December 16

Utilities Thinking Ahead

Very interesting information from Nick Carr:

Pacific Gas & Electric Company last month began paying corporate customers to reduce the number of servers they run. The giant California utility, reports Larry Dignan, is giving companies cash rebates for using virtualization software to consolidate their applications onto fewer servers. The rebates typically amount to between $150 and $300 for each server removed and can add up to as much as $4 million per site. Speaking at a conference today, Diane Greene, president of VMware, the leading virtualization vendor, said that “several other power companies” are considering launching similar programs.

I think this is a great move and look forward to more companies thinking about the impact on the environment.