What is the best way to conserve energy? Would it be taking more than 9,000 servers offline?

A recent DatacenterDynamics report highlighted AOL’s (News - Alert) recent participation in the Uptime Institute contest that challenged participating companies to see who could take the most equipment offline to save energy and other costs, while reducing their carbon footprint.

In an effort to streamline its data center services, AOL decommissioned roughly 9,500 servers in the Institute’s Server Roundup, which kicked off in October of 2011. The purpose of the contest was to encourage and recognize the importance in removing obsolete hardware and how it can reduce overall energy use in the process.

The Institute is a division of the 451 Group and hopes to reduce the environmental impact large companies have with their data center services. According to the Institute estimates, decommissioning just one 1U rack server can save as much as $500 a year on energy cost.

Companies can easily capture another $500 in operating system licenses and $1,500 in hardware maintenance costs. With this contest, companies relying on data center services can get serious about energy efficiency and asset utilization.

With AOL’s effort, the company turned over 26 percent of its server assets across the organization, saving $5.05 million in reduced utility costs, maintenance and licensing fees. AOL was also able to claim $1.2 million (included in the previous figure) in asset sales and reclamation.

NBC Universal (News - Alert) also participated in the contest. The infrastructure team decommissioned more than 280 servers for the media company, which represented 7.4 percent of the total enterprise. The company now operates 3,800 physical servers.

Why the push on the enterprise to reduce their data center services to make an impact on the environment? In all reality, these companies are not reducing their capabilities or limiting their data center services. The technologies available today allow for the reduction in hardware, even as companies are consuming and storing more data than ever before.

Next Generation Data (NGD) is a company focused on the operation and on-going management of the mission-critical areas within the enterprise – including data center services. The company has created the largest Tier 3 data center in Europe, operating a 750,000 square foot facility to provide critical power and cooling in a highly secure and managed environment.

NGD offers size, scale and flexibility with major fiber interconnects with multiple layers of security to protect data center services from outside threats, while minimizing the power consumed to ensure a green operation.