If CommVault isn't Green, What Is?

As a former end-user, any time I hear the word "Green", it generally only means one of two things to me: "How much green am I saving?" or "How much green will it cost me?" But when it comes to companies painting a true picture of how "Green" a technology really is companies need to factor in much more than the larger hard drives or faster speeds found in newer hardware. Instead companies need to think about optimizing everything from power and cooling to data center floor space to putting in place data management practices that utilize old and new technologies.

That is what puts today's announcement from CommVault® Systems that it is now a member of The Green Grid in some perspective. From a simplistic perspective, there is no reason for a software company to necessarily promote "Green" hardware because it sells zero hardware. However by taking the initiative to join The Green Grid, it provides further evidence that companies are starting to take more variables into account when measuring "Green" and that the trend towards green computing is more than just buying the newest hardware. If anything, as software vendors like CommVault embrace "Green", it sends a more definitive signal that companies are becoming more serious about proper data management techniques and willing to make real changes in how they manage their data going forward.

To discuss this change in customer mindset as well as gain some further insight on today's announcement, I had a chance to catch up with Mike Marchi, CommVault's VP of Product and Segment Marketing. Marchi noted that CommVault has been evaluating joining and participating in The Green Grid for some time and today's announcement is simply the culmination of those efforts.

But as part of that effort, CommVault commissioned its own study where it talked to nearly 600 end-users to better understand why "Green IT" is taking on more importance in their organizations. The full results of this study are available in a recently published white paper on CommVault's web site and it cites three major reasons why companies now realize that they need to take a more proactive role in the management of data. These reasons include:

• Data growth and unmanageable sprawl. Throw more storage at data growth problems isn't the answer anymore and while techniques like consolidation and virtualization help to control the sprawl, they do nothing to improve visibility into the data or manage the data itself.
• Data center energy consumption. Data centers use a sizeable portion of energy that companies and, with energy costs rising, a growing percentage of most corporate budgets. Proper data management techniques can help to rein in these costs.
• Data management inefficiency. No company can keep just one copy of production data any more. It is backed up, copied and replicated so often that if companies can eliminate even 20% of its redundant data, it can result in significant hardware and energy savings.

Marchi firmly believes that companies are reaching an inflection point when it comes to the management of data in their data centers. While he still recognizes that changes in data management practices will not occur all at once in any corporation, his comments coincide with what I am observing and hearing more often in conversations - companies know deep down that they cannot keep throwing hardware at their data management problems. In fact, some organizations are already internally getting push back from some unlikely places. "Pressure is coming from corporate Facility groups that are running out of power, running out of cooling and can't build out anymore," says Marchi.

Companies are under intense pressure to save money while still growing their company and the applications that run them. Today's rising energy costs and heightened sensitivity about social responsibility are forcing companies to come to grips that they need to do more than just buy the latest, greatest version of hardware and call that "Green IT".

As this study from CommVault points out, "Green IT" now equates to "Smart, responsible IT". This increasingly means companies need to put in place data management software that not only gives them visibility into their data but enables them to manage, and even reduce, how much data and hardware they need in their data center while better utilizing what they already own. And if that isn't green in every sense of the word, I don't know what is.