Lovin' the Mixed Reaction

Mark Fontecchio at SearchDataCenter.com reports that the “PG&E; and Sun rebate program gets mixed reaction”. Well, the EPA sounds intrigued, other utilities sounds interested, and customers are viewing it positively. Seems like the only folks on the other side are competitors. Cool!

Lin Nease of HP makes an important point: “If you look at the lifecycle, the rebate is a miniscule part of the equation”. We agree. Based on the study we did with PG&E; the annual energy savings for each year were more than the rebate, so we’re trying to get the word out that there’s lots of savings to be had here even if you aren’t in the PG&E; area.

Olivier Helleboid from HP and Mark Feverston from Unisys are stuck on this point that there are more important savings to be had elsewhere. Somehow I don’t buy this point that we shouldn’t design, deliver and reward customers for buying more efficient servers because we can save energy in other places as well. Can’t we do both? In the case of Mr. Feverston, aren’t you saying that we shouldn’t increase the MPG of cars because we can also save energy carpooling? We’re big fans of virtualization at Sun, and we think you can have BOTH energy efficiency (servers and cars) and savings through consolidation (virtualization and car pools).