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Several major technology vendors launched an effort on Wednesday aimed at making it easier for IT professionals and data center managers to create more energy-efficient data centers. Called The Green Grid, the moved was backed by Advanced Micro Devices, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Sun Microsystems.
The goal is to help reduce growing power and cooling demands in enterprise data centers. That goal is supported by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Alliance to Save Energy. The Green Grid organization will be actively recruiting members over the summer, including both corporations and individual tech pros.
"IT professionals are telling us that demands on their data centers are growing to the point where they can no longer keep up, and they don't know how they can fix the problems within their existing footprint," says Bruce Shaw, director of worldwide commercial business at AMD. "We are hearing horror stories about having to build new data centers costing millions of dollars because they just can't keep up with the performance envelope."
In a November survey of 1,200 IT professionals commissioned by AMD, 83% said the biggest issue they face is cooling and power within the data center. Only 20% said they have a plan in place to fix the problem, Shaw says.
"We what we have is something of an epidemic, and it goes far beyond the processor," he says. "It needs to consider the entire ecosystem: the servers, networking, the air conditioning, heating and ventilation, power supplies, and even software."
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Making the jump from outdated legacy technology to a more modern digital infrastructure will allow businesses to innovate at the speed and scale needed in today’s marketplace.
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