Energy Efficient Computing: Off the Bench & Onto the Field

The explosive growth in rich media, cloud computing and smart phones has had major unintended consequences. Thirteen percent of all the energy used in businesses comes from datacenters and PCs, while over two-thirds of all enterprise IT operating budgets is spent on ongoing operations and maintenance.

As a result, capturing as much value out of existing resources through improved efficiency is now a top priority within IT organizations. While early adopter firms and computing companies with large energy footprints were previously the main customers for efficiency technology, energy efficient computing has now become more mainstream. At long last sustainability objectives and managing environmental footprints are now fully aligned with the business objectives of reducing operating costs through IT efficiency.

While a major efficiency trend in the IT industry has been to consolidate computing infrastructure in data centers by using virtualization, this trend is being taken even further by a new class of emerging IT companies who count energy savings as one of their prime customer benefits.

For example, SeaMicro has designed multi-core servers using powerful but energy efficient processors with the potential of delivering 75 percent energy savings over existing servers. Verdiem provides a management platform for desktop PCs that can reduce their energy consumption by as much as 30 percent. Other companies are developing utility storage technologies, which create highly virtualized and dynamically tiered storage arrays built for both public and private cloud computing. These storage solutions can help customers minimize up-front capacity purchases by an average of 60 percent and reduce energy expenses by up to 75 percent.

Mayfield Fund has made three investments over the past 12 months in companies that target this macro energy efficient IT trend:

1). Virtualization Moves to the Desktop: PanoLogic provides small and elegant zero-client virtual desktops which consume 97 percent less power than PCs without sacrificing functionality. Pano devices consume so little power that they hardly emit any heat, reducing the amount of HVAC required in the office building. This is in addition to their primary benefit of reducing the infrastructure and operating expenses involved with buying and managing desktop PCs for the enterprise.

2). High Quality Video Delivery at Low Cost: Ankeena Networks, recently acquired by Juniper Networks, makes video delivery software that significantly enhances the quality of video content delivered to consumers. But at the same time its solution drastically decreases costs by reducing the number of physical servers required by a factor of 10. As a result, the amount of physical space goes down by a factor of 10 and simultaneously the energy requirements for running the servers and HVAC systems are dramatically lowered.

3). Financial Incentives for IT Efficiency: CPower, an energy services company for the commercial and industrial sector, rewards its clients for energy efficiency initiatives, which can improve the return on investment for energy projects while reducing facility operating costs. By working with individual facility managers, CPower helps to identify, implement and monetize datacenter assets and resources with demand reduction value, including energy efficiency, load management and distributed generation projects.

Energy efficiency can help address the new pain point for IT of drastically rising electricity costs related to running computing infrastructure and HVAC systems in datacenters today. We are excited about the opportunities that lie ahead for innovative startups in this area.

This article was written by Navin Chaddha and Pedram Mokrian, of the Mayfield Fund. Come to Green:Net 2010 to see Chaddha give his feedback on 10 companies that have developed innovation in the intersection and green and IT. Google’s Green Energy Czar Bill Weihl will also speak about how Google has reduced energy consumption of its data centers.

For more research on green data centers and IT see GigaOM Pro (subscription required):

Hot Topic: Green Data Centers

Green Data Centers Need Performance Not Prescriptions

Image courtesy of bugeaters’ photostream.