Greener technology has certainly been in conversations lately, and all the big computer companies are talking about it. Some companies have even made news about more efficient power supplies. They are looking to increase power efficiency to 85% by 2010. In the not too distant past, many power supplies were running in the 65% to 70% efficiency range. What is curious about this "news" is that today, power supplies – at least the ones Dell is using – are already running about 80% to 85%. By my estimations, this translates to about 25% less power use. So companies talking about 85% power efficiency by 2010 haven't been paying much attention to the efficiency gains made by the rest of the industry, and more importantly are pretty much behind the curve.
Improving power supplies is certainly a good start in the greening of technology, but it just scratches the surface of a much bigger picture that includes the entire lifecycle of a server, PC or peripheral device. You have to design every component to consume less power. You have to design your manufacturing processes to have a smaller environmental footprint, through strict chemical use policies, eco-friendly processes, and responsible waste disposal. You have to consolidate packaging so that, for example, ten blade servers are shipped in two boxes rather than 78. And you have to address what happens to the equipment after its useful life.
Dell already uses the most efficient power supplies on the market today, but this is only the tip of the iceberg to our commitment to become the greenest technology company on the planet.
Today, Dell is delivering:
- Client Power Control with and Energy Smart configurations can reduce power consumption by as much as 78%.
- Virtualization-optimized servers and storage products that maximize performance and reduce wasted energy…One Dell customer used virtualization to save as much as $10,000 a month in power and cooling costs – an 80% reduction.
- Blade servers with greater performance per watt: 16% less power per blade than HP BL460c and 9% less power per blade than IBM HS21.
- A diskless thin client over Blade PC solution that consumes 51% less energy per user.
- Data Center Solutions team that provides a new computing architecture, including customized, energy-efficient servers that use 30% less power without a compromise in performance.
- On-Demand Desktop Streaming that reduces energy costs by up to 16% per user vs. standard client desktops.
- Free tools to manage and monitor your server power.
- – Solutions that help you unlock your hidden data center – increasing data center performance up to 97%.
- – Dell – Liebert Energy Smart Solution that delivers 75% reduction in power/cooling with no change to performance OR up to a 250% performance gain with no increase in facility power requirements OR up to an 80% performance increase with a reduction in facility power by 42%
And Dell's efforts don't end with products and services. Check out the "Plant a tree for me" and "Plant a forest for me" program and Carbon Neutrality programs, Dell Earth, Regeneration.org, and all the work Dell is doing with ClimateSaversComputing.org.
So if you want to go green, go WAY GREEN with Dell.