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I ran across an interesting article on SearchStorage.com and a press release from the State of Oregon, that discussed Oregon's consolidation efforts for their statewide data center.  It illustrated some key benefits that can be realized, cost savings that can be achieved and they are expecting to reduce their carbon footprint by 30% when the project is completed in 2009.

In 2003 their original intent was to save more than $10 million a year in power and equipment by consolidating 11 data centers into one.  Oregon, which had a wide variety of products and vendors for each state agency, was determined to standardize technologies and virtualize storage, servers and applications.  It was interesting to see how some of the goals changed, but fortunately going green, previously a fairly low-profile benefit of consolidation, just moved to the forefront of their objectives:

"Originally in 2003, the goal was to provide the same service, but at a much lower price," said Mark Reyer, administrator for the state's data center.  "It was also an opportune time because the data centers were old and facing a major capital upgrade.  But as time went on and we hit 2005, like everybody else, our governor had a major green initiative throughout the state.  Since then, the primary drivers have been saving power and reduced cooling -- a great example of a green data center."

Reyer said the state estimates the consolidation reduced power by 30% to 35%, while improving compute efficiencies.  And there may be more to come.  "We're confident we could hit another 30% to 35% reduction by going even greener with blades, SANs and consolidating our footprint on mainframes and unit boxes," he said.

Even though the new facility and project costs came to around $43 million, they expect cost savings of $10-12 million a year once the project is complete.

It is interesting how the green initiative has become a key element to any consolidation effort.  When I first started performing server and storage consolidation; capital cost reduction, equipment standardization and increased manageability seemed to be the order of the day.  Sure, we achieved savings in operating costs, licensing, power consumption and cooling, but these were considered side-benefits.  My, how things have changed.