The Green Grid has produced a useful guide to what it calls Containerized Modular Data Center Facilities, which recognizes the increasing interest in modular design and how it can help improve energy efficiency in data centers. I’ve tackled this subject in a previous blog but chairing the recent Green Data Center (more…)

Major companies could reduce their carbon emissions by as much as 50 percent and significantly increase energy efficiency by shifting to cloud computing, according to a new report.

In an analysis of UK, French, and U.S. firms that have used cloud computing for at least two years, (more…)

Telecommuting has become more and more prevalent since the advent of cloud computing and the internet. Employees and students alike are sitting down in their home office, living room or bedroom to do their jobs and complete their courses.

Beyond the obvious benefits of choosing to attend (more…)

At Connectivity Week in Santa Clara, recently, I took part in a series of panel discussions on data center energy efficiency. The discussions covered a wide range of issues from the practicalities of infrastructure optimization to the possible role of data centers in demand response schemes. There was a particular (more…)

Want to go beyond the basics of reduce, reuse, recycle to make your workplace more environmentally friendly? There are several new technologies that can help reduce energy use and wasteful practices.

1. Cloud computer online services
Forget lugging your work laptop home or working at (more…)

Greenpeace has released a report titled How Dirty is your Data? which looks at the energy choices powering cloud computing. Based on 2007 data the report claims that if the cloud is compared to nations across the globe it would be the fifth largest consumer of electricity. The cloud would rank ahead (more…)

I recently had the chance to take part in an excellent green data center conference in San Diego. In between trying to soak up as much solar radiation as possible, I had the chance to test the pulse of the green data center movement with a diverse group of data center professionals and specialist consultants.

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Two announcements made this month reinforce the growing importance of energy efficiency to the battle for the data center market.

First, graphics chip developer NVidia announced that it is going to take on Intel and AMD in the CPU market with a new range of products based on chip designs (more…)

The rapid growth of cloud computing could reduce energy usage in the global information technology industry by 38 percent by 2020, according to a new report. Cloud computing refers to Internet-based computing in which data and applications are shared between computers on demand, rather than hosted on a separate server. (more…)

The AFCOM association recently revealed the results of a survey of 436 data center sites that showed the following trends: Cyber terrorism is an increasing concern, mainframe deployment is declining, storage deployment is increasing, and “green” technologies are definitely happening.

AFCOM found that there is a shift in data centers away from mainframe computers and toward other types of servers. That makes total sense as virtualization is the mantra of the day for those companies that are interested in optimizing their power by having several operating systems function within just one server. Data processing and storage is done within one server as opposed to a traditional system where the network is distributed in an elaborate design comprising of several servers and workstations all attached to their own separate hardware components. Similar to a virtual environment, all the physical resources such as additional servers, PCs, storage, hard drives, processors, and mother boards are totally eliminated. That way, not only are we saving big time in hardware investment (good for the planet!), we are also avoiding excess maintenance costs. That’s a big thumbs up!

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