Sept. 26, 2007 IT departments want storage vendors to cut the amount of power their products require, but admit that better management and alternative storage methods could produce significant energy savings, according to a new survey.

BridgeHead Software's annual audit of 148 IT executives in the U.K. finds that more than half (60%) are looking for ways to more efficiently manage their data storage, and 84% say storage vendors should do more to improve the energy efficiency of their products, ITPro reports.

But 70% believed better storage management alone could cut their energy use. Nearly two-thirds of those surveyed said that 30% to 50% of the data on their primary disk is not likely to ever be accessed, suggesting that firms could cut costs by transferring some data to alternative systems that require no power, such as removable disk.

"There is nothing wrong with demanding more energy efficient solutions from vendors, but many organizations could improve energy efficiency by cutting the data they hold on spinning disk," said Tony Cotterill, chief executive of BridgeHead. "While they may need to keep this data for legal or regulatory reasons, they can save power by taking it off to tape, optical disk, removable disk or other systems which do not consume power unless being accessed.

Three-quarters of those surveyed cited power costs as the main driver to cut usage, with the environment and power capacity concerns coming second and third.