Green Networking

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to speak at a conference in Orlando to an audience of over 100 Gartner clients and IT managers about how you can lower datacenter energy costs with blade networking.

I was taken aback by the power of our message!! Truly, I managed to shock myself!!

And no, our message was not about our switches having 2x the performance at 1/2 the cost of Cisco (though that is still true).

Our message was even more controversial - "you are polluting the environment by using energy inefficient Cisco gear - that puts out carbon dioxide, monoxides, and creates acid rain, global warming, melts the polar ice caps and kills the penguins!! Is this what you want to leave back for your children and grand children?"

The message resonates.

And the reason we can blow our own horn here is the fact that our BLADE switches not only make it possible for you to consolidate your datacenter into a more efficient use of space and equipment--but they also consume between 25 watts and 65 watts compared with external switches that typically begin consumption at 300 watts. Multiply that out by the number of Ethernet connections a business needs to purchase and provide power and cooling for and the cost savings and environmental benefits are tremendous.

What does this really mean? If a 100 watt light bulb, powered from a coal-fired power plant runs continuously for one year, it consumes:

• 876 kWh


• 714 pounds of coal


• 5 lb of Sulfur Dioxide


• 5.1 pounds of Nitrogen Oxides


• 1852 pounds of Carbon Dioxide

I had people come up and tell me they are going to go back and examine their network architecture decisions - truly.

In September BLADE Network Technologies was recognized as the first IT networking vendor to win the GoingGreen 100 award.

Today, my article, "A Holistic Solution to the IT Energy Crisis" was featured in GreenerComputing.com. Please have a read and let me know what you think.

-Vikram