Data centres worldwide have ten million unused servers, which could be hiding potential revenue of $30 billion.
According to the Anthesis Group, 30% of the world’s servers are sitting in "comatose" as no information or compute services have been processed for at least six months.
If shut down, the serves could generate savings in the IT and infrastructure load of more than 4GWs.
The company said the study is based on a sample of anonymised data and that the servers include standalone servers and host servers in virtual environments.
The research, carried in partnership with Stanford University and TSO Logic, claims this IT inefficiency comes down to the way IT departments work.
Enterprises were told they need to address issues around management, incentives and communication within their teams to achieve new revenue streams.
Jonathan Koomey, Research Fellow at Stanford University, said: "In the 21st century, every company is an IT company, yet far too little attention is given to IT inefficiencies, and to the need for widespread changes in how IT resources are built, provisioned, and managed.
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"Removing idle servers would result in gigawatt-scale reductions in global IT load, the displaced power use from which could then support new IT loads that actually deliver business value."
Jon Taylor, Partner at Anthesis Group, said: "Far too many businesses have massive IT infrastructure inefficiencies of which they are not even aware."
