April 8, 2011

Facebook Built a Green Data Center -- and Wants to Tell You How to Do It Yourself

Facebook is no stranger to controversy, from its ever-shifting privacy policies to its super-secret (and super-lucrative) upcoming IPO. In data center design and deployment, it's run into rough waters over its new data center in Pineville, Oregon, which it built from scratch and designed to be one of the most energy efficient in the world. It appears to have largely succeeded, given that the data center uses 38% less energy than its other data centers, and costs 24% less in equipment costs. And it's got cool blue ethernet-powered LED lighting to boot! All this seems to have gone over like a lead balloon over at Greenpeace, which has launched a highly visible (and embarrassing) campaign against the new data center for drawing electricity largely from burning fossil fuels like coal.

Yesterday, Facebook took the next step in this chess match by releasing the Open Compute Project, an attempt at crowd-sourcing Green IT design (the company also somewhat self-servingly calls it a return to its "hacker roots" -- who knew?). There's even a hi-def video complete with inspirational music, fuzzy shots and geeky IT types to explain the project. Open Compute touts the benefits of Facebook's approach to Green IT -- the data center in Pineville has a PUE rating of 1.07, meaning that 93% of the energy from the grid makes it to a piece of computing equipment (as opposed to cooling equipment or lighting). That's a pretty impressive figure, and Facebook is right to crow about it. The data center also implements the latest thinking in green data center design, such as removing cooling chillers, eliminating a central UPS, reusing hot aisle air, and using 480 volt electrical distribution systems.

What's remarkable, however, is that Facebook has gone one step beyond typical PR by actually showing how they did all this. On its server design page, for example, you can see gorgeous high-resolution photos of its AMD and Intel motherboards, and the custom power supply company engineers developed. Technical specifications, including detailed CAD drawings, are available for download. The same is true for the data center's electrical, battery, mechanical, battery, and rack design. It's an impressive display of openness, and the feedback features demonstrate that although released for just a day, other IT engineers are already weighing in and collaborating on these new designs.

Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive for Facebook. The company took a major step towards burnishing its Green IT credentials with this step, and towards winning back the hearts and minds of its green-leaning young consumers at the same time. While the information published is proprietary, Facebook knows it's not going to suffer economic harm or competitive disadvantage by making these designs known to the world. So let's not characterize Open Compute as anything more than what it is -- a PR stunt. As PR stunts go, though, it's a fine one.

Posted by tlau at 10:33 AM | Add Comment

House Passes Bill to Block EPA from Regulating Carbon Emissions

What a difference two years can make! It was in the summer of 2009 that the House of Representatives, in firm control of the Democrats, passed ACES, a far sweeping climate change bill that would have created a cap on carbon emissions and the nation's first carbon cap-and-trade bill. The bill came within a hair's breadth of passage in the Senate, but died there last year (I've blogged extensively about what happened in the Senate -- it's a gruesome story enough to churn anybody who believes in the democratic process). If ACES had passed, Green IT would have faced a certain regulatory future, as all stakeholders would have moved towards measuring and then curbing carbon emissions from data centers and other IT-related activities.

Now, the House is in the hands of the GOP and yesterday, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would strip the EPA of any power to regulate carbon emissions, and overturns the Supreme Court's 2007 ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA giving the EPA that authority. The bill, the "Energy Tax Prevention Act," passed by a vote of 255-172, with no Republican opposition votes and 19 Democratic votes in support.

According to Republicans, the bill is an attempt to rein in the EPA from passing regulations that curb greenhouse gases, a move they claim will kill jobs and raise energy prices. Democrats argue that the Supreme Court's decision allowed the EPA to scientifically decide that carbon is a threat to human welfare and health, and that the EPA is simply doing what the Clean Air Act mandates.

This bill is largely ceremonial, and the Republicans know it. The Senate rejected an identical measure 50-50, and the White House will veto it if it ever came up for signature. For now, EPA plans to regulate carbon in the heaviest carbon-emitting industries, especially power generation and the auto industry, will continue. A budget showdown over this exact issue, however, could change the landscape dramatically in the next few days. If Democrats give in on the riders the GOP is demanding, it might mean that the EPA will be de-fanged after all.

Posted by tlau at 10:10 AM | Add Comment

February 25, 2011

Greenpeace Ratchets Pressure on Facebook

Facebook continues to be the target of a campaign by environmentalists at Greenpeace, who are royally upset at the social media giant's new data center being built in Oregon. In spite of claims by Facebook that the data center is one of the world's most energy efficient, Greenpeace is upset that the utility company providing power to the data center is largely driven by coal-generated electricity.

