How busy are your computers?

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=
/www/story/04-22-2008/0004797293&EDATE=

SAN JOSE, Calif., April 22 /PRNewswire/ — Nearly two-thirds of IT and facilities personnel consider their data center energy efficiency “average” or worse — and their development and test environments might be the biggest cause of that, according to a survey conducted by Cassatt(R) Corporation, a leader in providing software to make data centers more efficient.

More than a quarter of survey respondents said that greater than 60 percent of their development and test servers are idle during off-peak hours. There is some good news, though: 62 percent are working on a data center energy-efficiency project now or expect to within the next year, according to the “Cassatt 2008 Data Center Energy Efficiency Survey.” And, contrary to conventional wisdom, 59 percent would consider turning off computers that are idle.

This article is a little old, but I was just doing some research on server utilization and came across it and thought it was relevant nonetheless. Thinking about your server utilization, about what systems (desktop/server/printer) need to be on for business to continue, and which ones can be shut down, can not only reduce your operational support costs, but reduce your energy costs. We can’t make big changes overnight, but examining what we can do within our operational/business constraints can still deliver/savings and (or) empowerment to the end user. That the desktops are rebooted should mean less calls, “my mouse is broken, my account’s locked out, Internet Explorer/Office freezes”, without necessarily causing that much disruption.