The Triple Bottom Line and Data Centers

Data center operators can reduce, or possibly even eliminate, thermal barriers by using varying mixes of warm water, outside air and hot/cold aisle containment. This can be carried out while moving towards dynamic cooling environments, the results of which results in improved water and energy efficiency, cost savings and reduction of carbon emissions.

Fan energy and numerous factors need to be considered, but research has shown that raising data center operating temperature by just 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.2ºC) can reduce energy use by as much 10 percent. That can have beneficial impacts across all three principal facets of 3BL business management, improving human and environmental health and quality while reducing operating costs at the same time.

Stipulations in existing contracts (Service Level Agreements) are one of the hurdles that often must be overcome. Beyond this, success can be achieved by accelerating migration to cloud compute, cloud storage, and cloud-based disaster recovery. In addition to higher energy efficiency and cost savings, moving along this path opens up the opportunity to launch or expand pay-for-use computing and cloud or “edge” computing services that provide an additional source of revenue for operators further encouraging the shift toward efficiency.

Idle or underutilized servers use between 50-65 percent of the energy of fully utilized servers. Public, private and hybrid cloud services provide simple and cost-effective ways for data center owners and operators to achieve 3BL goals cost-effectively.

Research has shown that a typical 2U rack mount server consumes 425 watts of electricity during operation. Assuming an energy cost of $0.10 per kilowatt-hour (kWh), it is possible to save $400 of electricity per year per 2U server by virtualizing or shifting workloads to the cloud. Factor in the energy savings reductions in the cooling for these servers at a PUE of 2.0 and the savings double to $800.

Separating compute and processing from storage while accelerating migration from magnetic hard disk to solid-state storage is another way that positive social and environmental, as well as financial, bottom line gains can be realized. Non Volatile Memory express is a SSD specific protocol that allow parallel I/O with better bandwidth and lower latency than SATA and should be considered.

There is a lot more to discuss regarding these three simple suggestions, and even more regarding how data center owners and operators can craft and successfully implement strategic 3BL business plans and programs.

The strong trend towards greater corporate social responsibility and environmental commitments coupled with economics and sustainability are clear and firmly entrenched. 3BL business management methods and best practices offer data center owners and operators, as well as organizations of all types, a conceptual, data-driven means of guiding and informing their goals and decision-making in order to do “right” by investors, employees and society in the broadest sense.