Notes from the Consultant's Jungle

Across the world there are new opportunities for data center and IT consulting companies to capitalize on the consolidation projects being launched in the Government sector.  Like commercial enterprises, governments focusing on governance (no pun intended) of IT see the benefits of consolidation of the data processing footprint.  Also like commercial enterprises, governments have business [...]

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We’ve talked about wind power for data centers and mission critical facilities, and often the subject of solar power comes up in those same conversations.¬† Dedicated commercial solar installations generating more than a megawatt are rare, and as such have very limited contribution as an energy alternative for data centers.¬† There is growing interest though, [...]

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When recently interviewed for a magazine article, I was asked about Green initiatives by data center operators.  There are lots of innovative techniques for reducing power consumption in data centers, and lots of ways to apply renewable resources.  The fact of the matter is that for the data center operator, some of the options are [...]

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The challenge in using green energy alternatives such as wind or solar power in data centers is power density.   Data centers consume a lot of power with respect to their physical footprint, so they need very large solar arrays or large wind turbine farms to generate the necessary power for the facility.  Consequently, the amount [...]

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Morgan Stanley plans to power their new data center in Scotland with a new generation of turbine generators called the Transverse Horizontal Axis Water Turbine (THAWT).  The $400M data center will require 150MW of power.  It will be powered initially from the utility grid but later transitioned to power generated by the underwater turbines of [...]

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As a bit of background and at the risk of stating the obvious, let’s quickly review some basics about energy efficiency and the Data Center.  It has been estimated that on average, electricity costs account for over 40% of data center operational expenses.  In 2006, American data centers consumed more electricity than all the televisions [...]

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I promised an update on the progress of the ship-based data center concept floated (yes a pun) by International Data Security (IDS).¬† A recent post on Silverback’s blog explains that the first launch (perhaps a pun) is now delayed until Q3 of 2008, and gives a few more details. IDS continues to see the ship-based [...]

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In these times of economic stagnation, IT leaders’ attention turns to cost savings.   Indeed in times like these, the CFO is likely exerting strong authority and demanding budget concessions from departments across the enterprise. Many companies are aggressively consolidating data centers as one way to address this demand.   There are a number of [...]

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