It's not a black-and-white decision when considering green storage. In our latest survey, only 31% of respondents said their companies have green initiatives or commitments in place, a drop of a few points from last year. While the dip is discouraging, those working toward power conservation report better results: 15% (vs. 12% last year) said their efforts exceed their expectations, while 36% report being right on target (a big jump from the 24% noted a year ago). There might also be a low-energy light at the end of the tunnel, with 16% of those surveyed (vs. 6% last year) expecting their companies to commit to green storage initiatives within a year. More than a third of respondents said they're using data deduplication, compression and virtualized storage to conserve storage energy; however, the biggest increases compared to last year were for thin provisioning (26% vs. 15%), solid-state drives (22% vs. 15%) and DC power (16% vs. 8%). Overall, 59% implemented these newer techs to help curb equipment power usage. Still, money is green, and while 53% were willing to shell out "a little more" for a green storage product, 33% of those surveyed said they wouldn't pay more.
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Rich Castagna, Editorial Director
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"Green needs to bring a positive ROI -- better than traditional solutions -- to the table. Just being the 'right thing to do' will not fly in a hard-dollar ROI review." -- Survey respondent
BIO: Rich Castagna (rcastagna@storagemagazine.com) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group.
This was first published in December 2009