A couple of IBM scientists think they’ve found a smart way to do that. Kota Murali and Roger Schmidt are the brains behind the Holistic Green Data Center–an integrated package of technologies designed to bring solar energy to data centers, avoid energy-sapping DC-to-AC power conversions and use water for cooling by running it directly under the microprocessors in server computers.

Each of the pieces by itself could create significant energy savings. Taken together, they offer the potential of transforming the way data centers are designed in sunny locations and greatly expanding the availability and lowering the cost of computing in developing countries in Africa, South Asia and the Middle East.

The seed of the idea was planted nearly two years ago when Schmidt, an IBM Fellow and the company’s chief engineer for data center energy efficiency, gave a lecture about water-cooled computer systems in Bangalore, India, where IBM has a large workforce. In the audience was Murali, the lead scientist for nanotechnology in IBM India. Murali made the connections: India has abundant solar energy. Solar energy produces direct current, which was is required to run computers. And a new generation of computers was on the way that would be cooled super-effectively by water–greatly reducing the need for traditional air conditioning. He approached Schmidt after his lecture and they began a collaboration that by the end of the this year is expected to result in a small IBM data center in Bangalore running the solar-and-water system as a test bed. “This creates a highly efficient system,” says Murali.

The potential savings are impressive. By avoiding conversion from AC to DC, they figure they’ll shave 10% off of energy consumption. In Bangalore, where the sun shines an average of 330 days per year, they expect to save 20% in energy costs by using solar as the primary energy source rather than relying on an electricity grid.

There’s another benefit that’s not obvious to people in mature economies. In many emerging markets, electrical grids are undependable or non-existent. Companies are forced to rely way too much on expensive diesel generators. That makes it difficult and expensive to deploy a lot of computers, especially in the concentrated way they’re used in data centers. But, with this holistic approach, a bank, a telecommunications company or a government agency could contemplate setting up a data center that doesn’t need the grid.

For Kota, who grew up in India but got his PhD at MIT in the United States, this approach to running data centers has an immense appeal. “As a scientist, it’s satisfying because you’re reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions,” he says. “As somebody who’s interested in social impact, it will be great to see these systems transform the lives of people who don’t have much electrical power and computing power. It can change life.”

If this experiment works as planned, IBM plans on offering the technology to clients.

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At the Burlington plant, IBM creates huge quantities of purified water for washing delicate components during the semiconductor manufacturing process–1.7 million gallons a day.  The bill for purified water is nearly $10,000 per day, including the cost of water, chemicals and energy. It used to be much higher–more like $20,000. But, starting more than a decade ago, under pressure to cut costs, IBM’s managers realized that situation was unsustainable. So they launched a water management initiative that ultimately became a data-rich system for managing all of the water used in the plant. And that system grew up to be the company’s Smarter Water business. “Burlington has helped IBM change the way it thinks about itself,” writes Fishman. “IBM wants to do for its customers–for companies, for cities, for utilities, for whole natural ecosystems–what it has done in IBM Burlington.”

For IBM, natural resource management has evolved over the past decade from an internal discipline into an expression of global advocacy. The company’s annual corporate social responsibility report lays out the internal benefits of conservation and environmental sustainability.  For instance, IBM saved over $50 million in electricity expenses and conserved 523,000 megawatt hours of electricity since 2008.  The company’s global conservation program involves 3,100 conservation projects at more than 350 IBM facilities in 49 countries.  Conservation is a good investment, too. Over the years, IBM estimates that its focus on environmental sustainability has realized savings and avoided costs at a rate of approximately $1.60 for every $1.00 spent.

As the Smarter Planet business initiatives continue to develop, those savings will increasingly be supplemented with new revenues.  IBM’s experience points to a big, convenient truth: conservation is good for business.

Burlington’s water management odyssey started in earnest about a decade ago when the plant shifted from making chips mainly for IBM to making them for the commercial market and competing with low-cost Asian manufacturers. The pressure was on to cut costs. The operations managers performed deep analyses of all of their supplies and processes, and water came into sharp focus.

More than half of the water the plant used was ultra-pure, meaning it’s 10 million times cleaner than tap water. Ninety percent of water-related costs were connected to the ultra-pure stuff. So that’s were the savings had to come from. Less than one third of the cost was for the water itself. The rest came from electricity,chemicals, filters, labor and the energy used to warm chilly Lake Champlain water to 70 degrees, says Jeff Chapman, the plant’s pure-water engineer.

The first steps were monitoring and measuring. The operations team set up a sensor-based monitoring system that tracked movements and temperatures of water and the cost of energy in each step of the purification process. Then they borrowed the statistical process control system that was being used in the chip fabrication process to help analyze their processes so they could tweak them so they used less water and energy. One major source of savings was using heat created in the manufacturing process to warm up the ultra-pure water to room temperature. Now they make additional efficiency improvements each year.  “We optimize the resources, the systems and the relationships between the systems. We’re the ultimate smart enterprise,” says Janette Bombardier, the director of Burlington site operations.

Bombardier and her colleagues enjoyed Fishman’s visit when the traveled to Burlington for a tour of the site last year. He seemed especially impressed with the massive plumbing system. Eric Berliner, the water manager at the plant,  told Fishman, “When you start to think like we think, you don’t see water in the pipes. You see dollar signs.” Fishman liked Berliner’s comment so much that he put it in the book.

