IBM has expanded its Zodiac consultancy service with tools to measure a firm's IT carbon footprint.
The Zodiac service uses an IBM database to establish the total power consumption and carbon footprint of a company's server banks across all platforms. It incorporates carbon footprint statistics to enable users to improve datacentre efficiency and offset carbon emissions.
The data provided by the carbon footprint evaluation is used by IBM to determine a strategy for reducing power consumption and environmental impact. Typically, this will entail a process of server consolidation, ensuring that hardware is being run close to full capacity and at maximum efficiency, IBM said.
The function has been used to retrospectively analyse the IT carbon footprints of previous IBM Zodiac consultancy projects. One was found to have cut a department's annual carbon footprint by 156 tonnes of CO2 - an amount that would have required 516 trees to offset.
IBM vice-president Dave Kay said, "Energy consumption has become one of the biggest business overheads and companies must take it seriously."
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