Power & Cooling

As part of Dell’s ambitious pledge to become the greenest technology company on the planet, we’ve partnered with IDC, the respected analyst firm, to undertake a huge study of companies in Western Europe to see the degree to which green IT has come of age. The IDC Green IT Barometer looks set to become an annual snapshot of green sentiment in Europe.

The research included the views of an impressive 459 IT directors of European organisations with more than 1,000 employees and operating at least one datacentre.

Your interpretation of the results will be influenced by whether you’re an optimist or a pessimist. Almost exactly half of European enterprises now have a formal green IT strategy in place (if you’re a pessimist, almost half don’t!). But those that do have a green IT strategy predict they’ll save money this year. These are large companies, spending on average 160 million euros per year on IT. Those with a green IT strategy expect to deliver 14.5% real cost savings in the next 12 months – that equates to an massive 23.2 million euros per year.

There are many hurdles for firms to overcome on the way to establishing a formal green IT strategy. The most frequently mentioned challenges were lack of in-house skills and expertise; other constraints and priorities which are not compatible with a green IT strategy, and plain lack of time.

Dell has made it a priority to minimise environmental impacts at each stage of the lifecycle, from product design to manufacturing and operations to customer ownership and product retirement. We’re developing products and that are the most energy efficient in the world, thus helping our customers to reduce power consumption and increase efficiency. Also Energy Smart Data Centre Assessment services can help customers build more energy-efficient IT infrastructures.

A number of conclusions can be drawn from the IDC study. Perhaps most importantly, green IT strategies won’t succeed if they are pursued in an IT silo. Collaboration is required across disciplines within organisations, and amongst trading partners. Information is essential to understanding what needs to change. The key is to understand the true cost of ownership. This can be a challenge if the IT department doesn’t pay for energy costs.

Increasingly, green IT is becoming a corporate responsibility. 19% of companies in Europe have appointed someone whose role is dedicated to the implementation of a green IT strategy. For these companies, green IT has gone beyond an aspiration, and has become a way to save money whilst acting responsibly. That’s a double whammy, even if you’re a pessimist…

Great news from the server team today:

First, Albert Esser, our VP, Power and Infrastructure Solutions, posted on Direct2Dell that we are the first in the industry to achieve 80 PLUS Gold-certification for a server power supply. The cool part is that it meets July 2009 Climate Savers targets for servers more than a year ahead of schedule, which require 92 percent minimum efficiency for the power supply unit at 50 percent of rated output.

Up next…Dell’s PowerEdge™ 2900 III server now tops all competitors with a new number one ranking for price/performance on the TPC-C benchmark.

· The leading price-per-transaction (price/tpmC) TPC-C result achieved 97,083 transactions per minute with a price/performance of $.68/tpmC.¹

· The PowerEdge 2900 III achieved the new TPC-C price/performance world record benchmark result with Oracle® Database 11g Standard Edition One running on Microsoft® Windows® Server 2003, and utilizing one Intel® Quad-Core Xeon® 2.83 GHz processor.

· Dell’s two-socket tower or 5U PowerEdge 2900 III server provides customers with a versatile platform designed for handling the most demanding workloads and application requirements. The 2900 III can be used for a variety of purposes including database, messaging and virtualization.

Very interesting video discussion between Steven Schuckenbrock, our CIO and President/SVP Global Services and CNET News.com’s Dan Farber.

From a CIO perspective he talks about how we’re transforming our own IT practices and implementing “green.” As SVP Global Services he’s asked about ITaaS, SaaS, and cloud computing.

In case you missed it, ZDNet "GreenTech Pastures" writer Heather Clancy gave Dell some green props this week in her post, "Dell's Esser: Green Tech is Not Just About the Data Center."  

No doubt energy efficiency is critically important in the data center - but there's a lot of other places we need to be looking too. (Gartner says 40% of carbon emissions come from client systems and monitors)

Also of note - we're the first IT vendor to attain Silver status under the 80 PLUS power supply designation.

Thanks, Heather, for the kudos and for your continued focus on the subject of Green IT.

Brett Ortega faced a challenge. He is the redevelopment and project manager, of American Baptist Homes of the West.

ABHOW's mission is to enhance the independence, well-being and security of older people by providing housing, health care and supportive services.

Brett discusses their increasing technology needs - all over wireless access, adding more servers without adding data center space are a few examples.  His team of 8 IT pros and 7 technicians did it. And saved a bunch of money and went green at the same time.