Viridity, which will come out of stealth mode Nov. 9, is developing software designed to give IT administrators, facility managers and C-level executives high visibility into the utilization and energy consumption of their IT equipment and applications. The software will analyze the data and generate action reports that businesses can use to make their data centers more energy-efficient.A new company coming out of stealth mode Nov. 9 is looking to give
enterprises a clearer view into their IT infrastructure and applications to
enable them to create more energy-efficient environments and drive down power
and cooling costs.
Viridity is developing a software product of the same name designed to trace
energy consumption at the IT equipment and application layer and then analyze
the findings. From those, reports are generated that are intended to give
businesses ways to balance power, cooling and IT utilization.
The software also is designed to do what industry experts say is key to
creating energy-efficient data centers and driving down power costs: bridge the
gulf between IT, facilities and C-level executives.
"All the consumption of power is happening at the IT [equipment] or
application side," Mike Rowan, Viridity founder and CTO,
said in an interview. "But the way power is being addressed now doesn't
address that side."
Currently, those three factionsIT management, facilities, and executives
like the CIO and chief financial officerall
monitor and manage energy consumption in the data center with similar goals of
improving efficiency and driving down costs, but do so separately and with
little communication, Rowan said.
The Viridity product is being designed to get those three sides working more
together. The software will collect data from the physical infrastructure
layer, monitor IT power consumption, simulate the physical aspects of the data
center, such as power and airflow, model logical aspects such as utilization
and performance, and analyze the data.
From there, the software will develop an action plan that can be used by IT,
facilities and C-level executives that will outline steps that can be taken to
create a more energy-efficient data center and the impact those steps will have
on power usage, cooling, performance and costs. It also enables companies to
modify the plan, and calculates the impact of those modifications.
At present, rising power costs and shrinking IT budgets are forcing
businesses to find ways to reduce costs, and they're finding that often the
cost of powering and cooling their IT equipment is greater than the cost of
buying it. The lack of visibility into data centers also means that most
facilities now are over-provisioned, and many new ones are built years ahead of
need.
Viridity officials say their software will be able to reduce operational
costs of data centers by as much as 40 percent and extend the life of data
centers by several years.
Major tech playersincluding IBM, Hewlett-Packard
and Dellare rolling out their own green data center services, aiming to help businesses
reduce energy consumption and cut costs.
"Every vendor on the planet has a green story," Rowan said.
"Some of them are really rock-solid, some are somewhat nefarious."
Rowan said he sees a situation in which Viridity will be a good
complementary tool for some other vendor tools, and a competitor to others.
Viridity Assessthe first product that will eventually make up Viridity's
Data Center Optimization Suiteis scheduled for general availability in the
first quarter of 2010, followed by Viridity Control later in the year and
Viridity Optimize after that.
In addition, Viridity also is announcing its beta and early adopter program,
dubbed Greenhouse Program, which will give select users early access to the
software and input into future features and functionality. Currently Viridity
has eight customers, according to the company.
Green IT and Green Computing 
