As 2011 came to a close, the White House had a couple of goals it was adamant about attacking –increase employment opportunities, improve whistleblower laws, track all of U.S. financial assistance to foreign governments and close 800 data centers by the end of 2015.
With regards to the latter goal, the White House is ahead of schedule, according to officials.
Steven VanRoekel , federal chief information officer, recently explained that data centers need to close in an effort to “[cut] spending on wasteful, underutilized hardware, software and operations as well as enhance our cybersecurity; shrink our energy and real estate footprints; and take advantage of transformational technologies like cloud computing.”
In a recent White House blog post, VanRoekel shared that the government’s goal is to close at least 40 percent of data centers. Agencies set a goal to close 215 data centers by the end of 2011, 545 by the end of 2012 and 1,080 by 2015. The closing of data centers will help tackle issues such as rising data center power consumption and increased energy costs.
VanRoekel said the Census Bureau was a success story in this area, as it will avoid $1.7 million in annual operating costs starting in 2012. The agency working to improve current centers and reduce data center power consumption through virtualization and cloud computing technologies, he said.
Agencies are also assessing data center efficiencies and will focus on density over capacity and computing power to “deliver more bang for the buck,” VanRoekel said.
One company that is always looking for ways to better monitor data center power and to improve data center efficiency is Server Technology (News - Alert), a company that offers solutions for the data center equipment cabinet. For more than two decades, Server Technology has been equipping some of the largest companies in the world with power management solutions. Server Technology is a global leader in power distribution products and power monitoring software and it designs, engineers and build innovative solutions for two primary markets with common technology – data centers and telecommunications.
2011 certainly marked a high note for the data center power distribution company as Server Technology introduced almost 300 new products into the rack mount power distribution unit space, bringing its overall offering to over 2,000 products.
“That’s unprecedented in our industry,” Julie Brown, marketing manager for Server Technology, told TMCnet. “Our customers have continued to ask us for unique, custom solutions and we’re able to deliver because of our Server Tech Quality Power Architecture which allows us to quickly develop situation-specific devices with the same quality, reliability and production processes found in all of our products.”
Last year, Server Technology also introduced hundreds of product releases including the Smart POPS (per outlet power sensing) and PIPS (per inlet power sensing) features and the Sentry Power Manager (SPM) 5.0, a significant upgrade to its power measuring and management solution.
Carrie Schmelkin is a Web Editor for TMCnet. Previously, she worked as Assistant Editor at the New Canaan Advertiser, a 102-year-old weekly newspaper, covering news and enhancing the publication's social media initiatives. Carrie holds a bachelor's degree in journalism and a bachelor's degree in English from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by Tammy Wolf