HP has announced a new energy management system and key initiatives to bridge the gap between facilities and IT to help customers dramatically reduce data center operating costs.

Based on work from the past four years by HP Labs, the new energy management system, called HP Dynamic Smart Cooling, is designed to deliver 20 to 45 percent savings in cooling energy costs or allow additional equipment to be added to the data center while keeping net power costs constant.

The HP system uses advanced software residing in an intelligent control node to continuously adjust air conditioning settings based on real-time air-temperature measurements from a network of sensors deployed on IT racks. Dynamic Smart Cooling actively manages the environment to deliver cooling where it is needed most, enabling essential cost savings to end users.

Due to its positive impact on the bottom line and the environment, Dynamic Smart Cooling will be adopted by HP’s own IT organization for its six new consolidated data centers in three geographic zones in the United States. It also is an important addition to HP’s Adaptive Infrastructure offering, which is the foundation for building next-generation data centers.

“By bringing facilities and IT together, HP customers can now change energy from a fixed cost to a variable cost within the data center,” said Paul Perez, vice president, Storage, Networks and Infrastructure, Enterprise Servers and Storage, HP. “HP’s holistic approach breaks tradition to solve the conflict between energy efficiency and IT scalability. Customers can now treat data centers as systems to be as carefully managed as the hardware running within them.”

Centered on Dynamic Smart Cooling, HP is creating a new partner program through which the company will work with leading architecture, engineering, equipment, technology, utility, real estate and service companies to accelerate adoption of energy efficiency solutions for next-generation data centers. The Data Center Solution Builder program will be managed under Perez and will feature EYP Mission Critical Facilities as its premiere partner.

“DSC solves a big problem the IT industry has been struggling with for quite some time,” said Peter Gross, chief executive officer and chief technology officer, EYP Mission Critical Facilities, Inc. “DSC not only dramatically improves the energy performance of cooling systems in data centers but also delivers improvements in overall data center reliability. It is the first step toward the ultimate goal of this industry – fully integrated and optimized data centers that bridge the gap between facilities and IT domains.”