Companies Report That Virtualization Investments Are Indeed Paying Dividends – eWeek

The most recent example: San Francisco-based IT services provider BEAR Data Systems, a Cisco Systems gold-certified partner, revealed June 24 that its hardware and virtualization tools are enabling clients to achieve energy savings of 30 percent or more.

Energy-efficient servers earn a star — but so what? – Computer World

But the Energy Star label doesn’t tell the full story on servers and their energy consumption. The current specifications measure energy use only under limited circumstances and for specific types of machines. Blade servers, so popular in enterprise data centers, don’t qualify, for example.

How to green your storage – SearchStorage – TechTarget ANZ

Avoid overspending and overprovisioning.

It’s obvious that spinning disk is the source of most storage power consumption, and unused spinning disk represents wasted energy. But there are several challenges in growing storage incrementally, including the organisation’s ability to accurately forecast storage capacity needs. Beyond capacity planning, it requires a relationship with a vendor who can support the incremental storage growth. The technology must also allow the storage to expand easily and with minimal disruption.

Gartner Zooms in on Key Cloud Computing Attributes – eChannelLine

The first of the attributes is that it’s service-based. According to Gartner, “Consumer concerns are abstracted from provider concerns through service interfaces that are well-defined. The interfaces hide the implementation details and enable a completely automated response by the provider of the service to the consumer of the service…”

Who uses cloud computing? Startups do, VCs don’t – VentureBeat

Cloud computing is a trendy term right now, but how widely is it actually used? During the venture capital panel at today’s Structure 09 conference in San Francisco, VCs offered two pieces of anecdotal data that create a nice contrast between who is and isn’t on the cloud.