CA: Green data center move saved $16M in energy, real estate

Ah, the greening of high-tech. Earlier this week, Advanced Micro Devices offered up a peek into its progress against various environmental and social goals. Next up is software giant CA Technologies, which is reporting an overall reduction of 30 percent in its corporate carbon footprint as part of its 2011 Sustainability Report, "What Moves Us."

CA, like many other leaders in the technology industry, has a vested interest in the green IT and corporate sustainability movements. Its CA ecoSoftware application is one of the many vying for a leadership position in the burgeoning areas of enterprise carbon and energy management software.

It makes sense that CA would use its own software as an ongoing beta test, if you will, and it talks alot about the need for measurement and then governance against that data.

The last time that CA report on its efforts was actually two years ago. Here are highlights of what it  has been able to accomplish since that time:

• Eliminated 16.3 million pages of paper consumption in the United States since April 2009, by adopting a print management system.
• Reduced data center real estate by embracing a private, blade-server-driven cloud infrastructure it calls "Labs on Demand." That transition has saved 16,000 square feet in data center floor space and has saved an estimated $16 million in energy, real estate and productivity over a five-year time period.
• Cut its overall real estate footprint by 1 million feet (which pretty much explains that big carbon emission reduction CA is reporting).
• Earned a LEED Gold certification for its new facility in India

What will you see CA focus on moving forward? Here are some of its more aggressive goals:

• A commitment to distributing 100 percent of its software electronically (I like that one, but it will take some serious education of customers to pull this off)
• Encourage suppliers to publish sustainability reports by 2012 (it doesn't say what it will do if they don't)
• Reduce electric usage per employee by 40 percent against a 2006 baseline; the target to achieve this is 2013.
• Jack up its renewable energy purchases to 25 percent of its total by 2015
• Hit a 75 percent recycling rate
• Adopt green leasing policies for any new facilities