Information technology has come under increasing environmental scrutiny over the last couple of years. Legitimate concerns have been raised about computers, which contain toxic materials such as lead, ending up in landfills or scrapped in foreign countries.Most recently, the amount of power used to run and cool computers, particularly servers, has become a ?hot? topic in industry and government.

From 2000 to 2006, energy use by U.S. servers and data centers, including the power and cooling infrastructure that supports them, more than doubled, according to an August 2007 report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.The EPA estimates that the nation?s servers and data centers consumed about 61 billion kilowatt-hours in 2006, amounting to 1.5 percent of total U.S. electricity consumption, at a cost of $4.5 billion. If current trends continue, data-center energy use will double again by 2011.

This alarming trend is getting the attention of government regulators. ?I think it?s safe to assume that over the next couple of years, we?ll probably see some sort of regulation or legislation around energy efficiency in the data center,? says Bogomil Balkansky, senior director of product marketing at VMware.

The green imperative is leading the IT industry to design more environmentally friendly and energy-efficient products and technologies. Some highlights:

The EPA has been encouraging our industry to design more energy-efficient equipment and adopt greener best practices. To date, more than 35 manufacturers have introduced PCs that meet tougher requirements for Energy Star certification, including an 80-percent-efficient power supply. The EPA is working on Energy Star specifications for servers, as well as developing a metric for data-center efficiency.

Hewlett-Packard, which has been recycling computers since 1987, has stepped up its efforts to reduce its environmental impact and was recognized as one of Fortune Magazine?s ?Ten Green Giants? last year. HP?s Design for Environment program aims to reduce the energy needed to manufacture and use HP products, reduce the amount of materials used, develop materials with less environmental impact, and design equipment that is easier to upgrade or recycle. For example, HP offers a business desktop PC built with up to 95 percent recycled components.

In May 2007, IBM announced Project Big Green, a $1 billion program to decrease energy consumption in data centers. This includes new services and tools that will help clients assess their energy efficiency and manage it. In November 2007, IBM announced an initiative that enables customers to earn energy-efficiency certificates that prove how much they?ve reduced consumption. Available now for IBM mainframes and PowerPC-based systems, the company intends to make the certificates available for its entire line of servers and storage products in 2008, says Rich Lechner, vice president of IT optimization and system software at IBM.Customers can use the certificates to officially document their energy savings, or trade them on the open market for cash, similar to carbon credits.

The Pocketbook Issue
These programs mainly target enterprise customers, in part because of the high costs of inefficient data centers. ?Everyone wants to be environmentally friendly,? says Francis Murello, senior technical manager, Ingram Micro Solution Centers. ?But you?re also looking at the financial aspects -- green solutions can save some green dollars.?

On average, for every dollar spent on IT, an additional 50 cents is spent on related energy costs, according to IDC estimates. That?s expected to increase to 71 cents for every dollar over the next three years and to one dollar in five years, says Lechner. To control such costs, he believes, data center operators can save 40 percent of their energy ?if they take a holistic approach to improving energy efficiency.?

For a 25,000-square-foot data center, assuming a rate of 12 cents per kilowatt-hour, that would amount to almost a quarter of a million dollars annually, he notes.And for every dollar saved on energy costs, operators can save an additional $5 to $8 on operational costs by reducing the amount of hardware and software they need, which in turn reduces the amount of floor space and labor required. But green solutions are ?relevant to clients of all sizes, including mediumand small-size businesses,? says Lechner.

He thinks the energy certificate program will interest smaller customers as well as enterprises.And rising power bills are hitting the pocketbooks of cost-conscious SMBs, prompting growing interest in energy efficiency. In fact, in a November 2007 worldwide survey by IBM, SMBs ranked energy as their single biggest cost increase over the past two years. Some 55 percent are taking action to save energy costs on IT, including purchasing more energy-efficient technology, consolidating servers or evaluating server usage and performance.

Solution Providers Go Green
To capitalize on this growing awareness, forward-thinking solution providers have launched green computing practices, offering consulting services that determine how SMBs can lower energy costs, and then selling them the hardware, software and integration services to implement the changes.

