The Green Grid Expands to Asia

May 28, 2008 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — The Green Grid (thegreengrid.org), a global consortium dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems, announced on Wednesday it has expanded its operations and efforts to Asia with a new presence in Japan (thegreengrid.org/japanese).

Responding to strong industry and government demand, The Green Grid has formed two new Japan Work Groups as well as a formal relationship with The Green IT Promotion Council to help expand the organization’s presence to Asia and to enable it to establish a unique set of best practices, metrics and technologies tailored for locally-based organizations.

“The Green Grid is responding to a long and strong history in Japan to improve data center energy efficiency,” says John Tuccillo, director of The Green Grid. “The launch of these new Work Groups will position The Green Grid to make strategic, tailored recommendations to Japanese businesses and organizations, with the goal to promote a sustained increase in energy efficiency.”

Reporting to the Technical Committee, the Japan Data Collection and Analysis Work Group will collect and analyze data from The Green Grid’s Japanese member companies and ensure that consortium recommendations are tailored appropriately for Japan-based organizations.

The second work group, the Japan Communications Work Group, will promote the key findings of the Technical Committee to Japanese IT professionals including data center managers, serve as a point of engagement for Japanese organizations interested in collaborating with The Green Grid and support local marketing and IT energy efficiency events, says the organization.

Some of The Green Grid Japanese member companies include GMO Hosting, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Internet Initiative Japan, ITOCHU Techno-Solutions, NEC, Nomura Research Institute, NTT COMWARE, NTT Facilities, SOFTBANK IDC and TEPCO.

The Green Grid says it is also signing a Memorandum of Understanding with The Green IT Promotion Council to enable the organizations to work together to outline the information they will exchange and the joint activities they will conduct to improve overall IT energy efficiency.

Energy efficiency and green technologies are concepts that are brought up frequently as of late and many organizations in the IT industry, particularly in the data center business, are working to develop energy efficiency metrics and best practices for the data center industry.

The Green Grid is one particular organization that seems to be making strides towards this goal through its strategic partnerships with hardware manufacturers, data center operators and government agencies, in an effort to engage the issue on all levels and create a solution that is not only efficient and cost-effective, but sustainable for the future.

Earlier this month data center operator Equinix and German hosting provider STRATO became members of The Green Grid.

And in April, The Green Grid signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the US Environmental Protection Agency as well as the Storage Networking Industry Association.

Tags: asia, The Green Grid