Google embraces natural cooling

The evolution of data centre efficiency has taken another step in Google's data centre in Saint-Ghislain, Belgium: the facility has no chillers to keep temperatures down, states Reuters.

Rather than using internal air-conditioning for cooling the hardware, the company is relying on the normally low temperatures in Belgium to provide all the free cooling its servers need.

The climate in Belgium will support free cooling almost year-round, according to Google engineers, with temperatures rising above the acceptable range for free cooling about seven days per year on average.

Software major Wipro is betting big on green technologies and sees it as the next emerging opportunity, hoping for a sizeable business in the next 10 to 15 years, according to Business Standard.

"We see that as a next emerging opportunity. We are positioning ourselves very strongly," Wipro Chairman Azim Premji told reporters. He noted the IT sector, which was small in size 20 years ago, had today grown substantially and constituted some 27% of the country's exports and some 4% to 5% of its GDP, indicating that green technologies hold similar business potential.

Premji said Wipro had strong IT service and IT manufacturing as well as engineering and process control capabilities. The company had been focusing on bringing in global technologies for customer solutions.

Start-up iControl Networks has raised $23 million to further develop its home security system that also allows people to control home energy through the Web and mobile devices, including the iPhone, says CNET News.

Investors in the series C round brought corporate investors ADT Security Services, Cisco, Comcast Interactive Capital, and GE Security.

Charles River Ventures, Intel Capital, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, through its iPhone application iFund, are also investors. To date, iControl has raised over $45 million.