In its latest campaign, Greenpeace is asking Facebook to "unfriend coal." Greenpeace's aim is to have Facebook issue a public declaration by Earth Day 2011 (April 22), with four central tenets:

• Increase the use of clean energy to help make Facebook coal free


• Develop a plan to make Facebook coal free within a decade, by 2021


• Educate users about how Facebook powers its services and the company's carbon footprint


• Advocate for clean energy at a local, national, and international level

The Unfriend Coal page on Facebook has nearly 60,000 "likes" as of this writing. In addition to using Facebook's own services to pressure the company, Greenpeace has taken to approaching employees at Facebook's headquarters and bus shuttle stops, handing out heart-shaped lollipops on Valentine's Day to tell employees they love Facebook, but want Facebook to swear off coal. The organization has produced videos with celebrities wearing Unfriend Coal T-shirts, in hopes of pushing the issue to a much higher level of awareness. Greenpeace was even able to ambush CEO Mark Zuckerberg's sister at Davos with one of those T-shirts for her soon-to-be-born child, a move that netted a promise from her to look into the matter.

The campaign is getting some attention within Facebook, which responded with a statement that it "agreed" with many of Greenpeace's goals and that it's opened a dialogue with a number of environmental organizations about how to minimize IT's impact on the environment. Facebook points out that it's a young company and can't predict where it will be 10 years from now, which is when Greenpeace wants the company to become coal-free. Of course, Facebook will likely be even bigger and more ubiquitous ten years from now, after a no-doubt healthy IPO makes a bunch of employees and investors uber-wealthy and creates a new generation of Silicon Valley zillionaires.

That's why all Green IT managers should pay attention to what happens in this struggle between Facebook and Greenpeace. Greenpeace doesn't try to hide it's real target here is all data centers and cloud computing -- it points out that by 2020, data centers and telecommunications will consume more electricity than France, Germany, Canada and Brazil combined. Facebook's response to Greenpeace, whether it likes it or not, carries not just the weight of its own commitment to Green IT -- it's speaking for an entire industry.

Posted by tlau at 3:49 PM | Add Comment

February 22, 2011

Fujitsu's Eco Mouse Causes a Lion's Roar in Controversy

As anyone who's spent time in Washington knows, it's not the crime that matters, it's the coverup. I was reminded of this lesson recently as I followed a story that's been trending upwards in the blogosphere about Green IT marketing. The hapless victim in this case is Fujitsu, a company that's no stranger to Green IT marketing. The company prides itself on creating Green IT products, releasing a Sustainability Report, and trying to incorporate Green IT principles into nearly every corner of its operations. As the company says, it makes "every activity green."

In the UK, the company released an "Eco Mouse," claiming that it is made with 100% bio material and is 100% recyclable. The mouse is made of plastic substitutes that come from trees, and biodegrade like wood. A rabble-rousing English newspaper, the Inquirer, found Fujitsu's claims a little suspect, since materials should be either biodegradable or recyclable, but really can't be both. Upon further inquiry, Fujitsu admitted that the mouse's electronics, scroll wheel, and optical sensor are made using traditional materials and therefore not recyclable or biodegradable, thus falling a little short of the company's broad Green IT claims. The company sticks by its claim that the mouse is 100% recyclable, but admits the marketing materials could have been phrased better.

There's no doubt that Green IT is a selling point for many IT vendors eager to reach out to customers concerned about IT's growing carbon impact. Fujitsu has certainly claimed many Green IT prizes by its careful and meticulous product planning and deserves to be applauded for it. This little episode demonstrates, however, that the best Green IT companies can still be called to account for overstating the truth, and that these little slip-ups can have an outsized effect on a company's Green IT overall Green IT marketing message. In this case, Fujitsu promised a mouse that could roar, but the only thing it delivered was pain and bad PR.

Posted by tlau at 12:29 PM | Add Comment

U.S. Bank Deposits Green IT Savings

U.S. Bank, one of the country's largest financial services firms, has been on a hunt recently for energy savings and carbon reductions. Like a lot of companies, the savings are coming from physical plant audits, which have resulted in programmable thermostats and light sensors.

