Green Initiatives: Lowering Cost and Increasing Efficiency ...green initiatives which include specific cost and efficiency, but the fact is that whether it is called a green initiative

Green Initiatives: Lowering Costs and Increasing Efficiency in the Data Center

February 2008

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Green Initiatives Page 2

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Executive Summary Research Benchmark

Aberdeen’s Research Benchmarks provide an in-depth and comprehensive look into process, procedure, methodologies, and technologies with best practice identification and actionable recommendations

Conserving energy, reducing floor space, and managing utility costs are becoming major priorities for IT organizations. As the number of servers continues to grow and demand for storage capacity increases, companies are faced with the challenge of powering and cooling these systems while controlling their energy consumption and complying with environmental regulations. A recent study by Aberdeen surveyed over 175 organizations, and results provide evidence that Best-in-Class IT organizations experience lower operating costs, improved application and data availability, and an enhanced corporate image as a result of implementing a green initiative.

Best-in-Class Performance Aberdeen used four key performance criteria to distinguish Best-in-Class companies:

• Decrease in data center utilities cost

• Decrease in data center floor space "We don't have a green strategy per se. What we have is program for increasing the efficiency of our infrastructure, but the two objectives coincide."

~ IT Manager, Data Clearing House in Virginia

• Decrease in storage systems power consumption

• Decrease in storage systems cooling capacity

Companies with the top 20% performance based on these criteria earned Best-in-Class status.

Competitive Maturity Assessment Survey results show that the firms enjoying Best-in-Class performance shared several common characteristics:

• 33% conducted formal energy audits as a way to measure data center efficiency

• 42% have implemented a tiered storage architecture to maximize the utilization of their storage infrastructure

"Ours is not a green initiative. It deals more with the cost of operation, but the two coincide."

~ IT Director, Large Insurance Data Provider in the Southeast

• 58% have instituted a corporate data and records retention policy

• 42% have knowledge about the energy efficiency and performance trade-offs of various storage media

Required Actions In addition to the specific recommendations in Chapter Three of this report, to achieve Best-in-Class performance, companies must evaluate their data center's power and cooling efficiency to guide their strategic planning and selection of server and storage solutions. By so doing, they serve the need to increase operational efficiency and lower costs - which is one of the keys to any green initiative.

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Table of Contents Executive Summary....................................................................................................... 2

Best-in-Class Performance..................................................................................... 2 Competitive Maturity Assessment....................................................................... 2 Required Actions...................................................................................................... 2

Chapter One: Benchmarking the Best-in-Class ..................................................... 4 Business Context ..................................................................................................... 4 The Maturity Class Framework............................................................................ 5 The Best-in-Class PACE Model ............................................................................ 5 Best-in-Class Strategies........................................................................................... 6

Chapter Two: Benchmarking Requirements for Success .................................... 8 Competitive Assessment........................................................................................ 8 Capabilities and Enablers ........................................................................................ 9

Chapter Three: Required Actions .........................................................................14 Laggard and Industry Average Steps to Success .............................................14 Best-in-Class Steps to Success ............................................................................15

Appendix A: Research Methodology.....................................................................17 Appendix B: Related Aberdeen Research............................................................19 Featured Underwriters ..............................................................................................20

Figures Figure 1: Pressures to Adopt a Green Initiative .................................................... 4 Figure 2: Current Green Strategies .......................................................................... 6 Figure 3: Convincing Companies to Adopt a Green Initiative ........................... 7 Figure 4: Measuring Infrastructure Efficiency........................................................10 Figure 5: Technologies Supporting a Green Initiative.........................................12 Figure 6: Efficiency Enhancing Technologies .........................................................15 Figure 7: Comparison of Implemented versus Plan to Implement ..................16

