American Power Conversion and 10 other major information technology companies – including fierce competitors – have joined forces to form the Green Grid, a global nonprofit consortium dedicated to reduce energy consumption by data centers and business networks.
Along with West Kingston-based APC, the group’s other founding members are Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Dell, IBM, HP, Intel, AMD, Rackable Systems, SprayCool and VMware.
The Green Grid’s formation reflects the IT industry’s growing energy consciousness and concern about unsustainable levels of power usage at data centers, said John Tuccillo, APC’s global director of data systems and a member of the Green Grid’s board of directors.
At the Gartner 25th Annual Data Center Conference last November, analysts for the Stamford, Conn.-based IT consulting firm predicted that half of the world’s data centers won’t have enough energy capacity to meet their power and cooling requirements by the end of next year.
Gartner also estimated that energy bills traditionally have accounted for less than 10 percent of typical IT budgets, but soon could account for more than half, according to a Green Grid white paper.
“The Green Grid was formed to really take on that challenge of energy efficiency in the data center,” Tuccillo said. “If you look at cost-of-energy escalations combined with the ecological ramifications of electricity and energy usage, it just makes an awful lot of sense.”
Until recently, energy costs were such a minor IT concern that electricity costs for running and cooling computers usually weren’t even factored into IT budgets, according to the Green Grid. But that has changed in recent years as data centers across the globe fill with more powerful servers to keep pace with the Internet’s rapid expansion.
Electricity costs are also skyrocketing at data centers because of high-power transformers, wiring, fans and air conditioners, humidifiers and lighting and other devices needed to maintain the increasing number of servers, according to the Green Grid.
The consortium’s first goal is to develop metrics that will enable data centers managers, utility company executives and government regulators to evaluate the energy performance of their computer systems.
Establishing a universally accepted set of metrics will help data center managers understand the efficiency of their data centers and make smarter IT purchases, much as consumers make miles-per-gallon comparisons when buying a car, according to the Green Grid.
The organization said it would not endorse specific products and that all the standards, measures and methods it develops would be platform-neutral, which Tuccillo called “critical” given the makeup of the group.
“There are a number of competitors involved – for example, Intel versus AMD, HP versus IBM or Dell,” he explained. “So you want to ensure that we all have worked out methodologies to collaborate in addressing the problem.”
The Green Grid has not set specific targets for reducing carbon emissions or taken a formal position on global warming, but any increases in data center efficiency will result in reduced carbon emissions, according to the group.
And though adopting energy efficiency measures cost money, data centers that do so will experience a long-term savings, Tuccillo said.
“There’s no question that if data centers become more efficient, it reduces your total cost of ownership,” he said. “It’s really is a win-win.”
Membership to the Green Grid is open to all companies and IT professionals willing to adopt its standards, but the membership structure is divided into two groups: general members, who have access to the Green Grid’s technical documents, intellectual property licensing, and events, and contributing members, who pay $25,000 annually and can join technology working groups, review technology documentation at each phase of development and directly contribute to shaping the consortium’s future.
The organization also has made available three white papers developed by its technical committee that offer perspectives on data center efficiency issues as well as efficiency baseline recommendations, and are targeted at CIOs, data center administrators and facility managers.
For more information about the Green Grid, go to www.thegreengrid.org.
