Metrics hinder bank project

Energy costs in Canary Wharf have turned the spotlight on green computing

Barclays Capital has started a datacentre review as part of a wider green IT plan, but metrics and operational issues are posing major challenges.

Rising energy costs and supply shortages in areas such as London’s Canary Wharf ­ where Barclays Capital is based ­ have driven a sharper focus on green computing, with the merger of the company’s IT and environmental divisions last year.

But the lack of clear measuring methods and technology available has hampered the project, Barclays Capital’s environmental manager Paul Baglin told Computing.

“We use the Power Usage Effectiveness metric to measure the power consumption of our datacentre, but we still have no clear idea as to how our servers are performing and energy efficiency against overall datacentre consumption,” said Baglin.

“But we are keen on developing a server performance metric, and will step up virtualisation.

“Datacentres take a long time to plan and therefore you try to leave some decisions until a quite late stage to ensure use of the best options available at the point of building.”

Future plans for the bank’s datacentre restructuring include building environmental design criteria into the process with on-site energy generation.

“A lot of people are chasing very few datacentres or sites suitable for local power generation. It might make sense to just stick it in Iceland where you have maximum free cooling, but that is not an option at the moment,” said Baglin.

Barclays Capital has already reduced its carbon footprint by 10.6 per cent via IT initiatives such as collaboration software. It aims to become globally carbon neutral by next year.