Open Letter to UK’s Prime Minister Regarding Green IT Stimulus Plan

by Andy Hardy, Managing Director, International Sales — June 25, 2009
The Prime Minister
10 Downing Street
London
SW1A 2AA

June 24, 2009

Dear Prime Minister:

Compellent welcomes, in principle, the Global Action Plan’s call on Central Government for a £1 billion IT stimulus package that will lead to smarter, more environmentally efficient, higher quality public services.

The recession has clearly forced public and private organisations to look harder at technology investments, especially anything labelled as ‘green’ or ‘environmentally
efficient’ IT. Organisations have had to move quickly to cull any fuzzy, nice-to-have green IT options. Only green IT that clearly delivers greater efficiencies, with measureable and sustainable cost-benefits, can make a real difference. Most of the greatest recent innovations in true technology efficiency, for example server
and storage virtualisation, have sprung from agile, fast-growing companies, none of whom has been offered a public role with the Global Action Plan. Instead, it’s the usual IT behemoths with very limited direct claims, or indeed incentives, to offer truly efficient IT, who have put themselves at the head of the line for any state funds.

Subsequently, there is a very grave risk that any stimulus package will be put to highly inefficient use, depriving British public sector organisations of the best technology
options while extending the deployment of ageing, inefficient and power-hungry IT solutions. Much of any stimulus payment, which comes from the taxpayers, will therefore be wasted.

We call on the Global Action Plan and the British government to think very deeply about how any stimulus can be put to best use, based on proven best-practice examples that cite true efficiency in terms of delivering more in terms of a solution, while using less hardware and less energy to deliver it.

The digital future of Britain requires a forward-thinking infrastructure based on today’s technology, not yesterday’s. Such an approach has already been proven to deliver more, but cost less, a concept that the tax-burdened British public will appreciate and welcome.

The nation has had its fill of political cosiness and gross fiscal irresponsibility. This could be an opportunity to start putting things right.

Greening the Data Center

by Lawrence E Aszmann, Chief Technology Officer — April 22, 2009
A recent Gartner, Inc survey indicates that while recession-related cutbacks will have effects across all projects, most organizations will maintain the priority of green IT initiatives. Overall, more than one-third of the 620 respondents anticipated spending more than 15 percent of their IT capital budgets on green IT projects.

With Compellent, ‘going green’ doesn’t require big-budgets. In the spirit of Earth Day, I’d like to point out that Compellent offers a proven, affordable, one-of-a-kind proposition in energy savings. Thin provisioning provides as-you-grow scalability and eliminates the need to over-purchase and over-power unused disk space. Advanced storage virtualization can cut power and cooling costs for our customers up to 93 percent. Boot from SAN capabilities reduce power draw by eliminating the need for internal server disks, and we offer carbon and energy savings reports through Enterprise Manager to guide green IT strategies.

Environmental responsibility is more than just meeting superficial standards for corporate stamps of approval – it is the quest for quantifiable, significant results. We recently shared the stories of two of our customers who have used Compellent to realize sizeable green benefits. Using storage virtualization, ROEL Construction was able to reduce its cooling load from 4.5 to 1.5 tons and reduce carbon emissions by 80 percent. GreenWaste Recovery cut physical hardware in half and reduced paper consumption by 60 percent by virtualizing CRM, e-mail and productivity tools on Compellent storage.

And it’s not just our customers that are noticing Compellent’s green edge; Computerworld named Compellent one of the Top 12 Green-IT vendors in 2009.

At Compellent, we are committed to giving our customers the tools to efficiently green their businesses in the IT department and beyond; from eliminating excessive hardware footprints to slashing data center energy use. Let us help green your data center, starting with the storage.

Comic Relief Has a “Nose” for Compellent Green Storage

by Lawrence E Aszmann, Chief Technology Officer — March 09, 2009
Comic Relief, the UK charity that has inspired similar relief organizations around the world, is putting on its bi-annual “Red Nose Day” fundraising event this Friday, March 13. We’re happy to announce that the Compellent SAN is a core part of their IT infrastructure, which is helping to support events like Red Nose Day and Sport Relief as well as everyday operations. Comic Relief implemented Compellent and VMware virtualization platforms to cut their server count by 1/5th, and reduce powering and cooling costs along the way. In the end, Comic Relief is going green to raise green, and that’s no laughing matter. 

John Thompson, Comic Relief’s Head of IT, in front of photos of British comedy duo, Dawn French (right) and Jennifer Saunders (left), who ended their 30-year run together last fall. They’re reuniting for one last sketch on the “Comic Relief: Funny for Money” program airing on the BBC Friday night.