What can smaller businesses learn from the IT department of a giant company like Sun Microsystems? That it's time to shrink their data center.After all, Sun's plan is to reduce its data center presence over the next seven years to nothing. Writes Sun Microsystems data center architect Brian Cinque: "Sun IT is driving towards a consolidated and unified data center approach by 2015, while reducing overall operating costs, overall energy consumptions, and to eliminate all SunIT data center's. Did I just say 0 data centers? Yes! Our goal is to reduce our entire data center presence by 2015."

Rich Miller at Data Center Knowledge got more details from Cinque. On his blog he quotes an email he received from Cinque: "By 2013, SunIT will still have data centers but we will have consolidated our IT infrastructure on Sun technologies and other vendor solutions. We will also partner with outhosting solutions which can also be called SaaS. As we progress to 2015, where the application is and how it is designed is no longer a driving factor."

Miller points out that in his blog Cinque "expressed confidence that SunIT could use virtualization and consolidation to reduce its data center footprint and energy use by 50 percent by 2013."

If Sun can do it, why can't you? Check out Cinque's reasons  reducing operating costs, energy consumption, and real estate. Those are issues for smaller businesses as well. The virtual data center is heading your way. Is your IT department getting ready for it?