Monday News Roundup

• Insider magazine believes 2010 will become the year of Cloud Computing, aided especially by technologies such as Microsoft Azure.

• The CompTIA IT Industry Business Conference Index has experienced its largest jump ever in December 2009, reflecting renewed optimism among IT companies, especially in Green IT projects.

• The German federal ministry for environment and German ICT federation Bitkom has unveiled a database from Green IT solutions.

• The British government unveils a sweeping strategy to create its own internal cloud computing system, which it estimates may save over 3 billion GBP annually.

• Melianox Technologies, a supplier of end-to-end connectivity solutions for green data center servers, announces that its CEO has been named "CEO of the Year" in the category of high-tech Israeli companies by the Israeli Center for Management.

• IT services company Tieto is building a new energy-efficient data center in Espoo, Finland.

• Fujitsu Laboratories of Europe Limited announces the opening of a new demonstration facility at its UK headquarters to demonstrate a range of green and innovative technologies.

• Cisco, NetApp, and WMware announce they are expanding their collaboration to deliver new design architectures that help customers evolve virtualized data centers to become more efficient, dynamic and secure.

• CoSentry announces the opening of its fourth data center in the Nebraska region, a Tier IV facility designed to green LEED standards.

• PEER 1 Hosting, based in Canada, announces the opening of a $40 million data center in Toronto, designed with redundant high-efficiency variable frequency drive centrifugal chillers to reduce cooling costs and condenser towers with economizers.

• Viridity Software, which provides data center energy management and optimization solutions, announces the appointment of Steve Keilen as Vice President of Marketing.

• Ideas International, a supplier of actionable comparative intelligence on enterprise IT infrastructure, has joined The Green Grid.