2013 Green Enterprise IT Award Categories

In 2013, Uptime Institute invites Green Enterprise IT (GEIT) Award applications in eight categories. Click on the category name for more information about the category and relevant projects.

Category	This Award Recognizes	Who may apply*
Audacious Idea	New, unprecedented ideas for realizing energy and resource efficiency. Products that are commercially available are not eligible to compete in this category.	Anyone
Facility Design- Implementation	Cutting-edge data center projects that demonstrate energy and resource efficiency in a new, operational data center. Design plus implementation - requires minimum of 6 months of operational data.	Data center owner/operator OR the architect, engineer, or contractor of record in partnership with data center owner/operator
Facility Design- Innovation	Cutting-edge data center designs that focus on energy and resource efficiency. Design only - no operational data required	Data center owner/operator OR the architect, engineer, or contractor of record in partnership with data center owner/operator
Facility Product Deployment	Facility infrastructure products that significantly improve data center energy and/or resource efficiency, as demonstrated in a user deployment. This is a joint Award honoring both the data center owner and the product vendor.	Site infrastructure vendor in partnership with data center owner/operator OR a consultant in partnership with data center owner/operator
Facility Retrofit	Data center facility retrofit projects that significantly improved energy and/or resource efficiency in an existing data center.	Data center owner/operator OR a consultant in partnership with data center owner/operator
Green Digital Infrastructure Strategy	Exceptional energy and resource efficiency beyond an individual data center. May extend across organization's entire digital infrastructure portfolio	Data center owner/operator OR data center owner/operator in partnership with architect, engineer, or contractor of record and/or third-party service provider (e.g., colocation, hosting, or cloud-based services provider)
IT Product Deployment	IT products that significantly improve energy and/or resource efficiency, as demonstrated in a user deployment. Within the data center or throughout the organization. This is a joint Award honoring both the data center owner and the product vendor.	IT hardware, software, or application vendor in partnership with data center owner/operator OR a consultant in partnership with data center owner/operator
IT Retrofit	Projects in which IT operations staff significantly improved energy and/or resource efficiency while improving IT effectiveness. Within the data center or throughout the organization.	Data center owner/operator OR a consultant in partnership with data center owner/operator

* Throughout, if the data center is operated by a facility manager other than the owner, the facility manager may partner with the owner to apply. A third party (e.g., an architect, engineer or contractor) may also participate where applicable. A maximum of three parties may participate in any given application.

** Product vendors may not present case studies of deployments of their own products in their own facilities or in facilities owned by subsidiaries of their organization.

MAY 13-16, 2013
Santa Clara Convention Center

2013 GEIT Awards Quicklinks

Category Descriptions
Past Winners
- All Honorees
- 2012 GEIT Award Honorees
- 2011 GEIT Award Honorees
- 2010 GEIT Award Honorees
- 2009 GEIT Award Honorees
- 2008 GEIT Award Honorees
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Webinar: State of the Data Center 2013 Survey Results

Click here to view slide deck.

Uptime Institute gratefully acknowledges the sponsor of the 2013 Green Enterprise IT Awards

GEIT Award Winners Speak

"The GEIT Award broadcast our advanced capabilities in data center energy management to our employees, partners, and customers. We garnered positive press both in the US and Europe based on this Award, and have gained benefits internally through a raised awareness of cross-functional IT energy management issues.“

Brenda Rian
AOL

Why is it important to keep Green IT achievements in the forefront of media and executive management?

Because it highlights our stewardship of not only our operational dollars, but also our environment and its natural resources. It's the right thing to do and it's a natural outgrowth of the efficiencies that IT brings to any business.

Steve Press
Executive Director
Data Center Facilities Services
Kaiser Permanente

"Winning a GEIT Award Award helped us benchmark ourselves against the industry and gave us recognition from our peers.“

Michael Corona
Office Depot

Has participating in the GEIT Awards improved your organization?

It definitely helped. The process does take some time and effort, but it is well worth it. In my case it helped keep the focus on gathering metrics throughout the project, and routinely studying that data to understand where opportunities for further improvements might be. This was particularly true in our challenging environment, as we were operating in upper ASHRAE conditions with a lot of infrastructure challenges and IT load growth, pushing us beyond best practices.

The metrics, graphs and knowledge gained throughout the project are useful to this day.

The application process also helped identify areas that we should have been tracking, for example, PUE and DCIE metrics.