Tables Table 1: Top Performers Earn Best-in-Class Status.............................................. 5 Table 2: The Best-in-Class PACE Framework ....................................................... 6 Table 3: The Competitive Framework..................................................................... 9 Table 4: The PACE Framework Key ......................................................................18 Table 5: The Competitive Framework Key ..........................................................18 Table 6: The Relationship Between PACE and the Competitive Framework.........................................................................................................................................18



Chapter One: Benchmarking the Best-in-Class

Business Context Fast Facts

√ 18% of responding companies had an increase in their storage budget for green technology in the past 12 months

√ 20% of the companies surveyed responded that at least 10% of their data center budget is allocated to improving energy efficiency

Conservation of natural resources is not a new idea; environmentalists have warned about the need to be environmentally aware since the 1960's and many individuals implemented recycling as a result. Concerns about energy supplies and consumption, global warming, and climate change have brought new public awareness to the industry in helping to solve these issues.

To address these challenges, information technology companies and professionals have formed environmentally oriented organizations such as The Green Grid, a consortium of industry manufacturers which seeks to lower the overall consumption of power in data centers around the globe. The Green Grid consortium is chartered to develop meaningful, platform-neutral standards, measurement methods, processes, and new technologies to improve the energy efficient performance of global data centers.

Is it a Green Initiative? It might come as no surprise that companies list the rising cost of energy and the cost of their storage infrastructure as top pressures (Figure 1), but does a response to these pressures constitute a green initiative? Most IT organizations are tasked with lowering costs and increasing the overall efficiency of their infrastructure, and these goals are consistent with those of a green strategy. Of course, some companies do consciously implement green initiatives which include specific cost and efficiency, but the fact is that whether it is called a green initiative or not, the effect on the data center costs and operations should be the same.

Figure 1: Pressures to Adopt a Green Initiative

11%

11%

14%

24%

24%

30%

38%

42%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%

Power restriction

Regulatory compliance

Reduce storage floor space

Storage capacity growth

Storage energy utilization

Brand pressure

Cost of storage infrastructure

Rising cost of energy

Source: Aberdeen Group, January 2008


http://www.thegreengrid.org/about/overview/



Companies may also respond to the market pressure to be identified as being environmentally conscious, which was indicated by 30% of the companies in the survey. Note that regulatory compliance and restrictions on power consumption were identified as the two lowest pressures both at 11%. These results may reflect the geographic distribution of the respondents as the majority of companies (69%) are based in North America which has yet to implement consumption guidelines or regulatory usage limits, unlike their European counterparts.

The Maturity Class Framework Aberdeen used four key performance criteria to distinguish the Best-in-Class from Industry Average and Laggard organizations:

• Decrease in data center utilities cost

• Decrease in data center floor space

• Decrease in storage systems power consumption

• Decrease in storage systems cooling requirements

Companies with top performance in these criteria earned Best-in-Class status (Table 1). Additional information about the Aberdeen Maturity Class Framework can be found in Table 5 in Appendix A.

Table 1: Top Performers Earn Best-in-Class Status

Definition of Maturity Class Mean Class Performance

Best-in-Class: Top 20% of

aggregate performance scorers

15% decrease in data center utilities cost 15% decrease in data center floor space 12% decrease in storage systems power consumption 2% decrease in storage systems cooling requirements

Industry Average: Middle 50% of aggregate

performance scorers

2% increase in data center utilities cost 0% decrease in data center floor space 4% increase in storage systems power consumption 14% increase in storage systems cooling requirements

Laggard: Bottom 30% of aggregate

performance scorers

45% increase in data center utilities cost 37% increase in data center floor space 32% increase in storage systems power consumption 39% increase in storage systems cooling requirements


The Best-in-Class PACE Model Deploying a successful green initiative to achieve operational efficiency and lower costs for the data center requires a combination of strategic actions, organizational capabilities, and enabling technologies. Table 2 summarizes



the characteristics of these companies. Additional information about the Best-in-Class PACE Framework can be found in Appendix A.

