Sustainable servers: How IT can help companies preserve the environment and the bottom line

An explosion of electronic data is creating more demand for more storage capacity and for more servers. More servers mean more energy demands, increased costs and a greater impact on the environment. The situation represents an opportunity for IT to play a greater role in helping companies achieve green goals and reduce or contain costs, says Fred Mapp, former Chief Information Officer at AMD and author of "Mapping Information Technology ... to Your Business." Mapp was speaking at the Spark 2008 IT Invitational sponsored by the W. P. Carey School of Business.

The heat is on, and sustainability is becoming an issue for the information technology department, author and consultant Fred Mapp says. An explosion of electronic data is creating more demand for more storage capacity and for more servers. More servers mean more energy demands, increased costs and a greater impact on the environment.

The situation represents an opportunity for IT to play a greater role in helping companies achieve green goals and reduce or contain costs, says Mapp, former Chief Information Officer at AMD and author of "Mapping Information Technology … to Your Business." Computing has benefited from the effects of Moore's Law, postulated by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore. In 1965, Moore predicted that the number of transistors on a chip would double about every two years.

For more than 40 years, Moore's law has proven correct, although Moore has said it cannot continue indefinitely. But Moore's Law meant that as computers became more powerful, they became smaller and cheaper as well. Speaking at the Spark 2008 IT Invitational sponsored by the W. P. Carey School of Business, Mapp recalled that when he started for IBM in the mid-1960s, a 512K computer filled a good-sized room.

"We had monsters," Mapp said. Today, he noted, the computer in his car has more power than one of the old IBM mainframes. Once, a transistor was the size of his little finger, but today you could fit a million on the head of a pin, he said. But there's a tradeoff. Packing all that computing power into a small space generates heat -- as anyone who has ever operated a laptop in their lap can attest.

The growing demand for data

As the computer industry has created more storage capacity, business and consumers have found ways to create more data. And it is growing exponentially. "In 2010, there's going to be more data produced in a single year than all of prior history,' Mapp said. "I mean everyone went to online records. You want to know your bank balance in the middle of the night, you can check it online. You're probably checking it right now.

All the health records are going online. Google searches." Then there are consumer uses. Mapp says that when he and his wife went on a vacation to Europe she took photos with her digital camera. "She must have 2,000 pictures on that camera,' he said. "When she gets home, what does she do? She downloads them to her hard drive. Then she e-mails them to all her friends."

Mapp showed a diagram, illustrating how a 1 megabyte e-mail sent to four people, who send it to four more people grows to more than 50 megabytes. "Have you ever thought about it?" Mapp asked. "See that's one of the things. Even the people that run IT aren't thinking about this. They just feel [capacity] is unlimited, it will always be there, I'll just save something. There will always be storage." But there might not be. The need for data storage will grow 10 percent a year over the next four years, Mapp said.

Hungry for power

Last year the United States Environmental Protection Agency reported to Congress that by 2011, the energy demands of data centers would almost double from 2006 levels to about 12 gigawatts in peak periods. That would increase demand by the equivalent of 10 power plants, the report said. The power needs for the data centers of technology companies such as Microsoft, Google and Yahoo are staggering.

Yahoo! and Microsoft operate server farms in Quincy, Wash., a small town three hours outside Seattle. Quincy is close to the Columbia River, a source of plentiful and cheap hydroelectric power. For the same reason, Google chose to build a new data center at The Dalles, on the Oregon side of the river. According to the EPA, improved efficiencies could lower the aggregate demand for power at data centers by about 30 percent.

Using "best practices" could lower the demand by as much as 50 percent. State of the art technology could lower the demand by as much as 80 percent. There's been speculation that the EPA will address some of energy use issues through new regulations. There may be limits to data creation and storage or more regulations on how data centers are designed and operated.

Perhaps as much as any inspiration through regulation, many companies are becoming interested in becoming green in their data centers for another kind of green -- money, says Rob Baxter, Chief Information Officer at Shamrock Foods in Phoenix. "Do you use the environmentally friendly servers or the ones that are a little cheaper?' Baxter said. "Well, the payback on the better ones doesn't take very long."

It's harder and more expensive to reconfigure an existing data center and make it more efficient than it is to build a new one, Baxter said. "But if you don't start thinking about it, you never solve the problem,' he said. "Now everybody's thinking about it." Mapp says power costs are becoming a huge issue for corporate IT. For every $1.00 spent on hardware, there's a cost of 50 cents for energy and cooling.

But there's a disconnect for many IT departments -- many never see the power bill. "How can you manage something if you don't know what it is?" he asks. Facilities managers, who usually manage the power bill, seldom approach IT managers about cost-savings on data centers.

"Something that simple -- you'd be surprised at how many people aren't even doing that," Mapp said. IT should take the lead in this area before it's too late. "If I said look at the person next to you -- every other person is going to be gone, fired, because we didn't take any cost reduction -- what would you do?" Mapp said. "We always wait until it's an emergency."

Mapp believes electric power usage is one example of how today's IT managers and department need to be more integrated with the company's central business goals and operations. The days of focusing on developing applications are over as more companies buy software from vendors. There are exciting opportunities for IT in such functions as managing costs, business processes and compliance with government regulations.

Bottom Line:

• The volume of new data being created, collected and stored is exploding, generating greater demands for electricity. Increased demand means higher costs and possibly more regulations.
• Information technology departments need be proactive in managing costs associated with the software and hardware they buy, operate and maintain.
• The trend for increased demand for power and data storage facilities is evident, but often companies wait for an emergency before acting.
• The days of focusing on developing applications are over as more companies buy software from vendors. Information Technology needs to be involved in the core processes of the business, not just off to the side.