Energy costs force server rethink

For most of the history of commercial IT, servers have been measured largely by one metric: performance related to cost of acquisition. However, that equation, often known by the Americanism “bang per buck”, is now being challenged by a new metric called “performance per watt”.

The rise of performance per watt as a concern among IT buyers is a recognition that energy costs and, in particular, the power required by volume servers, have become important contributors to overall IT expense, even if the bill is still more likely to be handed to facilities managers than IT chiefs.

As Sun chairman Scott McNealy has written: “If the chief information officer isn’t calculating the cost of electricity in his purchasing decisions, the company may as well be burning money.”
VNU Net