AnalystWatch: Sun Launches Eco Innovation Initiative (23-Aug-07)
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Full article: AnalystWatch: Sun Launches Eco Innovation Initiative (23-Aug-07)
Sun Microsystems has recently announced a new selection of products and services to aid customers in improving the power efficiency and resource usage in data centres. However, a spokesperson from Ovum stated that this latest contribution from Sun is not too different from what HP and IBM are already offering.
It is indeed the case that large enterprises are coming up against power and cooling issues in the data centre and energy costs are an increasing burden, thus CIOs should be looking at what can be done to alleviate such energy costs.
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Sun Microsystems has announced a new selection of products and services designed to help customers improve the power efficiency and resource usage of their data centers.
There are three Eco Ready Kits -- product sets to help customers assess data center efficiency, optimize (or replace) hardware, and virtualize their systems -- plus an Eco Services Suite designed to help customers improve their data center energy utilization, tune their cooling and air distribution and improve the efficiency of other infrastructure systems.
Analyst View
"Sun's latest contribution to the green arms race is not too different to what HP and IBM are already offering," says analyst firm Ovum's senior analyst, Ian Brown, "in the way of assessment services and assistance in implementing corrective actions to make your data centers more efficient. Sun's new services include Basic or Advanced Eco Assessment Services designed to provide varying levels of technical evaluation of the power and cooling efficiency, down to the rack and air distribution levels in the case of the Advanced option."
"The Eco Cooling Efficiency Services help recover and redirect misused air conditioning capacity and the Eco Optimization Service provides assistance with corrective actions outlined by the Assessment services," said Brown.
"There's no doubt that large enterprises are coming up against power and cooling issues in the data center and energy costs are becoming an increasing burden. All CIOs should be looking at energy costs and what they can do to alleviate them -- but then their CFOs and facilities managers are probably already talking to them about it. There are obvious first steps they should take around assessment and the leading data-center infrastructure suppliers -- Sun, HP, and IBM (not much from Dell yet) -- are all itching to sell their services," said Brown.
"The surprise is that IT services vendors have done relatively little in the way of jumping on the bandwagon," he added. "What better way to attack energy efficiency than by 'outsourcing' the problem to an IT services vendor's shared data center? The future promises legislation around carbon footprints and pressure to reduce energy consumption. For most large enterprises, running power efficient data centers is not a core competency; for infrastructure services providers it should be."
"Sun was one of the first hardware vendors to introduce the notion of utility computing," Brown said. "It didn't have much success selling it perhaps the IT services suppliers are better placed to do so and the time has come for them to step up to the mark?"
The analyst firm Ovum is a sister company to ComputerWire within the Datamonitor group.
- Source: [Computergram]
