The Electric Yardstick

By now, everyone knows that power costs are going to eat up one third of your IT budget in the next few years. Or maybe it's 40 percent of your budget. Fact is, no one really knows. But, as the saying goes, that's the problem with predicting the future; it hasn't happened yet.

But one thing you can be sure of is that vendors are going to duke it out as to who is the most energy efficient. Are Sun's Cool Threads really cool? Maybe not. How about Angstrom's Liqucool technology, which they claim will reduce energy use in the data center by 40 to 60 percent. One can even argue the whole debate is moot, because heating is good in cold climates anyways. Finally, HP and IBM are at it over their blade servers. Again.

Fact is, there is a simple litmus test for all of this - the first vendor to mention TCO loses. You know why? Because that means they are trying to bury their equipment's performance in the quagmire of IT, that discipline where 80 percent of initatives aren't even scoped out because 'IT is too complicated.' Bull. Plug a meter into it and give me the numbers.