By consolidating servers into more energy-efficient virtual machine hosts or blade servers, organizations can retire old, power-hungry hardware and optimize underutilized servers. Consolidation brings significant savings in space, power and cooling requirements, resulting in a greener data center. This white paper provides an overview of the factors driving server and data center consolidation and considers best practices for ensuring a successful consolidation initiative and a maximum return on investment. Find out why data centers are beginning to view server consolidation as an ongoing IT strategy with long-term benefits for the organization. Learn about new technologies that are making continuous server consolidation and optimization a reality.