Table 2: The Best-in-Class PACE Framework

Pressures Actions Capabilities Enablers Storage system energy utilization

Comply with The Green Grid consortium or other energy efficiency guidelines Establish storage operation efficiencies

Measure the infrastructure against The Green Grid consortium or other energy efficiency guidelines Classify types of data being stored and shelf life Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) process Tiered storage architecture Audit energy efficiency of storage infrastructure

Storage Area Network (SAN) Tape storage Network Attached Storage (NAS) Server and storage virtualization Energy efficient storage components Storage Resource Management (SRM) software Energy-efficient facility design Energy-conserving enclosures


Best-in-Class Strategies As Figure 2 shows, replacing or upgrading infrastructure components is a leading strategy of Best-in-Class companies (52%) for increasing the efficiency of the data center. Older components are far more likely to use more power and require more cooling than newer companies because manufacturers are designing components with energy efficiency in mind. Storage arrays, for example, can achieve a higher capacity without adding more disks because the capacity of individual disks has increased substantially. It's a storage industry axiom that fewer spinning disks mean lowered power consumption and cooling requirements.

Figure 2: Current Green Strategies

52%

31%26%

34%24% 21%

28%20%

8%

0%

20%

40%

60%

Replace or upgradecomponents

Consolidate datacenter

Establish operationalcost objectives

Best-in-Class Average Laggards


Consolidating the data center can have a dramatic impact on energy consumption. Consolidation takes many forms, including reducing data center floor space, server or storage virtualization, increasing the density of



compute power in less space - but all of these strategies have the same net effect, they reduce power consumption and reduce the requirement for cooling.

Aberdeen Insights — Strategy

One of the attributes of Best-in-Class companies in this report is that they have already implemented a green initiative. As a result of their actions, Best-in-Class companies have achieved reductions in power consumption or reduced the requirement for cooling.

But what about companies that are considering adopting a green initiative, (which represented 30% of responding companies)? What factors would convince these companies to accelerate an implementation? Figure 3 shows the results.

Figure 3: Convincing Companies to Adopt a Green Initiative

3%

6%

7%

7%

11%

16%

39%

0% 20% 40% 60%

Reach floor space capacity

Restrictions on power consumption

Demonstrated green success

Reached power/cooling capacity

Financial incentives

Regulatory mandates

Defensible ROI



Thirty-nine percent (39%) of respondents identified the need to demonstrate a Return on Investment (ROI) before undertaking a green initiative as the top factor. Of course, most companies would insist on a positive ROI as part of any proposal that involves a capital investment. In fact, a defensible ROI is more than twice as important as regulatory mandates and three-times more important as financial incentives.

In the next chapter, we will see what the top performers are doing to achieve these gains.

“Easy, common sense is the best approach: maintain the operation, ask people what they can do, audit, and then implement.”

~ CIO, Retail Manufacturer in Belgium



Chapter Two: Benchmarking Requirements for Success

Fast Facts

√ 28% of respondents purchased new, energy efficient storage systems in response to energy consumptions incentives

√ 43% of the responding companies are using server and storage virtualization

Implementing a green initiative requires understanding the current infrastructure's energy efficiency, its power and cooling consumption, and then adjusting the infrastructure so that its overall energy efficiency is increased and operational costs are lowered.

Case Study – Certified Personal Data Provider

Consider the case of a large provider of certified personal data located in the southern US whose clients include both Fortune 500 companies and government agencies. They "backed into" their green initiative for operational reasons, according to their Director of Unix and Storage Systems. "Because we've acquired some companies who provide complementary services to ours, we have a heterogeneous environment of some 1500 Unix, Linux, and Windows servers. Our data center costs are split 50/50 between servers and storage and we add about 20 terabytes of storage per month." The company continues to grow at a year-over-year growth rate of 27%, while data center power consumption was growing at about 40% per year.

