Blogs: M&M’s --- Part I - This stands for Marketing and Money
Blogs: Sometimes not making money is ok....
News: SaaS Software Licensing with Insight
News: Managed Email Security Services Trends with eleven and Variomedia
By Justin Lee, theWHIR.com
September 2, 2008 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Web hosting provider The Planet (theplanet.com) announced on Tuesday that it has unveiled the initial results of its lights-out program, a company-wide initiative to reduce energy consumption through more efficient use of lighting.
Implemented across all six of its facilities in Houston and Dallas, the company will reduce its yearly energy consumption by more than 1.4 million kilowatt hours, which amounts to nearly $140,000 in annual cost savings.
The company initiated the lights-on policy at its six data centers, which store more than 56,000 servers, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Down from 24 hours a day, data center technicians who work around the clock now turn on lights as needed in computer rooms.
The company helps reduce the need to illuminate overhead lights through the use of programmed lamps in main areas, which remain in a "constant on" state, enabling a few overhead lamps to remain on when the main light switched off.
The extension of the lights-off policy will now include all data center facilities, including the computer, electrical, battery, UPS and mechanical rooms.
The company's corporate offices in Dallas and Houston will also follow the policy, with motion-sensor lighting installed in all individual offices, as well as main lighting and heating, ventilation and air conditioning programmed to run from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Overall, 95 percent of office lighting remains off for 12 hours of the day. Only the areas staffed around the clock, including the Call Center, Network Operations Center and Sales, have the option for after-hours zone lighting and HVAC.
"Texas is the energy capital of the world, so we're acutely aware of conserving resources," says Jeff Lowenberg, The Planet's vice president of facilities. "At The Planet we employ a common-sense approach to energy conservation, so our lights-out program focuses on another simple solution to reduce energy consumption."
In May, Lowenberg was named "data center manager of the year" by SearchDataCenter.com, based on his work to save the company more than $1 million in energy costs in 2008.
The Planet takes on a more common sense approach to energy efficiency, such as the lights-out program. Lowenberg previously conducted a six-month trial designed to reduce power consumption and improve operating efficiency.
As a result, the company increased server loads by five percent, decreased power used for cooling by 31 percent, with an overall power reduction of 13.5 percent through different improvements it applied across all of its data centers.
Read Back Issues of WHIR Magazine
October 2009 - Web Hosting's All Star Team
This has been, for us, one of the most interesting, exciting and challenging build-ups to an issue of the magazine yet, Web Hosting's All Star Team. The balloting process was our first experiment with a kind of user participation we're planning to do a lot more with in the months to come. We had thousands of ballots submitted, with hundreds of write-in suggestions and a demonstration of user engagement that has us feeling super positive about the project.
About This Issue | Read Digital Edition
July 2009 - What am I Worth?
One of the interesting luxuries of working on a project like the printed WHIR magazine is that it allows us to play with things like our point of view from one issue to the next. In recent months we've been giving added attention to the kind of practical and applicable advice aimed at smaller hosts and resellers. This issue carries on with that point of view, asking, in our cover story, "what am I worth?" It's a complicated question without a clear-cut answer.
About This Issue | Read Digital Edition
May 2009 - The Blueprint for a Small Web Host
I was a little surprised by how difficult it became to see this idea through. We set out to assemble a blueprint for a small hosting business, but butted up pretty quickly against the general impossibility of covering all the territory that was out there to be covered. The basic constraints of a printed magazine, and the less-than-infinite amount of time we had available forced us to face the fact that we could never produce an exhaustive guide to starting a hosting company.
About This Issue | Read Digital Edition
Comment anonymously or log into your WHIR account
Logging in allows enhanced commenting features (such as external linking) in news, features, blogs and more.