Will IBM's Big Green initiative lead to broader news coverage of green data centers and the energy crisis faced by mission-critical facilities? The IBM announcement has generated dozens of stories in mainstream news outlets in the past three days. Today MarketWatch has an in-depth article on data center power challenges, which is interesting in that it considers the implications beyond the walls of the facility. An excerpt:
In response to soaring costs, Google and others are locating their data centers in out-of-the-way locations to take advantage of cheaper power. That, in turn, is driving up land and housing prices in places like The Dalles, Ore., on the Columbia River east of Portland, where Google just built a large data center. It's likely "we'll see more of that," said Akamai's (Kieran) Taylor. That trend could boost the growth of IT jobs in formerly remote areas.
It will be interesting to see whether the Big Green effect wears off quickly or puts data center power issues more firmly on the radar screen of the national media. Green data centers are part of the story, but the MarketWatch article reinforces what we've reported here so often: power issues are playing a huge role in data center site location, which is in turn remaking the geography of the data center industry.