Starting in 2007, the Unix and Storage group began a conscious effort to address the issue of escalating power consumption. They focused on two areas: establishing a standard, scalable enterprise architecture and standardizing on commodity hardware which allows the company to buy in bulk. As a result, technology refreshes can be done with budget and energy efficiency in mind.

The company has established its own set of metrics for evaluating their progress with the consultation of a green engineer. These are: a reduction in data center footprint, a reduction in power consumption, a reduction in administration costs, and a reduction in support (maintenance) costs.

The company's Director of Unix and Storage Systems said, "The key is to start with small wins and market those successes to other business units. Within the timeframe of one year we've been able to slow the growth in power consumption to 10%. We've made more bottom line impact than some of our business units!"

Competitive Assessment Aberdeen analyzed the aggregated metrics of surveyed companies to determine whether their performance ranked as Best-in-Class, Industry Average, or Laggard. In addition to having common performance levels, each class also shared characteristics in five key categories:

1. Process. The approaches they take to execute their daily operations




2. Organization. Corporate focus and collaboration among stakeholders

3. Knowledge management. Contextualizing data and exposing it to key stakeholders)

4. Technology. The selection of appropriate tools and the effective deployment of those tools

5. Performance management. The ability of the organization to measure their results to improve their business

These characteristics (identified in Table 3) serve as a guideline for best practices, and correlate directly with Best-in-Class performance across the key metrics.

Table 3: The Competitive Framework

Best-in-Class Average Laggards Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) process

Process 36% 27% 16%

Corporate data / records retention and destruction policy Organization

58% 53% 36%

Classify types of data being stored and required shelf life

46% 32% 30%

Knowledge of energy efficiency and performance trade-offs of different types of storage media

Knowledge

42% 27% 13%

Tiered storage architecture Technology

42% 35% 28%

Increase in storage systems availability

59% 44% 40%

Increase in storage systems reliability Performance

58% 39% 37%


Capabilities and Enablers Based on the findings of the Competitive Framework and interviews with end users, Aberdeen’s analysis of the Best-in-Class reveals that a green initiative is consistent with a purposeful strategy of increasing operational efficiency and cost reduction goals for the data center.

Process Consumer goods like refrigerators, air conditioners, and even cars have long had energy efficiency ratings, but not data center components like



servers or storage systems. This lack of established standards makes it difficult to measure the infrastructure's efficiency. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Energy are considering metrics proposed by The Green Grid. They have proposed several formulas (see the Aberdeen Insights box later in this chapter) to measure data center efficiency which many companies are using in lieu of government guidelines.

Figure 4 shows that Best-in-Class companies not only conducted formal energy audits of their infrastructure, but that 24% of them used The Green Grid guidelines. Although companies can and do use changes in data center power consumption and cooling capacity as indicators of progress, The Green Grid guidelines provide a common scorecard for companies to gauge progress internally and within the industry.

Figure 4: Measuring Infrastructure Efficiency

33%

24%23%

14%6% 6%

0%

20%

40%

Conducted formal energy audit Used Green Grid guidelines

Best-in-Class Average Laggards Source: Aberdeen Group, January 2008

The use of a formal energy audit conducted by an outside firm helps companies evaluate their infrastructure when they may not have internal expertise or available staff for this task. Thirty-three percent (33%) of Best-in-Class companies conducted formal energy audits, while only 23% of Industry Average and 6% of Laggards did the same.

Organization Fifty-eight percent (58%) of Best-in-Class companies instituted corporate data management and retention policies, in contrast to 53% of Industry Average companies and 36% of Laggards. Using this kind of policy enables companies to manage what kind of data gets stored, where it gets stored (for example, online or offline), and perhaps most importantly how long it is retained. They also help the IT organization determine how much storage capacity needs to be in the infrastructure to respond to current and anticipated demand. Removing data with an expired retention time allows IT to reallocate storage for other uses, which leads to a more efficient storage infrastructure. An additional benefit is that these policies help a company meet regulatory requirements to retain company-critical data in case of a lawsuit. A company’s ability to quickly produce documents or emails may help lower or even avoid the high cost of legal discovery.




