The greening of the data center

Vendors have jumped onto the green bandwagon. It is believed At this point it’s more hype than reality but that soon green IT technologies will make their way into the corporate data center as IT heads are aware of the savings that green technologies confer.

Former US Vice President and 2007 Nobel Prize winner for his work on global warming Al Gore preaches the good word. HP, IBM, Sun and others tech giants sell it. A good number of businesses are buying into it. We are talking about green IT. Companies globally have been forced to go green or at least some shade resembling that color thanks to governmental diktat. It’s the information technology industry’s turn now. Are we there yet? Not really. Therein hangs a tale.

Tech vendors, the press, and yes, industry analysts have latched onto crisis language to describe power and space shortages in corporate data centers. Christopher Mines, Senior Vice President, Forrester Research said, “Let’s all calm down. Tech marketers push green by hyping a crisis in corporate data centers. We surveyed enterprise IT professionals and found a moderate level of interest in improving energy efficiency in their data centers, but nothing that warrants the ‘crisis’ label. It’s in everyone’s interest to tone down the language and keep the focus on realistic assessments and initiatives to improve efficiency and greenness in corporate data centers.”

Let us look at some headlines...

“IBM Unveils Plan to Combat Data Center Energy Crisis.”

“Gartner Predicts Data Center Power and Cooling Crisis.”

“Coping with Data Centers in Crisis”

“Research shows that more than 70 percent of customers are in crisis mode, unable to properly cool the gear they need to meet their business goals.”

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