One of the lessons of business is that targets become more challenging. Dell's "We were too early with the green thing" message is interesting on a second level: Currently, (as has been commented previously) electricity - for power and cooling - is a Facilities Management issue, and FM budgets are usually separate from IT budgets, even when FM and IT are in the same business division. So, there is no incentive for a CIO to reduce energy costs, and certainly not to replace an existing but ageing server with one that is smaller, faster and more efficient. "A capital spend out of my budget to make an operating saving in his budget" is crazy talk.

Now, here's the tricky part: Any CIO who implements green tech before being required to is hanging themselves. I know (because I've done the numbers) that I can wipe 60% off my energy costs, and that in doing this, I can refresh my entire server estate for zero cost over three years. But I also suspect that I'm going to be asked by the CIO to deliver energy efficiencies in the financial year 2010-11. So, if I replace the servers now, I take away my ability to deliver the savings then, because they've already been delivered.

Big businesses are stupid, but we've seen this all before with the "laser toner is a stationary cost" argument, and I for one am not about to bang my head against that wall unless explicitly asked to...