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Finance IT guzzles most power

IT industry's power consumption crisis

Financial services firms are the worst culprits when it comes to IT’s consumption of energy, says analyst Gartner.

In a new report Rakesh Kumar, vice president at Gartner, says chief information officers (CIOs) must wake up to spiralling power consumption and possible environmental legislation to avoid an energy crisis in IT.

‘The worst are the financial services companies because they have such large pockets and are buying the latest high-density servers and storage devices without any regard to what they can switch off,’ he said. ‘They need to consolidate the equipment they already have, and switch off equipment that is not being used.

‘It will eventually be possible to implement systems that can operate within targeted power and thermal limits, although many of the components that will enable this kind of power management will not arrive in the next five years.’

In the meantime, Kumar advises CIOs to focus on improving use of existing equipment to delay moves towards high-density systems.

‘Financial services firms are under no pressure to cut back on technology that is not being used, while being under huge pressure to use new applications,’ he said.

‘I sincerely hope this does not lead to legislation, and that smart CIOs will self regulate and be proactive on this issue.

‘My cynical side says it is not going to happen, because it costs 25 per cent more to design an environmentally friendly data centre and people will not do that until they are forced.’

Kumar believes that increasing legislation will force organisations to focus on the problem, but says legislators are out of touch with more subtle technology issues.

‘It is much more difficult to recycle heat that comes out the back of a host of data centres than the heat from a steel foundry or a chemical plant,’ he said.

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Further reading:

Firms must not paper over the cracks

How to educate staff on green benefits

Finance IT guzzles most power

IT industry's power consumption crisis

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