May 9, 2008 - Datacenter operator Digital Realty Trust is set to provide its customers with "detailed and actionable information" on whether and how much their IT facilities are contributing to corporate environmental goals.

"Companies are seeking more information about how to achieve their green IT goals and are looking for guidance from the datacenter industry about standards for doing so," says Chris Crosby, senior vice president at Digital Realty Trust.

The company will use the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) metric - an emerging standard promoted by the Green Grid - as the basis for measuring and reporting on energy efficiency at its facilities in North America and Europe. PUE calculates how much power is devoted to driving the actual computing/IT components (servers, for example) versus the support elements such as cooling and lighting.

"Significant gains in energy efficiency can be achieved by...minimizing the amount of power required by non-IT equipment and maximizing the ratio of power used by computing systems like servers," explains Jim Smith, vice president of engineering at Digital Realty Trust. "PUE is a compelling way to measure energy efficiency in datacenter facilities because it offers our industry an apples-to-apples comparison similar to the miles-per-gallon fuel-efficiency rating that the auto industry uses."

Digital Realty Trust says it will also publish energy-performance benchmarks to support green datacenter initiatives industrywide.

This isn't the first time Digital Realty Trust has taken the lead on datacenter efficiency issues. In November it earned the industry's first LEED Gold green building certification for a datacenter facility in Chicago.

To download the Green Grid's whitepaper on PUE, click here (PDF).