Friday, August 17, 2007 at 1:05 pm by opus:interactive

Hewlett-Packard agrees with us: It’s easy being green.

Walking through our data center it is easy to see that our collaboration with HP continues to increase day-by-day. With new Blade solutions being installed as we migrate existing partners and welcome new ones into our family, we’re taking steps to assure their businesses succeed while we move toward a sustainable existence with the nature around us.

Our commitment to these partnerships is being showcased this fall season in a print publication by HP on transforming the enterprise. You can read a snippet from the publication just below and from there you can download the entire publication in a friendly Adobe pdf format by jumping off to HP’s micro-site dedicated to the publication.

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The Pacific Northwest has always been on the leading edge of environmental consciousness. The steady rain notwithstanding, throngs of outdoor enthusiasts, liberal thinkers and even local legislator - who have established ground-breaking urban growth boundaries to contain metropolitan sprawl - have made this region more “green” than most.

Companies routinely waste a ton of money cooling and powering open space. We wanted a micro data center that is efficient and eco-aware. And we wanted the ability to expand and optimize the data center as we grew versus filling empty space over time.”

If opus:interactive is any indication, the prevailing set of earth friendly principles are now spilling into the corporate sector. A Managed Services Provider (MSP), opus:interactive offers a variety of online services to its clients, such as Web hosting, managed servers, email hosting and high-speed Internet access. These solutions are provided through the company’s state-of-the-art data center in Portland, Ore.

“We’re not your average MSP,” says Jeremy Sherwood, Business Solutions Executive for opus:interactive. “Stewardship is very important to us, and we strive to take exceptional care of our clients as well as our environment.”

Whereas many organizations would opt to set aside a large parcel of space in which a modern data center can grow, opus:interactive contemplated efficiency more than square footage. “Companies routinely waste a ton of money cooling and powering open space,” Sherwood continues. “We wanted a micro data center that is efficient and eco-aware. And we wanted the ability to expand and optimize the data center as we grow versus filling empty space over time. We have the space, obviously, but why build it all out at once?”

Today, opus:interactive’s 1,000 square-foot Internet Data Center is home to numerous HP BladeSystem c-Class and p-Class server blades as well as 62 ProLiant servers. The facility is served by fiber optics and all vital systems are fully redundant. The company utilizes VMware on HP ProLiant BL460c server blades to offer virtual dedicated managed servers for its clients and to run many of its internal business applications without having to purchase additional servers.

“We made a concerted effort to become an eco-aware data center facility with the implementation of HP BladeSystems,” Sherwood says. “The blades have allowed us to scale faster, use power efficiently, provision servers faster and ultimately, close more deals.”

He adds that the blades are pulling a mere 15 amps of power compared the 40 amps that the stand-alone servers consume. And VMware has turned one or two day deployments into 15 minute projects from start to finish. As the company and its client base grows, opus:interactive is gradually replacing its ProLiant servers with HP BladeSystems, freeing up space in the data center, further reducing power consumption and easing cabling complexity.

“The use of HP BladeSystems stays true to our customer-first initiative by providing the best-of-the-breed hardware that truly is “Always On,” easy to manage, extensible, scalable, reliable and eco-aware,” says Eric Hulbert, Chief Information Officer of opus:interactive. “This shift in IT is our push for business innovation in all that we do. We plan to replace our entire infrastructure with the HP BladeSystem c-Class.”

Apparently, being green is easy after all.

For the full opus:interactive case study and information on the HP BladeSystem, visit: www.hp.com/go/transformblades.

Instructions:

In order to view the case study you will be asked to register. Please assure that you have selected the top check box of Step 1 (see the screen capture below for example) titled: HP BladeSystem Special Edition, Fall 2007 (PDF).

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