SCC lauds server consolidation as green IT key

SCC urges server consolidation to meet green IT targets

Pan European integrator SCC has called upon UK businesses to embrace server consolidation, in the wake of the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee statement on green IT.

The statement stressed how both government and industry must be more ambitious in their mission to reduce carbon footprints through greener IT policies.

SCC’s chief technology officer, Rhys Sharp, has highlighted European datacentre codes of practice and believes taking the route of consolidation reduces both power consumption and IT overheads.

Sharp said: “The industry may not have come up with instant answers to the environmental question, but various technologies are now coming together that can greatly help reduce organisations’ carbon footprints, while the environmental savings possible from server consolidation are increasing all the time.

“This is not brain surgery. By simply reducing the number of servers by a typical 5:1 consolidation ratio, companies are going to see four or five times less power consumed by the server. There is less cooling required, generating further savings, and we are now seeing the introduction of new technologies that throttle back on the server’s CPU performance when it’s not being used, reducing power consumption even more.”

Industry research has revealed that server consolidation can reduce a company’s carbon footprint by 90 per cent in addition to freeing up 89 per cent of available floor space.

Despite this, 50 per cent of UK companies have failed to implement this strategy, according to SCC.

Research conducted by SCC found if companies were to adopt such a strategy, up to half of UK organisations would be able to reduce their IT operating costs by 50 per cent as well as experience a good return on investment (RoI) within eight months.

Sharp concluded: “There is no doubt that this reluctance on the part of sof tware vendors has been a major obstacle.

“But as time wears on and product becomes much more mature in the market, we are finally seeing vendors begin to take more of an interest, so that barrier is starting to break down now.”