New green initiatives are pushing data centre companies in the European Union to take the lead in developing environmentally friendly technology. The economic crisis in 2008 gave an extra impulse to the trend, with reduced energy consumption leading to lower bills. Companies quickly realized that having good environmental credentials was good for marketing. The hostile economic climate turned out to be a catalyst for green information technology.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer called on Europe to provide clearer rules on privacy and data retention issues as his company pushes into remote computing services. Ballmer, whose company is investing heavily in data centres and cloud computing services, said there needs to be a regulatory regime that outlines the responsibilities of companies when providing those services.

By moving business applications to cloud computing, large organizations can reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions 30 percent or more compared to running those apps on their own infrastructure, according to a study released by Microsoft, Accenture and WSP Environment & Energy. The study also finds that small businesses can garner substantially higher savings.

Sentrum, a specialist in data centre solutions, has released further research findings which show that the voluntary Code of Conduct for Data Centres on Energy Efficiency; introduced by the European Union; is failing to secure any significant level of support in the UK.

The worldwide data centre infrastructure market for power distribution units uninterruptible power supplies, cooling, and racks made a significant rebound in the second quarter of 2010 with revenues and shipments expanding 6.9% and 3.6%, respectively, over the first quarter of 2010. According to the latest Worldwide Quarterly Datacenter Infrastructure QView from IDC, data centre infrastructure revenues fought back losses and were down just 1.8% while shipments were up 2.6% year over year.

VISI, the Minnesota-based data centre, managed hosting and cloud computing provider, was awarded Tier III Design Certification from Uptime Institute for their Eden Prairie, Minnesota facility. VISI is the first commercial data centre in Minnesota to receive the Tier III Design Certification from the Uptime Institute.

VISI's Eden Prairie Data Center will feature 18,000 sq ft of raised floor when completely built out and will be one of the largest data centres in Minnesota.

Source: San Francisco Gate

From data centres down to USB keys, if it involves storage, I'll be looking at it. The costs of conforming to the Carbon Reduction Commitment should not significantly affect UK data centre companies, a data centre chief has said. The scheme, now called the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme, adds costs to businesses that consume large amounts of electricity, such as data centres. Industry figures have spoken out against it; Kate Craig-Wood, managing director of hosting company Memset, has written on her blog that the CRC "threatens to impede growth and innovation in the data centre industry".

Jones Lang LaSalle’s fifth Data Centre Barometer reveals that the mood in the data centre sector is generally positive with over half of survey respondents recognising that occupier demand is on the rise, whilst supply of appropriate stock is becoming increasingly restricted.

The White House, which earlier this summer vowed to change how the federal government buys and uses IT, last week disclosed plans to cut by 40% its number of data centres and directed agencies to opt for cloud-based technologies.

India is expected to spend about US$95.47 billion on information and communication technology in the country by 2014, driven primarily by hardware and telecom, research firm Gartner said.

From a spending of US$56.82 billion in 2009, it is estimated that the ICT spending in India will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 10.9% to reach US$95.47 billion in 2014, Gartner said.

Source: Business Standard

Here for full article

When it comes to data centres, we seem to hear about Google and perhaps Facebook most often. Both companies have been known to announce new facilities and expansions on a regular basis. But apparently eBay has quite a lot of expertise in this field, too, as the U.S. Green Building Council recently awarded its Topaz data centre the LEED Gold certification.

Telecoms solutions specialist Livvy’s Group collects award after customers give it vote of confidence for second time. Telecoms solutions specialist Livvy’s Group has been named O2 Data Centre of Excellence ‘partner of the year’ for the second year in a row.

The award selects the best company from O2′s Data Centre of Excellence programme, a group of elite mobile data partners, providing customised O2 solutions.

Source: Mobile News

Here for full article

Source: APC by Schneider Electric

Data centre commissioning requires tight coordination between vendors, facilities, IT departments, engineers, the commissioning agent, and others. Managed properly, commissioning can deliver an unbiased evaluation of whether a new data centre will succeed or not. Managed poorly, it can lead to problematic data centre performance issues. Learn 10 common data centre commissioning mistakes, and find out how to avoid them.

Source: Technologies Evaluation Centre

Three-fourths of companies either currently employ enterprise-grade cloud computing solutions or plan to implement enterprise-grade cloud over the next five years, according to a new study commissioned by Savvis, a global leader in cloud infrastructure and hosted IT solutions for enterprises.