Big Blue Focuses Attention on "Big Green" (11-May-07)

From Lauraibm

MI Summary

May 2007 saw IBM announce “Project Big Green”, this is a five part strategy involving diagnosing, building, virtualizing, managing and cooling with the purpose of helping customers to achieve a significantly more energy efficient data centre.

IDC’s research has found that power and cooling concerns are the top issue in data centres today. IBM is quick to recognise that the power and cooling density challenges facing data centre managers today are so extreme that strong partnerships will be needed to adequately address the full range of problems. The fact that IBM has been quick to recognise this is very positive as research by IDC has found that most IT managers have no idea how significant the problem is.

IBM’s “big green” strategy has a patented “stored cooling” solution, this allows the system to be optimised for specific temperature requirements in data centres around the globe. IBM claims that this solution makes existing chilled water cooling infrastructures run 40 – 50% more efficiently.

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Comment by Matthew Eastwood

Source: http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=lcUS20679807

On May 10th, IBM announced a new integrated set of product and service offerings collectively called "Project Big Green." IBM recognizes that solving the energy challenges for the Data Center of the Future requires a holistic approach, including a focus on both the physical data center environment and the IT infrastructure itself. IBM claims to have designed more than 40 million square feet of raised floor data center around the world and is currently operating 8 million square feet across the corporation. While this places the company in a unique position in the market, IBM is quick to recognize that the power and cooling density challenges facing data center managers today are so extreme that it will take strong partnerships to adequately address the full range of problems. In fact IBM was joined on stage by executives from Liebert, Emerson, APC, Eaton, Anixter, and GE at the launch event in New York City.

IDC's customer research shows that power and cooling concerns are the top issue in the data center today. Compounding the problem is the fact that most IT managers have no idea how significant the problem is. In fact, a recent survey by IDC’s Enterprise IT Advisory Council found that 47% of the IT managers surveyed had no idea how many watts per square foot their data centers are capable of supporting today. Furthermore, it isn't always clear exactly who is responsible for paying the power bill inside most enterprises today. Again, in the same recent Enterprise IT Advisory Council survey, the IT organization was reported to be responsible for paying the power bill only 28% of the time. As a result, it is common for most people in IT to take the position that it isn't their problem at all.

For IBM, "Project Big Green" is a five- part strategy designed to help customers achieve a significantly more energy-efficient data center. The strategy, which runs across the organization touching Big Blue's systems and technology, global services, software, and financing organizations, includes the following:

• DIAGNOSE: Evaluate existing facilities — energy assessment, virtual 3-D power management, and thermal analytics.
• BUILD: Plan, build, or update to an energy-efficient data center.
• VIRTUALIZE: Virtualize IT infrastructures and special purpose processors.
• MANAGE: Seize control with power management software.
• COOL: Exploit liquid cooling solutions — inside and out of the data center.

One of the more innovative element of IBM's "big green" strategy is a patented “stored cooling” solution that allows customers to store cooling capacity in a chemical solution that can be altered to change state from solid to liquid at a wide range of temperatures. This allows the "system" to be optimized for specific temperature requirements in data centers around the globe. Customers can recharge' the IBM Data Center Stored Cooling Solution service product by running chillers at full efficiency during off peak hours when energy costs are lowest. IBM claims that this solution makes existing chilled water cooling infrastructures run 40–50% more efficiently.

IBM and its partners recognize that it will take a significant amount of education before this problem can really be solved. In addition, IBM's partners identified a number of other areas where the industry needs to focus attention in order to solve the problem in the data center. On the supply side, all OEMs must do their best to develop energy-efficient products and educate enterprise customers of all sizes regarding the ROI associated with energy-efficient products. The EPA's Energy Star program has been very successful in consumer markets by giving customers a common set of energy metrics necessary to make informed purchasing decisions. It is clear the enterprise needs a similar set of metrics to support for their planning needs. Another critical part of the solution is the development of enterprise-wide energy policies. This will be critical in order to get a consistent set of goals so that IT, facilities, and the business can all work from the same page.

IDC believes that it does take a holistic and partnered approach to solving these data center and IT infrastructure problems. It is clear that customera face a large and difficult challenge, and the problem is going to get worse before it gets better. According to IDC research, one-third of data center managers expect their current data center to operate for more than 30 years. At the same time, the typical IT infrastructure is replaced or significantly upgraded every five to seven years, and the compute and power densities grow significantly. As a result, the typical data center with a 20-year life cycle will support three generations of computing infrastructure over the course of its life. Additionally, The typical enterprise class data center averages 50,000 square feet and supports more than one third of all servers within the organization. In the United States, the average operational age of the typical data center is 12 years old, and more than 40% will be replaced within the next 10 years — 17% within the next five years. It is clear that the data center of the future will be quite different that the average legacy data center it will replace.