Virtualisation – The Green Option Large enterprises and small businesses alike depend on their IT systems to provide the high performance, availability, and resiliency customers and partners demand.
To be competitive, organisations must find an economical way to simplify and efficiently manage evolving technology requirements. Businesses of all sizes are pressured by environmental groups to do more with less space, fewer IT resources and tighter budgets. 
Virtualisation is designed to help you do just that by:
- Integrating servers, storage and networking in a single chassis
- No special wiring needed
- Flexible, modular technology
- Easy to deploy and manage
Virtualisation tackles the challenge by reducing the need to consume too much power and introduces a more efficient way of reducing thermal emissions and also reduces costs by optimising and managing IT environments to provide the following business benefits:
- Reduce the total cost of server ownership and increase hardware utilisation.
- Decrease unplanned downtime with reliable, cost effective disaster recovery
- Reduce security risks and improve manageability & reliability of desktop computing.
- Increase productivity, decrease costs and improve software quality.
- Cost savings from needing fewer servers
- Energy savings from reduced power and cooling needs
- Better management control of the infrastructure through centralisation.
- New servers can also be deployed in hours.
Other benefits can be achieved by consolidating some PCs to make the most of office space creating a hotdesk environment. Virtualisation has not been used to its full potential thus far, but that is set to change.
Research from Forrester Group (2007) indicates that 35 per cent of European businesses per annum are using or piloting virtualisation technology, with a further 16 per cent expressing an interest each year.
VMware software is a virtualisation platform used to increase IT efficiency, decrease costs and respond faster to changing business demands.
The technology involves hosting operating systems on a central server that allows staff remote access to their PC from any desktop. VMware Infrastructure leverages a company’s storage, network, and computing resources by creating virtual services from the physical IT infrastructure, enabling on demand resource allocation.
According to research, many large organisations are testing desktop virtualisation to manage office capacity, reduce power consumption costs and improve efficiency.
Most servers are not being used to their full capacity, with one server for every application. By consolidating applications it improves efficiency within the business.
Many firms attribute their adoption of virtualisation to server consolidation, but an equivalent number are using the technology to make their server environments more flexible and agile.
As virtualisation becomes an increasing standard and customer pressure mounts for greener options, vendors will have no choice but to embrace the technology. Late adopters seeking to take full advantage of server virtualisation will eventually have to make changes to IT practices.
Server virtualisation is quickly surpassing other forms of infrastructure virtualisation, including techniques for virtualising storage and networks.
The rapid adoption of server virtualisation can be attributed to its immediate and long-term advantages, which allow firms to reduce costs while making their infrastructures more flexible over time. Unlike computer grid technologies, which require architectural changes, server virtualisation allows firms to easily encapsulate existing applications into containers that can be moved between physical servers.
Green IT Matters
Green IT is part of a fundamental change in the economy and society, becoming a subset of the larger green (or sustainable) business trend, which reconciles sustainable business practices with profitable business operations. In the IT industry, both suppliers and buyers are coming to realize that they should incorporate green principles into the design, manufacturing, operation, and disposal of IT assets. The impetus for this change comes from a variety of sources:
- Government and global mandates are policing aspects of IT products and operations, including toxic materials used in building computing peripherals, disposal of electronic equipment, and emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases caused by power consumption and other sources.
- Product USP’s increasingly depend on growing consumer demand for green products and services, some retailers have developed "sub-brands" with a green angle and increasingly, manufacturers across industries are using green products and green corporate behaviour as a way to appeal to this growing segment of customers.
- Companies buying more energy-efficient IT equipment get the dual benefit of lowering their utility bills while also reducing their carbon footprint. Server and storage virtualisation for example, can deliver considerable savings in energy consumption as well as decreasing physical waste.
- Corporate Social Responsibility or CSR initiatives enhance the brands of companies by helping them stand out as those that care about the communities they operate within. Going green is part of any CSR agenda because of the prominence of global warming concerns.
Environmental Policies in the Supply Chain
Most companies pursuing green IT are pursuing broader corporate sustainability objectives; cleaning up their supply chains and enforcing green policies with their suppliers are often a major part of such efforts.
A profound economic change is taking place.
Summary
Environmental Policies are an increasingly important agenda for corporate IT organizations and their technology suppliers. Corporate IT will go green in the coming years, driven by a combination of cost, efficiency, regulatory compliance, and corporate environmental responsibility.
Green IT initiatives demonstrate the growing alignment of business and environmental incentives.
Companies' efforts to improve their IT efficiency and governance have direct green benefits as well.
|
