The Green Grid has delivered new strategies, methodologies and process recommendations that provide IT managers with a new framework to assess data centre energy use in order to gain greater efficiencies. This framework developed by The Green Grid is designed to educate data centre end users on data centre productivity, provide them with a better understanding of the key factors driving energy consumption and encourage them to reduce energy use in their data centres.

Developed by The Green Grid Technical Committee, which includes technical experts from Member companies, this framework will be presented to Members and other industry participants during The Green Grid Technical Forum and Members' Meeting. Underscoring the theme of this inaugural industry event, which is "Get Connected: Assess Today for Efficiency Tomorrow", material that will be presented includes:

• Addressing Organisational Barriers to Managing Efficiency: provides organisations with guidance on how to increase awareness of split incentives between IT and facilities management and how to address the behavioural issues resulting from those incentives;
• Baseline Efficiency Market Study: reviews the current state of the industry and identifies key factors driving companies to take action on data centre power consumption and the challenges in doing so. This study identifies existing practices for managing efficiency as well as provides companies with data to help them assess where they are with respect to industry common practices;
• Peer Review of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) Study on High Voltage Direct Current in the Data Center: reviews the LBNL study on potential efficiency gains from implementing a direct current-based architecture in data centres; and
• Five Ways to Save Server Power: presents strategies that can be implemented today for saving server power and improving data center energy efficiency.

"The strategies, methodologies and process recommendations being introduced by The Green Grid are a critical step forward in our efforts to help IT managers understand and improve energy efficiency in data centres and business computing ecosystems. Through our growing membership, we have access to member research facilities and key IT experts, enabling us to scope and understand the challenge and identify effective solutions", stated Jim Pappas, a director of The Green Grid. "The Green Grid Technical Forum will provide the industry with an opportunity to share this information and collaborate on additional projects."

During the forum, The Green Grid will discuss the future direction of energy-efficient data centres while previewing projects-in-progress, which include:

• Data Center Rating System Panel: industry discussion on data centre ratings with a number of parties, including The Green Grid, California Energy Commission, European Commission, US Department of Energy and US Environmental Protection Agency who have start working on data centre energy efficiency rating systems; and
• Data Center Productivity: highlighting The Green Grid's progress in developing metrics for data centres that relate useful work performed within data centers to the resources required to complete that work.

"The Green Grid's efforts to develop standards and metrics for energy efficiency through the work of our Technical Committee is advanced through complementary collaborations with other industry organisations", stated Don Tilton, a director of The Green Grid. "We expect this collaboration with the DMTF will help enable the seamless management of heterogeneous IT and non-IT equipment."

The Green Grid and the DMTF expect to develop standards designed to improve interoperability of management solutions at all levels of the data centre. The two organisations' collaboration is expected to develop an interface for heterogeneous management inside and outside of platforms, across data centers and for IT and non-IT equipment. The DMTF's Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM), a suite of management and Internet standard technologies developed to unify the management of distributed computing environments, will form the basis of the management interfaces it defines.

"Our alliance with The Green Grid to define new standards for energy efficiency will benefit all levels of the data centre", stated Winston Bumpus, DMTF president. "We recognize the importance of the data centre to today's enterprises and are launching this collaboration with The Green Grid to better meet the needs of our target audiences."

The Green Grid also announced membership growth to more than 150 companies. New Contributor Members include ADP, Enterprise-Rent-A-Car, Saft Power Systems Inc., Teradata, Vette Corp, Western Digital and ZT Group Int'l Inc. General Members include 42U, ADC, Avnet Technology Solutions, BigFix, Inc., Blackwave Inc., Broadcom Corporation, BULL SAS, Ciena Corporation, Compellent Technologies, Corning Cable Systems, CRAY INC., Degree Controls Inc., Dot Hill Systems Corp, EBSCO Publishing, EqualLogic Inc., Exelon Corporation, GlassHouse Technologies (UK), Internet Initiative Japan Inc., Interxion, Lee Technologies, Lockheed Martin Corp, National Semiconductor, NetXen Inc., News Corporation, Nexsan Technologies, NTT America Inc., NTT COMWARE Corporation, NTT DATA CORPORATION, ONStor Inc., Platform Computing, Quantum Energy Services & Technologies Inc., RACKWISE, Server Technology Inc., Siemens Corporate Research, Source IT Energy, Syska Hennessy, Terremark Worldwide, Inc., Total Site Solutions, Tretecnic Pty Ltd., University of California, San Diego, UTC Power and Wright Line LLC.

For more information about The Green Grid Technical Forum, you can visit http://www.thegreengrid.org/events/technical_forum/