Green Subsidies For SaaS – Forbes

Pacific Gas & Electric has the largest energy efficiency program targeted at data centers; 160 virtualization and consolidation applications have been filed or paid. Mark Bramfitt, principal program manager for PG&E’s data center efficiency programs, said last year’s budget was $11 million; about $7 million of this subsidized investments, including payment of $1.4 million to NetApp.

Microsoft Linux Move Puts Pressure on VMware – PC World

By allowing greater ability to run Linux on the Hyper-V virtualization platform, Microsoft is making a compelling case that it could be the virtualization vendor of choice for consolidation of Windows and Linux applications, says Gartner analyst George Weiss. Microsoft still lags behind VMware in enterprise features such as live migration. But once Microsoft proves itself “good enough” in terms of functionality, many customers will be intrigued by Hyper-V as a lower-cost alternative to VMware, Weiss says.

IBM tool allows virtual management from x86 servers to mainframes – Computerworld

This boost to virtualization management comes in advance of IBM’s release of its Power7 chip in 2010, which will offer up to eight cores and support for up to 1,000 virtual machines — up from support for 254 virtual machines on the Power6 chip.

HP Buys Cloud-Computing Vendor IBrix – InformationWeek

Founded in 2000, IBrix, in Billerica, Mass., has 53 employees and more than 175 corporate customers spanning the communications, media, entertainment, Internet, oil and gas, healthcare, life sciences and financial services industries. HP uses the company’s technology in several products, including StorageWorks storage area networks, ProLiant servers, BladeSystems and ProCurve Ethernet switches and management software.

Intel’s new 34nm SSDs cut prices by 60 percent, boost speed – Ars Technica

So what do you get for 60 percent less? In a word, speed. The new drives boast a 25 percent reduction in read latency, which was already about 60x the speed of an average hard disk; write performance has also doubled with this new generation.