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11: Worldwide Green IT Case Studies 187

utilization by the grid computations so energy consumption is not signifi-
cantly increased. In this way, World Community Grid is environmentally
friendly, making better use of otherwise wasted energy as well as CPU time.

A Green Data Center in Montpelier, France

This case study was based on information from Dr. Jean-Michel Rodriguez
of IBM France. Jean-Michel is the World Wide Lead Architect for the
Systems Technology Group Green Data Center and one of the ITO Lead
Architects based at the IBM customer center in Montpelier, France.
This is another nontraditional green IT case study because it is based on a
data center specifically built to demonstrate innovative approaches to
improve utilization and energy-efficiency costs in other data centers. The
demo data center in Montpelier is called the PSSC (Products and Solutions
Support Center) Green Data Center of the Future. The main idea was to cre-
ate a customer friendly real-time green showcase production data center that
will demonstrate a large percentage of the currently available best practices
in IT and facilities energy conservation, integrating at least one bleeding- ptg
edge major conservation technology. The live camera, thermal camera, and
green IT energy use real-time dashboards available to IT personnel through a
portal are interesting innovations that can help communicate the energy effi-
ciency of the data center to all interested employees.

Customer Pain Points

As mentioned previously in this book, the availability and price of elec-
tricity have become the number-one concern for data center operators,
according to surveys at the Gartner Data Center Conference in Las Vegas in
2007. Power moved ahead of its close cousin, data center cooling, as the
number-one pain point for customers. Forty-seven percent of respondents
cited power availability as their top concern. Insufficient cooling slipped to
second at 27 percent. The cost of power will become a huge issue, and even if
you don’t have to pay for the power, the power costs being visible will have
significant impact. In the meantime, data center operators will cope by con-
tinuing to expand their infrastructure. To address the issue, many different
approaches coexist, from relocating current data centers to another facility,
expanding an existing site, renovating a current facility, to eventually out-
sourcing data center operations. As a consequence, we see different ways to
address customer requests and pain points.