Rise of the green machine

Sunday Business Post - Computers in Business - April 01 2007

Technology vendors are promoting machines which are friendly to the environment but which can also save money, writes Dermot Corrigan.

Energy efficiency is the phrase on everybody's lips today. On a global scale, there are sweeping climate change announcements, while here the Irish government has introduced the 'Power of One' initiative to try and persuade Irish consumers to use less energy by doing simple things such as turning off the lights when you leave the room or only using the dishwasher when it is full.

Big technology vendors are aware of the way the wind is blowing and have introduced a number of new energy efficient servers and PCs. These vendors are also aware that, while Irish businesses might care about the environment in theory, they are generally more worried about their bottom-lines.

Hence the introduction in recent years onto the market of products which ensure that purchasing decisions can be both environmentally conscious and economically shrewd. The latest energy efficient servers and desktops consume less energy and also cost less money.

"The economic reasons for adapting energy efficient technology now far outweigh the environmental reasons," said Brian Kavanagh, Primergy product manager with Fujitsu Siemens Computers. "The economic barrier that was there in the past has been taken away, where if I wanted a green PC well I was going to have to pay a premium. Now the costs involved are actually reduced because a green PC is more efficient than a normal PC."

Richard Barrington, head of public policy for Sun Microsystems in Britain, said that businesses which purchase energy efficient technologies generally fall into three camps.

"Some people think of their corporate reputation and are interested in energy efficiency in terms of climate change, these are your BTs or Skys of this world," he said. "A much much bigger group of people are buying energy efficient because energy is costing more and more and people are looking at their bottom line and saying we want to do more with less. Then there are third group of people, including a lot of our big corporate customers, who are running out of space, or cannot get enough power into their data centre."

There are a number of factors which have fallen into place to tilt the balance in favour of energy efficient solutions. The first is that global energy prices have risen sharply.

"What has driven this over the last few years is utility expenses have shot up worldwide," said Eddie English, of Dell. "Probably in the last three to four years on average energy costs have gone up by about 20 to 25 per cent. A lot of people have arrived at a situation where they have to do something because their energy costs are too high."

Meanwhile, the IT equipment used by organisations has become much more powerful and requires a lot more energy to run.

"As electricity costs are increasing, power consumption on modern machines is increasing as well," said Mike Hughes, Windows client manager with Microsoft Ireland. "A PC today needs four or five times as much power as a PC would have a few years ago."

A third reason which has lead Irish businesses towards energy efficient solutions is that they are now using a lot more physical IT infrastructure than in the past. Organisations using data centres, especially, have seen their requirements shoot up.

"Storage requirements are growing phenomenally, up to 50 per cent per year," said Gavin Jones, business development executive, energy & utilities industry with IBM.

The combination of all these factors has placed energy efficiency clearly on the agenda of anyone charged with making IT purchasing decisions in Irish organisations. It also means that managers should consider the 'total cost of purchase' of a piece of IT equipment, rather than just looking at the sticker price upfront.

"Businesses should look the costs down the line," said Kavanagh. "If you are saving €100 on a PC up front it could be costing you a lot more over five years. I think Irish customers are starting to see that they should not always just go for the cheapest upfront."

The server and data centre space is where the highest energy costs are generally found. Consequently this is where the greatest savings can be made by introducing energy efficient technology, and manufacturers and vendors have targeted energy efficiency as a major marketing point for their products.

One metric that server manufactuers are keen to showcase is the 'performance per watt'.

"In the energy efficient servers we are talking about a 25 per cent improvement in terms of performance per watt," said Dell's English. "A regular server is probably running round about 320 or 330 watts. An energy efficient server, with specifically configured processor and memory, will run at around 260. Not alone does it use less power, but it also performs the transaction so much faster."

English said that this translates into significant cost savings.

"It depends on the cost of utility bills in your country, but in general what we are seeing is about $200 or $220 savings per server, per year. That is fairly considerable when you take into account that a large data centre could have a couple of hundred, if not a couple of thousand servers. You are talking real tangible benefits."

Energy efficiency savings are not confined to organisations with large data centres. Savings can also be made in organisations which are running PCs and laptops.

"Vendors are looking to differentiate themselves in these markets, and it is an advantage if they can say they are greener than others," said Hughes. "For example there are the Energy Star ratings. If your PC is energy star compliant you have to meet certain power usage levels. If your machine is energy compliant that can save you €50 a year."

The rising energy costs focused minds within R&D at the major IT manufacturers to develop technology which used less power. Sun Microsystems' latest servers use 'CoolThreads technology', which Barrington said cuts power consumption by 30 per cent.

Barrington said that this did not mean working harder, it meant working smarter. One intelligent deployment of existing power usages is to ensure that processors used their time more efficiently.

"Basically a computer processor does one thing, and then it waits either for another command from the user or for the memory to return information," he said. "So what we have done is build a computer that every time that processor finishes a job and it is waiting for something else, it starts another job. It can actually do 32 things at once."

"Because of that we have been able to increase the clock speed, make the computer go faster and faster, without using more energy and producing more heat. These processors use about half of the energy of traditional processors."

Dell has introduced their ‘Energy Smart’ technology into both desktop PCs and PowerEdge servers. Hughes said that the new servers can deliver up to 25 per cent greater performance per watt, while reducing power consumption by 20 per cent, compared to industry standards.

