According to its recent press release, IBM says "the new alliance with top IT companies around the world will enable clients to evolve to new enterprise data centers while offering the widest possible choice of open technologies."

The alliance is targeted at independent hardware and software vendors that specialize in elements crucial to data centers, says IBM, including networking, virtualization, facilities management, platforms, operating systems, storage and systems management.

Some of the IT vendors already in support of this program include Brocade, Citrix, Eaton, Emulex, Juniper Networks, Novell, RedHat, Sun and VMware.

The company says that the focal point of this program is "the importance of interoperability and open standards for new enterprise data centers, including those for energy management, virtualization, networking, security and service management."

IBM says there are many benefits to joining the alliance program including increased exposure to clients through a new enterprise data center appliance portal, potential participation in joint-development projects, the ability to participate in IBM client events and exposure to capabilities and opportunity for early interoperability development and tests.

Tying in well with its $1 billion "Project Big Green" initiative to reduce energy use through new energy efficient products and services, IBM also launched a new set of "green energy" tools to reduce energy consumption in data centers and to boost its business of selling power-saving technologies.