If you've got plans to green IT, you need a baseline starting point --- what's the current state of your Green IT. Plenty of companies have spent plenty of money doing that. I've found a free online tool, though, that'll do it for you, and potentially save you a great deal of money and time.
The free online tool is from Forrester, and it's a great, quick-and-dirty way for calculating your baseline.
Get to it here.
You enter the number of your IT assets, including computers, servers, storage, network gear, phones, and periphals, and include the watts each use, as well as the total number of hours of uptime. You also include information about cooling equipment, lighting, and power distribution.
Based on that, You'll see the total amount of emissions for you entire company, as well as by type of IT asset. And you'll also see the total cost as well as energy draw. You can then have the results emailed to you.
True, you won't get the same amount of detail as if you hired a consultant --- but then again, you won't have a big hole in your budget, either. The calculator is a great starting point, and good back-of-the-envelope type tool. If you've been leery of starting a Green IT deployment, it's a great place to start.
