IBM strengthens Green datacentre tools

IBM is helping business leaders improve the energy efficiency of their datacentres, releasing new energy-management software and working alongside other infrastructure vendors to ensure businesses can manage energy use across the datacentre.

IBM's new Active Energy Manager software can measure the power usage of key datacentre components, such as server racks and cooling systems. The latest version allows users to set caps on energy use by certain devices.

"Clients today are looking for ways to measure their green IT projects and have positive business results that can be documented and verified," said Rich Lechner, vice president, Enterprise Systems, IBM in a statement.

Active Energy Manager measures the energy used by devices which are connected to so called 'smart energy strips'.

Meanwhile, IBM has also forged an alliance of technology vendors committed to the development of datacentre energy efficiency standards.

Vendors including Brocade, Citrix, Juniper Networks, Novell, RedHat, Sun and VMware have signed up to the initiative, thereby increasing the chances that IT leaders will be able to manage energy use across a variety of kit deployed within the datacentre.