There are several steps companies can take to improve the energy efficiency of their data centers in short order, writes Darrell Jordan-Smith in his Greening the Data Center. Given that the demand for data center capacity will likely continue to increase at a dramatic rate, cutting energy costs is an essential consideration, he notes.

Quoting the McKinsey Report the blogger predicts that "nearly every company can double its data center energy efficiency over the next 3 or 4 years."

And this is how the report suggests to accomplish these efficiencies in the data center:

MANAGE IT ASSETS AGGRESSIVELY

• Optimize the use of existing servers so they work at higher utilization levels, using techniques such as virtualization and replace older servers with more efficient servers that use electricity more efficiently

CENTRALIZE RESPONSIBILITY & INCREASE ACCOUNTABILITY

• Give full responsibility and accountability to the CIO with the full support of the CEO.
• Establish targets for improvements in order to motivate the CIO to seek out improvements. Use the suggested new metric: corporate average data center efficiency (CADE)

ADOPT TRUE COST OF OWNERSHIP (TCO) ACCOUNTING

• Factor in the TCO of running applications and servers when estimating costs for new servers in order to identify the most efficient servers and make more informed purchasing decisions

BETTER FORECASTING & PLANNING

• Make more accurate estimates for future requirements by tracking how forecasts for data needs vary with real demands and rewarding those business units who perform well

Jordan-Smith adds that Sun has its own approach to greening the data center, which is a 3 step process: 1. Assess 2. Optimize 3. Virtualize. Sun offers free onsite data center assessments, he points out.

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