As the impact of commercial and industrial activities on the environment are becoming better understood, IT’s share of responsibility within the overall problem is gaining recognition. Traditional methods of generating power, through burning fossil fuels, transfer a significant carbon footprint to users of that power. The data centre is a very power-hungry industrial proposition. As a result, within the IT sector the data centre is being viewed with increasing unease. Given predicted data growth rates, and no change in their design or method in which they are powered, the environmental consequences of data centres could force them into a corner from which they cannot escape.

Environmental concerns are driving innovation within all sectors that supply solutions to the data centre. However, focussing solely on environmental concerns ignores another, arguably more significant, driver of innovation. Power derived from fossil fuels is not only environmentally damaging but also expensive, certain to be much more expensive in the future and, in some locations, there simply isn’t enough of it to go round. Data centre managers are obliged to minimise costs, while ensuring that they provide a continuous service to their customers to retain their business. As ever, money is a driver.

It is the job of the data centre manager to sift through all the marketing chatter to discover the true innovations that will make the service they provide more cost-efficient and of a standard that will attract and retain customers. A data centre manager who sets out to make a data centre which is environmentally friendly without aligning changes to these specific responsibilities is likely to find his pet green project going nowhere due to lack of senior endorsement or, worse, his data centre out of business. Where the two areas, environment and business coincide, the manager will find a line of least resistance in implementing change.

There are two focus areas in which the acquisition of business benefit may coincide with new environmentally benign technologies and practices; internal cost savings and customer demand. Changes that demonstrably improve the long term cost structure of the business or the customer’s propensity to buy are likely to receive the ‘green’ light from budget holders.

Change decisions that affect the internal ongoing cost structure of the data centre, rather than projects designed to effect customer demand, are often easier to make as more of the variables are known and within the organisation’s control. As calculations can be made with a higher degree of certainty, credible predictions can be made for the cost implications of a particular decision. These satisfactorily accurate predictions can easily be presented to support the business case for change. There have been many recent technology innovations that can dramatically reduce a data centre’s cost profile at the same time as being significantly ‘greener’.

For example, server hardware is largely responsible for the burgeoning power costs within the data centre. Chip manufacturers, such as Intel, and hardware integrators, such as IBM, have invested significant research and development capital to bring products to market that, while not compromising on performance, require far less power to operate.

IBM claims power savings of up to 60% from its new server technology. Not only are IBM servers up to 60% cheaper to run, they also require up to 60% less cooling (there is a direct 1:1 relationship between power usage and heat output). When one calculates the full cost of power to operate these technologies over their lifetime and contrast the results with standard or legacy technology, the savings are compelling. The power usage within a data centre is so large that power saving technology can pay for itself in a short space of time. The business case for new, more energy efficient, technology is made on a cost basis and the happy side-effect is that the data centre is also greener.

It is harder to make a business case for initiatives designed to increase customer demand by enhancing the environmental credentials of the data centre. Nevertheless, the effort is well worth making.

Many organisations have implemented Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policies that explicitly state a preference for suppliers with green credentials. Elsewhere within the same organisations there will invariably be a policy stating that the supplier should be fit for purpose. This means that a professionally run data centre with an impeccable operational record will stand a higher chance of satisfying those customers’ CSR requirements and become a preferred supplier if they have implemented certain environmental initiatives. For this data centre, environmental policy is a matter of competitive advantage.

To avoid confusion, two types of data centre need to be defined; private and public. A private data centre is owned and operated by an organisation to service its own internal users. A public data centre is set up to provide external organisations with data outsourcing services, such as web hosting or backup facilities for disaster recovery. Though the costs of these services will be funded differently, both types of data centres have customers with broadly similar needs and as such the data centre will supply to similar demands.

Successful demand satisfaction and creation initiatives depend on an understanding of the customer’s stated buying criteria and also their un-stated or true reasons to buy. Various arms of marketing science can be utilised to inform decisions. However, an element of entrepreneurial risk-taking in decisions will always be required. As long as the entrepreneurial factor is born of the requirement to increase or satisfy customer demand, rather than a wish for the world to be a better place, a business case is being made and resulting green initiatives stand a chance of succeeding.

Green initiatives that satisfy customer demand for environmentally aware suppliers, when fully considered over the long-term, often enhance the internal cost structure of the data-centre or cost so little that the demand they create more than compensates. For example, it is becoming easier and cheaper to select an electricity provider that offers power from renewable sources. The data centre that selects such a supplier may pay a little more for power (in fact, if low-energy servers are installed the overall power costs may fall) but they will be responsible for zero carbon emissions. It is these green initiatives, properly costed and with their effects on demand taken into account that should be implemented.

As is clear, many environmental initiatives, properly considered, may have sound business benefits. From paper recycling bins that subconsciously dissuade employees from printing documents, through light switches that turn themselves off at night to save energy, to marketing material that makes clear to your customers that you do these things so they are able to approve your service, the environment, indirectly, matters.