In the current economic climate, keeping costs down is imperative.  According to IDC, Cost Reduction is the #1 Priority for IT organizations.  Database Consolidation can help you to achieve this is several ways:

• Reduced administration. By standardizing and reducing the number of servers, businesses reduce the complexity of the infrastructure they must administer. Fewer support staff can therefore manage the same service demands. For international companies, this standardization also facilitates the provision of 24/7 support using worldwide support resources.
• Reduced operations costs. Increase in service capacity and growth are achieved with better utilization of resources. Typically, fewer servers are required, resulting in hardware and power savings. 
• Reduced data center costs. Site space formerly used for IT services can be returned to the business, and existing facilities can be used more efficiently. 
• Reduced revenue loss through higher uptime/availability. Consolidation reduces the cost of implementing high-availability solutions, which reduces revenue losses due to downtime.
• Reduced licensing costs. In most consolidation scenarios, licensing is reduced because there are fewer servers that require licenses. However, even when this is not the case, the other savings you make will still result in a lower TCO.