While the hype around green computing may ebb and flow, beneath the marketing buzz solution providers across Canada are doing impressive work on the ground every day, innovating and delivering real green IT solutions to their customers. We’re proud to profile 10 of Canada’s Top Green IT Solution Providers, to find out more about how they’re driving real green IT value to their customers, and how their peers can learn from their examples.
Transitioning from an IP telephony company to a green solutions provider was, in a way, a natural evolution for Langley B.C.-based BlueCurl. The VoIP and IP PBX solutions the firm brought its enterprise customers were already green; the ShoreTel products on which it primarily focused business lacked spinning media, making them more energy efficient.
Still, what fully drove BlueCurl to embark down the green path was developing a relationship with ultra-thin client vendor NComputing of Redwood City, Calif. Since then, the reseller has since sat down with its key partners, the Canadian arms of vendors IBM, HP and Cisco, to ensure all the systems they’re offering BlueCurl customers are at least Gold certified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). According to Chris Slattery, CEO of BlueCurl, his company has been having tremendous success with green tech deployments over the last two years, particularly in school labs where he says thin clients and desktop virtualization “really shine.”
The company was responsible for the first carbon neutral school lab in Canada at Lindsay Park Elementary in Kimberly, B.C., and has since brought similar solutions to school districts throughout Western Canada.Most recently, they’ve entered an agreement with turnkey storage virtualization provider Daytona Storage of Northville, Mich. in order to offer “soup-to-nuts” green tech that allow for reduction of servers, desktop power demands and storage-based e-waste for greatest impact.
Slattery has suggested that their solution saves a school lab environment more than 90 per cent on the energy bill (and footprint), while still being more affordable than traditional PC deployments.
Adding VMware-based storage virtualization is the next logical step for this green solutions provider, he suggests.
“When you can take 50 servers down to 10, and when you look at what newer servers are drawing versus older servers in terms of power, it’s fairly significant- it’s mind boggling.”