Cisco Urges Going Green

Jeff Wolach, president and CTO of Sinnott Wolach Technology Group, a Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.-based solution provider, said he's heard chatter from his client base about going green, though those weren't their exact words.

"We've been hearing that for a while, but they haven't used the terminology 'going green,'" he said. "But a lot are looking to reduce the amount of hardware and its costs and power consumption."

Wolach said his clients have been looking at alternate ways to consolidate hardware, using virtualization and utilizing co-location instead of a separate space for disaster recovery.

And while Wolach said green initiatives may not be top of mind, he said he expects more vendors and clients to find better ways to conserve energy in the coming year.

"It's not like we walk into an organization and for 2008 they're saying their big initiative is to go green," he said. "But, it's absolutely going to happen soon."

Along with virtualization and server consolidation, Wolach said tools like WAN optimization are also helping cut down on the hardware footprint for many of his clients, allowing them to use smaller pipes and tools that consume less power.

"We're trying to be very conscious," he said, adding that power consumption and reducing carbon emissions is becoming not only a concern for his clients, but internally within his firm. "We're taking major steps in trying to cut down on travel to different sites."

Jeff Hiebert, CEO of ROI Networks, a San Juan Capistrano, Calif.-based solution provider, said he's heard from vendors about green strategies, but customers' queries have been few.

"I do think I'm going to get more and more questions about it," Hiebert said. "This is a very dynamic concept that's going to change dramatically. It's not going to be snapping my fingers and I'm there."

One step toward green networking, Hiebert said, is the recent spate of vendors, including Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Juniper Networks and Cisco, opening up their network operating systems to third-party application developers. He said opening APIs to third-parties can lead to the creation of applications that can automatically cut power to ports when they're not in use, ultimately cutting power consumption, which in turn can lower the total cost of ownership for clients.

"To support a green strategy I need more intelligence to control that infrastructure," he said. "I just don't know if I'm going to be making a lot of money from it in the near term. But it makes a lot of logical sense."

Overall, Marcoux said, Cisco is looking to IT to be part of the green solution. The goal is sustainable development.

"You'll have the tools to understand your consumption, what it costs in dollars and the environmental impact," he said. "The ultimate goal is to provide information to people and let them act on it. The data is sorely needed. Good science is sorely needed. And systems and architecture to provide that information is sorely needed. If you can't measure it, you can't manage it."