IBM Plans to Build Energy Efficient, Adaptive Data Center

August 4, 2008

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IBM announced plans to build a $360 million data center by renovating an existing building at its facility in Research Triangle Park. The new data center will be built with IBM’s New Enterprise Data Center design principles and be more energy efficient.

Touted as IBM’s first truly adaptive data center, the facility’s equipment is designed to adjust its operation to the needs of IT equipment in the data center. The site can also potentially be expanded in standard modular increments. The company has said that with a modular approach, it can defer significant capital costs and slash energy use by 50 percent.

From the original building, 95 percent of the shell will be used, 90 percent of materials will be recycled, and 20 percent of newly purchased material will be from recycled products. The facility plans to be partially powered by alternative energy sources, with the goal of reducing about 1 million pounds of GHG emissions per year.

High Density Zone solution will also be incorporated into the data center design so the company can support the latest water-cooled equipment and energy requirements, as well as optimize its infrastructure for traditional and new air-cooled equipment. IBM says this technology, along with IBM’s energy efficient technology and a modular data center design, will allow the company to offer clients up to three times more computing capacity per square foot than the average data center.

As part of the IBM’s green initiatives, the company recently launched a green consulting service.

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