IBM has expanded its Big Green initiative with an addition to its Zodiac consultancy service providing customers with tools to measure carbon footprints.  

Zodiac uses a comprehensive IBM database to establish the total power consumption and carbon footprint of a customer's server banks across all platforms.

Environmental issues are rising higher on IT agendas, and IBM hopes that the service will enable customers to improve data centre efficiency and offset carbon emissions.

Organisations have a tendency to under-utilise hardware, according to IBM, as servers are often kept at between 10-12 per cent of capacity and needlessly waste energy.

IBM uses the data provided by the carbon footprint evaluation to determine the best strategy for reducing power consumption and the resulting impact on the environment.

This typically entails reducing the number of servers being used through technologies like virtualisation, thereby ensuring that remaining servers are being run close to full capacity and at maximum efficiency.

"It is becoming increasingly important for businesses to be aware of the environmental impact of their IT infrastructure and to minimise this impact wherever possible," said Dave Kay, vice president at IBM's Systems and Technology Group.

"Energy consumption has become one of the biggest business overheads and companies must take it seriously.

"IBM has developed what we believe to be the most comprehensive model on the market, which will help customers to save money and be more environmentally friendly by reducing their carbon footprint."

Zodiac has already been used to retrospectively analyse clients' IT carbon footprints. One previous Zodiac consultancy project claimed to have reduced a department's carbon footprint by 156 tonnes of CO2 a year.