According to Gartner, a renowned research institute, Green IT is among the main trends in 2008 and will become increasingly important in the future. Attention focuses on two areas: growing energy costs and the large number of computers requiring considerable space for servers.
The idea behind Green IT is to keep the environmental impact and use of resources associated with information technology as low as possible. Efforts in this context focus on the design and production of hardware as well as its use, disposal and recycling. Bank Austria has acted as a pioneer in this area by virtualising servers and thus significantly reducing electricity consumption.
WoLF saves energy
How much electricity can we save by shutting down HYPerPC workstations before leaving the workplace rather than just logging off? Wolfgang Posch, Head of ICT Desktop Management, and his team carried out extensive measurements of power consumption to answer this question.
They found that if PCs are in use for 10 hours a day from Monday to Friday and remain in the shutdown (instead of log-off) mode for the rest of the time, this saves about 500 kWh in electricity per PC annually. On this basis, overall cost savings would amount to at least about EUR 390,000 per year!
WoLF (Wake-on-LAN Feature) was introduced for this purpose at the beginning of May 2008. Within Bank Austria, it is used for some 9,500 PCs and about 1,200 notebooks.
"Green IT will be a major management topic by 2010. IT accounts for 2% of the global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2). Therefore all companies are called upon to reduce such emissions. We will therefore continue to think about measures that can help to reduce the environmental impact of IT and the use of resources."
Virtualisation is a key technology used to enhance the energy efficiency of computer operations. This involves combining servers and thus making them invisible. In Bank Austria, 638 servers have been combined into 36 servers through virtualisation.
Wolfgang Lachkovics, Head of Project Management at IT-A: "Based on our commitment to CSR and Green IT, we are making a significant contribution to protecting the environment and using resources in a responsible manner."