Buckinghamshire, United Kindgom - (The Hosting News) - September 2, 2008 - Data center consolidation specialists, RichardsoNEyres, has conducted a new survey, which has revealed that a large number of organizations are making energy cuts a top priority for 2008.

Even still, it appears that many are not taking green issues seriously enough and are adopting a do-it-yourself approach argues. The DIY approach has been revealed in research commissioned by RichardsoNEyres to highlight the main data center challenges IT managers are currently facing. The research was conducted in association with industry analysts IDL and it has prompted RichardsoNEyres to announce a six-step action plan to help businesses achieve greener data centers.

Adam Kemp, Director, RichardsoNEyres remarked, "Organisations going for the informal approach can lack structure in their environmental policies and this can affect the level of success that they achieve in reducing both energy costs and CO2 emissions. While computers may drive efficiency, the data centers that run businesses are often far from efficient. They are at the heart of environmental challenges created by IT but the average retailer just does not have the necessary knowledge to bring about change. They need specialist help and the actions we offer in our Thought Leadership initiatives are designed to illustrate how they can improve their carbon footprint and wider environmental position while also reducing operating costs and improving IT service delivery."

Details of the research include:

- Infrastructure review. To kick off their green data center campaigns, retailers must first undertake an IT infrastructure and data center review, leading to an action plan to simultaneously reduce cost, improve performance and cut environmental impact.
- Emissions review. Conducting a data center power and emissions review will create a foundation for understanding how to meet or exceed government or corporate environmental targets and will help meet the requirements of ISO14001 which specifies the requirements for an environmental management system.
- Power priority. With power costs undoubtedly continuing to rise and with many estimates suggesting that the price of running and cooling hardware will soon outstrip the cost of the hardware itself, this is clearly an area for improvement.
- Virtualisation. Server and storage virtualisation enables you to concentrate workloads onto fewer servers and storage devices. Replacing physical servers and storage devices with virtual machines reduces the energy required to run them, thus reducing CO2 emissions and running costs. It also improves utilisation of available hardware.
- Consolidation. Whether it involves moving remote IT facilities into a centrally managed location or combining existing data centers, consolidation can reduce your carbon footprint as well as simplifying management and reducing cost.
- Star rating. When purchasing new IT equipment, always check its rating under the European Community Energy Star programme for energy efficient office equipment.

RichardsoNEyres provides infrastructure solutions for the data center across the networking and storage spectrum. It works with companies to make their data centers more efficient and their businesses run more effectively. RichardsoNEyres' qualified technical specialists ensure that valuable data remains safe, secure and highly available to support business critical applications.

The company has partnerships with leading IT companies including VMware and Riverbed and is one of a small number of HP Authorised Business Solutions Providers (ABSP) in the UK.

Established in 1987, the company is privately owned and employs 50 staff at its HQ in Chesham, Buckinghamshire. Last year, the company had a turnover in excess of 21 million pounds.

To learn more, please visit: www.richardsoneyres.co.uk.

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