IBM aims to become ‘Big Green’

IBM has announced the latest project in its multi-year effort to consolidate its once-sprawling IT infrastructure into a more manageable, cost-effective and environmentally friendly IT service capability.

This initiative has been named "Project Big Green' by IBM. It is an ambitious project to consolidate some 3900 applications onto approximately 30 System z mainframes.

Although this is a logical continuation of the company's consolidation effort, one view of the catalyst for this particular project is the projection that the company will need to double its computing power by 2010, but is challenged in terms of its floor space and energy consumption.

Rob Hailstone, software infrastructure practice director with Butler Group, Europe's leading IT research and advisory organisation, says it is encouraging to see a firm commit itself to a radical change in the way IT is delivered.

Over the last 10 years the company has reduced its number of data centres from 155 to 7, and the number of corporate applications from 15,000 to 4700. This new phase of consolidation represents a very significant investment as well as providing a significant, long-term cost saving which will enable the company to build a team of very credible resources to pass on the experiences learned to its customer base. The company already has a team that provides consolidation support to its customers, and elements of that team will become part of Project Big Green.

IBM aims to reallocate US$1 billion per year to accelerate its development of green technologies, creating a 1000-strong "green team' of specialists, and building a client roadmap based on its experiences. Project Big Green represents an important part of this learning curve as well as delivering considerable in-house benefits.

The green credentials of the project come from the anticipated 80% energy reduction and 85% floor space savings through the planned consolidation. These contribute to the overall 40% cost savings for the consolidated applications.

IBM already runs around 1500 of its 4700 applications in System z, and its use of Linux on System z has increased by 300% over the last year.