Green IT Infrastructures “LEED” to Savings

Posted on Coast to Coast Computer Product Website

September 17, 2013 by rnorton

 If you go to any college campus and mention the words “LEED Certification” to Computer Science and Engineering students, they will be able to give you a detailed explanation of the importance of green technology on both physical and IT-based infrastructures. The green movement is not a fad that is going to fade out in a few years; it is here to stay, and server virtualization can play a huge part in the reduction of energy use and costs.
“LEED” stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, and is essential to a government designed point system to calculate a building’s environmental footprint ranking, from Certified, to Silver, to Gold, to Platinum.
The University of Iowa was recently awarded a Platinum ranking, the highest LEED Certification that can be offered, for their Information Technology Facility. “Data centers are among the most energy-intensive facilities you’ll find on a campus,” University of Iowa President Sally Mason bragged. “To build ours to LEED Platinum standards speaks volumes about the University’s commitment to energy conservation and sustainability.”
Granted, the University of Iowa spent over 30 million dollars to achieve such a high LEED certification, but doing something as simple as utilizing more energy efficient virtual servers can make a huge difference in your energy costs.
Take a moment to imagine a room filled with 30 hot, inefficient physical servers that are limited to using around 20% of their potential space; imagine the heating and cooling costs to keep all of those servers at an average running temperature of 68 degrees. Now, imagine a room with 8 virtual servers that are physically the same size handling the same workload. This is a perfect example of how energy efficient virtual servers are quite literally the future of IT and the green movement.
In IBM’s “Framework for Growth and Efficiency” article, the importance of server virtualization is mapped out very clearly: “Not only does [virtualization] improve the usage of existing resources, save storage space, and increase energy efficiency, but it also makes systems more responsive, simpler to manage and easier to back up, with less downtime and increased overall efficiency.”
To have a system that is both energy efficient and easier to manage is a dream that many CIO’s share. The benefits of such a system in terms of cost savings are colossal.
Virtualization and other efficient technologies are the future, and we are a company focused on tomorrow as much as we are focused on today.
Sources
IBM Green Perspectives – http://www-304.ibm.com/businesscenter/cpe/html0/195802.html
LEED Certification Explanation – http://blueberrypdx.com/leed-certification.htm
Iowa University LEED Platinum Ranking – http://its.uiowa.edu/news/platinum-record-information-technology-facility-ui%E2%80%99s-first-building-top-leed-certification

Print as a Service

Posted on Coast to Coast Computer Products Website 

 August 5, 2013 by rnorton

Print as a Service: Saving your Company One Document at a Time
When surveyed, 54% of organizations had no idea what the cost of their document environment was at the time. 33% of businesses could only give a rough guess. With those figures combined, this shows that only 13% of organizations are aware of what kind of impact their printing environment is making on their company. Where do you stand in that data? According to a recent infographic by Xerox, the impact of implementing Print as a Service into your business is substantial. Through both direct print costs and hidden print costs, there can be substantial cost savings to having a proper print management solution in place. Let’s take a deep dive into some of the hidden costs associated with printing and the stats around them (all of the stats below are based on an organization with 750 employees):

1. Organization Productivity: The average worker spends 8.8 hours per week searching for information. They will make 19 copies of every document, and lose 1 in every 20 documents printed. This amounts to re-prints and additional time spent on administrative tasks.
2. IT service desk: A printing fleet for a firm of 750 employees is responsible for approximately 1 in 4 support calls. That’s 40% of all calls! This also equates to approximately 3,700 hours of IT support and 33,000 kilowatt hours of electricity.
3. Storage/Footprint: Most firms have a ratio of 2.2 printers to every one employee. The optimal rate should be more along the lines of ten employees for every one printer.
4. Environmental Sustainability: By managing the number of documents that are printed, you will be seeing a significant impact on your environmental footprint. For example, printing expenses take up 85.73 tons of carbon emissions when not managed. With print management you can reduce carbon emissions by up to 60%.
5. Procurement and Administration: According to Xerox, 1-3% or your organization revenue is spent on print management. MPS programs can reduce hard costs by 30% and therefore see a cost savings of $1,000,000. What could you do with that kind of a savings?

With the lack of a universal managed print solution, you could be throwing away your budget without knowing it. Learn how you can spend more time focusing on true strategic initiatives and less time on cumbersome and outdated print management issues. Contact us to learn more.
sources:
http://www.konicaminolta.com.au/industryreport/KM_MPS_FactsAboutPrintingWithoutMPS_CostEfficiency_enlarge.jpg
http://thumbnails.visually.netdna-cdn.com/uncovering-hidden-print-costs_502911b090c94.jpg
http://techsource.datacom.com.au/TechKnowledge/bid/177734/Infographic-Costs-of-Print-Before-and-After-Implementing-Managed-Print-Services