Software or hardware: The future of green enterprise computing

Abstract

Over the last few years, interest in “green computing” has motivated research into energy-saving techniques for enterprise systems, from network proxies and virtual machine migration to the return of thin clients. This paper tries to answer a possibly contentious question: would we be better served by the embarrassingly simple approach of replacing every desktop with a laptop? To answer this question, we use power and utilization data collected from more than 100 devices over durations up to 15 months. We find that choosing the right computing systems - laptops - would save more energy than state-of-the-art power management software or thin clients. Furthermore, the marginal savings of applying software techniques on top of laptops is so small that it is probably not worth the trouble. When selecting computers, there are many other considerations than just energy, such as computational resources, and price. We find that these factors generally do not reduce the attractiveness of a laptop-based enterprise. We discuss current trends in enterprises today, and how our conclusions might affect their directions, sketching a future of how a cost-efficient enterprise might become a hybrid system entwining laptops and tablets with a computing cloud.