I’m the Director of Global Lab & Datacenter Design Servers (GDS), an internal group in Sun. We’re responsible for standardizing the global technical infrastructure portfolio for Sun. That’s currently 1.3 million square feet in 1588 rooms world-wide. It’s quite a fun job.

GDS resides in the Workplace Resources (WR) Business Unit is Sun. WR is the internal group that manages all the real estate for Sun and is under the People & Places umbrella. My team (GDS) bridges the gap between IT, Engineering and Facilities (WR). These groups speak different languages and have different and many times, competing priorities. With datacenter densities and costs increasing at such a rapid pace, it’s amazing that not many companies have a team like this. Someone who can talk “IT” and “Facilities” in the same breath. Someone who can balance the needs of both without sacrificing quality or functionality or overspending. Without this function, IT, Facilities & Engineering operate in a silo, making decisions that can and most often adversely affect the other. Bottom line, the corporation spends much more than it has to -or- loses more than it should because of uninformed decisions.

On 08/21/07 Sun had an ECO Launch that shared our own efforts internally with our customers and the industry. It was a great event in which I was honored to cut the ribbon to launch our new 72,000 square foot datacenter in Santa Clara, CA. I cut it on behalf of the hundreds of people who worked night and day for 12 months to make this possible. Bob Worrall (Sun CIO), Dave Douglas (VP of Eco responsibility), and John Fowler (EVP of Systems) were there as the keynote speakers. It was a kick!

With the launch, we created a summary video to help customers understand our approach and how they can apply it to their own designs.

Data Center Video Tour

http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/environment/media/datacenter_tour.xml

Solution Briefs

We also wrote six solution briefs and tree case studies to go into a bit more detail on each topic.

• Aligning Business Organizations (Dean Nelson)
• Hardware Replacement (Dean Nelson)
• Powering Energy Efficient Data Centers (Mike Ryan)
• Connecting Energy Efficient Data Centers (Serena Devito)
• Cooling Energy Efficient Data Centers (Mike Ryan)
• Accurately Measuring Data Center Power Efficiency (Mark Monroe)
• Bangalore India Data Center Case Study (Ramesh K V)
• Blackwater UK Data Center Case Study (Petr Vlasaty)
• Santa Clara California Data Center Case Study (Dean Nelson, Mike Ryan, Serena Devito, Brian Day)

I have a small but very effective core team of six that manage projects around the world (in the Americas, EMEA & APAC). All were able to attend and provide customer and media tours. All in all, it was an incredible day that showcased our work and Sun’s leadership in eco computing and energy efficiency. It’s part of our DNA.