News
        
        IBM Aims To Make Big Computing Greener
        
        
        
        In a sign that environmental sensibilities are informing business strategies, 
  IBM Corp. is spending $1 billion to spread technologies and services that could 
  make corporate computing centers more energy efficient.
Under an initiative that IBM executives intend to announce at an event Thursday 
  in New York, the company will reoutfit the "data centers" it operates 
  and help its customers redo their own with multiple power-saving approaches.
Data centers are huge, humming banks of servers that process transactions, 
  serve up Web pages and store information. Because of all the electricity and 
  air conditioning those computers need, data centers can be energy hogs.
IBM -- which has pledged, like several other big companies, to reduce its greenhouse 
  gas emissions -- is a leading data center operator, with more than 8 million 
  square feet of these computing warehouses worldwide.
Among the ways IBM expects to make data centers greener is through heavier 
  use of "virtualization" technologies, which let one computer handle 
  the operations of multiple machines. IBM also plans to deploy more "provisioning 
  software" that increases the time that servers switch to power-saving standby 
  mode. And it expects to launch new liquid-cooling systems that capture power 
  in off-peak times and store it for peak use.
The $1 billion is being reallocated from other purposes and is not an increase 
  in the company's investment or capital expenditure plans. Even so, IBM is expected 
  to call this a massive effort that reflects how energy issues are a higher priority 
  for its customers.
Forrester Research analyst Christopher Mines said the initiative reflects the 
  fact for an increasing number of companies, environmental responsibility now 
  is "an input to business strategy rather than just being an output."
"I think this is a strong effort by IBM to pull the pieces together," 
  Mines said. "People are aware of the environmental impact of their IT [information-technology] 
  shop, but many of them aren't doing anything about it so far. I think that's 
  going to change."