These savings pale, however, with what can happen inside the bank's data centers. Banks, of course, are one of the largest industrial customers for data centers, with large networks of servers connected to thousands of clients (PCs, ATMs, point of sale terminals, credit card machines, etc.). U.S. Bank alone has 1700 physical properties. Here, a virtualization project to make more efficient use of server processing and storage capacity has allowed the bank to swap servers as a whopping 15:1 ratio over the last 18 months, demonstrating that server virtualization through clever software management is a no-brainer, especially when it comes time to upgrade aging or obsolete legacy equipment. In addition to virtualization, the bank is using software to track and analyze energy usage across the entire enterprise. The software, called Hara, provides a dashboard view or site-specific analysis of possible opportunities for savings, and shows the cost and potential payback for potential projects across the bank's properties including data centers.

Finally, the bank has partnered with the EPA to become an Energy Star Partner. The bank has finished the first step towards Energy Star certification, loading all the data across its properties into the Energy Star portfolio manager program. If U.S. Bank emerges among the top 25% of its peer category, it will give the bank the right to carry and display the Energy Star logo.

All told, these efforts have saved the bank carbon and energy reductions of 5 percent in 2008, and 4 percent in 2009 and 2010 each. These projects have been the low-hanging fruit and have a short time to payoff of only three years. As these projects are completed, however, the bank is turning its attention to the more challenging task of finding additional projects beyond the obvious. This will require more commitment and creativity from every level of employee, as costs go and breakeven time go up in proportion.

Posted by tlau at 7:22 AM | Add Comment

February 14, 2011

Ready, Fire, Aim! GOP Launches First Attacks on EPA

When the GOP won back control of the House of Representatives last November, there was a lot of collective breath-holding to see what would happen to the White House's signature efforts to curtail greenhouse gasses such as carbon. Last week, the GOP confirmed its intention to do all it can to reverse those efforts in a series of marathon hearings on Capitol Hill. The Energy Committee, now headed by Michigan's Fred Upton, introduced legislation that would do two things to seriously turn back the clock on climate change legislation -- reverse the EPA's so-called "endangerment" finding on carbon, and de-fund the EPA.

Regular readers know that the endangerment finding was a necessary step for the EPA to take, after the Supreme Court's decision in 2007 that the EPA had the authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon, in order to regulate carbon as a threat to human welfare and life. Without the legal finding, the EPA wouldn't have been able to take the steps it's taken already. In response, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson blasted the committee, saying "Politicians overruling scientists on a scientific question -- that would become part of this committee's legacy."

On the other front, the House Appropriations Committee took a "wire brush" to the EPA's budget, proposing the removal of $58 billion from the White House's non-security discretionary budget funds, including funding designated for the EPA, Department of Energy, NOAA, and others related to climate science and climate change. The GOP is painting these budget cuts as necessary to preserve American jobs, something Jackson quickly countered by offering evidence that EPA rules regulating carbon are actually creating new jobs.

Environmentalists' worst fears appeared to come true when the President failed to mention "global warming" or "climate change" even once during his State of the Union Address, leading some to conclude that the White House had abandoned the fight. In reality, of course, while the White House has toned down the rhetoric, EPA hasn't backed down a bit in its carbon regulation efforts. Regulation of automobiles and powerplants will continue to be implemented this year, and potential new regulations on a broad host of industries, including data centers, remains a distinct possibility in the future. For all the bluster, then, the GOP attacks so far are drawing remarkably little blood.

