Did you know there are Federal standards mandating the procurement of energy efficient IT equipment? There are, and according to the rules, agencies must spend no less 95 percent of their computer and monitor budgets on EPEAT rated hardware.
The taxpayer, in a reversal from recent economic woes–and the environment, let’s not forget–appears to be benefiting from the practice.
According to a 2007 Environmental Protection Agency report, EPEAT products purchased that year will save government $4 billion in energy costs over their lifetimes. Green computers also reduced energy consumption by 42 billion kilowatt hours and reduced carbon emissions by 3.3 million metric tons, according to the report.
And in a lesson that hopefully spills over into businesses at large, the House of Representatives adopted virtualization in a big way, which impacted more than just power consumption.
The 440-plus servers that resided in individual member officers were replaced by centrally located and managed virtual servers. Not only has this saved power, but it also has improved security by taking management out of the hands of individual offices. Security patches, backup and intrusion monitoring are now centrally deployed, strengthening the network, Nichols said.
The consolidation has resulted in a 35 percent cost savings. The savings generated not only include reduced power consumption and storage costs, but also reduced costs to member offices, which no longer have to budget for hardware, software or maintenance, he said.
With all the bad news surrounding Washington DC, it appears that some things are going right.
Source: FederalTimes.com
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