Organisations that operate green datacentres should receive recognition for their environmentally friendly efforts, Node4 has claimed.
While the company welcomes awards distributed through the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) to some UK datacentres to fund a reduction in their carbon footprint, the colocation datacentre firm said more needs to be done.
Rik Williams, datacentre operations manager at Node4, said: “Our industry has a responsibility both to the environment but also to our own clients to ensure that everything is done to reduce the impact we have on the planet.”
However, while his company has been introducing measures such as LED lighting and free cooling chillers to reduce carbon footprints, Williams claimed the Government should be doing more to incentivise companies to move their IT to green Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), hosting and colocation providers.
“It’s vitally important that there is widespread acknowledgment of the benefits datacentres can deliver, particularly from a sustainability standpoint,” said Williams. “The major issue, however, is that the carbon reduction targets don’t give enough recognition of this fact.”
However, a number of analysts who have spoken to Cloud Pro disagree with Williams’ assessment.
Andrew Donoghue, senior analyst in datacentre technologies and eco-efficient IT at 451 Research, said: “The incentive to be energy efficient should come from the market. It is not the Government’s job to motivate datacentre businesses to be more efficient – it should be the desire to reduce costs and attract new business.”
Rakesh Kumar, research vice president at Gartner specialising in enterprise infrastructure an operations strategies, added: “Williams’ principle is that we need more carrots than sticks – the Government’s attitude is currently more punitive than encouraging – but this is something that is already happening, for example at an EU level through the Emissions Trading Scheme, which has been in place for five years.
“Additionally, the industry is largely self-regulating and in our experience customers are largely happy with the status quo; there are lots of hosted solutions options for them to choose from, including very energy efficient ones, depending on their priorities.”
“It’s vitally important that there is widespread acknowledgment of the benefits data centres can deliver, particularly from a sustainability standpoint. The major issue, however, is that the carbon reduction targets don’t give enough recognition of this fact.
