How to get a green light for an environmentally friendly data centre

There are two areas where the interests of business and the environment are in accord. Internal costs and customer demand. Any reduction in long term costs, or improvement in the customer’s propensity to buy, is likely to get a ‘green’ light from budget holders.

Changing the internal cost structure of the data centre is often easier than improving customer demand. Internally, the variables are known and within your control. Predictions for costs are always more credible than projected sales. These satisfactorily accurate predictions can easily be presented to support the business case for change. There have been many recent technology innovations that can dramatically reduce a data centre’s cost profile at the same time as being significantly ‘greener’.

Take server hardware. Servers are the key to lower power useage in data centres. Chip manufacturers, like Intel, and hardware integrators, like IBM, have invested heavily to develop products that can perform on far less power to operate.

IBM claims power savings of up to 60% from its new server technology. Not only are IBM servers up to 60% cheaper to run, they also require up to 60% less cooling, since power usage directly affects heat output. Calculate the full cost of power to operate these technologies over their lifetime and contrast the results with standard or legacy technology. The savings are pretty persuasive. Power saving technology can quickly pay for itself.

The business case for new, energy efficient technology is made on a cost basis. Happily, it also makes the data centre greener.

Customer Demand

It's a lot hard to make a business case for green initiatives that could increase customer demand. Still, the effort is well worth making.

Many organisations have Corporate and Social Responsibility (CSR) policies that explicitly state a preference for suppliers with green credentials. Elsewhere in the same organisations there will invariably be a policy stating that the supplier should be 'fit for purpose'. So a professionally run data centre with an impeccable operational record will stand a higher chance of satisfying those customer’s CSR requirements and become a preferred supplier if they have implemented certain environmental initiatives.

For this data centre, environmental policy is a matter of competitive advantage.

To avoid confusion, two types of data centre need to be defined; private and public. A private data centre is owned and operated by an organisation to service its own internal users. A public data centre is set up to provide external organisations with data outsourcing services, such as web hosting or backup facilities for disaster recovery. Though the costs of these services will be funded differently, both types of data centres have ‘customers’ with broadly similar needs and as such the data centre will supply to similar demands.

Successful demand satisfaction and creation initiatives depend on an understanding of the customer’s stated buying criteria and also their un-stated or true reasons to buy. Various arms of marketing science can be utilised to inform decisions. However, an element of entrepreneurial risk taking in decisions will always be required. As long as the entrepreneurial factor stems from a need to satisfy customer demand, or raise it, rather than a wish for the world to be a better place, a business case is being made and resulting green initiatives stand a chance of succeeding.

When customers demand environmentally aware suppliers, and green initiatives meet that requirement, they often lower the data centre's internal costs. Even when they don't they cost so little that the demand they create more than compensates.

For example, it is easier and cheaper now to choose an electricity provider offering power from renewable sources. The data centre that selects such a supplier may pay a little more for power. Although if low-energy servers are installed the overall power costs may fall. But they will be responsible for zero carbon emissions. It is these green initiatives, properly costed and with their effects on demand taken into account that should be implemented.

As is clear, many environmental initiatives, properly considered, may have sound business benefits. Paper recycling bins subconsciously dissuade employees from printing documents. Light switches turn themselves off at night to save energy. Marketing material that advertise that you do these things, will win customer approval for your service. And of course, the environment will benefit too. It matters.

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