A free carbon footprint assessment tool has been launched to help organisations affected by the CRC (formerly Carbon Reduction Commitment) Energy Efficiency scheme – due to go live on April 1st – by providing a real-time view into the data centre.
The new tool, provided by nlyte Software, a leading provider of data centre performance management solutions, will help organisations better manage their carbon footprint in the data centre with an improved way of managing change and measuring energy utilisation within the data centre.
The CRC Energy Efficiency scheme is the UK’s mandatory climate change and energy saving scheme set out in the Government’s Climate Change Act 2008, which aims to help organisations improve energy efficiency by driving changes in behaviour and infrastructure.
According to the Uptime Institute, power and cooling in the data centre already account for more than 50 percent of all IT spend, meaning the impact of this scheme on the data centre infrastructure alone will be significant.
Furthermore, from April 1st, any organisation impacted by the legislation must ensure that their data centres’ forecasted emission allowances are accurately included as part of their compliance strategies.
nlyte’s carbon footprint assessment will help organisations specifically measure active power and energy utilisation based on modelled power and real-time power consumption. By giving organisations this level of granular insight, the new tool will provide an overview of current and future CRC allowance requirements, helping data centre managers to set targets and manage changes within the environment that aligns directly to the CRC scheme.
With recent research conducted into the management of the data centre infrastructure indicating consolidation and server management and utilisation as key priorities for respondents looking to improve the data centre, it’s clear that organisations need to better assess their existing data centre infrastructure to gain a more exhaustive outlook on their current efficiency scales before making further changes.
“With the CRC scheme bearing down on UK organisations, it’s absolutely crucial they get their data centres in order – and the only way to do this is to have real-time insight into the entire infrastructure,” said Robert Neave, co-founder and VP of sustainable IT initiatives for nlyte Software.
“Our recent research found that over half of UK organisations are still unaware of the CRC scheme despite its imminent onset, and that of the 49 percent who are familiar with the scheme, almost one third still have not yet budgeted for the impact it will have on their data centres. This is a shocking set of figures and shows that most organisations are still practicing in the art of ignorance, thinking the legislation won’t affect them,” continued Neave. “
If the embarrassing league tables that name and shame those organisations that choose to ignore the legislation don’t convince, then perhaps the domino effect of legislation that we can surely expect to see follow will bear enough teeth to really start forcing organisations to cut their carbon footprints.
“Either way, getting an understanding of how efficiently the data centre is running and adopting a better approach to managing the infrastructure as a whole is no longer a nice to have but absolutely fundamental to all organisations’ carbon and energy efficiency strategies going forward.”
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