LOS ANGELES, CA -- 04/30/08 --
IBM Business Partner Leadership Conference
-- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced new energy-management software, an
expansion of its energy certificates program, and an energy benchmark to
help clients establish energy efficiency goals, optimize for energy
efficiency and measure and verify their green IT progress across the
enterprise.
The new offerings for energy measurement include: IBM Active Energy Manager
software to measure power usage of key elements of the datacenter, from IT
systems to chilling and air conditioning units; an expansion of IBM's
Energy Certificates program to 34 countries; and an online energy
assessment benchmark.
Since launching Project Big Green in May of 2007, IBM has already helped
more than 2,000 clients implement green initiatives that have helped reduce
cost and environmental impact as well as simplify IT systems.
Additionally, IBM has recycled more than one billion pounds of IT equipment
removed from clients' data centers.
"Clients today are looking for ways to measure their green IT projects and
have positive business results that can be documented and verified," said
Rich Lechner, vice president, Enterprise Systems, IBM. "Today's
announcements, which are based on IBM's experience with thousands of
clients, help them do just this as they transform to a new enterprise data
center."
New Active Energy Manager Software
IBM Systems Director Active Energy Manager (AEM) tracks energy consumption
in data centers and helps customers monitor power usage and make
adjustments to improve efficiency and reduce costs. The new software
allows IT managers to control -- even set caps on -- their energy use for
servers, storage, and networking as well as the air conditioning and power
management systems that keep the data center running.
The software supports monitoring of devices that are connected to select
"smart" power strips used to provide power to multiple devices, including
IBM and non-IBM servers and storage systems as well as energy monitoring
support using select wireless devices that may extend beyond traditional
data center walls.
Additionally, the software can be used with equipment from facility
management providers. For example, the software can retrieve temperature
and power information using SynapSense Corporation's wireless sensors,
which can be located virtually anywhere in the data center. It can also
receive alerts and events related to power and cooling equipment through
interaction with Liebert SiteScan from Emerson Network Power. The alerts
can notify IT administrators about issues with facilities equipment, such
as overheating, low battery power on uninterruptible power supply batteries
or other conditions that may keep IT equipment in a data center from
running properly.
Expanded Energy Efficiency Certificates Program
To help clients benchmark and improve the efficiency of their IT operations
and reduce their environmental impact, IBM and Neuwing Energy have expanded
the Energy Efficiency Certificate program to reach customers in 34
countries. This program enables clients to measure their energy usage
while earning energy efficiency certificates for reducing the energy used
to run their data centers. The certificates earned -- based on energy use
reduction verified by a certified third-party -- provide a way for
businesses to attain a certified measurement of their energy use reduction,
a key, emerging business metric. The certificates can be traded for cash
on the growing energy efficiency certificate market or otherwise retained
to demonstrate reductions in energy use and associated CO2 emissions.
In addition to the United States, Canada and Mexico, clients in the
following countries can now apply for energy efficiency certificates
associated with improvement in IT: Ireland, UK, France, Germany, Italy,
Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Portugal, Luxembourg, UAE, Saudi
Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, India,
China, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, South Korea, Thailand, Australia,
New Zealand, Philippines and Japan.
"Establishing a worldwide energy certificates program with the help of IBM
is important to clients around the globe who are dramatically improving the
efficiency of their infrastructures to meet their environmental
responsibility goals as opposed to simply buying renewable energy
certificates," said Matthew Rosenblum, CEO and president, Neuwing Energy.
"This program incents clients to become more efficient at the source and
helps reduce energy costs at the same time. We have already seen dramatic
results from both utilities and Fortune 500 companies as they start to
understand how productive this program is in keeping economic expansion
growing while reducing energy costs."
IBM and Neuwing are also looking for new ways to further improve the Energy
Efficiency Certificate application process going forward by automating the
interface between the Neuwing Project Input template and IBM Tivoli Service
Management offerings.
Care2 -- the largest online presence for social networking, tips on
sustainable living, eco shopping and volunteer opportunities with more than
eight million individuals and socially and environmentally responsible
businesses -- recently applied for an Energy Efficiency Certificate through
Neuwing Energy.
The certificate will document a project recently completed by IBM Premier
Business Partner RS-UNIX involving consolidating 70 x86-based servers to
just four IBM BladeCenter systems that will power their Website. The
project resulted in a 66 percent reduction in data center floor space and a
70 percent decrease in energy consumption while also doubling the
performance of the previous systems. The energy certificate -- when
validated by Neuwing Energy and which Care2 intends to retire to document
energy savings -- is expected to indicate an energy savings of 340 megawatt
hours, or the equivalent of CO2 emissions from automobiles consuming more
than 30,000 gallons of gasoline.
According to Edward E. Traylor, III, senior director of technical
operations at Care2, "As an environmentally responsible enterprise
supporting more than eight million members, an inefficient IT
infrastructure was not an option for us. RS-UNIX, our partner in this
project, created an extremely efficient solution based on IBM technology.
The energy savings we are documenting from this project are both good for
our bottom line and serve as an extremely important proof point for our
business, which is based on environmental responsibility."
IBM has applied for EEC to document energy savings in its data center in
Southbury, Connecticut. A data center thermal assessment was completed in
late 2007 using the Mobile Measurement Tool, first announced with IBM
Project Big Green. The assessment identified air flow modifications which
will allow the data center to turn off 18 computer room air conditioning
systems while maintaining current data center operations. The pending
energy efficiency certificates are expected to document a total of 1,600
megawatt hours of reduced electricity use annually.
Energy Efficiency Benchmark Tool
To further help clients understand if current green initiatives are
working, IBM is also announcing a new, free on-line energy benchmark tool.
The tool provides actionable insight into a company's IT-related energy
efficiency status, helping managers determine business strategies for
improving and closing efficiency gaps. Independently produced by The
Bathwick Group, the tool allows clients to measure their efficiency score
against other organizations worldwide. The tool can be found at:
http://ibmgreen.bathwick.com
Jonathan Steel, CEO of The Bathwick Group, said about the benchmark's
advantages: "The energy efficiency tool benchmarks against hundreds of
organizations from around the world and the data set is being added to
continually. It allows users to see how they stack up against
up-to-the-minute best practices whenever they take the assessment."
Additional Energy Efficiency Clients
RackForce, a wholesaler of server rentals to e-businesses, application
providers and hosting resellers, recently completed an energy efficiency
project with IBM. According to Brian Fry, vice president, sales and
marketing, RackForce Networks Inc., "Companies of all sizes need to think
about their energy costs. We worked with IBM to install IBM System x
servers. That change has led to a 30 percent reduction in our power usage.
And the built-in System x virtualization capabilities provide RackForce
more flexibility in delivering our dynamic, virtual services."
Wesco Companies (Wesco) is a family-based group of construction, property
management and equipment rental companies with a successful history of
serving the Southern California region for more than 70 years. "We
recently consolidated our servers and centralized our storage. Now, not
only do we have a faster and more stable environment, we have also reduced
our carbon footprint by more than half and cut electricity costs by nearly
60 percent," said Ray Reed, systems engineer, Wesco Companies. "As a
mid-sized company, every savings counts. IBM helped us take advantage of
the green IT solutions that were right for us, so we too could benefit."
For additional information please visit www.ibm.com.
Contact:
Ron Favali
IBM
favali@us.ibm.com
727-489-7202
