.  

 

In an attempt to cut costs, data center owners are investigating technologies and solutions that would enhance the energy efficiency of their data centers, according to the report. Information technology companies running data centers are also “keen” on implementing green technologies that might not have been a high priority if not for the economic slump, Frost & Sullivan analysts said.

 

Panduit is a prime example of a company that embraces green thinking as both a value and a responsible business practice. Green initiatives permeate every aspect of its business, company officials said, from using recycled, locally purchased materials when practical to developing product and solution offerings that enable energy efficiency and promote environmentally sustainable business strategies. 

 

“It is estimated that IT infrastructure alone contributes about five to 10 percent of the total energy utilized for running a company,” said Technical Insights Research Analyst Achyuthanandan S.

As a result, companies are searching for technologies and solutions that would help in significantly reducing the energy consumed by IT infrastructure, he added.

 

High energy costs are motivating chief information officers to find technologies that will help reduce power bills. In fact, the storage capacity needed by the average Fortune 1000 company doubles every 10 months – primarily driven by growth in application data, according to an Accenture (News - Alert) report. But green technologies such as virtualization, cloud computing and power management techniques are capable of significantly lowering the energy consumption of a data center.

 

In the past few years, there have been several instances where companies have cut energy costs and operational expenditure by adopting green technologies in the data center, Frost & Sullivan analysts said. Although a majority of companies claim that they are going green due to environmental concerns, cost saving is the primary objective of adopting green IT.

“TCO and ROI evaluations need to be analyzed, not just capital expenditures when deciding to implement green technologies in the data center,” said Todd LaCognata global solutions manager at Panduit. “Companies can save significantly on operating expenditures in the long term and can plan to be more scalable with respect to power and cooling.”

 

According to the report, green technologies offer three primary advantages: 1) Reduced energy consumption in data centers leads to both cost and environmental benefits; 2) the dissipation of less heat compared to typical data center hardware results in minimal cooling requirements; and 3) virtualization also aids in significantly reducing the number of servers required for IT operations, thus saving considerable space.

 

Designing a green data center is an arduous and expensive task, according to the report. Data centers need to deliver the highest quality at affordable costs, impelling managers to evaluate the organization’s requirements in detail.

 

“Although there are considerable savings in the future, enterprises are expected to be cautious before procuring green technologies as costs associated with implementing a green IT infrastructure is high,” said Technical Insights Research Analyst Gaurav Sundararaman. “The cost associated with building a state-of-the-art data center could exceed $200 million.”

 

However, Panduit’s passive, optimized thermal management solutions and green data cabinets enable high-density, high heat load data center designs while reducing energy costs of a typical data center by 25 percent or more, according to company officials.

 

The report also said that the IT industry should focus on energy management software and develop innovative platforms to increase the power efficiency of data centers. Industry leaders and standard bodies should promote the development of cost-effective cooling techniques for data centers. Researchers and industry participants need to look at alternatives to reduce heat emissions in the data center, analysts said.

 

“Panduit is working with industry-leading companies in the power, cooling, network, compute, and storage space to ensure that our smart data centers solutions align with their green data center initiatives,” LaCognata said.