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• NASDAQ plans to consolidate data centers from the current seven down to two.
• HP is consolidating its 85 data centers worldwide into six. The consolidation will help HP reduce its IT spending by approximately $1 billion in the coming years.
• The State of Texas is about to award a data center consolidation and outsourcing deal, worth at least $500 million.
• The State of Michigan has developed 3 state-of-the-art data centers for the state’s 19 agencies. 5 years ago they had 19 data centers.

Why consolidate data centers at all? We all know that any change to any data center - from a facilities level to start with - means months - if not years - of planning. But, the bottom line is scaling down actually helps large enterprises reduce IT total cost of ownership in regards to energy consumption (power), real estate, WAN and SAN Infrastructure, hardware, software licenses, maintenance services, and staff headcount. Let me remind you that an estimated 38 percent of the U.S.’s power supply is being absorbed by data centers (Source: Univ.NH study). As corporate regulatory policies are enforced based on Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance or Government mandates, reducing the number of centers to manage is key. Add disaster recovery requirements for each data center on top of this and you have an ever growing problem to solve. The bottom line is "Why have 10 data centers when you can have 2...while providing the same or better service levels." How to get started...well there are many opinions on this. At Egenera of course, we're of one mind on where to start. But you knew that already. Server virtualization is obviously a key piece of the puzzle but we've discussed how it's not a silver bullet in itself. Hypervisors are important enablers (for us too!) but VMware or Xen alone cannot solve your problems. Customers need to look farther ahead than that. Related blogs entries on "Data Center Virtualization" and "Darkened Data Centers" are quite clear on what I believe are two key pieces to the puzzle. It's finally happening. Take a look.