Enterprise Technology By Phil Edholm

Last week at InterOp, Nortel created a sensation with it's commitment to Green Technology and demonstrations that Nortel data equipment is dramatically more energy (and carbon footprint) efficient than our major competitor. The Tolly Group has analyzed Nortel data products versus the major competitor and has independently verified the veracity of the Nortel claims (Tolly report).

Green thinking in IT makes both good corporate sense, but it also makes good financial sense as well. Nortel has built a Green Calculator that allows companies to analyze their ROI on Green Networking. For example, a 2,500 seat network with gigabit desktops and IP telephony would save almost $2,000,000 over 5 years with the Nortel Green Network versus the major competitor. That represents almost $800 per seat, which exceeds the equipment cost component of the network and rivals the operational costs. This will become a critical component in the overall analysis of network TCO.

Finally, a couple of single device examples are important. Comparing a similarly equipped Nortel 8600 with a Cisco 6500 , the 8600 will save almost $52,000 in energy use over 5 years. Similarly the Nortel 8300 saved over $18,000 over the Cisco 4500 in a similar 5 year period.

For the 2,500 user network above, the CO2 emissions savings are 7106 metric tons. This is equivalent to 150 large cars or 249 small cars driven 100,000 miles each in the 5 years. This is about 23 Kilograms per network port per year (7106 Metric tons/2500/5*1000). If we extrapolate this to the worldwide enterprise users of networks at about 500 million (it is actually probably larger), the total is 11.5 MILLION metric tons. That is equivalent to 656 BILLION miles of travel in small cars or 46 MILLION cars at 15,000 miles per year!!!! That is about 20% of the estimated 250 Million cars in the US.

Just imagine, if we got "Cisco off the net" instead of "cars off the road", gas might be back to $2 a gallon and we could all breathe a little easier. While this may be too much to hope for, we can all do our part by deploying green networks.

Look for the Green Calculator to run on your network in June, the results will amaze you. It will be available on Nortel.com.