These days, the flow of dollars is definitely slowing. Overall, the total annual cost of water at the plant has gone down $3.6 million over the past decade in spite of a 66% increase in water rates and a 30% increase in manufacturing output. The Burlington plant has become a showcase for smart water management.

Technorati Tags: Burlington, Charles Fishman, IBM, The Big Thirst

But a proposal released today by leaders in the tech industry could make the task a bit easier. The Technology CEO Council, which includes the chief executives of IBM, Intel, Dell, EMC, Motorola and other companies, laid out recommendations aimed at saving the federal government $1 trillion over a 10-year period. One of the most attractive aspects of the proposal is that it doesn’t require a lot of up-front investments to produce sustainable, long-term gains.

The recommendations include reducing energy use in data centers, consolidating facilities, streamlining supply chains, sharing administrative systems, shifting from staff-heavy systems to electronic self-service, and using analytic tools to ferret out waste and fraud.  Here’s a link to the New York Times story about the proposal.

Every new US administration launches an efficiency program, and President Obama’s is no exception. Federal chief performance officer Jeff Zients (now the acting head of the Office of Management and Budget) is aggressively searching for smart ways to cut costs. And CIO Vivek Kundra, who works for Zients, is consolidating data centers and shifting some software applications to more efficient cloud computing models. Hopefully, this encouragement from the tech industry will help them get stuff done. Zients responded immediately with this blog post, Seeing Eye to Eye with the Tech Council.

The 12-page TCC report is peppered with specifics aimed at helping government agencies do more with less.  Motorola, for instance, saves about $1.2 billion a year as a result of integrating its supply chains. “Most of these won’t require big investments,” says Jonathan D. Breul, executive director of the IBM Center for The Business of Government and a former Office of Management and Budget senior adviser.  “A lot of it is management discipline. A lot of money is being spent needlessly. It’s a matter of redirecting it to activities that will save money.”

As IBM and Dell CEOs Sam Palmisano and Michael Dell laid out today in Politico, there are plenty of examples of how this can work from governments across the country.  For instance, by using predictive technology, New York State is validating tax refund requests, saving $889 million by catching improper refunds.

It’s going to take a lot of this kind of innovative thinking to solve the federal government’s money problems. Today’s announcement looks like it could help get the creative juices flowing.

Do you have any novel ideas for making government more efficient? Any new business models that would minimize technology costs for government agencies?

Technorati Tags: Dell, EMC, IBM, Intel, Jeff Zients, Motorola, obama, Technology CEO Council, Vivek Kundra

How do you build a data center to last 20 years when information technology is changing every 2 years

In the new economic environment, uncertainty, volatility and complexity seem to be at an all time high – and they are still rising. Business processes are becoming more interconnected and global. Standout CEO’s are focused on how to manage in a more complex environment by creating value through new perspectives, deeper insights and more information. For CEO’s and their organizations, avoiding complexity is not an option — the choice comes in how they respond to it.

CIOs can play an important role in the enterprise by developing a vision of innovation enabled by IT. How well you manage your data centers to raise the return on investment of IT infrastructure, to expand the business impact of data center operations and to make innovation real determines the level of your success.  Since data centers are long-term and somewhat static investments – needing to last 20 years while the technology inside changes every 2 to 3 years – it becomes an imperative that you plan strategies to be able to react to dynamic changes.

IBM’s data center family features innovation around a modular approach which helps solve three key ways to design a smarter data center.

Be flexible to handle unpredictable changes in demand.   Because demands for IT capacity are unrelenting and often unpredictable, CIOs have found it difficult to design an optimum data center to meet future needs.  In IBM’s Global CIO study, CIO’s indicated a need for 50 percent less capacity or 200 percent more capacity – just in the near term.  Trying to be accurate with a 20 year projection is impossible for any organization.  As CIO’s determine how to meet future demands from new computing models such as cloud computing – it is clear that building data centers in smaller increments – or modules – provides the flexibility to align business and IT needs in a key requirement.

Be able to adapt to changes in technology. Your business needs the processing power to drive the applications which run your business.  Yet with power densities of new servers growing over 20 times in the past decade, supporting the increased energy demands of new technology remains the #1 concern of data center managers.  Our plug and play approach provides you the ability to support new technology by spending 5-10 percent now in order to have the ability to grow up to 3 times the power increase in a single module -without disrupting your operations to achieve it.

Be responsive to managing demand.    Changing business models mean clients need to non-disruptively move workloads within and between data centers to adjust to changes in business demand.  This requires an integrated system to connect IT, data centers and building management systems to sense and respond dynamically to these changes.  During the initial design of a new data center clients need to integrate their decisions to include the operational management areas to insure the data center can maintain availability, optimize capacity, and reduce energy consumption.

Designing data centers is a complex task and cannot be driven by one company.  IBM’s has built an eco-system of partners from multiple companies to allow us to go-to-market on a global scale with support for our modular data center design approach.

Steve Sams is vice president of site and facilities services for IBM.

Update: Recently, I spoke with Darryl Taft at eWeek to showcase how Green IT and our Enterprise Modular Data Center approach can actually provide a much more efficient and competitive infrastructure to support emerging business requirements.  Read the full article “IBM Offers Green IT Advice” at the eWeek site.–Stephen Sams.