Energy demands in the data center are compromising business agility. In a recent survey, 42 percent of data center owners said they would exceed power capacity within the next 12-24 months, and 39 percent said they would exceed cooling capacity in the same timeframe. And IDC estimates that for every dollar IT spends on hardware to support new users and applications, they spend another 50 cents on power and cooling for existing hardware. As data centers reach the upper limits of their power and cooling capacity, efficiency has become the focus for data center design and extending the life of existing data centers.

Intel has helped reduce data center power consumption by delivering greater performance in the same power envelope for the past couple of years. The next challenge is to help data centers use energy more efficiently at all times, across all workloads. The Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series provides a foundation for IT management to refresh existing or design new data centers from the inside out to achieve greater performance while using less energy and space. Data center efficiency starts at the core — with energy-efficient processors and sub-systems to get the most out of each server rack, pedestal or blade. The CPU is the single largest consumer of power in servers today, so refreshing server infrastructure with highly efficient processors can deliver large gains. The Intel Xeon processor 5500 series with Intel® Intelligent Power Technology, delivers up to 50 percent lower idle power. By replacing aging single-core processor-based servers with new, more energy-efficient servers, you can gain capacity to grow and to increase IT performance using fewer servers. The estimated cost savings from energy and other operating cost efficiencies can pay for new servers in a an estimated 8 months.