Another advantage of energy efficient solutions is that they can play a role in keeping replacement and repair costs down.

"The hotter things are the more inclined they are to break down," said Kavanagh. "If you reduce the temperature by ten per cent you can double the lifetime of the mechanical components within a server, which reduces the total cost of ownership of that box."

Other significant costs for organisations which require a large amount of IT machinery are air conditioning and cooling systems. Dell estimate that 40 per cent of the total power usage in a data centre goes into chillers and air conditioning units.

"Not everyone understands that one of the bigger expenses in a data centre is running your air conditioning units," said English. "A server that is consuming less power is going to be generating less heat, so you can crank down your air conditioning and chilling units and save you a lot of money."

A number of the big server manufacturers have introduced tools which allow customers to see how much energy they might save with intelligent technology purchases.

Sun have developed the ‘SWaP’ (Space, Wattage and Performance) metric. This assesses the efficiency and effectiveness of rack optimised server deployments in a data centre.

Potential customers can use the Sun website to perform the calculation (SWaP = performance / (space x power)) and compare results from different systems offered by each vendor they are considering.

The Dell website features a similar gizmo that allows interested individuals to see how much they can save by harnessing the energy efficiencies of Dell products including laptops, servers and other data centre technologies.

Consolidation and virtualisation also play a key part in adding to an organisation’s IT efficiencies. By consolidating all their IT requirements onto fewer, more efficient servers, businesses can make substantial savings.

"Consolidation and virtualisation play an absolutely massive role in conserving energy," said English. "We have seen some serious advances in hardware over the last year. Some customers have been able to go from a ratio of five or six to one. I myself have seen instances where folks have been able to go from ten machines down to one."

"Other things to look at are things like power supply, which historically has been horrendously inefficient," said English. "In our latest servers we have the efficiency rating up to 90 per cent."

English also said that scalability is another area where organisations can make big energy efficiency inroads.

"Historically if you bought a mainframe you bought it with a lot of upgrade space so your business could grow into it," he said. "Dell is trying to allow folks to buy what they need for now, and then you can add on scalable blocks as they are required."

The nature of energy efficiency savings mean that everyone from the largest enterprise to the smallest operation can benefit from efficient technologies.

"Almost any business can benefit from energy efficient technology because even if you have a small business you are still talking about the bottom line costs of running each machine," said Barrington.

Hughes said that one reason why larger organisations turn to energy efficient technology is that individual staff do not always do as much as they can to help keep utility bills down.

"If you are a consumer, you are responsible for your electricity bills, so you are probably more aware of turning your machine off or not leaving the machine running," he said. "In your own house your automatic reaction is to switch it off. Small businesses are probably more aware of their energy costs as well, but if you go up into larger organisations somebody else is paying the electricity bill, so you do not automatically think about saving energy."

Organisations which are concerned about energy efficiency can also turn to software solutions.

Hughes said that the recently released Microsoft Windows Vista operating system features the ability to ensure that unoccupied machines are not left powered up.

"The most important thing from the power consumption perspective is the ability to make the machines sleep," he said. "If you take a laptop running Windows XP, when you put it to sleep it maybe took one or two minutes to come back to power again. From a usability point of view that is a poor experience, so people will just leave it running. Vista can effectively put your PC or laptop to sleep in about two seconds and bring it back to resume in about two seconds as well.

Hughes added that Vista can allow IT managers to se power settings for individual machines.

"If you want individual machines to power off after five minutes of no-one touching the keyboard, you can set that up and apply it right across the organisation,” he said. “Or you can blank the screen if no-one is using the machine."

The operating system can also adjust the energy usage of each individual machine so that only the required amount of power is used.

"Hardware and processor manufacturers have built in more intelligent processors, so depending on what the PC is doing at the time they can build up or down the power which the processor itself is consuming," said Hughes. "So the operating system can work with the processor, depending on what the user is doing."

Hughes said that optimum utilisation of these features could lead to considerable savings on each typical desktop system.

"There was a study done by the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) in the US which said there were savings of €48 per machine per year if you use all these policies together," he said.

Some businesses specifically ask staff not to power down their machines at night, for instance so that they do not miss out on important updates, such anti-virus software upgrades.

"Larger organisations may have policies where they put patches on their machines, and they may encourage staff to actually not switch their machine off," said Hughes.

"This is where automatic software settings become more and more important, because you are effectively taking the user out of the equation."

The 'green' motivation for purchasing one product over another cannot be discounted completely. All of the major IT vendors have reacted to their customers' requirements by introducing environmentally friendly practices.

Energy efficient technologies now sit alongside other responsible practices such as multi-pack solutions which save on packaging materials and supplying less manuals and user instructions with bulk orders.

"It is up to the customer, but in the majority of times they will go for it, as there is no additional cost associated with a service like that," said Kavanagh.

Kavanagh added that other environmentally friendly policies of the large IT manufacturers include reducing the use of dangerous chemicals in machine manufacture, increasing the ease of recycling equipment, cutting the fuel consumed by delivery vehicles and using environmentally friendly packaging material.

Jones said that energy efficient purchasing decisions can be publicised by businesses to impress their customers.

"Companies want to be seen as being custodians of the environment," he said. "Also employees like working for companies that are environmentally conscious, so it helps keep good people who want to make a difference."