Heather Clancy
THE BUZZ
It being Earth Week or Earth Month and all, I’m actually surprised that more technology vendors haven’t been making a bigger deal out of their efforts to contribute to the green IT movement.
But there have been more than a few press releases clogging my inbox, including a new report from Forrester Research, which has decided to dedicate an analyst to watching this space, so to speak. (Here’s a link to that report, although I must warn you now that it costs moolah to download it.)
This issue has been a pet blog topic of mine for some time now, as well as the focus of our “Easier To Be Green” cover story in the print edition of CRN back in January. I’m happy to report that our cover gal, Jennifer Mazzanti of eMazzanti Technologies, reports that her rebranding around the Green IT movement has taken on a life of its own. She has definitely landed more than one deal based on her ability to help the customer demonstrate its environmental responsibility, and she’s been asked to help with projects at both American University and MIT.
The Forrester analyst focused on Green IT, Christopher Mines, plans to follow this topic according to a vendor’s focus on one or more green dimensions: Design principles (especially energy efficiency and power handling), Manufacturing practices (from materials to processes), Operations and management and Disposal.
Right now, one of the most active concerns, of course, is power consumption. The Forrester report estimates that the typical power supply operates at 65 percent to 75 percent of efficiency because of the AC to DC power conversion that has to happen to run electronics equipment. (So, basically, this means that the rest of the power is wasted.) Forrester quotes these figures from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.)
Most of you have probably heard of Green Grid, which is worth keeping tabs on. Another consortium focused on building more efficient power supply technology is 80PLUS.
So far, much of the vendor-speak around the green IT movement has failed to include much substance for solution providers. But that hasn’t stopped some VARs from painting themselves green.
Sirius Computer Solutions, an IBM Premier Business Partner, just won the IBM PartnerWorld Beacon Award for Best IBM System x Energy Management Solution. One customer for the Sirius solution is a Web hosting company that runs off solar power.
Pretty cool. Literally.
