The Green Paradox - by Doug Mohney

Views and Opinions on Green IT (Feb 19 2010)

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   While IT and service providers build greener data centers, will there be enough green (dollars) to move organizations into the energy efficient space they want to brag about?   And is there enough green data center space to meet demand – or will there be too much?

    Trends to shut down data center space aren't going away.  For example, cash-strapped California plans a radical reduction in data center space used by state agencies in the next 14 months.  A 25 percent reduction in square footage is ordered by July 2010 and a 50 percent cut is set for July 2011. 

    California state agencies currently operate 400 data centers and server rooms spanning 400,000 square feet and housing more than 9,500 servers, so there's going to be a lot of scrambling to tighten up operations and server usage.

    Part of California's consolidation will see applications move out of older facilities and to a modern and greener state-operated data center that feature energy-efficient cooling systems and solar panels that chip in a part of the electricity.  The state may also move some applications to third-party hosting, but that is incumbent upon cost as much as being green.

    Which brings us to a paradox: Green data centers opening up around the globe while governments and businesses consolidate onto fewer servers.  When organizations choose to outsource to hosting and/or co-location facilities to save money, they are likely to select a green data center only if such is provided at the same or lower cost.  Green data centers may sound nice in principle, but they need to be cost competitive as well as environmentally cuddly.

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