Data center modularity is the Special Focus of Uptime Institute Symposium 2012. This year we will feature a unique Modular Data Center Campus within the Santa Clara Convention Center.

The Modular Campus and Exhibition Hall will be open on May 14th and 15th and is available to Symposium Delegates and holders of Free Modular Data Center Campus & Expo passes. Free Modular Data Center Campus & Expo passes also provide access to Symposium content on May 14th, including keynote presentations from eBay, as well as presentations from companies such as Greenpeace and HP; an evening networking reception; and Green Enterprise IT Awards Presentation Ceremonies.

The videos below feature three leading modular data center providers who are presenting at Symposium and exhibiting modular data center campus:

Register today for free access to the modular data center campus.

Why should you invest the time to complete an application for Uptime Institute’s Green Enterprise IT Awards?

Because implementing a successful project isn’t enough – you’ve got to TELL people about it.

Winning a Green Enterprise IT (GEIT) Award does just that. When you win a GEIT Award, the Uptime Institute – The Global Data Center Authority — announces on the world’s stage that your project demonstrates thought leadership, adherence to best practices, and bold innovation.

Winning a GEIT Award enhances your stature within your organization and increases the credibility of future projects you might champion. Winners receive a complimentary registration to present their case study at the annual Uptime Institute Symposium , so you’ll be able to share your Award-winning project with your peers in a 30-minute session . And because delegates will recognize you on sight as a GEIT Winner, your networking opportunities increase exponentially. After Symposium, your presentation and case brief become part of the Path Forward, the official proceedings of Symposium hosted on the Symposium website for the benefit of the global community.

Winning a GEIT Award is smart business. Your project has already provided significant benefits in terms of increased productivity and cost efficiency, but winning a GEIT Award amplifies that benefit: when an independent team of international experts examines your project in a rigorous double-blind review process and determines that you’ve implemented the very best solution to produce the highest-impact result possible, clients sit up and take notice.

Apply now for 2012 GEIT Awards.

This week we are posting testimonials from data center managers and IT executives from around the globe who have participated in Uptime Institute’s Green Enterprise IT Awards (GEIT).

Stephen Bowes-Phipps, Data Centres Manager at University of Herfordshire

Participating in the Uptime Institute GEIT Awards has given further credibility to the work not only that I have undertook but the progress the University of Hertfordshire is making with respect to furthering the Green IT Agenda. We have also used the award to provide greater publicity to the sector to encourage others to follow our path and spend the necessary time and investment in reducing their ICT operational and environmental costs.

In a perfect world, it would be nice to believe that funding for Green efficiencies always deliver a SMART return on investment (ROI) that makes senior decision makers feel good about the outcomes. Unfortunately, that is not always the case (though it was in ours). Awards can celebrate Green IT projects that are good for sustainability but have poor or non-existent ROI. There is evidence that corporate sustainability efforts have taken a back seat during the global recession as organizations seek to retrench their positions in a shrinking market. However, consumers may just be more selective about whom they do business with, and those who can demonstrate independent accolades of using their funds to both improve efficiency and bear more responsibility for the environment and communities in which they operate in, may win the lion’s share of the new and repeat business.

Download the University of Herfordshire GEIT Case Study here.

Apply today for the 2012 Uptime Institute GEIT Awards.

Response to the Inaugural Uptime Institute Server Roundup Contest has been great so far, with teams signing up from around the world to participate. The goal of the event is to remove obsolete servers, save energy, and save money. Decommissioning a single 1U rack server can result in $500 per year in energy savings, an additional $500 in operating system licenses, and $1,500 in hardware maintenance costs. That’s not chump change.

Winners of the contest will receive one of these beautiful rodeo belt buckles, just finished by cowboy artisans in Texas:

Winners will also be honored at Uptime Institute Symposium 2012 and their case studies will be featured sessions.

It’s not too late to sign up! Click here for the rules, and contact Uptime Institute’s Hank Seader with any questions. Deadline for the contest is February 1st, 2012.

In this keynote panel discussion from Uptime Institute Symposium 2011, Christian Belady (Microsoft), Bob Cashner (Wachovia), Mike Wills (BMO Financial Group), and Matt Stansberry (Uptime Institute) discuss how IT organizations from different business verticals approach data center cost reduction. Belady represents a cloud computing provider, while Cashner and Wills represent large banking institutions. While these organizations couldn’t be more different, they do share motivation to be hyper-efficient and effective with data center resources.

“Financial institutions are very IT dependent,” said Wills during the session. “The data is so critical to a bank. If we lost customer data, our credibility would be gone, and in essence we’d start exiting the business. Managing that infrastructure at the right price point is extremely critical to us. If we’re not driving our costs down from an IT perspective, we’re creating a lack of profitability. If you take a look at what’s happening in banking, our investments in IT and the infrastructure is huge. We’re in the neighborhood of 40% of our reinvestment in IT. that’s what banking is all about — internet banking, telephone banking. You start looking at what’s happening in the capital markets, it’s all IT dependent. Everything is really relying on the infrastructure. Our job is to drive those costs down to the bare minimum, it’s the only way to move forward. There are parts of our business we’re not going to do as efficiently as a cloud provider. Running a payroll system? That can be outsourced.”

For the full session and other sessions full videos, check out Uptime Institute Symposium’s The Path Forward 2011. The Path Forward 2011 comprises the presentations, reports, case studies, and videos associated with the Uptime Institute Symposium 2011, The Disrupted Data Center: Cloud, Cost, Capacity and Carbon (May 9-12, 2011, Santa Clara, California). Although many of these materials are freely available, some items are reserved for Symposium delegates until August 1, 2011. Symposium attendees will be receive an email notification soon with a password to view the protected items.

In this short video from Uptime Institute Symposium 2011, Chris Malone (Thermal Technologies Architect at Google) discusses the key data center best practices Google uses to drive high energy efficiency, and how to adopt those best practices to improve your own data center’s PUE.

Fix cooling first, it’s the biggest term in your PUE overhead and offers the biggest opportunity for improvement. Do that by managing air flow — separating hot and cold streams. Raise the temperature of the air coming into the rack to make it easier to use economizers.

Second, optimize power distribution scheme by minimizing conversions and using efficient UPS solutions.

Third, measure and improve. Google is currently reporting a 1.16 PUE, and the organization got there by measuring and constantly trying to improve. The typical enterprise data center is likely at a PUE around 2.0, which offers lots of room for improvement.

“These best practices are so simple that everybody should employ them and see good results,” Malone said.