Eric Swanson
Data Center Manager
Agriculture and Agri-Food, Canada

"The Award reinforces our reputation in the industry as innovative and customer-focused.“

John Niemann
APC by Schneider Electric

Has the Green technology delivered on its promise, returned its investment?

It definitely has. This project was part of a larger project to extend data center IT load, mainly through low-cost methods that greatly improved efficiencies and lessened environmental impacts. In our case the payoff was immediate: the very first Opengate rack, installed as a test, allowed additional IT load growth and overall data center environment improvements at a time when it was critical for program delivery. This continued throughout and past the project with additional containment, and we are now starting to improve resiliency and lower costs further with the installation of efficient and better cooling that is able to supply load based on rack IT load demands.

Eric Swanson
Data Center Manager
Agriculture and Agri-Food, Canada

Has participating in the GEIT Awards improved your career or organization?

Yes, it has. We are very often recognized and congratulated for the Award.

Mike Tresh
Director of Product Marketing
and Management
Viridity Software

Why is it important to keep Green IT achievements in the forefront of media attention and executive management?

It is important for us all. The more everyone is exposed to the value of Green and sustainable solutions, the more interest there will be in pursuing them. This is especially true when everyone wins through lower costs, lower environmental impacts, corporate social responsibility and leadership benefits, etc.

Eric Swanson
Data Center Manager
Agriculture and Agri-Food, Canada

Why is it important to keep Green IT achievements in the forefront of media and executive management?

Awards like these show that there often exists a responsible solution that doesn't diminish either the impact to business or the environment.

Mike Tresh
Director of Product Marketing
and Management
Viridity Software

Has participating in the GEIT Awards improved your career or organization?

I would have to say yes to both. It has brought a higher level of awareness to Green initiatives in our IT organizations, which has a snowball effect on involvement.

Steve Press
Executive Director
Data Center Facilities Services
Kaiser Permanente

Has participating in the GEIT Awards improved your career?

Uptime Institute's Green Enterprise IT Award is open to the international community, and therefore shows others that you have been involved with something that is world-class. The Symposium’s web site has a summary, presentation, and case study. This provides an excellent third-party reference to showcase the work done and share the knowledge widely, which for me was the driving force for participating.

The experience of preparing and presenting at the Symposium was also very educational, as was being at the Symposium.

Eric Swanson
Data Center Manager
Agriculture and Agri-Food, Canada

Why is it important to keep Green IT achievements in the forefront of media and executive management?

In a perfect world, it would be nice to believe that funding for Green efficiencies will always deliver a return on investment (ROI) that makes senior decision makers feel good about the outcomes. Unfortunately, that is not always the case (though it was in ours). Awards can celebrate Green IT projects that are good for sustainability but have poor or non-existent ROI. There is evidence that corporate sustainability efforts have taken a back seat during the global recession as organisations seek to retrench their positions in a shrinking market. However, consumers may just be more selective about whom they do business with, and those who can demonstrate independent accolades of using their funds to both improve efficiency and bear more responsibility for the environment and communities in which they operate in, may win the lion’s share of the new and repeat business.

Steve Bowes-Phipps
Data Centers Manager
University of Hertfordshire

"Winning a GEIT Award helped our organization highlight next-generation applied research.“

Paul Brenner
University of Notre Dame

Has the Green technology delivered on its promise, returned its investment?

We are believers in our solution. Reducing unused servers' power consumption is a common problem with great money savings potential.

Mike Tresh
Director of Product Marketing
and Management
Viridity Software

Has participating in the GEIT Awards improved your career or organization?

Yes – I believe the Award has given further credibility to the work not only that I undertook but the progress the University of Hertfordshire is making with respect to furthering the Green IT agenda. We have also used the Award to provide greater publicity to the sector to encourage others to follow our path and spend the necessary time and investment in reducing their ICT operational and environmental costs.

Steve Bowes-Phipps
Data Centers Manager
University of Hertfordshire

"The GEIT Award provides external confirmation of our thought leadership in green data centers.“

Robert Zdancewicz
eNation

Has the Green technology delivered on its promise, returned its investment?

Yes, our results are definitely in line with expectations. Our target annualized PUE of 1.22 is expected to be met or exceeded.

Steve Bowes-Phipps
Data Centers Manager
University of Hertfordshire

Has the Green technology delivered on its promise, returned its investment?

Absolutely!

Steve Press
Executive Director
Data Center Facilities Services
Kaiser Permanente

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