Data centers are electricity hogs, and when you add to that the PCs, copiers, printers and phones, “…the smarter you get about specifying and determining your standards around energy consumption, the more progress you can make for the company,” Washington Mutual’s Chief Information Officer Deborah Horvath tells Computerworld.
Since taking on the chairmanship of the brand-new environmental council in 2007, Horvath says that with the help of various technologies, the company has cut its PC-related greenhouse gas emissions by 60 percent, saved millions of dollars on IT-related electricity costs for its PC fleet, and reduced the legal department’s paper consumption by 15 percent.
One technology the company has successfully implemented is a highly customizable energy-saving power-management software that powers down 44,000 WaMu PCs when they’re not in use. This measure alone has cut WaMu’s CO2 emissions from 24.5 metric tons to 8.6 metric tons this year alone.
WaMu’s conservation efforts go beyond data centers. Through its year-long “Make A Statement, Plant A Tree” campaign, WaMu raised $1 million for the The National Arbor Day Foundation.