October Conversations

                                                        

I'm presenting this Thursday, October 30th, at the EMC Forum in New York City.  If you'd like a dive into the latest technology and trends with EMC and   our partners, here's a great way to get fully immersed in a single day.

"EMC Forum is the premier one-day opportunity to learn how EMC and our partners can help your organization build and refine your information infrastructure to reduce risk, eliminate costs, and exploit the value of your information. This complimentary event features an engaging keynote address by an EMC senior executive, followed by a series of breakouts on key technology trends and challenges."

With regular updates, I've been discussing variations on the efficiency theme for more than two years now and the focus of our message has been consistent.

That's changed.

Last week a colleague said: "You need to make this an October presentation, not a September presentation."  He was getting at how global economics, and conditions on Wall Street, dictate a different emphasis. 

And he's right.

We'll still talk about saving energy, improving environmentally and becoming more efficient too - but all with a much stronger emphasis on the economics of efficiency.

I believe that all of the green and environmental and efficient IT discussions lead to a single objective: the elimination of waste.

Fortunately, becoming more efficient, saving energy and saving money can be mutually inclusive. To the established  key principles - consolidate, optimize, automate - we now add a fourth: economize. 

(I know when someone says "economize" to me it conjures memories of my mother boiling hot dogs for dinner.  May not be hungry when you finish but your taste buds aren't very happy.)

We all understand that ecological concerns and harmful carbon based fuel impacts must still be factored in.  In today's news, Prince Charles is quoted warning that the financial crisis shouldn't eliminate environmental concerns:

"The credit crunch is rightly a preoccupation of vast significance and importance. But we take our eye off the climate crunch at our peril," he said in a speech at a science museum in Tokyo."

That said, being green has become even less easy - for Kermit and for the rest of us too. Cost reduction will rule (not that it has ever been unimportant) for the foreseeable future.

In the case of IT, we are fortunate that there are opportunities to be wiser in how we spend and still get the results we seek. 

I've seen lots of examples already:

- A business supply customer in Australia reduced their data center space, power and cooling but about 70% after a virtualization / consolidation project.

- A Health Care customer in California cut their annual power bill by more than $700,000 by while increasing server utilization to 80% after a series of application focused consolidation & virtualization projects.

- EMC saved about $750,000 by tiering an Oracle application. 

And EMC has been at it for awhile in our own IT operations, knocking down projects that range from double sided printing to legacy systems elimination to massive storage consolidation.   Not only have we avoided capital expenses in the tens of millions of dollars, and saved more than $1M on energy, we have been able to extend the useful life of our data centers by years.

During a customer meeting last week, we discussed how conditions have changed and asked what impact that would have on IT plans. 

This customer expects to exert greater care and expects more fiscal scrutiny.  Still, they also expect to move ahead with any and every project that can reduce total costs.  And they expect positive environmental impacts will be a bonus.

How about you?

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Comments

[Patrick Donohue]

this will be presented at the NYC Forum on Thursday, Oct. 30th, 2008?

[Dick Sullivan]

Patrick,

Yes. I am presenting on this topic at the Forum in the afternoon on Thursday.

[Dan Sullivan]

I find it interesting that you've been prognosticating the symbiosis between financial stability and energy efficiency since your first blog entries almost a year and a half ago. Unfortunately it took a financial crunch coupled with an oil/energy crisis hitting the masses where it hurts the most - their wallets - to attract peoples' attention.

I'm not going to pull a Chris Matthews/Howard Dean and anoint you John the Baptist, but you deserve credit.

On another note, not unrelated to Green IT, Bradford Plumer of the New Republic presents an interesting, more affordable way to allow people to "Go green":

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/environmentandenergy/archive/2008/11/03/the-trouble-with-green-financing.aspx