MANILA, Philippines -- Rising power costs are forcing Philippines companies to take a closer look at "green IT" initiatives, according to IBM executives.

"Yes, it has become noticeable. There are more users talking to us about it now," said IBM Philippines sales manager Leo Capinpin, in an interview.

Green IT mainly focuses on lessening the power usage of data centers, thus reducing power costs and carbon emissions.
Citing studies, IBM said corporate data centers account for two percent of total carbon monoxide emission in the atmosphere.

"For every dollar spent in power and cooling, it already equals the same in the actual cost of a server," said Eugene Bay, Asia Pacific general manager for IBM's Power Systems server line.

Technologies like virtualization--running one or more virtual servers on a single physical unit--also increase utilization while lessening power and hardware maintenance costs.

"There are end-users that wish to run servers in their data centers but have to contend with power issues and also physical space," Capinpin added.

The Philippines has some of the highest power costs in the Southeast Asian region. The government has recently launched a drive to reduce the country's power rates in order to increase international competitiveness.