IBM intros data center energy mgmt s/w

ARMONK, USA: At its annual IBM Pulse Conference in Orlando, IBM announced new software designed to help customers address the growing need to maximize energy efficiency and reduce costs associated with power and cooling. The software is part of IBM's Project Big Green initiative in which IBM has committed $1 billion per year to deliver technologies that help customers increase energy efficiency in their data centers and physical plants.

This latest version of IBM Tivoli Monitoring (ITM) software consolidates views of energy management information that enable optimization across data centers and facilities infrastructures. Monitoring capabilities offer customers the ability to understand energy usage to alert data center managers to potential energy-related problems and take preventive action.

Historical trending and forecasting capabilities enable greater precision in existing environments and energy planning. Autonomic capabilities allow customers to set power and utilization thresholds to help control energy usage. The new software can also help customers handle physical constraints in the data center relating to space, power and cooling.

IBM is combining the new energy management software with partner solutions to provide customers with a comprehensive view of energy consumption across the enterprise -- not just in data centers but also in non-IT assets such as air conditioning equipment, power distribution units, lighting, and security systems.

According to a 2007 EPA research report, US energy consumption by servers and data centers is expected to nearly double in the next five years.

"Customers today are faced with an array of energy challenges such as increased power and cooling costs, exceeding power capacity, and an inability to monitor and plan for power consumption," said Al Zollar, General Manager, IBM Tivoli. "IBM's new software offers the tools needed to monitor and manage power usage. Together with our partners, we are able to expand on our data center management capabilities to include facility management that provides customers with a holistic view of energy consumption and its potential impact on their businesses."

Generally, more than 50 percent of the energy consumed by data centers is now utilized for power and cooling infrastructures. IBM's new software provides the foundation of efficient data center energy management going beyond a single vendor solution by providing an interface that can be used with partners for visibility into comprehensive power, thermal and environmental data.

By combining the ITM energy management software with partner solutions, customers can capture operating and performance data from data centers and non-IT assets and use this information to analyze events and alerts, correlate with end-user application performance, and associate with service levels to take preventive action that can result in lower energy consumption while helping to enhance the quality of IT services delivery.

As part of this announcement, IBM will join forces with nine partners to offer IBM's IT management expertise with partner solutions that will allow customers to monitor and control energy consumption across their enterprise to help reduce power consumption and energy costs and better maintain service levels. The partners include:

* APC and TAC by Schneider Electric: APC, an integrated critical power and cooling services provider, and TAC, a building environment services provider, are combining APC's InfraStruXure Central and TAC building management systems with ITM energy management software. This integration will help administrators view, correlate and profile the dependencies of business process and IT assets to the underlying physical infrastructure to help manage risk and increase data center availability and energy efficiency.

* Eaton Corp.:Integrated with ITM energy management software, Eaton's Power Xpert® Software, Foreseer Class is a browser-based solution that helps ease energy management by providing a clearer picture of energy consumption and utilization at a component, device and system level. By gathering, presenting and analyzing power usage data in detail, customers can more easily identify opportunities for cost savings, downtime prevention and energy efficiency.

* Emerson Network Power: By leveraging ITM energy management software with Liebert SiteScan from Emerson Network Power, customers can enhance their infrastructure management capabilities with alerts regarding energy- related issues with facilities equipment, such as overheating or low power on uninterruptible power supply batteries, as well as providing for corrective or preventive actions to be taken to help optimize for energy efficiency.

* Johnson Controls Inc.: ITM energy management software combined with the energy monitoring and control features of Johnson Controls Metasys building management system is a web-enabled offering that allows customers to make real-time decisions about whether to scale back data center power consumption, make informed decisions about allocation of energy consuming assets based on priority needs of the business, and make faster failover decisions to help maintain uninterrupted performance of critical IT services.

* Matrikon: MatrikonOPC interfaces enable raw data flow into ITM energy management software from third party systems and building automation devices such as heating and air conditioning, lighting and fire and security alarms.

* OSIsoft: Leveraging ITM energy management software, the OSIsoft PI System and library of over 480 interfaces deliver real-time and high fidelity historical data visibility within the enterprise data center by consolidating operational data control systems into a single view, unlocking multi-vendor silos and enabling customers to capture and analyze data from data centers as well as building automation systems.

* Siemens Building Technologies: By integrating building automation systems with ITM energy management software, Siemens can help customers translate related building systems and facility data into more cost- effective site-wide operational efficiencies. Leveraging this information effectively requires more than interfacing technologies and the Siemens solution provides customers with broad facility sub-systems integration experience to help them realize the financial and operational benefits of total facility optimization.

* SynapSense Corp.: SynapSense sensor technology is combined with ITM energy management software to offer customers real-time data center monitoring and energy management capabilities for both the data center as well as building facilities. By pairing ITM software with SynapSense technology, customers can better identify inefficiencies in the data center operations and drive real-time, corrective actions that can reduce energy and help significantly improve resiliency.

* VMware: VMware's virtualization technology and ITM energy management software work together to drive intelligent, dynamic consolidation of customers' application workloads onto fewer servers, as well as power down under-utilized servers. IBM and VMware's complementary technologies can further optimize virtual data center power consumption while maintaining service commitments to the business.