VMTN Blog

James Governor posts on the plane home from VMworld Europe over on his Greenmonk site. As 'open-source' and 'bottom-up' analysts, the RedMonk folks are very clued in and have their ears close to the ground.  Green IT translates directly into dollars even if you don't care about that 'good for the planet' stuff.

Link: How Virtualisation Improves the Environment: VMing the World.

Running VMware on production servers for Windows-based applications can drive utilisation up from only 15% into the 90%+ mark. Not only can virtualisation help an organisation to make its existing servers run more efficiently, it can also reduce total numbers of servers by adding more flexibility into the mix. What is the difference between a QA server, a development machine, or a production box? Not much. By making it easier to provision, re-provision, and decommission servers virtualisation can reduce the need for every silo to have its own boxes. Centralising a server sprawl can help an organisation get a handle on its total energy consumption, and potentially lower cooling and energy costs through economies of scale. ...

If the only reason an organisation chooses to go down the virtualisation route is to lower costs that is fantastic. Doing so doesn’t make the efficiency gains less significant. Cutting costs and going green go hand in  hand. ...

I heard a few nice examples at VMworld. Thus Aspen, the reinsurance company, is currently rolling out thin clients, more like old school mainframe terminals but with rich media capabilities, to its end-users. Aspen calculates, in conjunction with their consulting partner BSG, that the average Windows PC consumes about 150 Watts of power. The new thin clients- nearer 8. Watts not to like? Aspen is even considering rolling out these thin clients to its users at home. ...

Efficiency is green- we should praise efficiency, not bury it. The reasons don’t matter- but the results do. I spoke to someone this morning who said customers don’t really care about green, but just wanted to know how many dollars they would save in deploying virtualisation technology, and therefore tech companies shouldn’t talk about eco issues. I think this misunderestimates some important dynamics. Few customers are going to choose a technology just because its labelled green, its true, but some might well be put off by a supplier arguing that green issues don’t matter.

If green IT is a fad I am going to celebrate it while it lasts. VMware has already done a lot for the environment, just by helping us make Windows servers more efficient, whether or not it markets the fact. Thanks Diane and Mendel!