Last Friday, September 18, 2009 McMartin Engineering hosted the Simposio Verde (Green Symposium) at the Banker’s Club in Hato Rey, Puerto Rico.One of the most significant topics discussed was the Financial Justification of IT projects in general and those proposed to reduce operating costs and protect the environment. IT professionals usually underestimate the value of presenting their needs in financing terms and explicit benefits to the firm, as stated by Dr. Juan Ramirez, President of McMartin Engineering Corp., “IT is not the center of the universe”. A successful IT manager, and staff as well, must be able to align the department projects to the vision and mission of the entity they are work with.

Going green is not a fashion statement made by corporations, it is a way of reducing operating costs and the impact they have on the environment. Any project with such a big technical challenge and need of resources is always accompanied of a bigger challenge: Financial Justification. We, as IT professionals, must be able to showcase the direct and indirect benefits our efforts represent to the firm’s final goal: doing more with less.

Once the audience was indulged with a throwback to FIN 101, the technical challenges and best practices were presented by Miguel Aldama, RCDD from The Siemon Company. During his presentation Mr. Aldama emphasized the importance of Intelligent Cabling Administration for optimizing the use of resources. Complementing Mr. Aldama’s input on how to reduce costs and improve operations related to cabling, Eng. Hector Perez took the lead to talk about Energy and Cooling for Data Centers.

During Eng. Perez, sales engineer from Technical Distributor, presentation the impact that cooling system has on the operating costs of a Data Center was clearly palpable. Along the explanation of the philosophies behind current best practices Eng. Perez explained the benefits of using Hot-Cold Aisles configuration and the type of systems used to achieve the desired conditions while reducing the energy consumption.

The conference ended with a great presentation about Virtualization by Eng. Anibal Rios from Benchmark Technologies.

Here are the presentations for your convinience:

• Financial Justification for an IT Project by Dr. Juan Ramirez
• Intelligent Administration by Mr. Miguel Aldama
• Green Data Centers by Eng. Betty Bezos
• Efficient Data Centers Guidelines by Eng. Hector Perez
• IT Green Strategies by Eng. Anibal Rios

Again thanks to all the attendees and our corporate sponsors.