Establishing a formal policy for data center energy efficiency is an important first step in guiding the organization toward achieving the green initiative objectives, as identified by 21% of Best-in-Class companies. A documented energy policy establishes goals for power consumption, cooling capacity, and even data center floor space. These goals allow the organization to measure its progress toward a more energy efficient infrastructure. By way of contrast with the Best-in-Class companies, only 12% of Industry Average and 3% of Laggard companies implemented a formal policy.

Knowledge Management Increasing the overall operational efficiency of the infrastructure requires an understanding of the efficiency of the components that comprise it. Since no two components have the same rating, it's equally important to understand the trade-offs between components. For example, two storage arrays might differ substantially in their energy consumption based solely on the number of disks inside the array. Forty-two percent (42%) of Best-in-Class companies used this knowledge in evaluating storage components, but only 27% of Industry Average companies and 13% of Laggard companies evaluate infrastructure components this way.

Efficient use of storage capacity is another way to increase the contribution storage systems make to the overall efficiency of the data center. Classification of data, the understanding of data types, and the amount of time data needs to be stored in the infrastructure was identified as important to improving the overall efficiency of the storage infrastructure by 46% of the Best-in-Class companies, in contrast to 32% of Industry Average and 30% of Laggards.

Technology Companies often add storage capacity in hopes of keeping up with increasing demands for storage resources which from an energy efficiency perspective only leads to increased power consumption and a requirement for additional cooling. One solution to this situation is to use a tiered storage architecture in which data is stored on the appropriate storage system according to application use and retrieval speed. Forty-two percent (42%) of Best-in-Class companies implemented a tiered storage architecture, as opposed to 35% of Industry Average companies and 28% of Laggards.

Tiered storage architecture is often combined with technologies like thin provisioning of applications and data de-duplication, both of which help to reduce the amount of online storage and thus promote lower energy cost and lead to a smaller storage footprint in the data center. Figure 5 shows the technologies Best-in-Class companies identified in support of their green initiative.



Figure 5: Technologies Supporting a Green Initiative

9%

17%

19%

19%

17%

23%

35%

15%

24%

27%

30%

30%

33%

42%

0% 20% 40% 60%

Solid state storage

De-duplication

Energy conserving enclosures

Energy efficient facility design

Using an energy consultant

Energy efficient components

Tiered storage architecture

All others Best-in-Class Source: Aberdeen Group, January 2008

Performance Management Best-in-Class companies continuously measure the performance of their storage infrastructure against metrics to gauge the efficiency of their infrastructure and highlight areas that might require corrective action. One such measure is storage availability; an increase in availability indicates that the storage infrastructure is responding well to demands placed upon it. Best-in-Class companies scored higher (59%) in increasing storage availability than Industry Average companies (44%) and Laggards (40%).

Another indicator of how well the storage infrastructure performs is reliability. An increase in overall reliability indicates that storage components are performing according to service expectations; a decrease in reliability indicates that storage components need to be replaced or that maintenance is inadequate. As with availability, storage reliability was higher for the Best-in-Class (58%) than it was in either Industry Average (39%) or Laggard (37%) companies.

Aberdeen Insights — Technology

Measuring the operational efficiency of the data center is a key part of establishing a green initiative. In the absence of governmental guidelines, technology companies formed The Green Grid in 2005. This consortium promotes data center efficiency in terms of metrics like power consumption and cooling.

continued




Aberdeen Insights — Technology

The Green Grid has established two metrics which companies can use to measure their infrastructure: Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) and Data Center Infrastructure Efficiency (DCIE). The formulas are:

PUE = Total Facility Power ------------------------- IT Equipment Power

and

DCIE = IT Equipment Power -------------------------- Total Facility Power

The importance of these kinds of metrics is that they give companies a balanced scorecard with which to assess their own consumption and the ability to compare it to other companies. US government agencies like the EPA and the Department of Energy are currently considering whether to adopt some of the metrics proposed by The Green Grid in 2008.



