Branham’s analyses revealed some good news. Real estate costs would be cheaper in Canada ($7 per square foot in Windsor versus $27.45 in Lexington). But Windsor was a greener pasture in more ways than one. VistaPrint’s manufacturing facility is run on hydroelectric power, a renewable energy source that doesn’t entail fuel costs and comes at a lower and more stable price. (In the Boston area, electricity comes largely from generation facilities that run on coal, oil or nuclear power.) That’s why data hogs like Yahoo and Google have recently begun building operations in the Northwest near the Columbia River, a source of hydroelectric power. “Any small difference in energy consumption or energy costs can make quite a difference,” says Kumar. Hydroelectric power also creates little air pollution because, unlike fossil fuel–fired plants, it does not generate carbon dioxide. Even nuclear plants generate some thermal emissions.

Sure enough, thanks to a 12-cent per kilowatt-hour difference in electricity prices, Branham figured he would save more than $130,000 a year by locating in Canada. Those cost savings would improve as VistaPrint added racks to the facility—a near certainty at its current growth rate. Coupled with the discount on real estate, the Windsor option proved 10 percent cheaper than outsourcing—even with the capital expenditures.

Not everyone can just up and move a data center to a cheaper real estate market with a renewable energy source. “Banks, for example, may need to be in downtown Manhattan or central London,” says Kumar. “But what [VistaPrint is] doing makes a lot of sense for them.”

The Bermuda project (which was completed at the end of last year) enables VistaPrint to shave 25 percent from its future hosting costs. And VistaPrint’s Windsor data center is scheduled to open this month. Branham plans to move many of the systems hosted in Lexington there (where the new virtual machines initially will occupy 10 to 12 racks), and the facility will also provide disaster recovery for the Bermuda data center (a service the company outsourced to Cable & Wireless). Cebula says VistaPrint is trying to make other eco-friendly choices, outside of IT. For example, the company bought an extraction system for its plant that recovers more paper waste, which VistaPrint can resell to recyclers. “What we’re finding is that the right thing to do environmentally and the right thing to do financially often go hand in hand,” she says. Some green options, like the new servers and the paper waste extractor, may involve up-front costs, Cebula says, but they usually pay for themselves and reap returns (such as revenue from reselling the excess paper and lower energy costs). Of course, not every green product or process has a payoff for everyone. Some of the new, environmentally friendly innovations in cooling technology, heat transfer and power supply for the data center (see “Fresh, Green Tech, Page 40) didn’t make the list at VistaPrint. “I did look at the price for a natural gas generator,” Branham says. “But the prices for natural gas fluctuate widely. Most people stay with diesel.”