Green IT Solutions Info Advantage offers a new suite of Green IT products and services that are energy efficient and reduce infrastructure. Green IT solutions can save businesses significant amounts of money while strengthening and improving the environment.

Green IT solutions can help the environment and improve your business

Information technology has come under increasing environmental scrutiny over the last couple of years. Legitimate concerns have been raised about computers, which contain toxic materials such as lead, ending up in landfills or scrapped in foreign countries. Most recently, the amount of power used to run and cool computers, particularly servers, has become a "hot" topic in industry and government.

From 2000 to 2006, energy use by U.S. servers and data centers, including the power and cooling infrastructure that supports them, more than doubled, according to an August 2007 report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA estimates that the nation's servers and data centers consumed about 61 billion kilowatt-hours in 2006, amounting to 1.5 percent of total U.S. electricity consumption, at a cost of $4.5 billion. If current trends continue, data-center energy use will double again by 2011.

This alarming trend is getting the attention of government regulators. "I think it's safe to assume that over the next couple of years, we'll probably see some sort of regulation or legislation around energy efficiency in the data center," says Bogomil Balkansky, senior director of product marketing at VMware.

The green imperative is leading the IT industry to design more environmentally friendly and energy-efficient products and technologies. Here are some highlights:

The EPA has been encouraging our industry to design more energy-efficient equipment and adopt greener best practices. To date, more than 35 manufacturers have introduced PCs that meet tougher requirements for Energy Star certification, including an 80-percent-efficient power supply. The EPA is working on Energy Star specifications for servers, as well as developing a metric for data-center efficiency.

Hewlett-Packard, which has been recycling computers since 1987, has stepped up its efforts to reduce its environmental impact and was recognized as one of Fortune Magazine's "Ten Green Giants" last year. HP's Design for Environment program aims to reduce the energy needed to manufacture and use HP products, reduce the amount of materials used, develop materials with less environmental impact, and design equipment that is easier to upgrade or recycle. For example, HP offers a business desktop PC built with up to 95 percent recycled components.

In May 2007, IBM announced Project Big Green, a $1 billion program to decrease energy consumption in data centers. This includes new services and tools that will help clients assess their energy efficiency and manage it. In November 2007, IBM announced an initiative that enables customers to earn energy-efficiency certificates that prove how much they've reduced consumption. Available now for IBM mainframes and PowerPC-based systems, the company intends to make the certificates available for its entire line of servers and storage products in 2008, says Rich Lechner, vice president of IT optimization and system software at IBM. Customers can use the certificates to officially document their energy savings, or trade them on the open market for cash, similar to carbon credits.

To learn more about Green IT solutions and how they can help your business,
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