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State of California Green IT Policy To Deliver $40M in Savings

The IT GenomeIf there is one common trend over the last couple of years it’s automation.

For example “Give me intelligence from my asset data without hundreds of hours of crunching” and “Give me more out of the box functionality” are common requests in the 2010 tools census.

The ability to build pretty drag and drop pivots on data streams on their own do not cut it. Users want automation, rapid time to value and real insights based on discovery. BDNA appear to have delivered this in spades with their State of California win.

“Executive Order S-20-04, signed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, established the State of California’s priority for energy and resource-efficient, high-performance buildings. The goal of the order was to support California’s power conservation initiatives and reduce overall energy usage. One obvious candidate for conservation was the State’s vast, power-hungry IT infrastructure, which included some 225,000 PCs, 9,500 servers, and more than 100 email systems. The State of California expect to save over $40 million and reduce carbon emissions by 200,000 tons per year based on analyzing data provided by BDNA.” Amit Golan, BDNA

Amit Golan, BDNA

Amit Golan, BDNA

One way in which the State of California is able to forecast such savings is via hardware refresh. Agent-less discovery data is normalised and then combined with market data such as device age, expiry dates and power to facilitate informed choices regarding power consumption. With a quarter of a million PC’s to manage small tweaks make big dollar savings.

This form of IT Asset Analysis is central to BDNA’s “IT Genome Strategy” which in essence says that by understanding more about IT environments organisations can eliminate waste. Software license compliance, virtualisation, data centre consolidation and Green IT projects are said to be enhanced by this encyclopaedia of IT Asset data which they have named their ‘Technopedia’.

One chink in this otherwise impressive armour is the absence of long term software usage (Where it is argued the most software savings can be made over the longer term). However BDNA also offer a ‘Normalise’ offering which takes feeds from other data sources such as SCCM or other Enterprise tools which might be able to provide usage. See also Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager SAM Add-Ons.

Visit TheITGenome.com to find out more.

About Martin Thompson

Martin is owner and founder of The ITAM Review, an online resource for worldwide ITAM professionals. The ITAM Review is best known for its weekly newsletter of all the latest industry updates, LISA training platform, Excellence Awards and conferences in UK, USA and Australia.

Martin is also the founder of ITAM Forum, a not-for-profit trade body for the ITAM industry created to raise the profile of the profession and bring an organisational certification to market. On a voluntary basis Martin is a contributor to ISO WG21 which develops the ITAM International Standard ISO/IEC 19770.

He is also the author of the book "Practical ITAM - The essential guide for IT Asset Managers", a book that describes how to get started and make a difference in the field of IT Asset Management. In addition, Martin developed the PITAM training course and certification.

Prior to founding the ITAM Review in 2008 Martin worked for Centennial Software (Ivanti), Silicon Graphics, CA Technologies and Computer 2000 (Tech Data).

When not working, Martin likes to Ski, Hike, Motorbike and spend time with his young family.

Connect with Martin on LinkedIn.

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