Energy costs are on the rise, as is the demand to reduce data center and server expenses. The Green IT Movement has proven to be a cost effective way to accomplish both. It also has the added benefits of helping the environment and creating positive PR for your IT team and your company. It’s no wonder that Green IT is among the top initiatives for CIOs and IT teams in 2010.

Virtualization and Cloud computing are at the center of most Green IT efforts. By now, most IT professionals have a vague understanding of the financial benefits of virtualization. However, few companies maintain specific calculations regarding the total cost of ownership for their servers or data center(s). Even less understand the total cost of ownership for virtual servers. Without this information, understanding the return on investment, or even completing a simple cost benefit analysis, can be a daunting task.

Further, the PR associated with a Green initiative is more impactful if the environmental benefits can be quantified and reported. Unfortunately, these calculations are even more difficult to produce, so most IT teams simply ignore them. This oversight makes it impossible for marketing, PR, and costumer relations to leverage the intrinsic value generated by your Green IT efforts. Ultimately, your company misses out on an opportunity to better connect with their target audience.

Fortunately, our friends at VMWare have done the leg work for us to create a baseline for these statistics. Their new TCO/ROI Calculator and Virtualization Savings Calculator can quickly quantify both the Financial and Environmental impact of server virtualization:

• Virtualization Savings Calculator- Calculates Financial and Environmental impact of Virtualization efforts
• TCO/ROI Calculator - Calculates and graphs the TCO and ROI of Virtualization efforts

Just remember, VMWare is a provider of virtualization solutions. That said, this calculator does have a slight bent, because it is designed to motivate you to purchase virtualization products. However, it does serve as great benchmark to begin your own analysis. Further, the Virtualization Savings Calculator site includes a Virtualization Assessment Tool that can help you compare your needs to those of similar companies. It can also suggest a platform that best fits the virtualization plans of your Green IT initiative.

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