Conserve IT, a New Wikibon Service to Qualify for Rewards for Energy-Efficient Equipment

Wikibon, a Web 2.0 technology research and advisory community, announced Conserve IT, a new service designed to assist IT companies and their customers to qualify for rewards offered by Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E) for installing energy-efficient equipment. Conserve IT is a first-of-its-kind service that accelerates the qualification of storage products for energy rebates and provides independent validation of energy efficiency for storage platforms from a number of leading vendors, spanning emerging Web 2.0 suppliers to the most recognized brands in the business.
 
Conserve IT was launched on behalf of IT customers in the Wikibon community who wanted to take advantage of the excellent programs PG&E and other utilities have put in place to conserve energy. The community felt that it could help to dramatically increase the participation of storage technologies which are major consumers of power and cooling in data centers. PG&E responded to Wikibon by allocating resources to help qualify additional storage technologies and providing guidance to the storage industry at large.
 

Conserve IT is a new Wikibon service designed to:

• Obtain the qualification of IT products from utility companies such as PG&E;
• Enable IT vendors to rapidly secure incentives for end customers;
• Widely distribute customer best practices on energy efficiency via Wikibon case studies.

Conserve IT significantly speeds the time-to-qualification, provides independent validation of energy savings, results in cash incentives for customers and enables the sharing of techniques for reducing energy consumption in data centers. Seven storage suppliers have signed on for Wikibon’s Conserve IT and have achieved or are actively seeking qualification of their technologies with PG&E and other utilities. Those committed to validating the energy efficiency of their storage platforms include 3PAR, Compellent, DataDirect Networks, EMC, Hitachi Data Systems, Nexsan and Xiotech.
 
“These seven leading companies recognize that creating energy saving technology is a starting point and helping customers realize the benefits of applying green technologies is the next step,” said David Vellante, Co-founder and Principal Contributor at Wikibon. “This partnership between the utilities and IT industries will accelerate the adoption of green technologies and this program will help customers and vendors directly connect green products to business value.”
 
PG&E incentives are based on the amount of energy savings achieved by datacenters through the installation of energy-efficient storage technologies such as MAID, virtualization and thin provisioning. In addition, Wikibon and its technology clients are seeking qualification of tiered storage management, high density storage arrays, flash drives, intelligent spindown, data de-duplication and other innovations. To qualify for these financial incentives, Northern and Central California PG&E customers must apply for and be accepted into the incentive program prior to deploying new storage technologies.
 


Suppliers participating in Wikibon’s Conserve IT had the following comments:
“Wikibon was able to secure qualification from PG&E for our InServ line of utility storage arrays within sixty days,” said Craig Nunes, Vice President of Marketing at 3PAR. “Wikibon’s knowledge of the PG&E process combined with a terrific understanding of storage virtualization dramatically accelerated our qualification and reduced the workload on our internal team. We’re enthusiastic about the partnership with Wikibon in the future to secure incentives for customers both inside and outside of California.”
 
“Conserve IT will help Compellent’s customers qualify for energy incentives by employing innovations like virtualization, thin provisioning and automated tiered storage to reduce the drives needed to manage data, further lowering costs, power consumption and space requirements,” said Larry Aszmann, CTO and co-founder, Compellent. “Working with the Wikibon community, we are helping end-users experience tangible economic and environmental benefits by delivering next-generation storage tools and resources that extend the performance of their data centers.”
 
“The Web 2.0 data explosion creates a requirement for storage technologies that are exceedingly energy efficient,” said Paul Bloch, President, DataDirect Networks. “Our S2A architecture allows the use of ultra high capacity SATA drives without compromising on performance. Together with Dynamic MAID, this translates into fewer spinning disks and lower energy consumption. We’re excited about teaming with Wikibon and the utilities industry to provide added incentives for our customers to conserve energy by adopting these advanced technologies.”
 
"EMC is committed to innovative technologies that promote energy efficiencies and to helping customers achieve optimal utilization of their IT infrastructure, reduce operational costs and their environmental footprint,” said Dick Sullivan, Director, Enterprise Marketing, EMC. "EMC is delighted to collaborate with Wikibon to effectively enable its customers to receive incentives from utilities for implementing energy efficient products and processes.”
 
“As enterprises continually look for ways to reduce power and cooling costs, Conserve IT is accelerating the qualification process for our energy-efficient storage arrays with utility companies so that our customers can reap additional benefits for implementing their Green IT initiatives," said Hu Yoshida, vice president and CTO, Hitachi Data Systems. “With Conserve IT, Wikibon has demonstrated industry leadership to help the user community maximize their return on investment. We are proud to be a part of this program, which is closely aligned with the pioneering vision and activities implemented across all Hitachi Ltd. companies for enabling greener data centers.”
 
"Nexsan strongly supports Conserve IT,” said Bob Woolery, senior vice president of marketing for Nexsan. “Rebates and other incentives are a key part to market transformation and driving more energy efficiency into the marketplace. Nexsan goes one step further by integrating our energy savings AutoMAID technology as a core feature of our solutions. Leading organizations realize that energy savings in storage is quickly moving from a nice-to-have to must-have.”
 
“For Xiotech, the Conserve IT program helps us definitively demonstrate the energy efficiency of our new ISE technology,” said Mike Hoch, vice president of Marketing at Xiotech. “And for our customers, it’s the opportunity to add to their energy savings with additional incentives from utilities. This is a win-win program for everyone.”