Green storage to take centerstage

SINGAPORE--Escalating storage requirements will drive the need for environmentally-friendly technology, according to a professor at the island-state's leading research institute.

Speaking to ZDNet Asia at the SNIA (Storage Networking Industry Association) South Asia Storage Academy conference held here friday, Professor Chong Tow Chong, Singapore's Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star) executive director of Science and Engineering Research Council, said: "I think green storage will be a very important issue, because when we move to Peta-scale or even Exa-scale, it's going to be a very different ball game compared to what we have today."

Noting the increasing demand in cooling and the high consumption of electrical power by data centers, Chong said a trend toward green storage is emerging.

"[In] IT, we talk about connectivity, speed, how much storage we have and so on, but increasingly, we hear people talk about green IT," he said.

Adding that data centers have one of the highest levels of energy consumption, Chong said this "will be something that people will worry about".

Compared to small companies, which do not have the resources to look into eco-friendly technology, large enterprises however should make green IT a priority, and "government agencies should take the lead", Chong said.

To lower the overall power consumption in the data center, several technology vendors are developing more energy-efficient systems.

For instance, in May this year, IBM unveiled its roadmap to building "green" data centers. The initiative, dubbed Project Big Green, is expected to help the average 25,000-square-foot data center reduce its power consumption bills by 42 percent, and is part of the company's overall efforts--coined Big Green Innovations--to go green.