The Green Grid has remained fairly quiet over the past couple of months, save for the occasional announcement of a new member. But judging by the roadmap the group unveiled yesterday, it's safe to say that the consortium has been quite busy indeed. The Green Grid has remained fairly quiet over the past couple of months, save for the occasional announcement of a new member. But judging by the road map the group unveiled yesterday, it’s safe to say that the consortium has been quite busy indeed.In a Webcast presentation, members of The Green Grid outlined an ambitious timeline for delivering a number of studies and other deliverables that should prove useful for datacenter operators looking to get a handle in bringing money-saving data efficiency into the datacenter.Notably, it’s not clear yet which of these studies, or how much of their content, will be available to the public at large versus just to paid members of The Green Grid. Per my discussion with boardmembers yesterday, that’s still up in the air. General membership costs $5,000 per year. Following is the road map, as outlined (more or less verbatim) by The Green Grid: Data Collection * Datacenter Standards and Metrics Inventory (Q3 of ’07) – This study will document existing standards and metrics for energy efficiency, identify coverage gaps, and make recommendations for future development. * The Green Grid Metrics: Describing Datacenter Power Efficiency (Q3 of ’07) – This study will be an update to The Green Grid’s existing study on datacenter efficiency metrics and will look at workload classification through a datacenter segmentation model.* Operationalizing Energy-Efficiency Data Collection (Q4 of 2007) – This study will identify the requirements for collecting and aggregating datacenter power consumption data.* Datacenter Efficiency Baseline Market Study (Q3 of 2007) – This study on the current state of the industry will allow The Green Grid to identify key factors driving companies to take action on datacenter power consumption and the challenges in doing so. Collecting and analyzing this data will help to provide companies with a baseline to compare their own initiatives, goals, and performance. * Operational Best Practices (Q4 of 2007) – These studies will focus on right-sizing the datacenter and will outline best practices in the adoption of virtualization and consolidation technologies.* Database for Datacenter Performance (Q4 of 2007) – The Green Grid will begin development work on a database focused on datacenter characteristics and performance schema. Technology Proposals * Initial Technology Roadmap (Q4 of 2007) – This road map provides an initial assessment of existing and emerging technologies affecting data center efficiency and performance, taking into consideration both return on investment and risk to the end-user. * Power Distribution Options for the Datacenter Study (Q3 of 2007) – This study will look at the qualitative advantages and disadvantages of datacenter power distribution configurations.* Cooling Options Study (Q4 of 2007) – This study will focus on the qualitative advantages and disadvantages of datacenter cooling architectures. Technology Industry