By Anastasia Tubanos, theWHIR.com
August 1, 2008 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — IBM (ibm.com) announced on Friday that it will be building a $360 million data center at its facility in Research Triangle Park in North Carolina.
IBM will renovate an existing building on its RTP campus to create “one of the most technologically advanced and energy efficient data centers in the world,” says the company in its recent press release.
IBM seems to be one of the companies making the most noise in the green data center space. In June it announced it had opened what it considered its greenest data center in North America.
Earlier that month IBM partnered with RackForce Networks and gigaCENTER Services to help build Canada’s largest “green” data center.
The technology giant says the new RTP data center will include new technologies and services – many of which are from IBM’s $1 billion Project Big Green initiative to reduce data center energy consumption – that will enable IBM to deliver cloud computing capabilities to its clients.
IBM’s version of cloud computing is called Blue Cloud and the technologies developed as part of this initiative enables clients to build large-scale, distributed, globally accessible data centers, says the company.
“This new data center is part of IBM’s commitment to construct the world’s most advanced data centers,” says Bob Greenberg, general manager of IT optimization and North Carolina Senior State Executive at IBM. “This is the latest example of IBM’s deep history of innovation in North Carolina. When we open for business in late 2009, the new IBM data center assures that Research Triangle Park will be a strategic location for our outsourcing business for many years to come.”
Following the first phase of 60,000 square feet of raised floor data center space, the RTP facility can potentially be expanded in standard modular increments.
The new data center will be “one the first in the world,” says the company, to be built with IBM’s new Enterprise Data Center design principles. Clients using this center will have “unparalleled access to massive internet-scale computing capabilities, while gaining the cost and environmental protection advantages of IBM’s industry-leading energy efficiency data center design.”
IBM’s goals with the building design include reusing 95 percent of the original building’s shell, recycling 90 percent of materials, with 20 percent of the newly purchased material to be from recycled products.
The company is also installing computing systems using virtualization technology and will use an integrated cooling system, enabling it to respond to varying cooling requirements of the IT equipment in real time and switch to free-cooling mode during colder months.
The facility will also be partially powered by alternative energy sources, resulting in a targeted reduction of approximately one million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per year.
IBM says it currently owns and operates more than eight million square feet of data center space worldwide.
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