One of the major challenges in going green is that, in most cases, power costs are not part of the IT budget, reducing the motivation for IT to make "green" decisions. In fact, green equipment can cost more, benefiting the facilities department's bottom line and not IT's. If energy conservation is an enterprise-wide initiative, seek internal budget incentives for purchasing IT equipment that meets target efficiency levels. If not, build a business case for green purchasing based on long-term savings and lower ongoing energy costs.

Greening the Data Center: The Energy Imperative

When making the business case for going green, the IT and facilities departments will have to work together to define the current state and identify future opportunities. Focus on power and cooling. While other environmental initiatives such as recycling remain important, the hard dollar savings and rapid ROI of energy-saving investments will cause these projects to take center stage.

Rising energy costs, and increasing data center heat density (and consequently increasing cooling requirements) due to server consolidation and blade adoption, mean that the enterprise is taking note of IT's electricity bill – even if IT isn't. Almost a third (29%) of respondents to a Ziff Davis survey indicated that data center power consumption and cooling issues had caught...