New Year’s resolutions return every 365 days – often with the subsequent realization of having set goals that were too high. Whether as a private individual or as a company: Sustainability has been among the top aspirations for years. The IT industry is considered one of the largest consumers of electricity and is therefore particularly aware of its responsibility to the environment.
Up to 50 percent savings potential on private cloud environments
Server hardware for new technologies such as blockchain, machine learning and artificial intelligence in particular is forced to become increasingly powerful, and so higher energy consumption occurs in data centers that process these information flows. As a result, energy-efficient operations are playing an increasingly important role. “We notice that the issue of sustainability has been in the spotlight for data center operators as well as users for quite some time now,” said Jerome Evans, founder and CEO of firstcolo GmbH. With the right strategy, large amounts of electricity can be saved, something many German operators are already working on quite successfully.
Greener IT through cloud migration
To further pursue the approach of green IT, data center operators are working around the clock on new solutions and strategies that will bring them closer to this goal one step at a time. “External data centers solve the problem for many businesses of a very high demand for additional servers and cloud infrastructure, which they are often unable to meet due to a lack of IT resources,” explains Evans. In fact, it is not uncommon for sensitive security gaps to arise from an excessive demand, and sustainable considerations are lost. However, in many cases, a large number of data centers are only utilized up to 20 percent – which is often due to an orientation toward peak operating times that are rarely met.
“By migrating the already existing infrastructures, this large gap can be significantly reduced – saving up to 50 percent of the energy used,” the colocation expert elaborates. Affected servers subsequently run more securely as well as more efficiently and can be scaled much more easily.
Defying rising costs
Skyrocketing energy prices in particular are ensuring that green IT and energy efficiency are playing an increasingly important role in data centers. Since the IT infrastructure of industrial companies uses huge amounts of electricity, this initially results in significant additional costs. “However, conscious economic action in the interests of the company and an all-encompassing sustainability strategy need by no means be at odds with each other,” Evans points out.
“By outsourcing data to a private cloud environment, the amount of energy required per server resource used decreases, greatly reducing effective energy consumption through increased efficiency.” Colocation operators are additionally focusing on green and highly efficient hardware as well. Sensors that measure air changes, cooling systems that save water and electricity, and energy-efficient processors – a wide variety of measures pay off in terms of sustainability in the latest data centers. The expert concludes: “Operators are gradually managing to cope with the increasing volume of data and are focusing more and more on sustainability aspects.