Posted by tlau at 8:09 AM | Add Comment

February 1, 2011

Monday News Roundup

Monday News Roundup
Feb 1, 2011

• THE world's largest carrier-neutral data centre company, Equinix Inc, will use recycled Newater to cool the new 'green' data centre (DC) that it is building in Singapore. As reported earlier, the company is investing US$43 million in the facility that will see the addition of 850 new cabinet equivalents when ready by June 2011. 'Apart from using chilled water to cool the DC itself, we will be using energy-saving blue LED lights all across the DC, as well as motion sensors to control the lighting automatically,' Clement Goh, managing director of Equinix Singapore, told BizIT in an interview.
• International managed hosting provider Peer 1 Hosting has begun build out on a 50,000 square foot green data centre in Portsmouth, UK. The Portsmouth data centre will incorporate a POD design. The first of four POD stages is scheduled for completion in early summer this year, at an initial cost of GBP 10 million. The remaining stages will be dedicated to additional data centre space and infrastructure which will be built out in three future phases, based upon customer demand and market conditions.
• TELADATA, a leading consulting firm specializing in IT infrastructure design, planning and project management, announces that its 2011 Technology Convergence Conference will feature a panel discussion, titled East Meets West, on data center efficiency. During the discussion, panel members from East Coast financial firms and West Cost Technology companies will engage in spirited discussion of their companies' respective methodologies for maximizing the efficiency of legacy and newly designed data centers. The panel will be moderated by Derek Schwartz of the Green Data Center Alliance and will feature participants from some of the top technology and financial services firms, including Doug Alger, IT Architect at Cisco Systems, William Udall, Vice President of Energy Efficiency in Data Centers at JP Morgan Chase, and David Shroyer, Controls Engineer at NetApp.
• Mehak Chawla examines the first Gold rated LEED data center in India and the savings that green hosting can bring about for an enterprise.
• Digital Realty Trust, Inc., a global wholesale datacenter provider, announces leasing results for the fourth quarter and year-end 2010.
• The Company signed leases during the quarter ended December 31, 2010 totaling approximately 478,000 square feet of space. This includes over 89,000 square feet of Turn-Key Datacenter space leased at an average annual GAAP rental rate of $184.00 per square foot, approximately 234,000 square feet of Powered Base Building space leased at an average annual GAAP rental rate of $39.00 per square foot, and approximately 155,000 square feet of non-technical space leased at an average annual GAAP rental rate of $20.00 per square foot. Each Powered Base Building is designed to meet the two leading green building standards, LEED in the U.S. and BREEAM in Europe.
• Emerson Network Power, a business of Emerson, and the global leader in enabling Business-Critical Continuity, introduces Liebert APM, the new proven and tested uninterruptible power supply (UPS) to optimize the flexible management of IT infrastructures. With a minimum footprint and a modular concept, which avoids any impact on the infrastructure by cutting operating and maintenance costs, the Liebert APM, available globally, guarantees the best ROI for data centers in small and medium companies. Liebert APM was designed selecting latest-generation power components and improving the topology of conversion circuits, in order to optimize its operation for maximum efficiency. That's why Liebert APM offers energy efficiency consistently above 95 percent for power loads between 30 percent and 100 percent.
• Platform Computing, the leading independent cloud management software provider, announces the general availability of Platform ISF 2.1, a new release of its modular software for building and managing enterprise private clouds. Platform ISF's unique application-centric approach enables customers to support multi-tier applications in addition to provisioning infrastructure (IaaS) and platform (middleware) as services. Customers benefit with a solution that can support the entire application lifecycle from dev/test to production-ready application clouds in as quickly as 30 days.
• The Green Grid Association, the industry's leading voice for advancing energy efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems, announces that the organization is expanding its focus and deliverables to address growing industry trends towards the sustainability and resource efficiency of information technology.
• Uptime Institute's sixth annual Symposium will bring together thought leaders, innovators and practitioners in the data center industry to discuss the latest trends, including how to anticipate and respond to disruptive changes such as cloud computing, volatile demand, and rapidly evolving modular architectures. Attendees will gain strategic and practical insights from the content-rich agenda and the unique opportunity to attend one-on-one sessions with experts from the Institute and analysts from the Institute's parent company, The 451 Group, and its subsidiary, Tier1 Research. The 2011 Symposium, attended by industry professionals from over 40 countries, will take place on May 9-12, 2011 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
• VYCON, a designer and manufacturer of environmentally friendly, high-speed energy storage flywheel systems, praises President Obama for his vision and goal to vastly increase the adoption of renewable energy and alternative energy technologies in the U.S., creating more jobs and lessening dependence on foreign oil. As President Obama discussed in the State of the Union address on January 25, 2011, Congress has provided funding and extended significant tax credits which have helped to create green jobs and integrate green energy technologies across the nation. To this end, VYCON has added 15 new jobs with more planned in the coming year.

Posted by tlau at 6:00 AM | Add Comment

January 30, 2011

Climate Czar Departs Obama Administration

Of the many things that President Obama did when he first assumed office, one that particularly rankled Republicans was his appointment of "czars," to head specific policy initiatives. These positions are outside of his normal Cabinet-level posts, and therefore did not require any Senate confirmation or hearings. While there's nothing illegal about what President Obama did, Republican members of Congress saw a creeping bureaucracy imposing costly burdens on business through unnecessary regulation.

The President's appointment of Carol Browner as Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy was controversial from the beginning. Browner is a lawyer who served as administrator for the EPA during the Clinton administration, and was the leader on a number of environmental and policy issues, including the aftermath following the BP Gulf Oil spill last year. She helped push for billions of dollars in stimulus funding for renewable energy programs in the Recovery Act, and was instrumental in brokering a deal with the auto industry to adopt greenhouse gas emission caps for new trucks and vehicles.

