Earlier this week, a group of vendors, AMD, IBM and HP among them, announced the creation of The Green Grid—a consortium that will aim to address some of the ever increasing power and cooling issues facing data centers. By creating metrics and recommending best practices, The Green Grid is hoping to help IT organizations improve data center efficiency.

The worthiness of The Green Grid’s effort is unquestionable. Vendors and manufacturers are showing deeper shades of green with everything from the products they market (more efficient chips) to the positions they create (VP of Eco-Responsibility) to the collaborations they form (The Green Grid). But the traction of such initiatives depends on consumer interest. Customers are starting to realize that power is an issue. Earlier this month, a study commissioned by AMD and authored by Jonathan Koomey of Lawrence Berkley National Laboratories, found that data centers in the United States consumed 45 billion kilowatts in 2005. That translates into a $2.7 billion utility bill. When it becomes more expensive to cool and power equipment than it is to buy it, data center efficiency and how to achieve it is going to garner even more attention.  

The other day, I spoke with Chris Mines, a senior VP at Forrester Research about The Green Grid announcement, and about the incentives customers have to improve data center operations. At this stage in the game, it’s not so much a company’s desire to decrease their carbon footprint as it is a way for them to save money. Chris acknowledged that the social responsibility component is mixed in there, but right now, it’s buried under economic incentives and anticipation of having to comply with regulations.

The Pollyanna in me wants to believe that a sense of moral responsibility to protect future generations and ecosystems will eventually drive environmental initiatives. But I also know that enlightened self-interest drives much of what we do, personally and professionally. And that’s okay. Whether we do “the right thing” because we feel a moral obligation, have a guilty conscious or anticipate economic gain, we usually expect the result to have a positive impact on our conscience or our bottom line. The biggest incentive for IT organizations to evaluate and improve data center efficiency is the financial impact that paying attention or not paying attention will have on the company. And for right now, that’s as good a reason as any.   

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