Irvine, CA, June 2, 2008 –Rising energy costs have brought consumption practices under the microscope for many businesses, particularly in densely-populated areas like Orange County where government regulations are demanding increased efficiency. Perhaps no function causes more concern than the IT department, where rapidly growing data centers struggle to fill a widening gap between multiplying business needs and shrinking power and cooling resources.

In 2006 the EPA estimated that data centers used 61 billion kWh of electricity, roughly 1.5 percent of all U.S. electricity consumption. Based on current trends, the agency estimates the energy consumed by data centers will continue to grow by 12 percent per year. Some industry analysts believe that energy costs will soon comprise nearly half of the average IT budget.

But where there is cause for concern, there is also evidence of great potential. One local company, Sidepath, Inc., has helped its customers dramatically lower energy costs by bringing green technologies into the data center. Sidepath leverages its unique business partnerships and experience to help organizations implement a virtual data center, leading to big savings in hardware and energy expenditures.

Sidepath’s virtual data center solution includes a combination of virtual server tools from VMware and virtual storage technologies from Compellent. Advanced storage virtualization removes the physical capacity of limitations of drives by combining all storage into logical, virtual volumes. Server virtualization software allows organizations to make the most of their server and space resources by dividing their physical server resources into multiple virtual machines.

Advanced Storage Virtualization Cuts Power and Cooling Costs by Up to 93 Percent
At the foundation of the Sidepath virtual data center is the Compellent Storage Area Network (SAN). Compellent’s advanced virtualization technology helps maximize existing storage assets and cut power and cooling costs by up to 93 percent.

Sidepath recommends the Compellent SAN for the virtualized data center because of its unique ability to virtualize at the block-level. Unlike many other storage solutions that work at the much-larger volume level, Compellent’s ability to work inside the storage volume helps increase performance, availability and utilization. This micro-level virtualization helps organization access their data faster by spreading operations across all disk drives in the SAN, making it possible to process multiple data requests at the same time.

Compellent’s Thin Provisioning feature radically reduces the number of disks IT departments purchase. Unlike other storage providers that require up-front purchases of best-guess disk needs, the Compellent SAN only consumes disk space when data is actually written. As a result, companies with the Compellent SAN power and cool significantly less storage, without sacrificing performance.

Purchasing fewer drives in advance is only part of the story. Sidepath’s virtual data center solution also includes Compellent’s Automated Tiered Storage to help IT professionals reduce the impact of the average 80 percent of data on their system that is considered inactive. Automated Tiered Storage dynamically classifies older data, such as outdated emails and archived files based on how frequently they are accessed and then automatically transfers stale items to lower-cost, energy-efficient drives.

Deploying a virtual data center saves Sidepath customers well beyond disk costs by helping them make the most of their current data center resources and shrinking their data center footprint, enabling them to reduce expansion costs from generators, power infrastructure, cooling and facility limitations. Compellent’s Enterprise Manager storage resource management (SRM) software arms storage administrators with the carbon and power information they need to help find the ideal mix of disks for their data center and save on unnecessary upgrades. The software’s Green Report is a powerful tool for IT strategy that automatically calculates energy costs and CO2 emissions into actual dollar amounts.

Server Virtualization Thrives with Storage Virtualization
Sidepath also helps customers virtualize their server environment using VMware technology. Compellent’s unique Dynamic Block Architecture and seamless integration with VMware enable storage administrators to amplify the benefits of server virtualization by enabling them to provision from a virtual pool of storage without restrictions and create storage for hundreds of virtual servers quickly with no wasted storage capacity.

Compellent’s Boot from SAN technology can help administrators save up to $70,000 for every 25 servers they boot from the SAN and help eliminate the power draw and cost of internal server disk drives without server-based software or third-party applications.

Virtual Data Center Delivers Real Savings
Sidepath customer, Los Angeles-based Ares Management, has used the Compellent SAN to support a virtual data center that has helped reduce power consumption by 25 percent and saves an estimated $70,000 a year on hardware costs. The global investment firm skyrocketed during the last few years and currently manages approximately $16 billion in assets in the private equity and leveraged finance markets.

Rapid growth at Ares had led to an influx of analysts and operations staff. Ping Ooi, the company’s Associate Vice President of Technology, says his team struggled to keep the IT infrastructure humming—especially in the Los Angeles office where the company’s Microsoft® Exchange e-mail servers and central databases were kept on individual servers with internal storage.

“We kept blowing past our growth projections, so we were constantly adding file systems and storage capacity,” says Ooi.

To manage the rapid growth, Ooi worked with Sidepath, Inc. to develop a detailed virtual data center strategy. By virtualizing its server and storage resources, the Ares IT team has been able to eliminate 10 physical servers and reduce energy consumption in the company’s power-crunched Los Angeles facility with no drop in service levels to end users.

“We’ve dropped power usage from an average usage of 40 amps per circuit to about 29 amps per circuit,” comments Ooi.

Last year, analysts estimated that as much as half of all U.S. data centers will not have sufficient power by the end of 2008. With an expected exponential growth of business data continuing for the unforeseen future and the steady rise of energy concerns, eliminating wasted energy in the data center through virtualization is a ripe opportunity to make a real impact on the bottom line.

For more information on the virtual data center, contact Sidepath at (949) 748-8702, info@sidepath.com or visit www.sidepath.com.

About Sidepath, Inc.
Sidepath assists Southern California businesses – ranging from small or mid-sized companies to enterprises – with obtaining data services and network connectivity, including Internet access, dedicated private lines and data center hosting, as well as data storage, data protection, disaster recovery and business continuity. Many small to mid-sized companies have found it advantageous to work with Sidepath because of its steadfast attention to customer satisfaction. In addition, Sidepath provides “no obligation” quotes, which saves customers time and resources. Because of its specialized expertise and extensive industry experience, Sidepath can offer customers the best and most cost-effective network and data management solutions.