Back | eWEEK.com | Search
Green IT Company Viridity to Come out of Stealth Mode
By: Jeffrey Burt
2009-11-06
There are 0 user comments on this Green IT and Green Computing story.
Receive eWeek news alerts on your mobile device.
Get the latest breaking news with mobile-formatted article links.
Click here to subscribe
E-mail
Print
PDF Version
Viridity, which will come out of stealth mode Nov. 9, is developing software designed to give IT administrators, facility managers and C-level executives high visibility into the utilization and energy consumption of their IT equipment and applications. The software will analyze the data and generate action reports that businesses can use to make their data centers more energy-efficient.
A new company coming out of stealth mode Nov. 9 is looking to giveenterprises a clearer view into their IT infrastructure and applications toenable them to create more energy-efficient environments and drive down powerand cooling costs.
Viridity is developing a software product of the same name designed to traceenergy consumption at the IT equipment and application layer and then analyzethe findings. From those, reports are generated that are intended to givebusinesses ways to balance power, cooling and IT utilization.
The software also is designed to do what industry experts say is key tocreating energy-efficient data centers and driving down power costs: bridge thegulf between IT, facilities and C-level executives.
"All the consumption of power is happening at the IT [equipment] orapplication side," Mike Rowan, Viridity founder and CTO,said in an interview. "But the way power is being addressed now doesn'taddress that side."
Currently, those three factions—IT management, facilities, and executiveslike the CIO and chief financial officer—allmonitor and manage energy consumption in the data center with similar goals ofimproving efficiency and driving down costs, but do so separately and withlittle communication, Rowan said.
The Viridity product is being designed to get those three sides working moretogether. The software will collect data from the physical infrastructurelayer, monitor IT power consumption, simulate the physical aspects of the datacenter, such as power and airflow, model logical aspects such as utilizationand performance, and analyze the data.
From there, the software will develop an action plan that can be used by IT,facilities and C-level executives that will outline steps that can be taken tocreate a more energy-efficient data center and the impact those steps will haveon power usage, cooling, performance and costs. It also enables companies tomodify the plan, and calculates the impact of those modifications.
At present, rising power costs and shrinking IT budgets are forcingbusinesses to find ways to reduce costs, and they're finding that often thecost of powering and cooling their IT equipment is greater than the cost ofbuying it. The lack of visibility into data centers also means that mostfacilities now are over-provisioned, and many new ones are built years ahead ofneed.
Viridity officials say their software will be able to reduce operationalcosts of data centers by as much as 40 percent and extend the life of datacenters by several years.
Major tech players—including IBM,Hewlett-Packardand Dell—are rolling out their own green data center services, aiming to help businessesreduce energy consumption and cut costs.
"Every vendor on the planet has a green story," Rowan said."Some of them are really rock-solid, some are somewhat nefarious."
Rowan said he sees a situation in which Viridity will be a goodcomplementary tool for some other vendor tools, and a competitor to others.
Viridity Assess—the first product that will eventually make up Viridity'sData Center Optimization Suite—is scheduled for general availability in thefirst quarter of 2010, followed by Viridity Control later in the year andViridity Optimize after that.
In addition, Viridity also is announcing its beta and early adopter program,dubbed Greenhouse Program, which will give select users early access to thesoftware and input into future features and functionality. Currently Viridityhas eight customers, according to the company.
© 2009 Ziff Davis Enterprise, Inc.
Mobilized by mDog.com
