Software giant claims datacentre managers can turn up the heat

At the opening day of its user event in Las Vegas, business software giant CA announced new projects focusing on emerging technologies designed to save energy and reduce datacentre costs by allowing them to operate at higher temperatures.

Chris Stakutis, vice president of emerging technologies at CA, said at a CA World 08 press session on Sunday that datacentre power consumption was a key focus area for the company's emerging tech division.

"Every datacentre on average doubles its power consumption every five years, " he said. "But most datacentre owners I talk to don't know what they're spending on power."

"I've sat at the table with some very important CIOs and the mechanism they're using is adding up the utility bills and sending round a spreadsheet. You're not measuring or monitoring it at all today, and that's bad."

Stakutis added that approaches to cooling datacentres also need to be revisited.

He argued that, although datacentre equipment can be run at 90 degrees without failing, most firms aim for a much lower temperature to remain within the warranty and because they do not have confidence in the equipment's stability when it is operated at higher temperatures.

"You can save five per cent of your cooling costs for every degree warmer you run it," he said. "You just need to put in hundreds of wireless thermometers so you are confident you're not exceeding any limits."

Stakutis conceded that CA was "a little bit late in coming to market with energy and datacentre products", admitting that "the IBMs and others are all already out there".

However, the announcement that the software company is now working on systems designed to help manage datacentre energy use is still significant as those IT companies focused on delivering energy savings have to date largely originated from the hardware sector.

A version of this article first appeared at BusinessGreen.com's sister site vnunet.com