June 11, 2008 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- In what appears to be a part of its environmentally friendly "Project Big Green" initiative, IBM (ibm.com) announced on Wednesday it has partnered with web hosting provider RackForce Networks (rackforce.com) and gigaCENTER Services to help build Canada's largest "green" data center.
There has been a great quantity of data center announcements the past few weeks, many of which have been focused around "green" data center initiatives. In May, Rackspace Hosting reported it had built a carbon neutral data center in the UK while Equinix announced that all four of its Silicon Valley Internet Business Exchange centers had received certification from the Bay Area Green Business Program.
Towards the end of the month, Yahoo! completed a turn-key data center lease agreement with Digital Realty Trust and the two companies were targeting the project towards achieving LEED Gold certification status as a "green" data center.
IBM's new 150,000 square foot facility will be called gigaCENTER Services Corp. and will be built in British Colombia at an estimated cost of $73.8 million. The first phase of the construction is expected to start in December 2008.
According to reports, the data center will be developed using IBM's modular approach and will include power and cooling capabilities to support a variety of technologies from high-density blade servers to mainframes. Products and services needed for the project will be delivered over the three-year estimated construction period, says IBM.
When complete, the building will support 70,000 square feet of raised-floor data center space and provide facilities to support on-demand server capacity services and Business Continuity and Resiliency Services delivered through RackForce and IBM Global Services, say the companies.
This is one of many "green" data center initiatives IBM has launched recently as part of "Project Big Green," a $1 billion initiative to dramatically reduce energy use by IBM and its clients. The initiative includes new energy efficient IBM products and services and a five-step approach to energy efficiency in the data center, says the company.
In May, IBM announced it 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.
Last week, IBM reported that it is heading up a joint research initiative of 13 European partners to develop technologies that help automate the continually changing demand for IT resources in a cloud computing environment.
