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Who Reviews Your Data Center Energy Costs?

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I'm Brandon Lorenz, senior editor for Building Operating Management magazine.

Who pays the energy bill for your company's data center? Is it the facility department or the IT department?

One challenge that comes with cutting data center energy costs is the disconnect between energy cost and energy use. Often, facility departments pay the cost. But IT plays a direct role in driving up those costs. Such a disconnect can make it difficult to drive down energy costs because there isn't a single party responsible for managing the cost.

What can be done? Track the energy use. Share the information. Start building a relationship with the IT department. And start small. One question you can ask IT is whether they are using all the servers in the data center. Don't be surprised if you find out a few servers have been left running even though they aren't performing useful work.