Greener digital world? Save IT energy costs and environment - conference keynote speaker

http://www.globalchange.com/ sustainagility.htm Sustainagility: How IT companies part of $40 trillion global race to reduce energy use over 20 years. IT major consumer of energy;Greening of IT; is creating major new business opportunities, can improve corporate image, and may increase customer loyalty. Conference keynote speaker - futurist video by Patrick Dixon. 500 million obsolete computers in America, 130 million mobile phones thrown away each year. E-waste 2% of solid municipal waste in America, hazards polluting water supplies or endangering wildlife. lead pollution in land fill - printed circuit boards and components, mercury and cadmium, linked to cancer, reproductive problems, other illnesses. Apple banned asbestos, cadmium, mercury and lead and barium, brominated flame retardants and polyvinyl chloride. recycling. Hewlett-Packard has taken a lead. 1 trillion kilowatt hours of electricity was used last year to power the web – 5.3% of all global power use and 9.4% of electricity consumption in the US. Web servers alone already consume more than 1% of global electricity, growing 14-20% a year. A single 50,000 square feet data centre uses around 5 megawatts – enough to power more than 5,000 homes. more efficient power supplies for example. Other ways to reduce web server energy losses include: power management software (Windows Server 2008 boasts 10% energy savings, but Linux does better); more efficient chips; better cooling systems; better use of fibre-optics, turning additional servers on and off depending on load (200,000 servers can be powered up in less than 5 minutes). Other actions we can take include adjusting cooling systems to the numbers of servers actually active; using heat exchangers to cool server farms and heat nearby homes; more efficient data switching / networking and using solar power from local units; separating sections of IT rooms to run at different ambient temperatures according to equipment need; place air conditioning units closer to equipment to reduce distance air has to ...

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[Nkatsikanis]

I would love to work from home but companies frequently are afraid to allow you access to there servers from outsize there company premisses /or IP address.

Smashing video btw :)

[pjvdixon]

Thanks - yes it is astonishing how many CTOs and CIOs responsible for corporate IT security have been unwilling to invest in solutions to allow secure home working.

[Nkatsikanis]

They lose for this as people can be much more productive in a home environment.

[pjvdixon]

Yes - many times more efficient for most people to work at home on something like writing a long report.

[DeltaNC]

One of the most interesting aspects of IT in industry is that, it is often not performance increases which attract companies to upgrade, but the energy cost savings.

My brother recently consolidated all his employers servers across Europe to only two servers in Scotland, the savings more than paid for the new hardware anyway, so in reality they couldn't afford not to upgrade!

Virtulisation is very much the future! Even for the consumer!

[pjvdixon]

I agree that the priority is often saving IT costs especially since 70% of large IT projects deliver late or signficantly over budget. Thanks for the interesting virtual server cost saving example. Patrick

[Nkatsikanis]

Trust is the biggest issue with working from home. Most people think that people will not work a full 8 hour day from home and they can't really check on this.

[Nkatsikanis]

It would be good if there was some research into this. There must be formal stuff out there.