For the second in our series of follow-ups to SLMs recent Green to Gold event at Interop Las Vegas, we've asked Sun Microsystems to take us inside their green-decisionmaking process as one of the largest computer products and services providers on the planet. So what's sustainability got to do with it? (Or perhaps, "What's sustainability got to do with IT?") Mark Monroe, director of sustainable computing at Sun, breaks it all down for us.

The Business Case for Greening IT

1. Save energy = save money (ECOlogy = ECOnomy). Eco is an equation that, in for-profit businesses, only works when the ecological benefits are balanced or exceeded by the economic ones. It is fruitless to propose projects that don't have tangible economic benefits, especially in the beginning of a savings/greening program.


2. Efficient IT equipment takes up less space. We've compressed floor space requirement by factors of ten or more by upgrading old computers to new ones. If expanding capacity requirements are forcing facilities to build out more space, try spending construction capital dollars on equipment upgrades to get more compute in the same square footage.


3. CO2 reduction improves company image, especially in EMEA. Signing the Kyoto Protocol has driven legislation and marketing in many countries around the world. In the U.K., improved reputation can be more valuable than the cap-and-trade benefits of the carbon economy.


4. Failure to act voluntarily will lead to legislative action. Computers and datacenters may be the new smokestack for high tech companies. A large datacenter can consume enough electricity to cause four hundred thousand metric tons of carbon dioxide to be generated. Just because you can't see the smoke at the datacenter doesn't mean the regulators won't be looking to regulate the consumers that cause the pollution!

Top Steps You Can Take to Green Your IT Operation

1. Measure your IT energy consumption separately. You can't manage what you don't measure. IT infrastructure can consume as much energy as some manufacturing operations. Find ways to meter IT equipment separately, like using network-able power strips, or intelligent UPS software.


2. Consolidate/virtualize applications. My estimate is that 15%-30% of all applications are "virtualizable," constrained by things like resource availability and cost. Build virtualization into any technology refresh or consolidation project from the start. It's much easier than retrofit, and the benefits pay back much more quickly in new deployments.


3. Implement regular technology refresh. Finance depreciates computer technology in three years. After that, the resource is "free," and it's hard to get business managers to agree to spend money when they perceive they are getting something (compute cycles) for nothing (no capital depreciation budget impact). Don't give them the chance: refresh the gear when finance says it's used up.


4. Retro-commission datacenters and facilities. All mechanical systems drift away from their design specifications over time. Going through your datacenters with a fine-toothed comb and fixing the biggest efficiency problems can provide a 15% benefit, typically paying back in ten months.


5. Eliminate unused/underutilized equipment. Internal studies at several large companies show that 8%-10% of the equipment in datacenters is not being used at all. Not under-used, truly not used at all. Identify these machines with IT tools, turn them off for 90 days, crossing a quarter-end boundary, and remove/recycle any machines that no one hollers about.


6. Add the power bill to CIO budget responsibility. Executives are great at managing expense items in their own budget, and equally good at ignoring items in someone else's. Make a journal entry in your company finances to get power bill responsibility over to someone who controls consumption, rather than splitting incentives between IT and facilities.


7. Investigate renewable energy co-generation (solar, fuel cell, biodiesel). Every thought about making a backup generator your primary power? Using renewable technologies like solar, fuel cells, renewable fuels, for clean heat and power generation can be economical, and may reduce greenhouse gas emissions.


8. Retrofit cooling infrastructure with high-efficiency solutions. It can be prohibitively expensive to retrofit an entire datacenter with new cooling, but it can also be cost effective to upgrade a small section of an old datacenter to new cooling technology. Reuse chillers and cooling towers, but build in some liquid- or refrigerant-based cooling close to the heat sources, and you'll be able to extend the life of your existing datacenter space.

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Mark Monroe has worked at Sun Microsystems for the past 13 years. For more on his efforts to green IT operations at Sun, read this internal Q&A with company CIO Bob Worrall, published in March 2007.