How's that green data center coming along? Symantec and Ziff Davis asked that question of over 800 data center managers (70 surveyed in focus groups and by phone; 800 surveyed online) that keep some Global 2000 firms humming across 14 countries.

I know you're wondering, "Why would a computer security company care?"

You see, Symantec is undergoing a bit of a transformation, branching into a data center management software provider and aligning its resources in that direction after its merger with Veritas. Don't think for a minute that they're going to shed their security-savvy ways anytime soon, though. Norton's going nowhere.

Anyway, back to the point of this post.

Today, the company revealed a couple of interesting statistics regarding the greening of data centers. Let's get the bad news out of the way first: many talk a big game, but their efforts are falling short.

Nearly three-fourths of respondents state they have interest in adopting a strategic green data center initiative; however, only one in seven have been successful at implementing a green data center, illustrating a stark contrast between interest and execution.

And we here in the U.S. are lagging a bit...

Slightly more than a third of companies based in the United States (U.S.) said they have corporate green policies, while almost 60 percent of companies from Asia-Pacific and Japan (APJ) and 55 percent of European companies have them. According to the research, companies from Canada, China, Germany, India, Mexico and South Korea are more likely to have green data center policies than not. Regionally, organizations with larger data center budgets implement green data center strategies more frequently than those with smaller budgets.

I know, not a good showing for the good ol' U.S. of A. Technology-wise, though, businesses here and abroad seem to be making friends with virtualization.

Data center managers indicate that software designed for server consolidation and server virtualization are the most popular solutions in creating energy efficiencies, with 51 and 47 percent indicating plans to consolidate and virtualize servers respectively. In fact, 68 percent of respondents indicate that reducing energy played a role in their decision to implement virtualization and server consolidation.

And though we may lag versus the rest of the world in overall data center efficiency, this is the one area we are leading.

Server consolidation and virtualization implementations are more prevalent in U.S.-based companies and surpass implementations in other parts of the world. In contrast, while there are fewer APJ [Asia-Pacific and Japan] organizations currently implementing consolidation/virtualization strategies in their data centers, the majority of IT managers (88 percent) from this region who do, cite energy consumption and energy reduction as the primary reason.

And encouragingly, power management is starting to make its presence felt.

Respondents also revealed that most data center managers are at least planning to implement power management products, with 30 percent implementing on selected equipment, 13 percent on equipment throughout the data center, and 34 percent either planning to use or currently evaluating.

Depending on how you look at it, the data can be viewed as encouraging or disappointing. Either way, it reminds us that we are still very early in the green IT transition. In that light, encouraging gets my vote.

Thanks Dan!