News
VMware Virtualisation Technology Qualifies for Expanded Green Tax Incentives in Ireland
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
VMware, Inc. (NYSE:VMW), the global leader in virtualisation solutions from the desktop through to the datacenter and to the cloud, today announced that its technology will now qualify for the Accelerated Capital Allowance (ACA), an expanded tax incentive introduced and embraced by the Irish Government to encourage companies to invest in energy-efficient equipment moving Ireland towards its objective of harnessing the benefits of an intelligent green economy. Organisations purchasing VMware software along with eligible enterprise storage and server hardware will be able to write off the entire cost of the eligible purchase against taxable income in year one. VMware is the first virtualisation vendor to successfully submit its products for ACA qualification.
Energy consumption is a critical issue for IT organisations today as they look to reduce costs, lower the environmental impact of their operations and face up to critical datacenter capacity issues, whilst at the same time increasing business agility. By using VMware to virtualise and consolidate their underutilised physical IT infrastructure, customers can reduce their energy costs and consumption by up to 80 per cent and drive up the utilisation of hardware resources from between 5-15 per cent to as much as 85 per cent. Industry analyst Gartner estimates that removing a typical two-socket x86 server from the datacenter will save an end-user organisation around $410 in power and cooling costs yearly!
"The Irish government is taking a proactive stance in helping IT departments to adopt more energy efficient and green approaches," said Matt Piercy, regional director, Northern EMEA, VMware. "VMware's technology has played a key role in helping many organisations to meet their corporate social responsibility objectives, and the fact the VMware virtualisation platform is the first to qualify for the ACA only serves to reinforce our green credentials. Our unique management features, such as Distributed Power Management, allow customers to achieve significant savings in power and cooling above and beyond what can be achieved through server consolidation and allowed us to meet the criteria laid out by Sustainable Energy Ireland (SEI)."
In order for a virtualisation solution to qualify for the ACA it must be capable of converting a physical server to a virtual machine (often referred to as P2V), automatically consolidating workloads and powering down unused equipment, and provisioning dynamically. The VMware vSphere 4 platform includes a wealth of management features which deliver the stipulated functionality, including Distributed Power Management, which continuously optimises power consumption in the datacenter, and Distributed Resource Scheduler, which provisions resources dynamically to ensure workloads are balanced across the available infrastructure.
"Despite the financial challenges facing many Irish organisations we want to make sure they are not forced to compromise their environmental credentials in order to minimise overheads," said Brian Motherway, head of industry, SEI. "Information & Communications Technology is one area where businesses can potentially cut their carbon footprints significantly, with virtualisation playing a key role in green IT strategies. The latest expansion of the ACA scheme to include energy efficient server and storage hardware, along with virtualisation software, will help remove some of the financial barriers to energy efficient IT."
Organisations wishing to claim the ACA tax incentives effective from January 1st 2009 first need to ensure the equipment is eligible for the ACA - an up to date ACA specified list is available at www.sei.ie/aca. Any ACA eligible purchases can be included on the company's tax return form. The total value of ACA eligible purchases will then be deducted from the company's taxable profits. For example, a qualifying company with a 100,000 euro profit at the end of their accounting period purchasing eligible capital equipment that cost 40,000 euro may only have to pay 12.5 % corporation tax on 60,000 euro of its profits, lowering its tax bill by 5,000 euro.
The information in this press release is provided for general guidance only and does not constitute the provision of legal advice, tax advice or professional advice of any kind. The information provided herein should not be used as a substitute for consultation with professional advisers. The information is provided 'as is' with no assurance or guarantee of completeness, accuracy, or timeliness of the information, and without warranty of any kind, express or implied.
