The Pulse = Collaboration

When I joined eBay in September of 2009, I had the pleasure of taking a seat on the Green Grid Advisory Council (AC).  The AC was formed in late 2008 to provide input and guidance on the general direction of the consortiums strategies and drive a greater awareness of the Green Grid with end users.  The AC is made up of executives from AT&T, ADP, eBay, Nationwide Insurance, Strato, The Walt Disney Company, Tokyo Electric Power Company, and Verizon. My first meeting was at the New York Stock Exchange where the GG held a call for action event.  The NYSE hosted the GreenGrid event and later allowed the BoD and the AC to go onto the trading floor.  The GG Board of Directors were also able to ring the closing bell. Too bad the platform wasn't bigger - we all couldn't fit. :-) But, we were able to watch from the trading floor.  In the picture shown here, we were right below the platform. Denis, in the brown jacket to the right of me, runs all of Disney's Data Centers. We happened to run into the guy who does all of the trading for Disney (in the blue jacket). Very cool. I just wish I could have found the eBay trader, but we're not listed on the NYSE.  The NYSE trading floor isn't what you see in movies (chaotic, with people yelling and exchanging paper). It is filled with computers, and thousands of screens with tools providing real time reports that the traders use to make decisions. After the closing bell, we were able to take a few photos (note 4:12:59 on the clock).  Being a uber-geek certainly has it's perks.  :-)

This was the first Green Grid event I had ever attended. I had seen the great work that they had been doing on defining and documenting PUE/DCiE and the way to measure PUE (quickly becoming the industry standard), free cooling maps for North America, Europe and Japan, measuring data center productivity and their work with the US government (DOE/EPA/others) on efficiency.  When I was at Sun, Mark Monroe, Director of Sustainable Computing joined the GG BoD. He  participated in the Data Center Pulse summit on behalf of the Green Grid to obtain feedback on the metrics work they were doing.  I was watching this organization grow - from a distance.  And grow they have.

As I attended the NYSE event, I started seeing the potential for our two organizations to work together. The GG Advisory Council seemed like a perfect conduit for DCP members to share information. We had similar charters. It also seemed like a great avenue to expand the work we had been doing on the DCP Stack Framework and the Chill Off efficiency experiements we had been championing.  In addition, the Green Grid has over 175 global companies represented in their members list including all of the Chill Off participants.  At this session I offered up the possibilities of collaborating with the AC and BoD.  At the next AC meeting we started laying out the framework of how this might work. In December of 2009 I attended the GG board of directors meeting along with other AC members. We laid out the approach and the benefits of working together.

Today, I am pleased to announce that this collaborative agreement between Data Center Pulse and The Green Grid has been formalized. We are excited about the opportunity to provide direct and timely input and feedback.  The Green Grid is very interested in being able to get "the pulse" of this large group of end users.  Our goal has always been to influence the industry through the eyes of the end user.  This is exactly how we do it.  I want to ensure our members that we are staying true to our original vision of protecting their anonymity. We established the relationship through the GG Advisory Council to do just that.  Over the next few months we will be working through the mechanics of this relationship.

I quickly scanned the headlines today and a number of the industry media groups have picked up the story.  Great perspectives from Data Center Knowledge and downstream blog.

Stay tuned for more information. If you have any thoughts or ideas, please share them by emailing dean.nelson@datacenterpulse.org or feedback@datacenterpulse.org.