There's been a flurry of activity among IT vendors to develop lower energy products and with good reason--the cost of electricity continues to rise in every part of the country. Energy experts' opinions differ on the size of the rate hikes, but one thing remains clear: None of the experts expects the rates to remain the same or decrease. Some even foresee a dire future in which the total cost to power and cool a server for four years exceeds what it cost to acquire the server.

For some data centers located in metropolitan areas, it's not just the spiraling cost of electrical power that's a concern; availability may be an even greater problem. They simply can't pull any more power off the existing electrical grid. To bring in new hardware, they have to unplug older hardware first, making the migration effort to updated hardware difficult and risky.