Being green isn’t just about the environment. Going green with your
information technology (IT) infrastructure can take more red out of your
expense side and put more green on your
bottom line. Today, a significant cost factor
of in-house or outsourced data centers is
directly related to power and cooling. The
more efficient the system, the less power is
consumed and the more you can save.
Energy is not only consumed by power
servers, but it is also needed to cool them.
Outsourcing some or all of your IT needs to
a “green service provider” to reduce your
overall IT footprint and management costs
can provide additional savings.
“Virtualization, business continuity, service-oriented architecture (SOA) and proactive monitoring are four good strategies
that lead to improved resiliency and
reduced cost for the business, while at the
same time promoting good corporate citizenship — great reasons to care about
green power,” says Trent Henson, Executive Vice President, Information Technology at DYONYX. “Anything that can be
done to reduce physical infrastructure and
provide the same or better level of service
inherently reduces the complexity (and
cost) for managing that process.”
Smart Business learned more from
Henson about the benefits of green IT.
How does virtualization fit with green power?
Typically, as a business grows, more
servers are needed for more applications.
More servers require more rack space,
which requires more floor space. All of this
infrastructure requires more power and
cooling. More power requires more money.
Virtualization is a proven strategy for making hardware more efficient. This mature
technology allows several operating systems to reside on the same server, and
more tasks can be performed on one
machine. Where traditional servers provide a 1-1 efficiency ratio, virtual servers
provide an average 15-1 ratio. Energy can
also be saved by deferring lower priority
tasks to be performed at night when energy is needed less for other operations and
costs can be considerably less. Instead of
purchasing new, more efficient servers that utilize less power while doing more, you
might look into outsourcing to a firm that
through economies of scale only charges
you for the resources you need and utilize.
What about business continuity?
You can also leverage virtualization technology for lower-cost, high-availability
solutions. Businesses need to make sure
they take measures to ensure business
continuity; however, many can’t afford two
of everything should one component fail.
Virtualization allows you to lift virtual
images (your data) onto another physical
device, quickly and without the time and
cost of replacing the exact same hardware.
A service provider that has multiple server
sessions and data centers can build this in
for you. Redundancy is made practical
with virtualization.
What is service-oriented architecture, and
how does SOA fit into this?
SOA is the concept of taking traditional
IT functions of a business and turning it
into a service. SOA reduces costs through
increased reuse, another greening strategy.
Another advantage of SOA is it reduces
redundancy and the associated decommissioning of applications. Common implementation of business rules and processes
results in better consistency, security and
compliance. While the long-term results
can provide more service with less cost,
the initial developmental costs can be quite
extensive. It takes a while to recoup them.
Virtualization can provide affordable SOA,
especially for middle-market companies. If
you outsource SOA functionality, it is possible to get even more service for less cost.
Imagine spending a few thousand dollars
per month for a service that could cost well
over $250,000 in purchased hardware and
software, data center space and the skilled
resources to manage it all.
Don’t most companies already have proactive monitoring systems?
Many companies think they do, but more
often than not, it is more reactive in nature.
When something happens, someone is
notified, and the IT department gets right
on it. Proactive monitoring is encompassing and utilizes predictive analysis to notify
IT before the failure occurs. Does your system monitor power draw? As the power
demand goes up, more heat is produced
and something has to give. A breaker trips
and the system goes down. Getting it back
up is going to take some amount of time.
Even minimal downtime can be costly,
especially if core systems or customer
service is compromised. Monitoring power
draw, all motherboards, ram and all other
processes can predict an oncoming problem and provide notification and adjustments before a crash occurs. Make sure
your IT department or outsource provider
can demonstrate this as part of your systems management.
At the end of the day, most companies are
more interested in meeting their business
goals than being green. By asking the right
questions, it is possible to achieve both
objectives, and who doesn’t want to
increase productivity, reduce cost and look
good doing it?
TRENT HENSON is Executive Vice President of Information Technology at Houston-based DYONYX. Reach him at (713) 293-6359 or
[email protected].