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At the annual Dell analyst day, Dell executives say the company is looking to change its product mix, moving more upstream into the data centre with a solutions-based approach and away from its heavy reliance on PC sales. The executives, including CEO Michael Dell, say this will be accomplished through a combination of targeted acquisitions, partnerships and organic growth. However, while they say the move away from reliance on PCs is key, it is unclear how easy such a move will be, given that PCs still account for about half of Dell’s revenues. Dell also says the company won’t offer an all-in-one data centre solution, as Cisco and HP have.

Dell is going to continue moving away from its PC roots and deeper into bigger – and higher-margin – areas, particularly services and the data centres of large enterprises.

Source: eWeek

As part of the green initiative and IT transformation program, Hewlett Packard has completed consolidation of 85 internal IT data centres into just six locations thus reducing costs, eliminate older technologies and improve service levels, while also decreasing the environmental impact of its facilities. It recently shut down all the existing data centres spread across Singapore, Korea, China, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and India, resulting in saving worth US$175 million.

Faisal Paul, head ESS Marketing & Growth Initiatives, HP India said “We have now consolidated our existing data centres to just six in three locations. By doing so we have achieved a 60% reduction in annual energy use through thermal mapping, virtualisation, technology refresh. Besides 80% more processing power with 80% fewer servers and also reduced the data storage costs while doubling the capacity”.

Source: CXO Today

Just off the North Sea coast in the UK, Hewlett-Packard’s EDS unit has built a data centre that largely relies on cold sea air to keep servers chilled and – by doing so – cut the centre’s cooling power needs in half. The expected reduction in electricity costs, from US$15 million to US$7.5 million, is achieved through a combination of factors that may begin with a 12-foot raised floor, which is easily three to four times the height of a typical data centre raised floor.

The higher floor allowed designers to install fans 7.5 feet in diameter that bring in outside air to cool the 305,000 sq ft data centre. The larger fans are more efficient than a series of smaller fans, said Ed Kettler, an EDS fellow. EDS is the HP division that is building the data centre in Wynyard for its clients. “That is a relatively new approach as far as we can tell,” he said.

Source: Computer World

In the latest “data centre in a box” announcement, HP has said that its “pod,” which is similar to Sun’s modular data centre except that it’s twice as long and boasts more and larger server racks, now works with uninterruptible power systems and water-based cooling technology from Active Power.

According to Jim Clishem, president and CEO of Active Power, his company’s power systems are about 10% more efficient than competing UPSs, which could result in about a US$1 million per year operational savings on a pod. He says Active Power’s solution can pack twice the power in half the space of other power supplies because of its use of flywheels. And while the average power usage effectiveness (PUE) of a data centre is 1.8 to 2.0, he says this pod configuration will deliver a PUE of less than 1.25.

Source: Wall Street and Tech

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