This week, Browner announced she is leaving her position. The announcement came as a surprise to most observers, as she was widely expected to assume another position within the White House, perhaps as Deputy Chief of Staff. Although she claimed there is "no back story" to her departure, there's no doubt that Browner's departure is related to the failure of the Senate to pass climate change legislation last year, and the subsequent Republican victory in midterm elections. More importantly, Republicans in Congress are preparing to hold hearings and examine meetings, memos, records, and anything related to how the Obama administration passed EPA regulations related to global warming and climate change. Some pundits are going a step further, and speculate that Browner's departure was forced by the administration to avoid Browner being called before Congress to testify under oath about her involvement in these discussions, in an attempt to avoid the public spotlight.

While that attribution seems a little extreme to me, I do think that Browner's departure is part of a carefully calculated move by the administration to signal a change in approach to climate change legislation. In Washington politics, the key players and actors matter a lot. Replacing Browner will defuse and disarm may critics of the President when it comes to climate change policy, and allow him to claim a pivot towards more business-friendly policy. Whether there is a substantive shift away from climate change policy and carbon regulation, however, remains much too early to tell.

Posted by tlau at 9:50 AM | Add Comment

January 27, 2011

What Does SOTU Say About Future of Climate Change Legislation?

On Tuesday night, President Obama laid out his agenda for the coming year in the annual State of the Union speech. The speech has been widely praised in the media, and polls seem to indicate that the public was similarly impressed, with large majorities buying into the key themes and messages. Those themes, of job creation and regaining national competitiveness among the international community, were previewed ahead of time but nonetheless seemed to resonate especially well with a public weary of depressing economic news and feeling like they're falling behind relative to other countries.

In terms of the legislative future for Green IT, however, it was President Obama said about climate change that was most interesting and relevant: he didn't mention it once. When it comes to climate change, the environment, and global warming, President Obama has actually uttered those words less than even former President George Bush, a remarkable feat considering President Bush comes from oil-rich Texas. The term "climate change" has also disappeared from the White House website and it's fair to say that President Obama will not be using those words in public speeches this year. Environmentalists are furious, of course. Grist's David Roberts points out that if the U.S. does not get to zero carbon emissions by the middle of this century, severe and possibly irreversible changes to the climate will lead to "massive, widespread human suffering." He believes that calling this a "Sputnik moment" as the President did in his speech is only telling half the truth. The reason the U.S. ramped up the space program after Sputnik was fear of the consequences if Russians ruled outer space. By failing to frame climate change as a moral and human life imperative, President Obama failed to properly finish the Sputnik analogy.

Although the President didn't mention climate change or global warming, he did address the topic of clean fuels and green jobs extensively. Perhaps the most important part of his speech was calling for a national Renewable Energy Standard of 80% by 2035. He included nuclear and clean coal in his definition of clean energy, which predictably upsets some people, but the important part is that if Congress passed a RES, it would once and for all create financial incentive for investment in renewable energy programs. He also called for the elimination of tax breaks to oil companies, a moment that brought a grimace to Speaker John Boehner's face.

A lot of people, including some Republicans, are still fuming at the lost opportunity of a market-based approach to carbon regulation. After calling for it in his last two speeches, and after the BP oil spill disaster, Congress came pretty close to being able to overcome opposition to the "cap and tax" bill as some Tea Partiers called it, but it wasn't enough to overcome the Senate's 60-vote rule to cut off debate and vote on legislation. As a result, the focus on green jobs and renewable energy in Tuesday's address should surprise no one. For Green IT, it means that the regulatory focus will now shift away from direct carbon emissions to clean electricity. The outcome may be the same, but the legal motivation will be subtly different.

