Earlier this year, social networking giant Facebook finished construction of its newest data center in Pineville, Oregon. In a press release, Facebook officials touted the new facility as "setting new standards for environmental responsibility in data center design and operations." Those standards incorporate renewable energy tactics such as rainwater reclamation, solar energy, and heat recycling. By now, the energy-saving advantages of environmentally friendly efforts in IT are clear - even if companies don't always practice them. Even rather token efforts that make grossly inefficient data centers slightly less so can result in significant cost savings, given the escalating cost of electricity. But it's clear that energy efficiency will become only more important in the years ahead. That's especially true for data centers, as the demand for IT horsepower increases. So what are the best next steps in efficient data center operation? And is there a place for renewable ...

New CEO Arun Oberoi doesn't exactly bristle at Viridity Software getting lumped into the Green IT vendor category, but he wants to make sure the Burlington, Mass., company is seen as more than that. "We're working in the converged world of green IT, a big part of which is saving not just costs but the planet in any which way we can," says Oberoi, most recently head of security/governance company Aveksa. "But the real theme around what we do is finding a way to make the physical realities of the data center more available and optimized so that businesses can become more agile in their business processes."

Frederic Chanfrau, senior vice president of IT for governance, quality and vendor management with Schneider Electric, wants everyone in the company's IT organization to understand three points about going green. First, that energy demands are increasing at the same time as the company must decrease its greenhouse gas emissions; next, that each employee is responsible for helping address this challenge; and finally, that running a sustainable technology shop doesn't necessarily cost more. "They can put their own stone in the building of a greener IT organization," Chanfrau says. But they have to know how. So early next year, Chanfrau is launching a course through Schneider Electric's ( SCHN) internal Energy and Solutions University to introduce IT professionals to the basics of running a sustainable organizatio

A dozen nitty gritty tools and technologies that cut energy costs, boost data center efficiency and promote green IT practices. What makes them green: IT leaders are demanding energy-efficient hardware, and vendors are listening. That's particularly true when it comes to server hardware, where performance-per-watt is improving markedly thanks primarily to improvements at the processor level, says Andy Lawrence, eco-efficient IT research director at The 451 Group. "IBM, HP, Dell – they're all putting a lot of thought into how servers are designed for efficiency. For example, they're putting more effort into the number and placement of fans, airflow, use of power supplies and converters. And these all can add up, and combined with power management at the processor, we've seen rapid progress in the last few years," he says.

Avaya is prepping to launch its one-box data-center strategy early in October -- the VSP 9000 switch -- as a counter to Cisco's more comprehensive approach. The Avaya plan differs from Cisco's one-box strategy in that Avaya's box is purely a switch, while Cisco's is a chassis containing a switch, servers, storage and applications. Avaya has little choice but to present a limited offer because it lacks the other components among its assets. Until it bought Nortel last year the company described itself as a communications software specialist, but the purchase brought along Nortel's collection of networking gear, including the in-development VSP 9000. Now with the switch in customer trials prepping for release, Avaya is making a virtue out of its approach and finding fault with Cisco's "toaster box" solution -- as Avaya's vice president and general manager of data solutions Steven Bandrowczak calls Cisco's ...

Industry groups and government agencies from the U.S., Europe and Japan have reached a basic agreement on how to measure the energy efficiency of data centers, they are expected to say on Monday. The agreement is seen as significant because it establishes a common metric that different types of data centers, in different parts of the world, can use to report their level of energy efficiency. That could provide a yardstick for companies to assess the efficiency of their own data centers, and also to gauge the effectiveness of energy-saving techniques employed by other facilities.

Vendors have a lot more work to do to make Ethernet ready for large-scale data center duty. According to users at the Ethernet Technology Summit here this week, Ethernet could be a lot greener and "fabric-friendly." This shows that recent efforts by vendors and standards organizations -- such as the Data Center Bridging work by the IEEE and Cisco's next-generation Nexus platforms -- to ruggedize and reduce the power consumption of Ethernet switches and routers for data center applications are still incomplete. "The biggest, baddest switch you can buy today is still too small -- woefully too small," said Donn Lee, an engineer at Facebook. "We have to lash together huge arrays of 10G links to scale. Switches are not built for being in a fabric."

Pamela Rucker doesn't want to spend money with IT vendors that waste water or energy, or that have large carbon footprints. After all, she says, as vice president of IT for environmental services firm PSC, it would be hypocritical to not hold vendors to high standards.

Visitors to Disney's Epcot Center in Orlando can walk around the world, stopping at pavilions that aim to give them a taste of other countries. Now, Disney and IBM hope to give visitors a unique look at the information technology that delivers the modern world's everyday necessities as well. Last week, the two companies unveiled the latest revision of their collaboration-the Smarter Planet-an exhibit on how technology can save energy and Earth's resources. Based on concepts espoused in IBM's 14-month-old marketing push of the same name, Smarter Planet allows guests to explore the impact of various technologies, such as using mobile phones for banking.

Brent Hoag, VP and CIO, JohnsonDiversey

Organizations seeking ways to conserve energy and profit from being green may find the true gains won’t come from "greening" their data centers, but rather by maximizing the efficiency of their supply chains, said Peter Graf, the chief sustainability officer for SAP. “I find [green IT] a little bit exaggerated. Green IT is usually positioned as reducing the energy consumption of the data center,” Graf said, speaking at the National Retail Federation’s annual convention, being held this week in New York. Only an average of 2 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions are created from computers, he noted. "I'm not dismissing it, but the real opportunity is in logistics, production, in distribution and production."

Alcatel-Lucent wants the telecommunications industry to turn a little more green by developing new equipment that cuts power consumption by a factor of 1,000.

