There's a lot of wishful thinking when it comes to detailing the bottom line benefits that can accrue to companies who pursue a green IT strategy. Enterprises make assumptions that they'll improve the bottom line by improving their IT department's environmental record. But is it, in fact, true?

A just-released report from the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, Accenture Lawrence Berkeley Labs, the federal Department of Energy, and others, shows that in fact, companies can gain very big benefits by greening their data centers. The "Data Center Energy Forecast Report" study, based on case studies with 17 different companies, reveals that using the right techniques and technologies, a data center can save a full 55 percent of its energy costs by going green.

The report examines 11 different technology initiatives that companies have used in the last year to reduce energy use in data centers, ranging from consolidation, to server power modeling, resource optimization, and cooling improvements, among others.

The study was undertaken in response to an EPA report last year that found data centers' energy use more than doubled between 2000 and 2006. As of 2006, data center energy use took up a total of 1.5 percent of all energy use in the U.S. -- more than all color TVs combined.

One of the EPA report's finding was particularly startling -- the purchase price of a new server is less than the capital cost of the power and cooling infrastructure needed to support that server. In addition, soon the lifetime energy costs of the server will also exceed the purchase price of the servers. That makes one thing abundantly clear: Reducing the number of servers, and the electricity and cooling required by servers, will go a long way towards improving any enterprise's bottom line.

The EPA report outlined three different scenarios for reducing energy use in the data center. The most aggressive, what it calls the state-of-the-art scenario, can reduce energy consumption in the data center by 55 percent. That number may sound abstract, but here are the real numbers to consider: This scenario would save 74 billion kilowatt hours of electricity compared to current electricity trends by the year 2011, which would mean a whopping $5.1 billion in savings.

The just-released "Data Center Energy Forecast Report" examined whether that EPA state-of-the-art scenario is in fact reachable. The answer is an unequivocal yes. The report concludes:

After 17 case studies and further analysis, this report answers that these results can be achieved using the technology available today and may even be exceeded by improvements to IT operations.

IT Infrastructure and Site Infrastructure Savings

The Data Center Energy Forecast Report examined two primary types of data center infrastructures ---IT infrastructure and site infrastructure -- and detailed the savings that could be gained by greening each. IT infrastructure is made up of servers, storage, and the network. Site infrastructure is a data center's lighting, power delivery, and cooling systems. In the IT infrastructure, savings can be primarily gained via better handling servers. Greening network and storage will have less of an impact. Site infrastructure can account for half or more of all energy used by data centers, and so this is also a good place for enterprises to target.

The report's case studies show that some of the greatest savings can be gained from virtualization. The survey studied Symantec, and found that via virtualization, 1,635 servers across the company's data centers (including switches, routers, firewalls, and storage)were brought down to 386 servers plus 152 servers in other sites). Sun was studied as well. By consolidating servers, according to the report, Sun was able to reclaim 88 percent of its data center floor space, and reduce power consumption by more than 60 percent. It was also able to avoid more than $9 million in construction costs for data center space.

On the site infrastructure side of things, the survey found that some of the greatest benefits can be reaped by targeting something that is little thought-about -- cooling improvements for IT equipment, such as fans or modular cooling units, or chilled water systems.

Bottom Line Recommendations

For IT managers, perhaps the most important part of the report are its findings and recommendations. Here are several of the most important ones:

Legacy Upgrades Can Be Nearly as Efficient as New Commissions: This is good news for companies that can't undertake massive IT overhauls. Retrofitting legacy data centers can be surprisingly effective. In particular, the report says that cooling of legacy data centers provides a high payoff, using a combination of air management, variable frequency drives, and water-side economizers.

IT Initiatives Deliver Greater Impact than Site Improvements: For now, this means that IT transformation, including virtualization and treating the data center holistically, offers a much better payoff than site improvements. So for now, IT management would do well to focus first on IT initiatives.

Existing Green Technology Works: The survey found that companies would do well to start their initiatives today, instead of waiting for new green technology to appear. The reports says clearly, "Results show that individual data centers can save considerable amounts of energy by adopting available technology."

Using green technology today will pay off not only in saving energy costs, but other ways as well, notably, allowing enterprises to avoid or deter upgrades or expansions to their data centers.

There is plenty of exceedingly useful information including detailed case study information and advice on the best use of green technology in the report. Anyone interested can download it from GreenerComputing here.

Preston Gralla is the editor of GreenerComputing.