The Challenge for CFOs Today: How to Reduce Energy Costs While Improving Public Image

As data center energy demands continue to grow, carbon emissions are expected to surpass U.S. airlines emissions within the next five years. This is causing regulators to target data centers for increased regulation. With the proposed Cap and Trade legislation looking increasingly likely, energy prices are expected to rise. Moreover, the Administration—as well as the public—currently views business as part of the environmental problem, not part of the solution. To avoid even more burdensome regulation, it is in every business leader's short- and long-term interest to improve their company's public image by reducing energy usage.

The Data Center: Translating fixed costs into variable costs

IT costs in general have traditionally been viewed as fixed. As a result, reducing data center energy costs has been seen as an intractable problem. If your CIO says you need more capacity to meet customer demand, you invest in additional capacity. On average, electricity represents 25% of a company's total IT costs. The root cause of this fast-growing expense is that data centers are managed to remain “always on,” reflecting the premise that you cannot accurately predict data center demand. Thus, you are forced to build to meet peak customer load. Otherwise, it is argued, valuable customers will not have access to your services and applications when they need them.

Move from “always on” to “always available” with Power Assure

During non-peak periods, when servers are not needed, they remain on, drawing 60-70% of their maximum electrical load. Today's servers—even the newest, most efficient servers—vary their electrical demand between 60% and 100% based on load, while your actual customer load may vary from 5% to 95%.

The solution is to move from an “always on” model to an “always available” model. This doesn't mean you need fewer servers. You still need to be able to meet peak demand. But with Power Assure's “always available” model, your servers are brought on or off line dynamically, in real-time, with server supply matching actual customer demand. This allows your electrical load to adjust with your customer demand, thus making electricity in your data centers a variable cost and reducing your energy bill by an average of 50%.

The potential savings are significant. Power Assure dynamically manages your server assets by continually monitoring your actual customer load via your load balancer or your virtualization software. Power Assure's online database tracks all of the assets in your data center, including their power draw and service level requirements for your customers. By dynamically adjusting the number of servers online or offline at any time, Power Assure allows you to achieve a constant utilization of your ”needed” servers at 75%-80%, resulting in a corresponding flat (and much lower) cost per transaction.

Working with utilities to qualify for rebates

Our team of utility experts will work with you to get the largest rebate possible from your local utility using our “before” and “after” baselines. In addition to reporting the energy and dollar savings, Power Assure also monitors your resulting carbon savings, providing you with the data you need to optimize your “green” credits within Cap and Trade regulations. All of the historical and real-time data is stored off-site in our secure data center for three years.

Power Assure saves you money

Data Center energy costs will increase significantly over the next five years. Cap and Trade legislation will further escalate these costs. But these changes can be an opportunity to motivate your business toward greater efficiency. Every dollar cut from your electrical bill flows straight to the bottom line. Power Assure will convert your data center energy bill from a fixed cost to a variable cost, reducing it by an average of 50% as a result. These savings are not only good for business, but help improve your corporate image as well.