AOL, Citigroup, Intel and PG&E Among Finalists of Uptime Institute’s 2009 Green Enterprise IT Awards

SANTA FE, N.M.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Uptime Institute — a research think-tank and advisor to owners and operators of the world’s largest enterprise data centers on the technical and business issues of computing reliability, sustainability and energy efficiency — today announced the finalists of the 2009 Green Enterprise IT (GEIT) Awards, co-sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and knowledge partner McKinsey & Company. Winners will be announced at the Institute’s 4^th Annual Institute Research Symposium: LEAN, CLEAN, and GREEN in New York City, April 13-16, 2009.

“In today’s economic and environmental climate, it is important that we highlight corporations’ demonstrated commitment to pushing the envelope in improving data center operations”

The awards ceremony will take place on April 15 and feature a keynote by Thomas L. Friedman, Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist and No. 1 best-selling author of Hot, Flat, and Crowded.

The 2009 GEIT Awards program honors organizations that have distinguished themselves by reducing energy consumption in their data centers and beyond. GEIT Award finalists have gone beyond instituting established industry best practices to implement cutting-edge green IT systems. The Institute introduced the GEIT Awards program in 2008 to create institutional awareness that IT energy efficiency can enhance bottom-line profitability while meaningfully reducing overall corporate carbon footprint.

“In today’s economic and environmental climate, it is important that we highlight corporations’ demonstrated commitment to pushing the envelope in improving data center operations,” said a GEIT Awards judge Bill Tschudi, program manager at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division. “The applicants show that measurable efficiency improvements can be achieved. By sharing their processes for making improvements, the awards winners provide thought leadership, helping move this industry forward.”

Because industry education is central to the GEIT Awards’ mission, finalist organizations will share their successes and lessons learned through white papers and case study presentations at Symposium 2009. The ultimate goal is to share strategies that enable the uptime industry to save money, defer energy shortages and reduce the global IT carbon footprint.

In describing the value of the GEIT Awards, another judge, Mark Wood, director of data center infrastructure at HighMark, Inc., said: “Based on the number of applications submitted, it is clear that many corporations are going beyond green IT in diverse ways. The outpouring of response is a good sign that the industry is taking aim on the critical energy problem we are facing. Having said that, it will take the cooperation and dedication of the entire industry to move us into the next generation data center.”

The 2009 Green Enterprise IT Awards finalists are:

Data Center Energy Efficiency Improvement: IT

• AOL
• Intel

Data Center Energy Efficiency Improvement: Joint IT and Facilities

• MassMutual Financial Group
• NetApp

Data Center Facility Design

• Citigroup
• eNation Corporation

Energy Efficient Products: Facilities

• Powersmiths International Corp.
• Verari Systems

Energy Efficient Products: IT

• APC by Schneider Electric
• Verdiem^® SURVEYOR

Green IT Beyond the Data Center

• PG&E
• University of Notre Dame Center for Research Computing

Data Center Energy Efficiency Improvement: Facilities

• 5NINES Data Centres (UK)
• UniCredit Group

For more information about the GEIT Awards judges and the judging criteria, please visit:

http://uptimeinstitute.org/content/view/263/178/

For more information about the Institute’s 4th Annual Symposium, please visit: http://www.uptimeinstitute.org

About the Uptime Institute:

The Uptime Institute is a leading independent think-tank, corporate advisor, knowledge exchange, education and professional-services provider, serving the owners and operators of the world’s largest enterprise data centers. Its primary area of expertise is the uptime availability, reliability, and resiliency of enterprise computing within formal critical computing environments — computer rooms, server farms and ranches, and data centers. The Institute operates a private knowledge network, the Site Uptime Network that conducts research, benchmarking, knowledge sharing, and best practices for its members, who represent 100 of the largest data center owning/operating institutions in the world. The Institute’s intellectual property base includes the de facto industry standard for data-center design, known as the Tiers Classification System and the Four Metrics for Determining a Green Data Center.