Green IT seems to be the catch-all for a lot of things:  power use, power efficiency, data center design, recycling, consulting, cooling efficiency, and the list goes on.  So it was interesting when last week in the CRN ChannelExpo in the UK, Jonathan Perry, WEEE Take Back Programme Manager – UK & Benelux lead a panel discussion on the subject.  Because I’m against acronyms, WEEE is the European Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive (which sounds like WEEED to me, but I can see why they didn’t go there).What confuses me the most is the narrow focus – not of this panel but of the marketplace in general?  Sure Green is about recycling, but in IT and for channel partners, it is about so much more.  Green means green, as in opportunity.  Those channel partners that know how to position themselves as a provider of green IT expertise will be the most successful.  Where are the opportunities?  Here are a few ideas:      

·         Increasing data center density:  With the cost of new data centers at around $50,000 per square foot, few new ones are being built.  Customers need your help figuring out how to get more compute per square inch. This requires services to assess, design, build and monitor. And it’s not just about cramming more equipment in the same space. There are power and cooling issues to contend with.   Here is just one of many tools to get you started.

·         Unlocking the hidden data center:  The average server utilization in a data center ranges from 5% to 15%.  What does it take to get utilization to 50%?  Virtualization coupled with infrastructure design and management services.

·         Consolidation and virtualization to lower data center power use:  Lots of customers understand virtualization, but few know where to start.  Heterogeneous IT environments make this 100 times harder.  As a trusted local channel partner, along with Dell’s virtualization-ready servers and storage, channel partners have some great opportunities to help their customers realize some great cost savings and efficiencies.

·         Energy Smart Servers and Clients:  Green IT also means using less energy.  With Energy Smart products from Dell, your customers don’t have to choose between high performance and dramatically lower power use.  So you have some really powerful products that are easy to sell.

·         Blade Servers:  Customers want blades for raw computing power and their compact size, but with greater density comes greater power use.  There are ways that you can use blades AND manage power use for them.  There is a great podcast about it here.

·         Power & Cooling Solutions:  Replacing inefficient power supplies and chillers with more energy-efficient ones presents a great opportunity.  Once you assess where inefficiencies reside, you can provide great solutions to address them.

·         Storage & Data Management:  The amount of storage, and duplicate storage, in your customers’ IT infrastructure is staggering, and so too is the amount of power, space and resources it takes to manage it.  Consolidating storage is an excellent opportunity for your local expertise and services.

So is Green IT about recycling?  Sure.  But there is a really opportunity for channel partners to make green real for customers in a way that everyone wins.  If you disagree, I’d like to hear it.