02 Nov 2009

Back-end savings for firms

Companies could make considerable cost savings by reducing energy consumption for their back-end IT infrastructure, it has been claimed.

Jim Docherty noted in a blog post for Public Technology that servers, storage and networking equipment are all classified as back-end IT equipment and by improving power efficiency in this area, a business could reduce their energy costs considerably.

New innovations such as virtualisation and the installation of blade servers were just two ways of achieving this, Mr Docherty noted.

He wrote: "IT is one of the biggest consumers of electricity within a business and unless policies are in place to reduce use, this is one area that could see a steady increase in consumption."

Sophie Curtis recently noted in her blog for Silicon.com that overzealous equipment refresh cycles could be needlessly costing businesses thousands of pounds.

She said the three-year turnaround for office IT equipment is a policy which is in place with many firms but does not take into account whether systems need updating or not.