Technological Development and Its Effect on IT Operations Cost and Environmental Impact

Abstract

The lifetime and complexity of some IT scenarios significantly exceed the typical lifetime and complexity of a technological system. This is a source of significant economic efficiency improvement. In this paper, we propose an approach that enables us to leverage costs, reduce the space floor requirements, and lower CO2 emissions incurred by the infrastructure. By re-investing a significantly smaller financial amount compared to the initial investment an IT infrastructure with the same or better performance and with significantly higher energy efficiency can be purchased. By using a mathematical model, we can quantify the benefits of the approach based on technological advancement, electrical energy prices, and prices of data centre construction. We compare two strategies: the frozen strategy relying on a fixed IT infrastructure during the entire IT system lifecycle and the migration strategy leveraging technological advancement.