“Does my carbon footprint look big in this?” If you are standing in your data centre and need to ask, then you haven't embraced virtualisation yet, say applied technology solution specialists, Square One. In an age when the environmental impact of your company is becoming a bottom line reporting issue, it is probably time to start seriously looking at how technology itself is impacting the size of your carbon footprint.
Square One's Technology Solutions division is currently working with several local organisations that are not just in cost reduction mode, but environmental impact reduction mode too. The ability to trade in a dozen servers for three, to reduce the floor space required for your server room by two thirds and to reduce your costs is very compelling. However, virtualisation technology also allows you to reduce your electrical energy requirements (power and air conditioning) by over 20%, while actually increasing the utilisation capacity of your servers.
Of course, in one way, technology reduces our impact on our natural environment by cutting down our need to travel by road and air, and making our communications and distribution more energy efficient. However, all this efficiency comes at a price. It often simply trades one form of energy consumption for another. The less petrol fumes you spew into the atmosphere, the more power you use by deploying videoconferencing.
However, if you actually approach technology in the same way as you approach all the other aspects of your operations, you may find that you can truly reduce your carbon footprint in real terms. This is where virtualisation technology really comes into its own. By consolidating your hardware and moving onto an integrated virtual platform, you are actually utilising technology intelligently to reduce the impact your organisation has on the environment by at least 20%.
“With the future of our environment, the responsibility of each individual and organisation, we really are compelled to explore every possibility available to us in order to reduce the impact that we have on our natural world,” said Craig Alexander, CEO of the Square One Group. “The fact that virtualisation technology also makes financial sense for an organisation seems to render the decision to adopt it, a total no-brainer.”
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