Virtualisation shoots no green silver bullets

Beverley Head
Monday, 19 October 2009 02:54

IT Industry - Market

Server virtualisation is no panacea for cutting carbon emissions – indeed there could be three times more savings secured from placing greater emphasis on using IT to change entrenched business processes. 

Rob Riegert, the managing director of Melbourne based Prima Consulting says electricity consumption to run servers typically contributes 2% of an organisation’s emissions. “That means that 98% of emissions are from business as usual activities.”

He claims it is three times more effective to spend IT budgets on improving business as usual activities rather than just virtualising servers.

“I’m not saying you shouldn’t do it – but look at where you’d get the most benefit from your spend.”

Andrew Milroy, industry director of the ICT group of analyst Frost & Sullivan, who recently chaired a session at the Sustainability and Technology Forum held in Sydney, broadly agrees that “Sustainable IT is made up of two components. Firstly it consists of ways of reducing IT’s carbon emissions through activities such as data centre consolidation or even small operational changes like power management for PCs. Secondly and perhaps more importantly it comprises ways in which IT and IT suppliers can enable whole organisations to reduce carbon emissions in non IT specific activities such as by developing smart grids for utilities firms or enabling video conferencing.”

According to Riegert while there is interest in green IT generally among Australian enterprises “they are more interested in information that action.”

continued page 2