BOULDER, Colo. Oct. 6, 2008 –Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), a leading IT management research and consulting firm, today issued findings from new research focused on the advancement of “Green IT” initiatives. The study reveals an astounding 100 percent of surveyed IT professionals indicated plans for new Green IT deployments during the coming year. The complete results of the research are discussed by EMA study leader, Steve Brasen in the new report “The True Value of Green IT: Quantifying the ROI of Energy Efficiency.”
“It’s telling that 100 percent of our respondents have Green IT programs in the works or planned for the future, showing companies are looking to Green IT as a means of cutting expenses while increasing the energy efficiency in their IT departments,” said Brasen. “The research that we’ve compiled shows not only are companies interested in the social and environmental benefits of Green IT, but that actual cost and power savings make good business sense.”
EMA defines Green IT solutions as products, services and practices designed to improve the efficiency of computing resources in such a way as to reduce the environmental impact of IT utilization. Some of the more popular Green IT deployments include server consolidation, automated power management and virtualization. The study confirmed that benefits achieved by implementing Green IT solutions occur in four key areas:
- Sustainability and social responsibility
- Cost savings and revenue generation
- Regulatory compliance and power availability
- Marketing
According to the EMA survey, 57 percent of all organizations have already implemented a Green IT initiative. In addition, the organizations that have implemented Green IT solutions have seen, on average, a 19 percent decrease in energy costs. The research also indicates that the larger the organization, the greater likelihood it has implemented a Green IT solution. Results showed that of smaller companies with less than 2,500 employees, 39 percent have deployed Green IT solutions. On the other hand, 73 percent of companies with 10,000 or more employees have implemented Green IT solutions. In addition, the study found that companies with the largest annual revenue use, proportionally, the least amount of weekly desktop power consumption. For example, companies with revenues of $1 billion or more had an average weekly desktop power consumption of 25.61 KwH, while companies that had revenue of less than $100 million had an average weekly desktop power consumption of 34.04 KwH. This finding indicates a clear correlation between those who have implemented a Green IT solution and those who have lower weekly desktop power consumption.
An EPA study conducted in August 2007 indicated that within the last five years, the total amount of energy utilized by all domestic U.S. data centers has doubled. Power facilities are also over-burdened – by 2011 the increased demand for power could require the addition of 10 more baseload power plants. This increase in power usage comes with a price. When factoring in real-world workstation utilization practices, Enterprise Management Associates’ research reveals that the average annual power cost of a single desktop is $149.10. With a company that uses 10,000 desktops, that puts desktop power expenses at over $1 million per year.
EMA analyst Brasen says many companies need to know where to look for energy cutting options. On average, desktops are kept powered on during non-work hours 43 percent of the time. Datacenter servers also are kept fully operational, on average, 88 percent of the time. The top reasons for keeping datacenters operational during weekends and evenings include: the business production environment is utilized 24-7, the need to perform data storage back-ups and the requirement to accommodate out-of-hours maintenance windows. Introducing Green IT solutions such as server consolidation, automated power management and virtualization can provide significant cost savings and achieve quantifiable return on investment.
Brasen will share highlights from the research study during a free 1-hour Webinar on Tuesday, October 7, 2008.
To purchase a copy of the report, “The True Value of Green IT: Quantifying the ROI of Energy Efficiency,” contact sales@enterprisemanagement.com or +1.303.543.9500.
About Enterprise Management Associates
Founded in 1996, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) is a leading industry analyst and consulting firm dedicated to the IT management market. The firm provides IT vendors and enterprise IT professionals with objective insight into the real-world business value of long-established and emerging technologies, ranging from security, storage and IT Service Management (ITSM) to the Configuration Management Database (CMDB), virtualization and service-oriented architecture (SOA). Even with its rapid growth, EMA has never lost sight of the client, and continues to offer personalized support and convenient access to its analysts. For more information on the firm’s extensive library of IT management research, free online IT Management Solutions Center and IT consulting offerings, visit www.www.enterprisemanagement.com.