Nortel Energy Efficient Solutions

by John Gray, Portfolio Leader, Business Optimized Networking, Nortel

The era when everything and everybody that benefits from being connected is upon us. This places increasing demand on enterprise networks, as more and more devices and applications hunger after bandwidth.

At the same time the cost of energy is rising, and many companies are feeling the effects of the slowing economy in IT budgets. According to IDC, the cost to power and cool data centers is projected to grow from $26 billion in 2007 to more than $44 billion in 2010.

This leaves CIOs and IT decision makers with an important challenge: how to save money without compromising on network performance. The answer lies in energy efficiency. A high-performance network that uses less energy leaves more money in the budget.

Nortel’s product strategy around delivering networking solutions that offer excellent performance while also using less energy is a hallmark of our design philosophy. The Tolly Group found the products use up to 50 percent less energy, while at the same time offer 20 times the performance and are four-to-seven times more resilient.

When Info-Tech compared similar products from Nortel and a primary competitor, it determined their LAN/WAN solutions provide a cost of ownership that is up to 50 percent lower.

Nortel has recently introduced a new tool, called the Nortel Energy Efficiency Calculator (NEEC). It assists companies in measuring current energy consumption costs and the potential energy savings of working with Nortel. Companies can plug in various network deployment scenarios, evaluate trade-offs in network design and most importantly, determine their potential energy cost-savings.

Chris Kent, Director of Network Services with the Spring Independent School District of Houston, TX explains, "We made the decision to use the most energy-efficient products available for two reasons: they provide the most compelling return on investment through reduced OPEX and because we believe in being good stewards of the environment. The Nortel Energy Efficiency Calculator enabled us to test a number of different configurations and deployment models. It provided a great deal of insight as to what exactly our power expenses would be, given various trade-offs. In the end the results demonstrated were a key factor in our purchasing decision."

The end result for Spring and other customers who select Nortel energy-efficient data networking is a solution that can effectively pay for itself over time, as a result of the upfront price difference and after-implementation energy savings.