Two years after it bolstered its data center
services offerings with the acquisition
of data center consulting firm EYP, Hewlett-Packard has rolled out to its
channel partners the energy efficiency analysis and thermal assessment service
it gained from the deal.
The move comes at just the right time, as customers are looking at energy and
thermal adjustments following efforts for server consolidation, according to Pat
O’Connor, director of HP services business development at Agilysys, an HP Elite
partner IT solution provider, which began telling its corporate and
public-sector customers about the service when HP made it available through the
channel in November 2009.
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The new HP offering adds a crucial component to Agilysys’ data center
practice, which already includes server consolidation, virtualization, business
continuity and data center automation. Agilysys serves as a project manager and
resells the HP-provided professional service.
“Having this tool as a channel partner is great for Agilysys,” O’Connor told
Channel Insider. “We have customers that are asking us to come in and talk to
them about their business needs. We are talking to a number of utilities about
upgrading and transforming their data centers.”
O’Connor noted that several U.S.
states are requiring their utility companies to reduce their own data center
power consumption, and to meet those needs many have been talking to Agilysys
about HP’s Energy Efficiency Analysis and Thermal Assessment. In turn, Agilysys
is getting referrals from those utilities’ commercial customers as well.
The HP assessment includes a proprietary software tool used by the engineering
group at HP that can provide what-if scenarios on spending and energy/money
savings to customers considering changes, something that holds great appeal for
budget-conscious IT leaders who are looking for quick ROI.
O’Connor says that the data centers he sees run the gamut, from ones that would
see tremendous savings from upgrades to more modern centers where a few tweaks
here or there could yield some savings.
“Every opportunity we come into we can make some recommendations and offer
solutions that would benefit the customer,” he says.
At the beginning of each project, Agilysys conducts a questionnaire and
planning session—a template provided by HP—together with the customer, and then
comes back to the customer with a statement of work and terms.
Over the two years that HP has offered the service through its own direct
sales, it has conducted about 70 audits, according to Bill Kosik, Green
Data Center
technology principal at HP. The team providing the audits has ranged from 20
members to 50 members.
Kosik says his group focuses on solutions that offer a less than five-year
payback.
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Green IT and Green Computing 
