In the past, IT departments never saw the power bill - all this has now changed, and well-proven technologies are being marshalled to address the issue of cost and carbon.

Australian businesses are a pragmatic lot. They are focused on either making money or saving money - and always doing what they can with what they have.

The Green push of late tends to manifest itself for Australian businesses in the practicalities of a) running out of power b) running out of space and c) recognising the cost of power from a dollar and carbon perspective.

IT Storage consumes over 30% of the power required in a typical data centre, and is the fastest growing IT infrastructure element as our world thrives on data. This puts it right into the cross-hairs of consideration when discussing power consumption and carbon overhead.

In the last 18 months, I have seen a distinct shift in customer thinking and focus around technologies that can provide tangible cost savings in these areas. For example, the use of "thin provisioning" to reduce physical storage consumption has become a mandatory requirement for new storage footprint.