The green datacentre is a myth for many companies, who either lack the skill or the will to implement green policies, despite their public support of green policies. Those are the findings of an investigation into the green datacentre, at a time when increased power consumption globally is linked to the demand for IT services.

A survey by datacentre specialist Aperture Research Institute (ARI) of more than 100 datacentre professionals has shown that organisations are unable or unwilling to meet the expectations set by their adoption of green initiatives for the datacentre. Organisations lack the tools to measure energy efficiency, lack processes to charge the business for energy use, and that many do not decommission ‘ghost’ servers that are no longer needed.

This follows an earlier ARI report published in March 2008, which discovered that 70% of organisations say they are adopting green initiatives – although 19% of those had omitted the datacentre from that programme.

In the latest ARI study, 74% of those surveyed refused to activate power saving features on devices if it would require a drop in performance. While 37% are concerned that the power/performance ratio doesn’t add up, 15% worry that they have no way to track whether the power saving setting is on or off. Nearly half (48%) of those surveyed blame the business for not using power-saving features, saying that users wouldn’t tolerate a drop in performance in the interests of saving power.

When it comes to procurement, energy efficiency and ease of disposal are the lowest priorities, rated as less significant than brand and price. 37% of datacentres have no plans to measure energy efficiency, and 76% do not charge the business for the power used by the IT it commissions. One reason for that is a lack of infrastructure for measuring power consumption.

Steve Yellen, principal of the Aperture Research Institute, said: “Although many organisations have made a commitment to cutting their environmental impact, when it comes to the datacentre, most lack the tools and processes they need if they are to deliver on that promise. The number one cause of increasing power consumption is an increase in demand for IT services, so business managers must be made accountable for the energy their applications consume. Only 24% of organisations we surveyed said the IT department charges the business for energy use. They simply don’t have the technology to be able to implement the management processes they need.”

The survey also found that decommissioning processes are not strictly followed, and “ghost servers” haunt the datacentres of 19% of organisations. Ghost servers are those servers which the business no longer needs, but which have not been switched off, and which are as a result needlessly consuming electricity, space and other limited resources.

The report comes in the wake of the recent European Outsourcing Association conference in London, where delegates said that datacentres were – in theory, at least – top of their green agenda in terms of IT services, but also voiced the opinion that innovation and education are often expected to come from their outsourcing services providers.