I did a session this year at International Spectrum 2009 Conference called "Alphabet Soup".  I talked about current IT terms and what they mean to us, and how they effect us in our day to day life.

One of the terms I covered was "Green" and "Green IT".  After the session was done, a few people said I should write more about it and what it means to us.  So here I am.

The question of what "Green" is in IT is very relative.  "Green" started out as a term for "cutting your carbon footprint".  The problem is that there are many different ways to do this.  Let me start out with a case and point from a recent issue of an IT Magazine I read.  They did an article on creating a "Green" computer.  The researchers put a computer together that used as many components that where manufactured out of recycled components as possible.  Then did stress tests on the computer and did an evaluation and article on that computer.

The next issue they included an additional article/retraction because they got slammed by readers whose concepts of "Green" differed from the researchers.  The ideas of what "Green" computing is ranged from lower power consumption, which of course leads to a lower "carbon footprint" at the power plants, to recycled parts, to using laptops and think clients instead of desktops.  Other explained that they didn't think this computer was really "Green" because it required more energy to create the components made from recycle components due to the extraction and then manufacture process.

They are only a few examples, and as you can see, the term "Green" is a bit relative.  If you focus on the concept of "lower Carbon footprint" and assume that means lower power consumption, then any computer system that uses less power than another would say that is green.

I've talked with some CIOs and their concept of going green is removing 1 computer from there data center and making sure that everyone turns off their computer at night.

Another replaced most of their thick client PCs with thin clients, and moved all the processing to a central server in the computer room.  While this cuts down on the amount of power used on each PC, it increases the amount of power in the computer room, but in computer and in cooling and conditioning.  But since this is lowering the amount of power used by whole company, then its termed going "Green".

You can really go pretty far with this concept.  By using Linux computers instead of Windows computer (which usually requires more processing power), you would be going "Green" because you don't need such a large computer and don't need the same power consumption.
“Green” has become a marketing buzzword lately.  So if you are asked, "Is your MultiValue database server Green" you can say "Yes".

We don't require the same hardware resources as other applications and databases.  You save on power consumption.  You don’t need the large storage arrays, or the complex multiprocessor systems.