Top 10 Ways to Green your IT Department

When you think about greening your IT system, the whole notion can seem daunting. After all, to revamp your entire system is a gargantuan (not to mention expensive) undertaking. But what you should look at is making forward progress.

Sure, it would be ideal to retool your whole system, but that’s not realistic. Instead, look at one or two small things you can do now, and then consider changes you can make in the future.

Let’s take a look at 10 things you can do to green your IT department.

10 Operating system settings -- The quickest, easiest change you can make won’t cost you a thing. Simply set your clients’ power saving settings to turn off their monitors and computers after a certain time. Better yet, teach your workers that those power buttons on the front of their monitors can be pressed anytime. If they’re not using the computer, simply turn off the monitor.

9 Phasing in technology – As you continue to green your IT department, think about where you can implement green ideas and technologies. You may not need to replace clients or servers now, but think about what you need and when the day does come to buy replacements, plan to buy the replacements that use less energy than what you have now.

8 Power use – If you don’t pay your electrical bill, find your facilities manager and take a look at it. Then, once you’ve taken some steps to reduce your power use, take a look at the bill again. Seeing the impacts of your efforts will help you maintain your momentum toward reducing power use. Not only that, but you have some solid numbers to show your boss at your next performance review.

7 Efficiency – Some companies (like server manufacturer Rackspace) are doing the legwork on reducing power consumption in their devices. If you are replacing servers or clients, try to find those that are at least 80 percent energy-efficient. This benefits you twofold. First, you use less power (and pay for less power), but you also pay for less cooling. For every watt of energy you have that you don’t use, you need to pay for another watt of power to cool it.

6 Datacenter organization – Make sure your datacenter is organized as logically as possible. Make sure you have racks of equipment set up with the cool aisle/hot aisle model. This ensures that racks of equipment aren’t using the exhaust from the rack in front of it for cooling. Also, if you have it in you, make sure the cables underneath the floor are laid out in a neat manner. This ensures that air can flow under the equipment and provides some measure of cooling you don’t have to pay for.

5 Recycling – When you get rid of old equipment, make sure that you send it to a reputable recycler. You should find one that allows you to audit their chain of custody, so you can make sure your equipment is being disposed of ethically, and is not on a slow boat to China.

4 Repurposing – You may not need to recycle your old equipment at all. If it can still be used in your organization, do it. That is, maybe you have an old server you’re replacing, but if there is a function the server can perform – even if it isn’t what you initially intended it for – use it there. You save yourself the money of buying new equipment and you also take the recycling issue out of the equation.

3 Paperless office – You can save lots of money each year by going paperless. It is estimated that the average document is copied nine to 11 times at a cost of about US$23. To file a document, it cost US$25. Even worse, the cost to retrieve a misfiled document is US$153. Also, if you maintain all your files online, you can retrieve them from anywhere.

2 Thin clients – If you consider thin clients, you may only need to update the physical memory on old clients and they will be perfect to use in a new server/thin client plan. This allows you to repurpose old clients. You don’t need to worry about recycling the old machines and it fits into our #1 green IT tip:

1 Vitrualization – Virtualization allows you to take several physical servers and replicate their function on one single server. Obviously, you won’t have to buy the physical servers that you are replacing, and you won’t have to pay to power or cool them. Be realistic, though. You won’t be able to put all your existing servers onto one machine. You still need to consider capacity, performance, and redundancy, but you can still cut a lot of hardware out of your organization.


Green IT is not only good for the environment; it’s also good for your wallet. You may not care about baby seals or deforestation or any of the other stuff Sting sings about. That’s okay, too. But you can’t deny that cheaper power bills will help you in the long run. To go green you don’t have to jump in with both feet, just make some easy changes.