Chapter Three: Required Actions

Fast Facts

√ 28% of respondents cited demonstrating a ROI as being the chief barrier in implementing a green initiative

√ 29% of companies listed energy efficiency expertise as one of the top criteria in selecting a solution provider

Whether a company is trying to move its infrastructure performance from Laggard to Industry Average, or Industry to Best-in-Class, the following actions will help spur the necessary performance improvements:

Laggard and Industry Average Steps to Success • Evaluate infrastructure for energy efficiency. The first step in

implementing a green initiative is to establish the current energy profile of the data center. Without such an evaluation, there is no baseline against which to gauge progress. In fact, more than 33% of the Best-in-Class companies performed a formal evaluation of the infrastructure, while only 23% of Industry Average and 6% of Laggard companies did so.

• Establish a formal energy policy. A formal energy policy is a blueprint for success in implementing a green initiative because it establishes operational goals by which the organization can assess the progress in achieving them. It is also a logical next step after evaluating the current efficiency state of the infrastructure. Perhaps most important, formal policies such as these require people at all levels in a company to "buy in" to their application which helps assure success. Establishing a formal energy policy is a best practice in 26% of Best-in-Class companies, while Industry Average and Laggard companies together only used them 11% of the time.

• Replace or upgrade components. Most companies have a period technology refresh program, in which obsolete components are upgraded to current technology. Traditionally these upgrades are performed to meet changing application or operating system requirements, but they can also be replaced for energy efficiency reasons. Ninety percent (90%) of Best-in-Class companies upgraded or replaced components to raise the energy efficiency of their infrastructure, as opposed to 33% of Industry Average or 28% of Laggard companies. This incremental approach also fits with the budget cycles of most companies; a gradual upgrade of servers or storage components will show progress in lowering costs without "breaking the bank."

“For me, the term ‘green initiative’ is false. With normal methods to reduce costs and limit the growth of storage you will always reduce power consumption.”

~ IT Manager, Large European Publisher in Germany

• Implement a virtual infrastructure to reduce power and cooling costs. Virtualization has many tangible advantages, but one of the most important is that it can reduce the sheer number of application servers or storage nodes. A reduction in the number of physical components means a reduction in power consumption and required cooling, especially for storage components which tend to require more cooling than other components. The virtualized infrastructure also requires less floor space as physical components are replaced. Finally, the concentration of virtual servers on fewer




machines makes the infrastructure easier to manage. Best-in-Class companies led in storage virtualization with 32%. The results for Industry Average and Laggard companies were close, with 20% and 17%, respectively.

Best-in-Class Steps to Success • Engage consultants trained in energy efficiency. The

likelihood that companies have on-staff expertise in energy efficiency is slight, since this is a specialized discipline within engineering. Still, 18% of Best-in-Class companies used energy consultants to help them measure the energy efficiency of the infrastructure and to propose solutions that target infrastructure weaknesses.

• Increase the use of energy efficient technologies. Manufacturers continue to improve the energy efficiency of their products, especially in the area of storage. The technologies shown in Figure 6 were identified by Best-in-Class companies as important to their green initiative. All of these technologies share a common theme: they increase the operational efficiency of the infrastructure, which has the net effect of lowering costs.

Figure 6: Efficiency Enhancing Technologies

15%

24%

27%

30%

33%

0% 20% 40%

Solid state storage

De-duplication solutions

Energy conserving enclosures

Energy efficient facility designs

Energy efficient storagecomponents


• Consider consolidating data centers. Only 30% of Best-in-Class companies performed some kind of data center consolidation, but consolidation has the potential to accomplish the major objectives of a green initiative. Consolidation concentrates server and server resources which can reduce power consumption, reduce cooling requirements, and reduce floor space.




