Skip Links

Network World

  • Social Web 
  • Email 
  • Close

Big Blue announces "Big Green" initiative

By Deni Connor , Network World , 05/10/2007

IBM on Thursday unveiled a $1 billion-a-year service initiative aimed at building and redesigning data centers that consume less energy.

At a press conference in New York City, the company debuted Project Big Green, which will call on 850 Global Technology Services employees to redesign IBM’s own data centers and those of its customers.

"Large companies are facing a large crisis around energy,” says Mike Daniels, senior vice president of IBM Global Technology Services. “This issue is surfacing in a number of different ways, whether it’s the capital required to build new data centers because people are out of capacity, or where people are out of power or trying to manage that power. We think this is an issue where we can provide leadership for the industry and for our clients."

IBM claims that the savings for customers are great in going green -- by using IBM technologies such as their blade servers instead of other vendor’s technologies, a customer with a 25,000-square-foot data center should be able to save as much as 42% on energy consumption.

That savings is huge, says IDC, which estimates that for every dollar spent on computer hardware, another 50 cents is spent on energy. This amount, IDC says, is expected to increase to more than 71 cents by 2011.

The Big Green initiative also will net IBM lots of dollars. The company has put the "$1 billion" stamp on two past initiatives: Its $500 million investment in e-commerce in 2000 netted the company $1 billion in Web-hosting services contracts a year later. Also in 2000, IBM announced it had already spent $1 billion on promoting Linux and that in 2001 it would spend an equivalent amount.

Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) is one of the customers that says it already has benefited from IBM’s green initiative. The company used IBM diagnostic technology at three data centers to measure and identify hot spots, air leakage and other inefficiencies across 40,000 square feet of data-center space. Had PG&E surveyed this space manually, it would have taken several weeks instead of a few days.

“"The real key to us is on energy efficiency and reducing the demand for energy both for us and our customers," says Brad Whitcomb, PC&E vice president of customer products and services.

Partner Content

Explore the Ultrium Edge

The powerful tape technology can address data security with tape encryption as well as long term data protection.

Find out more

Disk and Tape Square Off

Discover what disk and tape really cost -- and which solution provides lower total cost of ownership and optimizes energy use for your organization

Download the White Paper

Don't Fall For The Myths

The Clipper Group explores the truth behind the myths of tape, digging into the misconceptions in the disk vs. tape debate.

Download the White Paper

Will You Add Tape Too?

Over two thirds of disk-only users look to add tape back into storage infrastructure according to recent survey.

Download Survey Information

Comment
Login
Forgot your account info?
Add comment
Anonymous comments subject to approval. Register here for member benefits.
Have a NetworkWorld account? Log in here. Register now for a free account.

Videos

rssRss Feed

Whitepapers

Retrospective Network Analysis

In this whitepaper learn how Retrospective Network Analysis (RNA) has proved a different type of...

SNMP Monitorin One Critical Component to Network Management

SNMP is a valuable tool to any network administrator who requires complete visibility into the...

Monitoring and Managing App Performance

This paper defines application analysis, discusses the different categories of tools on the market,...

Webcasts

Direct from Microsoft: Tips for Integrating Exchange 2007 and Double-Take Software

Double-Take (r) Software and Microsoft are teaming up on September 9, 2008 for a webinar focusing...

Transforming the Enterprise WAN Edge: Video from Cisco

Life on the edge of your WAN has changed dramatically. With the need to deliver advanced services,...

PoE Plus: Impact on the PoE Market

The standard for Power over Ethernet (PoE), IEEE Std. 802.3af(tm)-2003, advanced networking,...

Special Reports

Data Centers: At the Center of Action

Archiving, backup and data protection take on ever more critical roles in the enterprise. Data...

The New Network/System Management Challenges

Increasingly popular technologies such as virtualization, wireless networking and data center...

Virtualization Reality Check

Find out why analysts say approaching virtualization with an ounce of caution is wise. And also why...

Get instant email notification when white papers, webcasts, executive guides are added to our library. Stay informed and up-to-date with the latest on IT Technologies with Network World's Resource Alerts.