Big Blue goes green
By Colleen Taylor, Contributing Editor -- EDN, May 10, 2007
Big Blue is getting greener. Technology giant IBM Corp. today announced it is redirecting $1 billion per year across its businesses in an effort to mobilize the company's resources to dramatically increase the level of energy efficiency in IT.
The plan includes new products and services for IBM and its clients to "sharply reduce" data center energy consumption and transform the world's business and public technology infrastructures into "green" data centers.
Called "Project Big Green," IBM's initiative targets corporate data centers where energy constraints and costs can limit their ability to grow. The initiative includes a new global "green team" of more than 850 energy efficiency architects from across IBM.
According to the company, the savings are substantial-- for an average 25,000 square foot data center, clients should be able to achieve 42 percent energy savings, the company said. Based on the energy mix in the United States, IBM said, this savings equates to 7,439 tons of carbon emissions saved per year.
"The data center energy crisis is inhibiting our clients' business growth as they seek to access computing power," Mike Daniels, senior VP of IBM global technology services, said in a statement. "Many data centers have now reached full capacity, limiting a firm's ability to grow and make necessary capital investments. Today we are providing clients the IBM action plan to make their data centers fully utilized and energy efficient."
IBM claims it currently runs the world's largest commercial technology infrastructure, with more than eight million square feet of data centers in six continents. By using the same energy efficiency initiatives it is offering clients today, IBM said it expects to double the computing capacity of its data centers within the next three years without increasing power consumption or its carbon footprint. Compared to doubling the size of its data centers by building out new space, IBM said it expects this will help save more than five billion kilowatt hours of energy per year.
