Industry group Wikibons "Conserve IT" initiative, has finally got storage vendors and energy companies on the same eco-friendly page.
Last year, for example, Copan Systems and California utility Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) launched a partnership whereby PG&E customers using the storage vendors MAID gear were eligible for rebates. While a step in the right direction, the deal hardly seemed to open the flood-gates for similar partnerships. Until, perhaps, today.
We launched Conserve IT as a way to accelerate the qualification of vendor technologies within these types of rebate programs, says David Vellante, Wikibons co-founder and principal contributor, noting that the industry "had very few technologies qualified, and we set out to increase that.
Conserve IT, which will extend PG&Es rebates to power-saving
technologies from the likes of EMC, HDS, and DataDirect, certainly raises the green storage stakes, subjecting vendors eco-friendly claims to a much deeper level of scrutiny.
Wikibons role will be to evaluate technologies such as MAID, virtualization, and de-duplication, independently validating vendors energy saving claims.