Adding the patina of ?green? to the consulting package can sometimes clinch a deal, says Anthony L. Bongiovanni, president of Micro Strategies, an IBM premier business partner. Bongiovanni has been selling energy-efficient technology to the midmarket -- companies with 500 to 5,000 employees -- for several years. But he started marketing it as green just last year. ?When you start talking to people about green, it?s one of those feel-good things that helps to get them over the hump of implementing a new technology,? he says. Bongiovanni estimates that the green focus has helped him convert 10 percent to 20 percent more prospects.

But selling green can be tricky. Bongiovanni, for instance, has learned that his target is not necessarily the IT director at a midsize company. ?If we talk about energy efficiency, the IT director might not be that interested because the cost of energy doesn?t appear on his budget,? says Bongiovanni.?But for the facilities director, it certainly does.?

Selling Virtualization
The biggest focus for green consulting practices is server virtualization, a software technology that creates virtual machines on one server. Servers are notoriously underutilized, sometimes using only 10 percent of their capacity.Virtual machines can run multiple applications on the same physical server, so many servers can be consolidated onto one machine. This dramatically reduces the number of computers needed and, therefore, the amount of energy used. The technology is so green that Pacific Gas & Electric is offering a $150 rebate for every server retired through virtualization.

Although huge enterprise consolidation projects get the most attention,?any business that has a server can benefit from virtualization technology,? says Balkansky of VMware, the virtualization market leader.According to The Yankee Group, virtualization deployments among SMBs -- companies with fewer than 100 servers or fewer than 1,000 employees -- are expected to double during the next two years.

For solution providers, virtualization can be lucrative. Many VMware partners sell $4 to $6 of services for every $1 in VMware license revenue, says Julie Eades,VMware?s director of channel marketing. ?And they?ll often get another $3 to $4 in sales of additional products on top of that.?

How Ivoxy Does It
One such company is Ivoxy Consulting, a VMware partner that last year launched a green virtualization practice. Ivoxy assesses a customer?s infrastructure, estimates how much the customer can save in power, cooling, equipment footprint and capital/operational costs, and then recommends how to do it. ?When customers see how much time, effort and money they can save through virtualization, they are eager to have us provide the solution to make it a reality,? says Alec Taylor, principal consultant and partner at Ivoxy.

The best thing about the practice is that ?these assessments give us the opportunity to sell new hardware, software, installation and training into our customer base,? he says. ?It?s analogous to hiring consultants to make your home more energy-efficient. They make recommendations, but they also can overhaul your kitchen and sell you more energyefficient appliances.?

Ivoxy uses a product called PowerRecon from PlateSpin (www.platespin.com) to automatically collect the details on the systems in the infrastructure. It inventories all the hardware, including how much heat is generated by each type of system and how much power each uses, says Taylor. This helps Ivoxy assess the potential cost savings in power, cooling and space that can be achieved through consolidation. For large customers, the cost of this assessment is rolled into the project. For smaller companies, Ivoxy charges anywhere from $4,000 to $20,000.

Sometimes, Ivoxy recommends computer upgrades.?Systems less than a year old are 50 percent to 75 percent more efficient than older systems,? says Taylor, who specializes in HP equipment. He also often recommends software such as Verdiem?s Surveyor (www.verdiem.com) that can manage power use down to each individual machine. If the customer has some workers who leave at 5 p.m. and others who typically stay till 8 p.m., for example, the software can be programmed to power down each machine at the appropriate time.

Other green infrastructure plays include blade servers and the new Intel Modular Server, an energy-efficient box that includes up to six servers, a SAN and built-in networking. Green storage initiatives include reducing the amount of data through deduplication; using power-friendly media such as tape and solid-state disks; and consolidating storage infrastructure through storage virtualization.

Ivoxy?s green practice currently represents 20 to 25 percent of the company?s revenue, says Taylor. ?In the last six months, we?ve more than doubled the number of assessments in green computing, and I see that number continuing to accelerate,?he notes.?I would expect it to double again in three to four months.?

Such is the promise of green computing, a practice that every solution provider would be wise to consider.