The Green Monster

Every solution provider on the planet should be looking at starting a green practice aimed at saving their clients buckets of cash being eaten up by rising energy costs.

Every business is grappling with rising electricity and gas prices that can be mitigated with relatively painless technology solutions. No matter the size of the business, there is big money to be saved by focusing squarely on energy efficiency, be it through Web conferencing technology that saves on travel expenses, data center power and cooling or simply more efficient hardware products.

STEVEN BURKE Can be reached at (781) 839-1202 or via e-mail at sburke@everythingchannel.com.

One of the biggest green field opportunities is the data center. All of the major vendors and power is in the data center where many solution providers simply have not done their due diligence to save clients big money. Just how much money? In a recent ChannelWeb Netseminar, Mark Melvin, CTO of solution provider giant ePlus, detailed the mind-numbing savings figures that a large energy company achieved with a data-center-optimization solution that included Emerson Network Liebert power cooling combined with HP blades and virtualization software.

The ePlus solution consolidated the large energy company's infrastructure from 399 rack units to 30 rack units, which resulted in a whopping 76 percent minimum savings in power to 20,250 watts from 86,575 watts and an even more impressive 80 percent savings in cooling costs to 69,111 Btu/Hr compared with 360,995 Btu/Hr. Solution providers don't need to be power cooling experts to play in this game—or understand its benefits.

What's exciting for solution providers that do go green (don't forget, Everything Channel is hosting a Going Green virtual trade show on Sept. 18.) is that customers are demanding green solutions. What's important for solution providers to know is that they don't need to possess all of the green knowledge themselves. They can tap into channel-savvy vendors with the right programs. Tom Karabinos, director of partner channels for Emerson Network Power, for one, stresses that given Emerson's powerful network of local Liebert reps, solution providers do not have to be power and cooling experts.

The world has changed. The days of spend at all costs on IT infrastructure are over, IT budgets are tight and if you want to grab a chunk of them you need to be a green monster. It's an opportunity that every solution provider should be eating up right now.

Are you a green monster?
E-mail me at sburke@everythingchannel.com.