Aberdeen Insights — Summary

"Green IT" is rapidly becoming one of 2008's industry buzzwords, but how many companies are actually implementing a green initiative? Aberdeen's research shows that 30% of responding companies are actively engaged in a green strategy, while another 35% are interested an evaluating an energy initiative. Figure 7 compares the top actions of these two groups.

Figure 7: Comparison of Implemented versus Plan to Implement

52%

28%22%

42%

23%17%

0%

20%

40%

60%

Replace orupgrade

components

Establishoperationalobjectives

Consolidate datacenters

Implemented Plan to implement


The percentages of the two groups are surprisingly close which demonstrates that IT organizations understand what their mission is and where their efforts should be directed. All three of these actions reflect the ongoing need for IT to understand costs and direct their efforts at lowering them. That these actions are consistent with a green strategy is not a coincidence, because one of the primary tenets of "going green" is the notion of reducing consumption. So whether it is called a green initiative or not, it still falls to the IT organization to reduce or at least control energy costs and to increase the operational efficiency of the infrastructure.





Appendix A: Research Methodology

Between December and January 2008, Aberdeen examined the use, the experiences, and the intentions of more than 175 enterprises that have implemented a green initiative.

Study Focus

Responding executives completed an online survey that included questions designed to determine the following:

√ The degree to which companies are actively engaged in the implementation of a green initiative

√ What metrics companies are using to establish and then assess their progress in lower costs and increasing operational efficiency

√ The benefits, if any, that have been derived from implementing a green initiative

The study aimed to identify emerging best practices for green data centers and to provide a framework by which readers could assess their own management capabilities

Aberdeen supplemented this online survey effort with telephone interviews with select survey respondents, gathering additional information on green strategies, experiences, and results.

Responding enterprises included the following:

• Job title / function: The research sample included respondents with the following job titles: procurement, supply chain, or logistics manager (29%); operations manager (27%); IT manager or staff (24%); sales and marketing staff (13%); and senior management (7%).

• Industry: The research sample included respondents from a variety of industries, the largest of which were high technology (19%), financial (7%), public sector (7%), education (6%), and mining, oil and gas (7%).

• Geography: The majority of respondents (68%) were from North America. Remaining respondents were from the Asia-Pacific region (9%) and Europe, Middle East, and Africa (22%).

• Company size: Twenty-eight percent (28%) of respondents were from large enterprises (annual revenues above US $1 billion); 29% were from midsize enterprises (annual revenues between $50 million and $1 billion); and 43% of respondents were from small businesses (annual revenues of $50 million or less).

• Headcount: Twenty-eight percent (28%) of respondents were from small enterprises (headcount between 1 and 99 employees); 44% were from midsize enterprises (headcount between 100 and 999 employees); and 28% of respondents were from large businesses (headcount greater than 1,000 employees).

Solution providers recognized as sponsors were solicited after the fact and had no substantive influence on the direction of this report. Their sponsorship has made it possible for Aberdeen Group to make these findings available to readers at no charge.




Table 4: The PACE Framework Key

Overview Aberdeen applies a methodology to benchmark research that evaluates the business pressures, actions, capabilities, and enablers (PACE) that indicate corporate behavior in specific business processes. These terms are defined as follows: Pressures — external forces that impact an organization’s market position, competitiveness, or business operations (e.g., economic, political and regulatory, technology, changing customer preferences, competitive) Actions — the strategic approaches that an organization takes in response to industry pressures (e.g., align the corporate business model to leverage industry opportunities, such as product / service strategy, target markets, financial strategy, go-to-market, and sales strategy) Capabilities — the business process competencies required to execute corporate strategy (e.g., skilled people, brand, market positioning, viable products / services, ecosystem partners, financing) Enablers — the key functionality of technology solutions required to support the organization’s enabling business practices (e.g., development platform, applications, network connectivity, user interface, training and support, partner interfaces, data cleansing, and management)

Source: Aberdeen Group, February 2008

Table 5: The Competitive Framework Key

Overview


The Aberdeen Competitive Framework defines enterprises as falling into one of the following three levels of practices and performance: Best-in-Class (20%) — Practices that are the best currently being employed and are significantly superior to the Industry Average, and result in the top industry performance. Industry Average (50%) — Practices that represent the average or norm, and result in average industry performance. Laggards (30%) — Practices that are significantly behind the average of the industry, and result in below average performance.

