Case Study

The Green Data Center Starts With A Rationalized Application Portfolio: A Sprint Case Study

How One IT Ops Group Generated Eco(nomic) Value By Removing Underutilized Apps And The Infrastructure Tied To Them

February 12th, 2009
Doug Washburn, VP, Research Products
Doug Washburn VP, Research Products
With contributors:
Lauren Nelson , Galen Schreck

Summary

Sprint's end goal was to cut costs, increase capacity, and reduce the carbon footprint of IT infrastructure in the data center — but that's not where they started. Recognizing that the data center and its server, storage, and network assets exist to support applications, Sprint's IT infrastructure and operations group took a unique approach — rationalizing the application portfolio first, then consolidating, optimizing, and virtualizing the remaining infrastructure. The benefits were significant. From January to December 2008, Sprint retired 127 applications, decommissioned or redeployed more than 2,239 servers, and freed up 291,042 gigabytes of storage. This translated into $28 million of redeployable assets, a $20 million reduction in operating costs, and a reduction of data center-related carbon emissions by 10,450 metric tons.

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