Posts Tagged ‘performance management’
The goal of Performance Management is always the same: to explicitly determine priorities, establish regular measurements, set targets, and review progress in a repeatable fashion.
Historically, performance in IT has generally been measured in terms of cost and service levels.
Some describe Green IT as the environmentally responsible and sustainable use of IT assets, incorporating triple-bottom-line philosophies (Note: for a wider perspective of Green IT, see Fabian’s previous post). Even taking into account a very narrow viewpoint that simply focuses on energy efficiency, it is obvious that performance in IT needs to be expanded to take into account some new standard metrics.
Issues and considerations
Firstly though, let’s take a look at some issues that we can address so that we can determine some valid metrics:
- IT assets consume significant amounts of electricity and devices are often left on when not in use.
- Over time it has become culturally acceptable in many organisations to leave work PCs turned on overnight to save the hassle of turning them on in the morning. This alone is responsible for a large amount of wasted energy.
- Data Centres are responsible for a very large amount of energy usage, not only because of all the servers, storage and comms equipment, but in the environmental conditioning required to keep them at the correct operating conditions.
- e-Waste is a fast-growing issue which is compounded by planned obsolescence. e-Waste can be reduced by planning to keep equipment longer before replacing it. e-Waste can also be reduced by evaluating the environmental impact of the manufacture and disposal of assets using the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT).
Metrics to consider
You might like to consider these kinds of metrics, depending on your priorities:
- Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) — This is an industry standard metric for determining the energy efficiency of the data centre infrastructure. Total Data Centre Power Consumption divided by IT Equipment Power Consumption. It is also expressed as its reciprocal, Data Centre Effectiveness (DCiE).
- Average User IT Energy Footprint — Total electricity used attributable to IT equipment for a period, divided by the number of users in the organisation for the period.
- Average Daily Desktop Run Hours Per User — The total number of hours desktops are turned on divided by the number of users. These numbers should be targeted between 8 to 12 hours.
- Average Energy Per Gigabytes Storage Capacity — Total electricity consumed by server storage devices divided by the total gigabytes of storage capacity provided by those devices.
- Number of Pages Printed Per User — The number of physical pages printed (i.e. pieces of paper) and/or the number of page impressions, dividing each by the number of users. Measuring both can give an indication of total printing volume as well as behaviour choices such duplex printing. In circumstances where total volumes cannot be reduced, duplex printing should be encouraged.
- Energy Star Compliance — The percentage of IT assets that comply with various Energy Star ratings.
- EPEAT Compliance — The percentage of IT assets that comply with various EPEAT ratings.
- Desktops Purchased Per User Per Year — This is for long term trending to determine if length-of-life targets are being met.
Decisions can be made regarding the granularity of calculation, for example, by division, by department or by building floor to allow cross referencing and benchmarking.
Once these metrics are collated, it is important to publish the metrics so they are visible across the company. Graphically appealing dashboards with rich user interfaces are an engaging way to present this data.
Collating these metrics often requires new data to be collected. There are tools available to streamline the collection of the underlying data to minimise the human effort involved.
How we can help
Greensense has helped companies implement customised Green IT Performance Management Frameworks including the supporting data collection and we also have many years experience in visualisation technologies. Please contact us here at Greensense if you would like more information about these services.
