Power Management, Driving Savings & Virtual Gains

Power Management

Information technology is a major consumer of energy and a net contributor of greenhouse gases and other forms of waste. Gartner estimates that the IT industry overall is responsible for 2% of global CO2 emissions, which is equal to that of the airline industry. Gartner also estimates that better management of the power usage of PCs, monitors and printers has the potential to reduce both costs and CO2 emissions by as much as 50%. Some options that IT departments are using include replacing CRTs with LCDs and replacing desktop computers with more energy-efficient notebooks.

Driving Savings

Just about every college and university is under pressure to come up with ways to save money and run IT more efficiently. Such is the case at Purdue University, which recently released a plan to reduce recurring IT costs by $15 million over the next two fiscal years. In a report issued by Gerry McCartney, Purdue's CIO and vice president for information technology, one cost-saving priority is a plan to more efficiently manage power for the college's 20,000 desktop computers. Other measures include video conferencing to save travel costs, deployment of a virtual desktop infrastructure and strategic sourcing to analyze Purdue's IT spending.

Online Community Grows

Enrollments in online courses stay strong at community colleges in 2010.

Source: The Campus Computing Project

Virtual Gains

Ohio University estimates that server virtualization will help the college save $21,000 over the next year, thanks to energy savings of more than 420,000 kilowatt-hours. The university's Office of Information Technology started its virtualization project in 2008. Since that time, 161 servers have been decommissioned, representing a one-time savings of roughly $350,000 in hardware costs and licensing fees. The college now uses only 22 physical computers to support 204 virtual servers.

Source: Ohio University