Dell plans green line

One of the hassles of trying to take a green, or at least energy-efficient, approach to buying IT hardware is the time-consuming necessity to read through complex technical specs to discover appropriate components.

Dell is to offer a shortcut through that process by tagging such components so that buyers can select configurations without ploughing through details of performance-per-watt, thermal characteristics and so on. It expects to have configurations ready next month.

“An organisation’s green footprint is a boardroom issue and from there a front-of-mind IT issue,” said Hugh Jenkins, Dell UK enterprise manager.

“One of the things we’re looking at is offering configurations of ‘green machines’ so if a customer chooses that configuration they would know it’s the absolute best we could do. We’re still kicking around [branding to identify these configurations] but the message will be all around energy efficiency.”

It’s an interesting move but it could put IT buyers in a quandary as optimal configurations usually still demand a bigger power envelope. Vendors that market their green credentials are, therefore, often asking buyers to trade off performance for low power demands.