IBM services aim to boost data center sustainability

IBM is expanding its portfolio of sustainability offerings with new services that promise to help customers reduce data-center energy consumption and securely dispose of old gear and redundant data.

IBM’s Technology Lifecycle Services group has added three new services to its sustainability portfolio: Sustainability Optimization Assessment, Asset Recovery and Disposition, and Data Erasure Services.

Many enterprises are refreshing and consolidating data-center hardware, as well as migrating on-prem data centers to colocation facilities or cloud, to improve efficiencies and boost workload performance, according to Dylan Boday, vice president, technology lifecycle services product management at IBM. “Cost savings, improved efficiency, greater security, and environmental responsibility are some of the reasons to refresh or consolidate data center hardware and move toward broader data center optimization,” Boday wrote in a blog about the news. 

According to an IDC sustainability study, cited by Boday, “three-quarters (75%) of organizations surveyed consider sustainability and circularity critical factors in their procurement process for IT equipment.”

Global environmental, social, and governance (ESG) regulation has increased 155% over the past decade, and there is mounting pressure for companies to define execution pathways to achieve compliance, Boday stated. In meeting environmental goals, enterprises often achieve IT resource optimization, which positively impacts operations expenses, Boday stated. In the IDC study, almost 40% of line-of-business managers surveyed said they improved their financial performance or expect to do so as a result of sustainability-related investments.

To aid in those efforts, IBM’s Sustainability Optimization Assessment will run a survey on a customer’s data center environment to establish IT optimization and hardware refresh needs. It then can recommend an actionable plan to consolidate and/or replace hosts. 

The service utilizes IBM’s AI-based Turbonomic service to suggest sustainability targets throughout the data center lifecycle. IBM Turbonomic is a performance- and cost-optimization platform for public, private, and hybrid clouds that can inform customers of the best way to build efficient compute resources and avoid overprovisioning.

Another new service, IBM Asset Recovery and Disposition, is designed to help data-center customers get a handle on outdated or no-longer-needed assets, such as servers or storage. It includes removing equipment, assessing its actual value, and then either reselling or recycling the assets. The idea is to offer an environmentally and economically sound way to enable a circular economy for de-installed assets, whether organizations decide to resell or recycle them, Boday stated.

A circular economy refers to an economic model that aims to eliminate waste by reusing, repairing, remanufacturing, and refurbishing assets and devices, thus keeping them longer in the circle and in use, according to an article in Computerworld. “This model contrasts with the traditional linear economy where resources are taken, used to make something, and then disposed of. The circular economy emphasizes reducing waste, promoting reuse and recycling, and designing products for longevity and sustainability. It is gaining traction in the IT industry as a way to address environmental concerns, reduce e-waste, and promote sustainable practices,” the article stated.

IBM’s third new service is aimed at helping data-center customers securely and properly erase and sanitize data that’s no longer needed from IT hardware and devices. The Data Erasure service is enabled via a partnership with Blancco Software Technology.

IBM technicians are certified to deliver Blancco data-erasure software, and they work with clients to identify a data erasure strategy by assessing their environments and assets, according to Boday. “After the erasure services are complete, clients receive a tamper-proof certificate of erasure tailored to their requirements. With this documentation, clients can prove handling of end-of-life data, and redeploy, resell, or donate their data storage assets,” Boday stated.

The new sustainability services complement existing services from IBM Technology Lifecycle Services (TLS), which include media retention services, infrastructure optimization, hardware deinstall and install packages, and other logistics assistance.

The new IBM services are available now and can be purchased separately or as a part of an IBM TLS end-to-end package.