The second phase of Project Big Green intends to drive greater advancements in energy efficiencies by making data centers more flexible in matching information technology (IT) needs to capital and operating costs. The data center environment is going through dramatic change. According to the EPA, energy costs for these environments are doubling every five years and the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air/Conditioning Engineers expects technology densities to increase by 20 times in this decade. With roughly 60 percent of the capital costs and 50 percent of the operational costs of running a data center being energy related, the ability to design, construct and activate a highly energy efficient data center has become a business imperative.

To meet that imperative for both the CIO and CFO, IBM is today introducing modular, energy-efficient data center designs available anywhere in the world. Designed to power businesses ranging from large global enterprises to small organizations in remote areas, the new modular data centers can reduce energy consumption by as much as 50 percent. They include:

• Enterprise Modular Data Center (EMDC) - an enterprise class data center "shrink-wrapped" and standardized from 5,000 square feet up to 20,000 square feet. This approach enables clients to bring new data centers online three-to-six months sooner than a custom designed version. By building in smaller, standardized modules, clients can scale the starting data center capacity by up to 12 times while matching their capital and operational costs to their IT needs over time. This approach allows the customers to defer up to 40 percent of the capital expense and 50 percent of the operational expense until the capacity is required. Each EMDC is designed to achieve the world's highest ratings for energy leadership, as determined by the Green Grid, an industry group focused on advancing energy efficiency for data centers and business compute ecosystems.
• Portable Modular Data Center (PMDC) - provides a fully functional data center in a pod-like form with a complete physical infrastructure including power and cooling systems and remote monitoring. It also has all the elements of the secure operating environments found in traditional "raised- floor" data centers, including protection from fire, smoke, humidity, condensation and temperature changes. The PMDC can be shipped and deployed into any environment and can support multiple technology vendors and multiple systems in an industry standard rack environment.
• High Density Zone (HDZ) - a modular system that provides incremental cooling and power capability in existing data centers that are tapped out of capacity. The HDZ system can be swapped into an existing data center without disrupting current operations and can provide up to 35 percent cost savings compared to retrofitting an existing data center.

The modular data centers introduced today are essentially miniature versions of IBM's renowned data centers, mimicking the power and energy efficiency of facilities that serve many of the world's largest enterprises. The capability to increase computing capacity while simultaneously reducing power consumption is an antidote to a pressing business need. CIOs must now plan data center support of global enterprises as energy costs rise to all-time highs. IBM's Project Big Green helps them design and deploy energy efficient modular data centers while providing CFOs the savings which can dramatically reduce energy bills.