Green Data Center Panel Discussion
Taken from the GigaOm Green:Net 09 show in San Francisco on March 24th, 2009. Moderated by Rich Miller of Data Center Knowledge, this is a good sampling of how large IT vendors are looking at Green from both an industry as well as a data center standpoint.
This is a good view if you want to understand some of the higher level considerations of getting more Green in your data center. Most of the panelists also provide some insight into new technologies that are coming to market to help in the deployment and management of energy. Our take was on Cisco EnergyWise as a means to implement common monitoring and control of data center energy.
Panelists for this session were:
Kenneth Brill, Executive Director, The Uptime Institute
Albert Esser, VP Power and Infrastructure Solutions, Dell
Rich Lechner, VP Energy and Environment, IBM
Christina Page, Director Climate and Energy Strategy, Yahoo!
Myself, Robert Aldrich, Principal, Energy Management Solutions and Services, Cisco
What was clear to me…
was that each of the panel members was in agreement on the big challenges which I would summarize as follows:
1) Common monitoring, measurement and management across dispirit infrastructure
2) Energy efficiency will only take us so far, governmental leadership is required for wholesale change addressing climate change
3) People, process, organization structures and operative habits/behaviors are fast becoming a bigger challenge than the technology
4) Silo’d approaches to facilities and IT management do not make business or environmental sense
5) There is and should be many different approaches to going Green and the current competitive climate to bring Green solutions to market is a good thing
6) There is a shortage of talent in the IT industry that can address complex data center architectures, energy and the environment
I’m of course taking some license here with my interpretation but we had less than an hour for this discussion.
It would appear Green is here to stay and judging by the level of discussion at this conference in general, the days of Green-vaguery and Green-wash appear to be numbered.
Exciting times…
Posted by Rob Aldrich at 03:21PM PST
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