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Lean, Green Computing Machine

How Project Big Green is taking energy efficiency beyond the data center

Adding Enhancements

Project Big Green was designed to cover five major areas: diagnose, build, virtualization, liquid cooling and active energy management. Since May 2007, “we’ve made enhancements in each of those areas,” says Lechner.

In the active energy-management area, IBM now offers the capability to monitor and manage not only servers, storage and networking devices, but also facilities equipment such as air conditioning, lighting systems and chillers within the data center. This area is being realized by IBM’s work with a number of partners such as APC and GE.

In May IBM announced that active energy management is being extended “beyond the data center boundaries to include other elements of the facilities such as lighting systems outside the data center area,” Lechner says. That’s an exciting development that opens up new opportunities for customers to boost energy efficiency in their facilities.

Enhancements in the build area encompass new, highly efficient servers, such as the System z10* mainframe and the POWER6* processor system with advanced virtualization capabilities.

Looking at cooling, the new generation of IBM’s rear-door heat exchangers is a stunning innovation in terms of technological development and energy savings. “The first generation extracted 60 percent of the heat generated by a rack of servers right at the source,” says Lechner. “The new generation extracts 100 percent of the heat at the source. In theory, you could deploy these servers with no need for air conditioning.” Eliminating the requirement for air conditioning would yield a substantial cost savings for many companies.

Other innovations include advances in IBM’s storage and server virtualization offerings. In addition, the company recently introduced WebSphere* Virtual Enterprise, which expands virtualization into the application area, improving the efficiency of applications in terms of energy use. “We’re enhancing the portfolio in every dimension,” Lechner says. See the sidebar “Realize Big Green With OIO”.

Emphasis on Eco-Responsibility

Improving energy efficiency is now a necessary part of a company’s corporate responsibility. Today’s responsible business is a green one and takes into account the financial, operational and social/regulatory drivers that influence green decision-making.

On the financial side, more efficient energy use translates directly into cost savings. Every dollar saved on energy will spur another six to eight dollars of operational savings, Lechner points out. On the operational side, IT innovations allow companies to achieve more computing performance for each kilowatt hour of energy used. From a social and regulatory standpoint, companies that proactively address energy challenges and show verified energy conservation measures can gain stature in customers’ eyes.

Project Big Green was envisioned to address all these facets of an eco-responsible business. When the program was launched, “one of the primary drivers for customers was operational,” says Lechner. “Customers couldn’t deploy new server or storage technology because they couldn’t get more energy into the data center or they couldn’t dissipate the heat that was already in the data center.” The other primary driver was financial issues. These include rising energy costs and the fact that compute and data capacity doubles every 12 to 36 months, thereby increasing the need for IT and its associated energy costs.

The issue of social and environmental responsibility and regulatory pressure is increasing, and clients need to be thinking about how to develop programs that can be monitored and verified. IBM can help them do that.”—Rich Lechner

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