TECHNOLOGY FOR CHANGE

A Center of Greener IT�and Savings

Dennis McCafferty | Date: 07-02-10 | Comments

IBM's Green Solutions Center is showcasing a number of IT solutions that are helping customers save significant costs when it comes to energy consumption.

Reducing data center energy usage is one of the biggest challenges for the IT industry. The Environmental Protection Agency has reported that, if left unchecked, this consumption could cost the public and private sector $7.4 billion in annual electricity costs by next year. Fortunately, in North Carolina's Research Triangle Park, IBM is partnering with other companies to come up with solutions.

That's where IBM's Green Solutions Center is open for business. Within its more than 2,000 square feet, the center showcases high-efficiency servers, storage and energy management systems. It also contains automated room controls, interactive displays and touch panels, along with green interior components. Tours are conducted daily, and more than 10,000 customer prospects a year�arriving from nations such as Japan, China, Chile and Spain�participate in briefings to experience firsthand the available data center and infrastructure technologies.

One highlight of the tour is the Enterprise Modular Data Center, which uses half the energy of same-sized facilities while still delivering equivalent quality and speed of services. There's also the "rear door heat exchanger," which can dissipate up to 110 percent of the heat from high-density servers. (Visitors are encouraged to "hug" the cabinet there to feel the results firsthand. To their surprise, the air coming from the rear of the server is colder than the air that goes inside.) The latter solution was used by the University of Toronto to create the world's No. 15 supercomputer rating in 2009.

One IBM customer, Columbia County, Ga., has used Green Solutions Center research to build a scalable modular data center that doubled IT capacity while saving $30,000 a year in energy consumption. Home to Augusta, Ga., and among the fastest-growing areas in the state, Columbia County sought a replacement for its previous data center because it was aging and lacked redundancy. "We had been experiencing several outages�three to four a year," says Lewis Foster, CIO for the county. "Some lasted for 12 hours due to inadequate power and cooling systems. It was impacting Web services for our citizens, so we needed to fix the problem quickly. The IBM team outlined expectations, kept us informed of progress and acted as a partner."

Other partnering companies, such as the Eaton Cellwatch battery monitoring system, are also showcasing innovative products at the center. The system helps IT managers avoid needlessly replacing batteries in their UPS systems. It optimizes power performance by alerting users to replace weak batteries only, thus lessening environmental impact and ultimately resulting in lower maintenance costs.

Most UPS batteries can last five to 10 years. However, it's standard industry practice to replace batteries every two or three years because, after that, one or two cells may become faulty and jeopardize the entire battery. "Cellwatch, however, allows facility managers to identify and replace individual cells as they begin to fail, extending the life of the batteries," says Don Roy, a senior consulting specialist with IBM at the center. "You prevent useful batteries from being destroyed. You can help the environment and save money at the same time."