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

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.