One of the hottest topics in the world of IT this past year has been the growing difficulty businesses are experiencing in trying to keep up with the demand for computational throughput without creating unmanageable data centers where the cost of running and cooling the equipment exceeds the cost of hardware acquisition. The formation of The Green Grid organization announced on Wednesday, could be a first step to creating an open industry community that can best address the issues and begin the journey to finding solutions.Founding partners Advanced Micro Devices, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Sun Microsystems are offering an open invitation to IT professionals, technology companies, energy companies, utilities, and other interested parties to join in trying to establish a dialog around the issues of data center power consumption. Many companies are likely to quickly join in the effort, including, hopefully, Intel, the largest manufacturer of processors used in servers in data centers around the world.

In a survey of 1,200 IT professional commissioned by AMD, 83% said their biggest concerns currently are related to cooling and power, and only 20% said they have a plan in place to address the issues. That survey echoes a survey conducted recently by AFCOM, the leading association for data center professionals, which found that 20% of respondents say their data center is currently exceeding 80% of power capacity, and 49% say it's exceeding 50% of power capacity.

A coalition that brings together both IT professionals, data center managers, equipment providers, utility providers, and others to try and find a path for building and operating at much greater efficiencies is long overdue.