VMware, Inc., the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter, today announced that it continues to drive sustainability and socially responsible “green” initiatives for customers of every size in the private and public sectors across the globe. VMware customers have virtualized more than an estimated 9 million workloads since 1998, resulting in an estimated energy savings of 105 billion kilowatt hours of electricity², or roughly $11.6 billion. According to The World Factbook¹, those savings are equivalent to the power consumed in the US for 10 days.

VMware virtual infrastructure helps enterprises and governments reduce their energy costs and consumption by as much as 80 percent. Most desktops and servers today are in use only eight to 15 percent of the time they are turned on, yet they consume 60 to 90 percent of the normal workload power even when idle. VMware vSphere has advanced resource and memory management features that will enable consolidation ratios of 15:1 or more and dynamically power off unneeded servers, which increase hardware utilization to as much as 85 percent. Every server retired from a datacenter saves an estimated four tons of CO2 emissions, equivalent to taking 1.5 cars off the road or planting 55 trees. Similar opportunities for savings are available for desktop PCs, which can be consolidated on servers in the datacenter using VMware View. VMware vSphere 4 is expected to be generally available during the second quarter of 2009.

Saint Vincent’s Catholic Medical Center in New York has a strategy for an all digital, all green IT infrastructure. With VMware virtual infrastructure, the renowned healthcare system virtualized 85 percent of its infrastructure and retired 185 servers in 90 days.

“After the successful greening of our datacenter, we have moved to the virtual desktop stage of implementation where we have begun to replace the traditional desktop with a ‘zero foot print’ endpoint that has no OS,” said Tony Antinori, vice president of technology and operations, St Vincent’s Medical Center. “A thin device consumes less than five watts, which is just three percent of a typical PC, making it the ultimate green alternative and increasing our ROI. At St. Vincent’s, we plan to continue to implement virtualization technology across nearly 5000 endpoints, saving thousands of dollars in power and doing our part to go green.”

The City of Aurora, Colorado consolidated 70 servers down to five servers with each running close to 20 virtual machines. “VMware virtual infrastructure helps ensure outstanding performance,” said Steve Jenovai, senior systems administrator for the city of Aurora. “We dynamically add or reduce resources for specific applications as demand ebbs and flows.”

The Nurses Board of Victoria, a government agency for the state of Victoria in Australia, is in charge of registering professional nurses, accrediting educational institutions and investigating professional conduct cases. “By deploying VMware virtual infrastructure, we reduced our power usage by 25 percent and also lowered our carbon footprint,” said Michael Hoffmann, CIO, Nurses Board of Victoria.

Forestry Tasmania is an Australian government organization charged with managing more than 1.5 million hectares of state forest land. “Forestry Tasmania consolidated its IT environment using VMware virtual infrastructure,” said Jeremy McCarthy, team leader systems and helpdesk for Forestry Tasmania. “This allowed us to reduce server room power consumption by more than 30 percent.”

PowerSeraya, a leading integrated energy company in Southeast Asia that provides utility wholesale services such as electricity, steam and cooling water to the greater Singapore region, reduced energy consumption and carbon emissions by an estimated 70 percent by leveraging VMware virtual infrastructure. This translates to a savings of about 26,000 kWh and 12.5 tons of carbon dioxide yearly.

VMware works with more than 40 utility companies worldwide to offer financial incentives for virtualization projects in datacenters. The incentives are based on the amount of energy savings achieved through data center consolidation and qualifying customers can earn a maximum rebate amount of $4 million per project site, and $300 to $600 in annual energy costs for each server removed. Those savings are almost double when reduced datacenter cooling costs are also taken into account.

For more information on how VMware helps companies and governments of all sizes go green, please visit: http://www.vmware.com/solutions/consolidation/green/