Virtualization Times

2010 will be the year of closing the Green IT gap and thus growing awareness of how boosting productivity, efficiency and effectiveness of resources (servers, storage, I/O networking, hardware, software, services and facilities) leads to both economical as well as environmental benefits.

Some believe that green is about reduce or avoiding power and cooling as a means of lowering costs and where applicable carbon impacts, or, where opportunistic enabling carbon trading. Likewise, there is a common theme I encounter when talking to IT organizations around the world that the perception of Green IT is focused on carbon impact reductions, thus not applicable to them.

Yet, those same environments have concerns about supporting and sustaining business growth, more data to move, process and store for longer periods of time, after all, there is no such thing as a data recession!

The net result is the Green IT gap, which is the difference in the messaging and perception vs. issues and opportunities for organizations of all size to realize the many different facets of enabling a Green IT environment.

For example by closing the Green Gap with awareness that virtualization can be used in life beyond consolidation to enable agility and flexibility, that boosting performance lowering response time, doing more work per watt of energy are all forms of increasing efficiency, effectiveness and being Green.

The byproduct of course is helping the environment in a self funding manner while providing business and economic value, what CEO or CFO would not like to have that conversation!

The reality is that there are many ways to reduce environmental impact while enhancing the economics of IT resources besides simply boosting utilizing or powering devices off.

These include optimizing IT resource capacity as well as boosting performance to increase productivity per watt of energy used when work needs to be done.

Some approaches require new hardware or software while others can be accomplished with changes to management including reconfiguration leveraging insight and awareness of resource needs.

Thus the focus will expand in 2010 beyond the previous themes of energy and resource avoidance, consolidation and conservation to that of boosting productivity and resource effectiveness while reducing per unit costs to support economic growth with an environmental benefit.

The other Green Storage: Efficiency and Optimization
http://storageioblog.com/?p=847

Green IT and Virtual Data Centers
http://storageioblog.com/?p=850

What is the Future of Servers?
http://storageioblog.com/?p=823

Justifying Green IT and Home Hardware Upgrades with EnergyStar
http://storageioblog.com/?p=827

Saving Money with Green IT: Time to Invest In Information Factories
http://storageioblog.com/?p=767

Optimize Data Storage for Performance and Capacity Efficiency
http://storageioblog.com/?p=749

EPA Energy Star for Data Center Storage Update
http://storageioblog.com/?p=740

I/O Virtualization (IOV) Revisited
http://storageioblog.com/?p=729

Closing the Green Gap – Green washing may be endangered, however addressing real green issues is here to stay
http://storageioblog.com/?p=70

Server and Storage Virtualization – Life beyond Consolidation
http://storageioblog.com/?p=426

Also check out my book "The Green and Virtual Data Center" (CRC/Taylor and Francis) ISBN-13: 978-1420086669.

“The Green and Virtual Data Center” sets aside the political aspects of what is or is not considered green to examine the opportunities for organizations trying to grow their business while being environmentally friendly in an economically efficient manner. Addressing multiple technology domains and disciplines, this book looks at design and implementation tradeoffs using various best practices and technologies to sustain application and business growth while maximizing IT resources, such as power, cooling, floor space, storage, server performance, and network capacity along with management software tools.

Learn more at: http://storageio.com/book2.html
And: http://storageioblog.com
And: http://twitter.com/storageio

Best wishes to all for a happy, safe and successful new year!

Cheers gs