Apr 28 2008
Compellent Technologies, Inc. today announced its customer, gm2 Logistics, a warehousing and logistics company located near London, has been recognized for its eco-conscious IT plan with IDG's InfoWorld Green 15 Award. The award honors the top 15 green technology initiatives undertaken by organizations in the past year.
“The InfoWorld Green 15 designation is a great honor and recognition for the way gm2 Logistics extended the life of its data center through storage- and energy-efficient technologies,” said Larry Aszmann, CTO and co-founder of Compellent. “Compellent continues to develop and provide tools to reduce storage costs and related energy consumption in data centers of all sizes. It is our goal to partner with more of our customers, like gm2, and enable them to support and grow their green IT efforts.”
In 2007, gm2 Logistics replaced its inefficient legacy storage system with two Compellent storage area networks (SANs) to create an IT infrastructure with high uptime and ensure business continuity. Compellent’s management of data inside the volume resulted in fewer storage drives required and helped the company shrink the data center footprint and consume less power. By pairing the Compellent SANs with VMware-based virtual servers, the company reduced its data center footprint by one-third and consolidated its 36 servers into six blade servers.
“Compellent helped us transform our IT into an energy-efficient, highly sustainable data network that’s running 24/7,” explained John Boyd, IT manager, gm2 Logistics, Ltd. “Since implementing our company-wide green initiative, we have searched for ways to reduce power consumption and our impact on the environment. We’ve seen that profit-centered business decisions can co-exist with a green strategy--they don’t have to be mutually exclusive. We are extremely honored that InfoWorld chose to recognize the green efforts of both gm2 and Compellent.”
By providing the storage foundation for server virtualization, the Compellent SAN is enabling customers to consolidate servers and disks and, ultimately, reduce power and cooling costs. By further integrating technologies such as automated tiered storage, thin provisioning, space-efficient snapshots and remote replication to reduce reliance on high-energy storage, Compellent customers gain the means to deploy a feature-rich, greener data center.
“Many organizations worldwide are struggling with high energy costs, as well as limited space and power to meet their computing needs. They’re also feeling pressure from inventors, legislators, customers, and from within to cut waste, reduce their carbon footprint, and be better environmental stewards,” noted Ted Samson, senior analyst, InfoWorld. “The InfoWorld Green 15 winners clearly demonstrate how sustainable technology initiatives can be complementary – even instrumental – to achieving business goals.”
The award-winning companies implemented projects that have resulted in higher energy efficiency, reduced waste and an improved impact on the environment. To be recognized with an InfoWorld Green 15 Award, initiatives must utilize multiple technologies in innovative ways to serve clearly defined sustainability goals. Winners were formally announced on April 22, 2008 at InfoWorld.com. For more information about the InfoWorld Green 15, visit www.infoworld.com/article/08/04/22/17FE-green-15-2008-index_1.html.