Issue 7, Dec 09/Jan 10
FOCUS DCD LONDON
A Commitment to Carbon The carbon-reduction cause should bring IT and facilities together – but divisions remain reports Nick Booth.
T
his year’s DatacenterDynamics London conference saw a variety of initiatives, ranging from new launches to new legislation. The
one unifying theme at the heart of all of these strategems was carbon management and emissions reduction.
2009 will be remembered as the year that saw the pressure finally erupt, as carbon exploded onto the scene and engulfed every operator and exhibitor at the conference.
Achieving carbon neutrality and managing carbon emissions was the topic of discussion not only in the exhibition hall but also at many of the breakout sessions.
This saw equipment makers and data center builders stressing green credentials and the ability to reduce clients’ carbon footprint.
Meanwhile, in seminars and presentations in Halls 1-4, the makers of cooling systems, power supplies and management systems all argued the merits of their systematic sustainability.
Expert commentators agreed that this was the first year the traditional priorities of the data center industry – such as reliability and zero outages – were finally supplanted.
Despite the almost unanimous agreement that carbon emissions and energy consumption now top the bill, there was still controversy.
Some critics hinted that while the data center industry evolved slowly for decades, those values of reliability and uptime are no longer appreciated, and these days carbon footprint is higher up the agenda.
What data center managers might call consistency, others might construe as complacency. The inference from some speakers was that professionals who are used to dealing with constant change, such as IT managers, could be the natural successors to the facilities manager as the dynamics of the data center are altered.
Many of the new product launches seemed to court the IT manager, or at least emphasised the IT management underpinning traditional facilities products.
NEW PRODUCTS New product launches by equipment vendors, such as Chloride, APC by Schneider Electric and Riello, all included IT-empowered management
features
aimed at the computer professional, rather than the facilities manager who has traditionally made the key decisions in the data center.
Chloride showcased its Trinergy UPS system. As technical support manager, Chloride’s Rob Tanzer detailed its energy- efficiency (99%) and lower carbon footprint and cost of ownership. “We’re at the forefront in the race to go green,” he said.
Neither Chloride nor its rival, Riello (which showcased the MultiPlus UPS), made reliability and guaranteed uptime their primary selling point.
Rittal and APC, meanwhile, detailed products that would help the IT manager take greater control of the data center by allocating energy costs to specific users.
NEW PLAYERS In partnership with Microsoft, Rittal launched Rizone, software for monitoring and managing the IT infrastructure of data centers.
Confirming that data center dynamics are set to be governed by the IT crowd, Rittal’s product manager, Barry Maidment, said: “It’s going to be all about bringing applications and physical infrastructure together.”
CALCULATED WITH NO RISK Microsoft’s move into this market is simply confirmation of what we’ve been doing all along, said APC. Announcing the Data Center Efficiency calculator, John Tucillo, VP for global industry and government alliances at APC, said IT tools are increasingly necessary as the data center becomes an issue of strategic importance that affects the careers of a far wider range of professionals, such as the marketing directors, compliance managers and even the legal department of
big corporations.
“In April next year, companies will be required to start reporting their carbon consumption, and data center management is a much-needed foundation,” said Tucillo.
As so often happens when an invisible enemy has to be confronted, those under threat could be more in danger from their own actions. If it’s not bad enough that data center managers have to contend with global warming, another man-made catastrophe looms on the horizon, with a potential to cause far more pain in the short term, if one exhibitor is to be believed: the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC).
This is an argument that was echoed by data center builder Davis Langdon, which issued dire warnings about the carbon reduction commitment. David Rees, a partner and tax expert at the firm, warned there is a lot of uncertainty about this new government-imposed market mechanism.
“We can say for certain that it’s mandatory and it starts next April,” he said. However, he hinted that the metrics for performance assessment and revenue recycling for this tombola scheme could run into difficulties.
“I asked a government spokesperson how it might work in future, and she couldn’t quite explain it,” he said.
www.datacenterdynamics.com 29
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