Hewlett-Packard, Yahoo and Alcatel-Lucent are among the recipients of grants from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for projects on improving energy efficiency in the IT and communication technology industries. U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced US$47 million in grants for 14 energy-efficiency projects across the country Wednesday. The funds come from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a huge economic stimulus package passed by the U.S. Congress early last year. Managing Data Center Power and Cooling: Download now "These Recovery Act projects will improve the efficiency of a strong and growing sector of the American economy," Chu said during a press conference. "By reducing energy use and energy costs for the IT and telecommunications industries, this funding will help create jobs and ensure the sector remains competitive. The expected growth of these industries means that new technologies adopted today will yield benefits for many years ...

Chinese consumers are more willing than their American counterparts to pay a premium for consumer electronics that are environmentally friendly, according to the results of a study done by consulting firm Accenture.

Enterprise data needs will grow a staggering 650% over the next five years, and that's just one of numerous challenges IT leaders have to start preparing for today, analysts said as the annual Gartner Data Center Conference kicked off in Las Vegas Tuesday morning. Rising use of social networks, rising energy costs and a need to understand new technologies such as virtualization and cloud computing are among the top issues IT leaders face in the evolving data center, Gartner analyst David Cappuccio said in an opening keynote address. The 650% enterprise data growth over the next five years poses a major challenge, in part because 80% of the new data will be unstructured, Cappuccio said. IT executives have to make sure data can be audited and meet regulatory and compliance objectives, while attempting to ensure that growing storage needs don't break the bank. Technologies such as thin provisioning ...

IT professionals looking to boost their high-tech careers in the coming five years are betting on security certifications and skills to help them stand out to potential employees, according to a new survey. Five ways to get affordable certification skills Some IT skills see pay hikes during the downturn From Trust to Process: Closing the Risk Gap in Privileged Access Control: Download now CompTIA, an IT industry trade association, polled some 1,537 high-tech workers and found 37% intend to pursue a security certification over the next five years. Separately, nearly 20% indicated they would seek ethical hacking certification over the same time period. And another 13% pinpointed forensics as the next certification goal in their career development. "When you add the results, you will see that about two-thirds of IT workers intend to add some type of security certification to their portfolio," says Terry Erdle, senior vice president of ...

A data center start-up is exiting stealth mode with technology that reduces power and cooling costs by analyzing the energy consumption of IT equipment and applications. What does a real green data center look like? Impact of Data Center Relocation on Application Performance: Download now Officials at Viridity Software -- the name means "greenness" -- argue that today's power monitoring products focus only on the physical infrastructure, giving insight into how power is delivered to the data center but not insight into why it is being consumed. Viridity's software maps the connections between applications and specific IT equipment, while also analyzing the relative importance to the business of each application. Then it provides step-by-step recommendations to eliminate power and cooling inefficiencies, simulates the potential impact of new technology deployments and enables chargeback.

Enterprise efforts to consolidate data centers and install virtualization software are taking a big bite out of the number of power-hungry application and storage servers required to support enterprise data. But after taking this critical first step, what else can you do to boost efficiency? You can move from hatchet to scalpel (to borrow a metaphor from President Obama). In this instance, the reference means that once you've minimized your number of power-sucking devices, it's time to precisely monitor and measure data center environmental metrics -- down to the nitty-gritty rack level -- so that you know exactly what adjustments are needed to optimize efficiency.

For Disney, energy efficiency is being achieved through a series of small improvements, Weber said in an interview with Network World. "Some of it just comes down to cleaning the facility up," Weber says. "And I don't mean with a dust pail and so on and a broom, but cleaning the data center up from obstructions and ensuring that every one of our floor tiles is sealed properly for air flow. Blanking panels -- not only that we have them but that they're in the right spot. Variable speed fans and motors on our CRAC units, increasing temperature settings across the board.

Data center managers should turn server temperatures up to 75 degrees Fahrenheit, and adopt more aggressive policies for IT energy measurement, Gartner says in a new report. Five tools to prevent energy waste in the data center Mergers & Acquisitions: The Data Dimension : Download now After conducting a Web-based survey of 130 infrastructure and operations managers, Gartner concluded that measurement and monitoring of data center energy use will remain immature through 2011. Only 7% of respondents said their top priorities include procurement of green products and pushing vendors to create more energy efficient technology. In general, data center managers are not paying enough attention to measuring, monitoring and modeling of energy use. “Although the green IT and data center energy issue has been on the agenda for some time now, many managers feel that they have to deal with more immediate concerns before focusing attention on their suppliers’ products,” Rakesh Kumar ...

Intel has made a number of power-saving enhancements to its Atom architecture that will be included in its upcoming Moorestown platform for smartphones, a company official said on Monday.

Some techies like to think of themselves as eco-friendly, driving energy-efficient cars, riding mass transit or, better yet, biking to work. On the job, many are involved in data center consolidation and virtualization efforts aimed at slashing electricity costs. But how many techies are willing to go green on their desktops? That's the question a group of IT vendors is asking as it challenges its own employees and government workers to turn off their PCs, monitors and printers at the end of the workday to save power.

PG&E, which serves much of Northern and Central California, including Silicon Valley, has set aside US$50 million to spend on a set of rebates and incentives between now and 2011. Those rebates will go to customers who employ energy-saving technologies such as virtualization, fresh-air cooling and high-efficiency power supplies in their data centers. Enterprise System Management Challenges in Big Organizations with Eli Almog: Download now That's up from the $7 million PG&E doled out in 2008, and the utility can increase the money available if enough customers are interested, said Mark Bramfitt, the head of PG&E's customer energy efficiency program, in a presentation at the Next Generation Data Center conference on Thursday.