Cisco is doing a lot with their website these days, pushing a lot of Web 2.0 features and creating content aggregator sites, like the Cisco Validated Design Program (CVD) and the Cisco Design Zone for Data Centers and Data Center Assurance Program (DCAP). Since Cisco.com is so large, it can take too long to find things, even with the new search tool.
Cisco released another site like this, the Cisco Efficiency Assurance Program, in June. This site, like the others, is done with Flash to make the user interface more appealing with links to PDFs, videos, and feedback sections. The Cisco Efficiency Assurance Program is all about Green IT. "Cisco Green" may have been a better name, but, whatever.
The site does have a lot of good information for DC Architects and facility engineers. The focus of the content is efficient power usage - how to measure it, increase efficiency, and build efficient structures and data centers. The site is an aggregator to other information spread around Cisco.com and partners like the Cisco Energy Efficient Data Center Solutions and Best Practices and Data Center University.
However, the key tool of the site is the Green Data Center Model Calculator. This calculator is a business case scenario modeler for Green Data Centers. You can alter a wide range of variables to calculate NPV, savings, and business benefits. A very nice tool if you take the time to correctly enter all of the variables.
The tool includes automatically updating graphs for a visual view of the results.
The last thing the tool needs is an "Export Report to PDF" function. Hopefully that will be coming soon.
Overall, a very nice site for your Green Data Center.
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Michael Morris is a communications engineering manager at a $3 billion high-tech company. His background is in enterprise WANs working with telcos, and developing large-scale routing designs. He has worked on networks at government and corporate organizations, including networks at two Fortune 10 companies. In his current role, he leads large-scale IT networking projects and develops and maintains architectural standards for data networks, storage area networks, IP Telephony, and security. Michael is a CCIE and has 11 years experience in networking and communications, including four years as a paratrooper in the U.S. Army. He has a bachelor's degree in MIS from the University at Buffalo. Recently, he was awarded the Network Professional Association® (NPA) Professional Excellence and Innovation Award for his work on network architecture, templates and enterprise MPLS design.
The opinions expressed in this Weblog are those of the writer and may not represent the opinions of Network World.
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