Green IT might have been the buzz word in the global technology arena, but when it comes to its actual implementation and monitoring, not many IT managers seem to be quite serious about it. According to a recent poll conducted by research firm Gartner, this is mostly being seen in data centres where the IT managers are not paying sufficient attention for measuring, monitoring and modelling the energy use.
“This finding is further affirmed in client conversations which reveal that, although the green IT and data centre energy issue has been on the agenda for some time now, many managers feel that they have to deal with more immediate concerns before focusing attention on their suppliers’ products,” said Rakesh Kumar, research vice president at Gartner.
“In other words, even if more energy efficient servers or energy management tools were available, data centre and IT managers are far more interested in internal projects like consolidation, rationalisation and virtualisation,” he added.
Conducted in April 2009 among more than 130 attendees from the infrastructure and operations (I&O) management, the Gartner webinar found that although green IT issues remain at the top of the agenda, respondents consider vendor and green procurement a low priority activity for the next 18 months. Although 68 per cent of respondents thought data centre energy management is their most important green IT issue for the next 18 months, only 7 per cent consider green procurement and pushing vendors to create more energy efficient and greener solutions as their top priority.
Gartner said that energy management (both in terms of capacity and cost) can only be effective through advanced monitoring, modelling and measuring techniques and processes.
On being asked which energy management metrics they will use in the next 18 months, 48 per cent of respondents said that they had not even considered the issue of metrics. Gartner said, without metrics it is impossible to get accurate data, which is essential to evaluating basic costs, proportioning these costs to different users and setting policies for improvement.
“These metrics form the bedrock for internal cost and efficiency programmes and will become increasingly important for external use. Organisations that want to publicise their carbon usage through green accounting principles will need to have their basic energy use continuously monitored,” said Kumar.