Study Reveals Struggle to Go Green

CUPERTINO, Calif. -- Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) today announced the findings of its worldwide Green Data Center report, a supplement to the companys recently released 2007 State of the Data Center study. Nearly three-fourths of respondents state they have interest in adopting a strategic green data center initiative; however, only one in seven have been successful at implementing a green data center, illustrating a stark contrast between interest and execution. For the purpose of this study, we define a green data center as having increased efficiencies in energy usage, power consumption, space utilization and reduction of polluting energy sources.

“Data center managers are running out of space and energy costs are skyrocketing, so they are motivated to ‘green’ the data center for cost reduction and efficiency purposes,” said Mark Bregman, executive vice president, chief technology officer, Symantec. “The report findings indicate that cost savings and constant business pressure to maintain performance and meet increasingly aggressive service level agreements are the main reasons for implementing many green strategies. For them it is beyond environmental concerns – it is about meeting business goals and reducing costs.”

Participants noted that while energy efficiency is a priority, it must be balanced by business needs. The increasing emphasis on creating energy efficiencies has added another layer of complexity in managing today’s data center. To better manage and reduce costs, the study finds that many data center professionals are increasingly turning to software solutions, including those to manage server consolidation and virtualized environments as they develop and implement their green initiatives.

Software is a Top Strategy for Creating Energy Efficiencies Data center managers indicate that software designed for server consolidation and server virtualization are the most popular solutions in creating energy efficiencies, with 51 and 47 percent indicating plans to consolidate and virtualize servers respectively. In fact, 68 percent of respondents indicate that reducing energy played a role in their decision to implement virtualization and server consolidation. In addition to server consolidation and virtualization, those who implement a green data center strategy are more likely to use software for storage resource management, server management and data deduplication.

Symantec Corp.