Posted by tlau at 9:35 AM | Add Comment

January 24, 2011

Monday News Roundup

Monday News Roundup
January 24, 2011

• The vice president of Force 10 Networks believes there are many definitions to cloud computing, and Green IT adds complexity in virtualization while creating simplicity in physical data center infrastructure.
• Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, announces that its new 4 gigabit (Gb)-based 40 nanometer (nm) class low power DDR3 memory will be used in HP ProLiant G7 servers. The new 4Gb memory technology enables up to 100 percent higher memory performance than the widely used 60nm-class 1Gb DDR2 modules, while consuming over 84 percent less power.
• In a move that heralds a performance revolution in energy-efficient power electronics, Cree, a market leader in silicon carbide (SiC) power devices, has introduced the industry's first fully qualified commercial silicon carbide power MOSFET. This establishes a new benchmark for energy-efficient power switches and can enable design engineers to develop high-voltage circuits with extremely fast switching speeds and ultralow switching losses.
• Eltek Valere, a global leader in high efficiency power electronics, has announced the next generation (Gen3) of its Scalable power product family, the Scalable Powerpack--a fully integrated DC power system for central offices, mobile telephone switching office (MTSOs), data centers and other high-capacity computing/networking centers.
• eBay's Employee Green Teams took significant steps in 2010 to achieve sustainability goals in their workplaces all around the world.
• IBM and IG3 have entered into an agreement, in which IBM will design a Green Data Centre for IG3. IG3 is constructing one of the largest Data Centers in the Asia Pacific Region. Located in Bangalore it represents the largest investment so far in this sector in India.
• Data is growing exponentially and new data storage solutions are hitting the market every day. With all of this complexity, it is becoming increasingly more difficult to evaluate the myriad of product choices and make strategic purchasing decisions. PROMISE Technology Inc., a leading supplier of versatile RAID storage solutions catering to customers from enterprise to consumer, forecasts eight key trends that will have a significant impact on the storage technologies customers will consider in 2011. One of these is Green storage options have businesses rethinking how they produce, distribute and consume technology.
• Federspiel Controls announces that it has entered into a long-term strategic relationship with NTT Facilities, Inc. designed to bring Federspiel Controls' energy management systems to data centers on a worldwide basis. The agreement represents a multi-million dollar commitment in sales revenue.
• Imtech (technical services provider in Europe) announces that it has received orders to a value of over 110 million euro for the upgrading and expansion of the technical infrastructure in multiple data centers and call centers in Germany. Besides expanding their capacity, Imtech's innovative solutions result in considerably lower energy consumption at these centers.
• The British Computer Society launched last month a new certification called the Certified Energy Efficiency Datacentre Award (CEEDA) that aims to bring together the best practices for data centre operations, and give owners a LEED-like sustainability rating as a badge of green IT quality. At the moment, the leading green building certification standards, such as LEED and BREEAM in the UK, can all be applied to data centre operations, but those ratings don't do a lot to reduce energy costs and carbon emissions once the computer facilities are up and running. And, although groups like The Green Grid have developed a number of metrics to help green IT operations for IT managers and CIOs, green data centres remain a piecemeal affair.
• VYCON, a designer and manufacturer of environmentally friendly, high-speed energy storage flywheel systems, is pleased to announce that it has just shipped its 300th flywheel system. Marking an important milestone for the company, VYCON's clean energy storage systems are deployed world-wide and provide unsurpassed power backup and power regeneration to mission-critical applications.
• Raritan Inc. announces that NewSpring Capital, a leading provider of private equity capital in the Mid-Atlantic region, has made an investment to support Raritan's growing power management business that helps companies improve energy efficiency and operations in their data centers. Funds were provided through NewSpring's growth equity fund -- NewSpring Growth Capital II, L.P. Raritan plans to use the investment proceeds to facilitate its rapid and accelerating growth in the data center power management market through the development of new products and expansion into additional geographies.
• Server Technology, Inc., the global leader for Power Distribution Units and Power Measurement and Monitoring Solutions, today announced the release of 18 new innovative cabinet power distribution units (CDUs) for the data center industry.
• "This is a great example of our customer-driven innovation process at work," said Brandon Ewing, president of Server Technology. "We've developed a unique design-engineer-build process that allows us to work with our customers to develop solutions that provide capabilities to solve problems and drive their businesses forward. Server Technology was built on our power expertise and engineering know-how and I'm thrilled with our speed to market for customer specific products," said Ewing.
• Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "The Future of Virtualization, Cloud Computing and Green IT Global Technologies & Markets Outlook 2011-2016" report to their offering.
• Bell Canada announces construction of a new Tier 3 Certified data centre in the National Capital Region, significantly enhancing the availability of highly secure data hosting in the region with one of the most energy efficient facilities in North America. Three customers have already signed long-term co-location contracts worth a total of nearly $100 million to use the new Bell data centre, which is scheduled to begin operation in late 2012. The centre is designed to meet LEED Gold standards and to be in the top 2% of data centres for the most effective use of power in North America. The 82,000 square foot (7,600 square metre) building will use green hydro power on a grid separate from most National Capital users and deploy redundant utility components.

Posted by tlau at 5:50 PM | Add Comment