Greening IT in the Hotel Industry at Susan Labandibar

Greening IT in the Hotel Industry

Last week I gave a presentation on Sustainable IT in the hotel industry. It’s surprising how much IT equipment goes into building the IT infrastructure of a larger hotel. There is the server that handles the reservations, another to handle programming the room keys. There are the restaurant servers, the gift shop servers, and the rooms management servers. There’s even a server to handle the in-room movies!

There are computers in the office, computers in the business center, and–in some hotels–computers in the rooms. There are displays in the hallways guiding guests to their conference rooms, computers at the front desk, and in the kitchens. Not to mention the wireless Internet access that is available throughout the hotel.

Server consolidation, server virtualization, and enabling power management are the three fastest ways to reduce IT-related energy consumption in the hotel industry.