Report: 'Green' Efficiency Market to Hit $41B

Companies don't decide to "go green" with their IT operations because it's fashionable. For data center operators, energy efficiency is a business imperative. That's why reducing the energy use and carbon output of these facilities has been a visible priority for the industry for several years. If you've attended a data center conference or been pitched by a vendor in the past two years, you've repeatedly heard the "green data center" refrain. 

A new report released this week by Pike Research has put some numbers to this trend. Pike, which specializes in "clean tech" research, says investment in greener data centers will experience rapid growth over the next five years, increasing from $7.5 billion in global revenue to $41.4 billion by 2015, representing 28 percent of the total data center market.

Pike projects that spending on power and cooling solutions represent the biggest chunk of the green data center market opportunity, representing 46 percent of revenue over the next five years. Energy efficient IT equipment will be the second largest category with 41 percent of the market, while monitoring and management will follow with 14 percent of total revenue.