Visibility counts: IT execs who see energy bill more likely to think long-term

IT services company CDW reports that IT executives who are privy to their company's electricity bill are twice as likely to consider energy efficiency when buying their hardware. That's one of the findings in the 2009 Energy Efficient IT Report, which compiles the results of a July survey of 752 IT professionals.

Unfortunately, generally speaking, energy efficiency has been taking a back seat to cost considerations over the past year, according to the poll. Which is a shame because of the stat I'm about to recount. Here goes:

• 52 percent of the IT professionals who said their company DID have energy management considerations managed to reduce their total IT energy costs. This was up from 39 percent of those surveyed in 2008.

Those responding to the survey defined energy management measures in a lot of different ways, including buying hardware that uses lower wattage processors, applying network management or power management software to the problem (40 percent in 2009 vs. 30 percent last year), using software within uninterruptible power supplies (UPSes) (43 percent vs. 31 percent), installing remote monitoring tools (43 percent vs. 29 percent) and virtualizing all or part of their data center (46 percent in 2009 vs. 35 percent last year).

CDW reports that organizations that had a higher success rate with energy efficient were proactive about the process. By simply ASKING their IT department to make a change, approximately 57 percent of organizations saw a reduction vs. 39 percent of those did not ask. Assigning accountability for the problem or applying incentives to encourage reduced power consumption also made a difference.

You can download the entire CDW Energy Efficient IT report here.