ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at a number of analytical measures and metrics that can be employed to measure the “greenness” of business operations in general and IT/ network operations in particular. Technical standards or performance benchmarks to consistently “quantify” conformity to, or levels of being, “green” are needed. A planner may seek to establish the entire “carbon footprint” of an operation (say, of the IT department assets of the firm, or of the networking assets of the firm), or may seek to determine the usage/consumption/efficiency of an individual IT asset. In addition, some basic concepts covered in greater detail in the chapters that follow are introduced briefly in this overview chapter. Metrics are discussed in the second part of the chapter. As noted in Chapter 1, the focus of a greening initiative relating to IT data centers and networks (whether intranets or carrier infrastructure) covers two main areas:
1. System Load: This relates to the consumption efficiency of the equipment in the data center or telecom node (e.g., IT equipment such as servers, storage, and network elements such as switches, routers, and repeaters). It represents the IT/networking work capacity available for the given IT/networking power consumption. System Load should be defined as a function of the utilization of said capacity.
