Admittedly, all this green talk can come across like a lot of hippie tree hugging. Butterflies, nymphs frolicking in the woods, cuddly puppies... You get the picture.

But lets face it, we don't get paid in puppies and butterflies -- good luck cashing that check -- nor do our CIOs.

Today a colleague, Christopher Saunders of InternetNews, and I sat with Steve Sams, IBM's VP of Global Site and Facilities Services. In short, his group is responsible for helping clients design and build data centers. Today, that job means packing more compute capacity in tight power envelopes.

Some interesting stats emerged during out talk of IBM's own efforts to improve efficiency.

1997
270 Data Centers
31 Networks
11,000 Intel Servers
8,000 Unix Servers
15,000 Applications

Fast forward to...

2008
12 Data Centers
1 Network
1,500 Intel Servers
1,500 Unix Servers
5,000 Applications

Energy and operational cost savings? $1.5 Billion a year.

Update: That colleague was Christopher Saunders. And I'll back him up on this; Sams does indeed spin a bone chilling yarn.

...At the same time, Sams said enterprises are holding off on a third of all server-related decisions -- because they don't think they have enough space in the datacenter!

Other businesses are allocating unnecessarily huge portions of their datacenter expenses to power and environmental costs. One datacenter observed by Sams' team spent a piddling 28 cents of every dollar on running its servers: the rest went to keeping the lights on and the air cool.

So, that IT project of yours that got denied? Now you know why. Unless your boss just hates you...