Green IT technologies gaining popularity in Asia Pacific

Analyst firm IDC has found that Green IT technology is gaining strong momentum and mindshare across the region.

IDC announced as part of the results it obtained in a survey on power management, automation and virtualization in data centers. amongst data center managers in the Asia Pacific region, excluding Japan (APEJ).

According to IDC, the survey of nearly 600 respondents, found that Green IT technology is gaining strong momentum and mindshare across the region as rising power costs in datacenter operations are becoming a top concern of IT decision makers. In the report IDC said that applications that can help to better manage power and cooling and improve management, automation, load and capacity administration of these servers, will be in demand. IDC has classified these applications into three main categories: power monitoring and management tools, asset management and automation tools, and server virtualization software. IDC says that Green IT software can enable significant economical benefits as well as environmental sustainability through the efficient management of existing hardware or services within data centers.

More than 75% of respondents in the survey said that their decision to implement green solutions is largely driven by benefits from cost savings, followed by corporate social responsibility (CSR) and compliance. "As businesses in APEJ continue to grow, power consumption in energy hungry datacenters also increases. Green IT technologies has become even more appealing as businesses look towards energy efficient solutions to reduce power consumption and to alleviate the costs," says Adren Lim, Market Analyst of IDC’s Asia/Pacific Software Research.

The report also found that software was playing an increasingly important part of an attempt to green a data center saying that, "...While mainstream green IT in the data center is largely a combined effort of more energy-efficient hardware, best practices, and consultation services, software is playing an increasingly important role in facilitating the whole "green engine" to achieve business and environmental sustainability".

"A large portion of Green IT practices and supporting software revolve around virtualization products, but equally important, is the management of these consolidated virtual and physical assets that will bring value through lower power, hardware, and manpower costs," Lim added.

When asked if businesses were adopting Green IT solutions because of or despite of the economic downturn, Lim said, "Green IT has been gaining good mind share in APEJ even before the downturn and is poised to become the next big trend. The current economic climate should further accelerate the cost saving advantages Green IT can offer". He adds that it is good to bear in mind that this report looks at Green IT only from the software perspective, which is a component within the whole "green" engine.