Green IT is about much more than virtualization and saving energy in the data center. Reuse and redeployment of existing equipment pays off very big financial dividends as well, while helping to fatten an enterprise's bottom line. In touch economic times, it can be good for the environment, and good for a company's financial health.

Redemtech, which specialized in IT asset recovery, has just released a case study which details just how significant those savings can be. The case study focuses on a "top five bank" which, according to Redemtech, "had technology assets sitting idle" that could be reused, and so could eliminate the need for buying new hardware and technology. But the bank, says Redemtech, "lacked the capabilities to identify usable equipment, prepare it for reuse, and redeploy it within the organization."

Sound familiar? If you're in a large enterprise, it most likely does. Most big companies have plenty of unused hardware they don't know about --- laptops, desktops, servers, routers, and more. And if they do know about the hardware, they don't have a plan in effect for cataloging, managing, and reusing it, or recycling it if it's truly at end of life.

Redemtech contracted with the bank to fix the problem in a variety of ways, including defining business-appropriate rules for when equipment should be recovered and re-used, testing systems before they are re-deployed, harvesting parts from equipment, and much more.

The results, says Redemtech, were dramatic:

* A net return of more than $7.8 million over two years.
* Saving enough electricity to power 35,622 homes for a year.
* Reducing solid waste volume equivalent to the waste that 1,469 households produce in a year.

For details, check out the case study.