In the following categories: Process — What is the scope of process standardization? What is the efficiency and effectiveness of this process? Organization — How is your company currently organized to manage and optimize this particular process? Knowledge — What visibility do you have into key data and intelligence required to manage this process? Technology — What level of automation have you used to support this process? How is this automation integrated and aligned? Performance — What do you measure? How frequently? What’s your actual performance?


Table 6: The Relationship Between PACE and the Competitive Framework

PACE and the Competitive Framework – How They Interact Aberdeen research indicates that companies that identify the most influential pressures and take the most transformational and effective actions are most likely to achieve superior performance. The level of competitive performance that a company achieves is strongly determined by the PACE choices that they make and how well they execute those decisions.




Appendix B: Related Aberdeen Research

Related Aberdeen research that forms a companion or reference to this report includes:

• Remote Office Backup; September 2007

• Business Continuity Benchmark Report (Virtualization); September 2007

• e-Discovery and Data Archiving; December 2007

• ISCSI at the Tipping Point; November 2007

Information on these and any other Aberdeen publications can be found at www.Aberdeen.com.

Author: Jeffrey Hill, Senior Research Analyst, Data Management and Storage Practice, [email protected]

Founded in 1988, Aberdeen Group is the technology- driven research destination of choice for the global business executive. Aberdeen Group has 400,000 research members in over 36 countries around the world that both participate in and direct the most comprehensive technology-driven value chain research in the market. Through its continued fact-based research, benchmarking, and actionable analysis, Aberdeen Group offers global business and technology executives a unique mix of actionable research, KPIs, tools, and services.

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3PAR® is the global leader in utility storage, highly virtualized tiered-storage arrays built for utility computing. 3PAR Utility Storage allows users to reliably serve more with less. Organizations creating virtualized IT infrastructures for workload consolidation use 3PAR to reduce the cost of allocated storage capacity, storage administration, and the SAN infrastructure. As the pioneer of thin provisioning, 3PAR has disrupted the fundamental economics associated with primary storage and become a leader in minimizing power consumption and promoting environmental responsibility. Distinct advantages in simplicity, efficiency, and massive scalability make 3PAR utility storage ideal for open systems storage consolidation, integrated data lifecycle management, and performance-intensive applications.

For additional information on 3PAR:

3PAR Inc.

4209 Technology Drive

Fremont, CA 94538

Phone: (510) 413-5999

Email: [email protected]

Website: www.3PAR.com


http://www.3par.com/



Nexsan is the world leader in secure, energy-efficient long-term disk storage solutions. It delivers innovative storage appliances and modular, high density disk storage systems for a broad range of applications such as fixed content storage and archiving, disk-based backup, digital video security, medical imaging, email and rich media, compliance and litigation support. The Nexsan line of enterprise-class secondary storage solutions offers exceptional price/performance and is the choice of Fortune 500 companies, major governmental agencies, small/medium enterprises and leading organizations seeking high-density, energy-efficient, long-term disk storage.

For additional information on Nexsan Technologies:

Nexsan Technologies

Robert Woolery

555 St. Charles Drive, Suite 202

Thousand Oaks, CA 91360

Phone: (805) 418-2702

Email: [email protected]

Website: www.nexsan.com


Green Initiatives: Lowering Cost and Increasing Efficiency ...green initiatives which include specific cost and efficiency, but the fact is that whether it is called a green initiative

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