IT Directors Ignoring Green Issues, Research Reveals

Almost one in four IT directors and CIOs questioned in a recent survey claim that managing environmental constraints such as energy consumption or inefficiencies around the cooling of datacentres is of little or no importance to them.
 
The survey was commissioned by IT services company Computacenter Services and carried out by PMP Research. It questioned 100 IT directors and CIOs.

Other key findings include:

• Environmental issues – when asked which environmental issues they experienced with their datacentre, lack of available space for new infrastructure was the greatest concern (43%). This was followed by lack of available power capacity (33%) and then high cost of real estate (20%)

• Public Sector beats the banks – nearly half (48%) of public sector IT directors have reduced processing power on the desktop or are evaluating a move towards centralised application delivery.  Yet more than 6 out of 10 IT directors in the banking sector have no intention of taking this route

• Not a factor for manufacturers – almost a third (32%) of manufacturing professionals state that managing environmental constraints is of little or no importance to them. This is compared with 16% in retail, 29% in banking and finance and 16% from the public sector 

• Ignorance is not bliss – one in seven (14%) admit to there being little awareness within their organisation of the need to adopt more environmentally friendly IT practices

Terry Walby, datacentre solutions director, Computacenter Services comments:

“Given the environmental inefficiency of the average datacentre, organisations need to take heed of the green agenda. Typically, we see two areas for cost savings and efficiency gains. Firstly, improved environmental controls through simple and cost effective steps such as removing excess cables, dust and packaging that hinder airflow and contribute to excessive heat, and re-architecting rack, cable and infrastructure layouts that will help reduce the demand on cooling systems. Secondly, technology innovation, such as consolidation and virtualisation of existing infrastructure, deploying energy efficient hardware, or using management tools to shutdown servers during idle periods can reduce power demand by up to 80%.”

According to industry experts, electricity now accounts for nearly 50 per cent of the overall operating expenses in many datacentres. Yet, on average only half of the power consumed by a datacentre is actually required to operate IT systems. The remaining half is burnt up by lighting, cooling, losses in power distribution and even air movement.

Walby concludes:

“Benchmarking and improving the efficiency of a datacentre environment will not only enable organisations to fully optimise their datacentres but also make best use of their energy resources, save thousands of pounds on monthly power bills and reduce their carbon footprint.”

Ends

 

About Computacenter Services

Computacenter Services is part of the Computacenter Group, Europe’s leading independent provider of IT infrastructure services. It oversees a range of managed and support services contracts as well as implementing transformation projects for major corporate and government organisations, with service offerings extending from users’ desktops to organisations’ network infrastructure and datacentres. Computacenter Services recorded £267 million of revenue in 2005 and employs approximately 3,500 staff across the UK, including an international service desk in Barcelona.

For further information please go to http://www.computacenter.com/services

 

For more information, contact:
Helen Ablett / Fiona McKenzie for Octopus Communications
0845 3700 655
computacenter@octopuscomms.net