Buy 3PAR storage, they'll buy a carbon offset certificate

3PAR wants to be known as the storage vendor that wants you to use less storage. Of course, that means it wants you to use THEIR storage.

Craig Nunes, vice president of marketing for 3PAR, figures that businesses in the United States typically buy four times the storage capacity they typically need. Not only is this an unnecessary drain on IT budgets, it has an impact on energy consumption and, therefore, carbon emissions.

The 3PAR value proposition is that by using its virtualized storage technology, called 3PAR Utility Storage, your business can cut both your capacity and (by association) reduce your storage-related energy consumption by 50 percent.

A sample customer is Mary Kay, the cosmetics giant. The company supports many sales representatives remotely and runs a high-volume online business. Mary Kay has deployed six 3PAR InServ Storage Servers to serve its data centers. In so doing, it was able to reduce its storage costs by about 20 percent while reducing the time it takes for administration by about 60 percent, according to a 3PAR case study about the installation. (It takes three administrators to handle Mary Kay's storage management tasks.)

Nunes figures that 3PAR has helped take about 22,000 terabytes of storage capacity out of the system since it begin its existence. For perspective, he estimates that one terabyte of storage emits about 1 metric tons of carbon. So, 3PAR claims it has helped the equivalent of the emissions from about 25,000 automobiles out of the atmosphere.

For those who like sustainability status symbols, 3PAR will buy carbon offsets for all the products that it sells. You can hang it in your lobby, if you want. In addition, the company will help its customers with the paperwork necessary to claim energy equipment rebates from the utility companies that offer them.