Software giants plan green data centres

Microsoft and Oracle, along with the National Security Agency, are moving ahead with their 'green' data centre plans, although Oracle's project in Utah is reportedly delayed, states Environmental Leader.

Microsoft plans to open a 700 000-square-foot data centre in Northlake, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, less than three weeks after opening a 300 000-square-foot facility in Dublin.

Both data centres will house hundreds of thousands of servers that will help support the company's new Bing search engine and other online services.

The latest rankings from the Green500 list of the world's greenest high-performance computers (HPCs) finds IBM holding sway as the leading provider of the most energy-efficient supercomputers in the world, reports Reuters.

The company holds 18 out of 20 of the top spots, including the top ranking for its BladeCenter QS22 Cluster at the University of Warsaw's Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modeling. Similar configurations of that HPC also landed in a two-way tie for second place as well as fourth place.

Those rankings, coupled with IBM's Blue Gene/P Solution HPC system hold on 14 of the top 20 positions in the ranking, means that IBM has dominated the list of the greenest supercomputers in the world.

NetSuite, which sells an enterprise resource planning, CRM and e-commerce platform based on a SaaS architecture has been pushing both the green benefits and cost savings potential of cloud computing platforms, says ITWire.

The company is offering Australian customers a 50% discount for organisations that can show proof of membership to associations like the Australian Wind Energy Association, the Australian Green Development Forum, the Alternative Technology Forum, and the Green Building Council.

NetSuite said the offer remains open until the end of the year, and price rises for companies using the promotion would be capped at 10% for subsequent years.