3PAR announced the 3PAR Virtual Technology Incentive Program (V-TIP). The program combines the benefits of 3PAR Utility Storage with first-ever financial incentives offered by Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) for datacenter storage virtualization and thin provisioning projects.

"Storage virtualization and thin provisioning technologies help our customers realize significant capacity and cost savings while also addressing critical datacenter energy issues," explained Mark Bramfitt, principal program manager for PG&E. "By providing financial incentives, we hope to increase industry adoption of these smart and efficient new storage technologies."

Thin provisioning and storage virtualization technologies available from 3PAR were developed to transform the way that storage capacity is provisioned and consumed. With 3PAR Thin Provisioning, 3PAR Utility Storage customers have been able to meet their storage objectives with fewer disk drives than they required with traditional storage systems. To further recognize and promote energy-saving measures, PG&E is now offering financial incentives to customers in Northern and Central California who deploy 3PAR Utility Storage systems through 3PAR V-TIP.

"Lowering operational costs through storage virtualization is a key opportunity for our IT organization," said Jonathon Taylor, Systems Engineer at California State University, East Bay. "The incentives that PG&E provides for deploying 3PAR storage virtualization and Thin Provisioning offer a compelling enticement to accelerate our storage virtualization efforts."

The 3PAR InServ Storage Server is a highly virtualized, next-generation storage array designed to optimize datacenter efficiency without sacrificing storage performance and agility. For example, built-in virtualization features reduce the number of disk drives required to do the same job as comparable storage arrays from traditional storage vendors.

Traditional storage arrays are built on architectures that are fifteen to twenty years old. These dated architectures cannot address today's increasingly demanding datacenter workloads without requiring larger numbers of disk drives than virtualized arrays. By comparison, next-generation 3PAR InServ arrays employ a hyper-efficient hardware architecture that distributes data and performance workloads across all internal resources to deliver efficiencies that traditional storage systems cannot match. As a result, customers who have replaced their traditional storage arrays with 3PAR Utility Storage have been able to significantly reduce their requirements for disk drives and related energy consumption. When combined with 3PAR Thin Provisioning, the 3PAR InServ's highly virtualized architecture has been proven to deliver even greater compound benefits to customers. Thin provisioning is a "green" software technology that 3PAR helped pioneer in order to dramatically improve the efficiency of typical storage arrays.

Wikibon Energy Lab -- a service provided by wikibon.org, an independent community of IT professionals -- validated 3PAR's energy savings with PG&E based on a review of actual 3PAR customer installations that included the use of 3PAR Thin Provisioning software. According to David Floyer, CTO of Wikibon Energy Lab, "3PAR Thin Provisioning has been shown to dramatically increase utilization rates on InServ disk drives -- and reduce energy consumption by up to 75% relative to traditional modular and monolithic arrays." This enhanced efficiency permits 3PAR customers to use less physical disk space and fewer disk drives for a reduced datacenter footprint and substantial energy savings.

The financial incentives offered to 3PAR customers by PG&E further reward 3PAR customers for deploying energy-smart storage. PG&E rebates are based on the amount of energy savings achieved by datacenters through storage virtualization and the use of 3PAR Thin Provisioning and other thin technologies from 3PAR. To qualify for these financial incentives, Northern and Central California PG&E customers must apply for and be accepted into the rebate program prior to deploying a new 3PAR-based storage implementation.

Financial incentives from PG&E are just a part of the energy and environmental benefits from 3PAR Utility Storage. According to a Wikibon Energy Lab case study, customers replacing older storage technologies with next-generation 3PAR InServ arrays have saved as much as 90%* on annual energy costs related to powering and cooling their storage systems.

"PG&E has recognized that the energy savings made possible through storage virtualization and thin provisioning are an innovative solution to high energy usage in California," said David Scott, President and CEO for 3PAR. "3PAR Utility Storage is a perfect match for this program, which rewards customers for adopting smart and efficient technologies with benefits that go far beyond just energy savings."