Datacentre professionals dismiss green product hype

Green initiatives are gaining ground in company datacentres, but few of the people who run them trust the environmental claims made by vendors of datacentre products and services, according to a new study.

The survey found that among datacentre professionals more than one in four (26 per cent) dismissed vendor statements about environmentally friendly products as hype, while 42 per cent indicated they had no way to validate vendor claims. The research was carried out by Aperture Research Institute (ARI), a subsidiary of datacentre management software vendor Aperture Technologies.

"There’s a lack of trust between vendors and the datacentres they supply," said ARI principal Steve Yellen. "Managers recognise the positive contribution that more-energy-efficient equipment can make, but they are quick to dismiss vendors’ green claims as hype or impossible to verify."

According to Aperture the majority of datacentre managers are calling for more energy efficient equipment to be developed, bought by their organisations and then installed in their datacentres.

While seven out of ten datacentre professionals said their company has adopted green initiatives, among those respondents nearly one in five (19 per cent) said their company's green strategy did not encompass the datacentre, and 13 per cent admitted they did not know if this was the case.

Computer servers and the datacentres that house them have been widely targeted by green activists as a leading worldwide contributor to carbon emission growth.

Statistics reported by the US Environmental Protection Agency indicate the total power consumed by servers represented approximately 1.2 per cent of the total electricity used in the US in 2005, more than double the use when compared with 2000.