IBM is betting big on green data centres to help companies raise energy efficiency and lower costs. The company has partnered with Hyderabad-based Ctrl S to expand its 'green footprint' in India to enable clients, especially in the mid-market segment, set up affordable and energy efficient data centres.
"We have already built over 2,50,000 square feet of data centre space for over 55 clients in the country including Dr Reddy's Laboratories and ING Vysya. These are businesses that we serve directly. Ctrl S is our only partner in the country and we help them set up more green data centres in the country. The partnership model will cut costs for our clients and popularise green data centres," said Anoop Nambiar, country manager, business partner organisation (India/South Asia), IBM.
Green data centre is a part of IBM's Project Green initiative. Launched last year, IBM is making an investment of $1 billion annually for Project Big Green to increase the efficiency of IBM products. New IBM products and services, announced as part of this project, provide a five-step approach towards energy efficiency at the data centre. If followed, it will reduce data centre energy consumption and transform clients' technology infrastructure into 'green' data centres. The estimated energy savings is approximately 42 percent for an average data centre.
"Data centres need too much power and are also posing questions relating to environmental concerns and corporate sustainability. Estimates suggest that 50 cents are spent on energy for every dollar of hardware. This is expected to rise by 54 percent in four years. With energy costs getting dearer, it may not be sustainable for organisation to build such data centres," he said.
Data centres house computer servers and equipment that consume large amount of energy as demand for computing power grows worldwide. IBM's new enterprise data centre is over 40 percent more energy efficient compared to regular ones. "It also eliminates 80 percent outages and reduces floor space by 80 percent. With real estate prices being a great concern for many organisations in the country, this could in turn bring down their operational costs. It has also reduced disaster recovery time by 85 percent," he said.
There is a direct correlation between reduced total cost of ownership and greening of the data centre. Since green IT is all about reducing energy consumption — reducing waste of IT resource and lowering carbon emissions — it directly impacts both capital cost and operational cost. "Innovative techniques like virtualisation, stored cooling, integrated power management along with right sizing the data centre cuts capital cost. Mature data centre layout design, optimisation and operations techniques will reduce operational costs," he said.