Using electricity is bad for budgets, bad for the planet, and arguably bad for national security as well. So IT organizations have a great desire to reduce energy usage.
There are three basic ways to save energy in IT:
1. Consolidate work from underused computers onto fuller ones (and then turn off the under-used ones).
2. Move work from inefficient computers to efficient ones.
3. Design your data center carefully (architecture, layout, equipment choice, geographical location, and so on).
Based on that, there are three areas of particularly low-hanging fruit most enterprises should pursue immediately, namely:
Virtualization. Virtualization helps both with consolidating under-used machines and throwing out full but inefficient ones.
E-mail outsourcing. Google runs its data centers much more cheaply and “greenly” than you do.
Specialized data warehouse technology (appliance or otherwise). Let me expand on that last one a bit.
3-10X+ performance improvements are not uncommon if you move your data warehouse from Oracle or SQL Server to Teradata, Netezza, Vertica, Sybase IQ, or some other data warehousing specialist. 2-5X+ reductions in database size are also common, for two reasons: First, the specialists have simpler indexing schemes than are required if you want good warehouse performance from an OLTP DBMS. Second, they often are better at data compression.
And if you use a lot less hardware -- processors and disks alike -- you'll also use a lot less power.
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Curt Monash is a leading analyst of and strategic advisor to the software industry. Praised by Lawrence J. Ellison for his "unmatched insight into technology and marketplace trends," Curt was the software/services industry's #1 ranked stock analyst while at PaineWebber, Inc., where he served as a First Vice President until 1987. He subsequently co-founded Evernet, Inc., a $40 million networking systems integrator. Since 1990, he has owned and operated Monash Research, an analysis and advisory firm covering software-intensive sectors of the technology industry. In that period he also has been co-founder, president, or chairman of several other technology startups.
Curt has served as a strategic advisor to many well-known firms, including Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, AOL, CA, and Netezza. Curt earned a Ph.D. in mathematics (Game Theory) from Harvard University. He has held faculty positions in mathematics, economics and public policy at Harvard, Yale, and Suffolk universities.
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