Consortium Completes Formation and Calls for Members: The Green Grid, a non-profit consortium dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems, today announced the completion of its formation, membership structure, technical charter, and made available three new white papers. The collective viewpoint of Green Grid members is that energy efficiency in the data center is the most significant issue facing technology providers and their customers today. This situation is not only due to exponential increases in power and cooling costs over the past few years, but also because customer demand for concentrated computing is outpacing the availability of clean reliable power in many places around the world. The Green Grid is the first industry initiative chartered to take a holistic view of the computing ecosystem, with a focus on addressing the pressing issues facing data center users. The consortium also announced its Board of Directors, comprised of AMD, APC, Dell, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Rackable Systems, SprayCool, Sun Microsystems, and VMware. These companies represent leadership across all facets of product development for the data center and are collectively committed to driving new user-centric metrics, technology standards, and best practices for use by data center managers worldwide. End users and technology suppliers are encouraged to become members of The Green Grid to help drive the creation of platform-neutral specifications and metrics. The Green Grid's membership structure includes Contributing and General Member levels. General members will have access to all technical documentation produced by The Green Grid, access to intellectual property licensing, and opportunities to attend events. Contributing members will have all the above benefits and be eligible to join technology working groups, review technology documentation at each phase of development and directly contribute to shaping future consortium direction. The organization has also made available its first three white papers developed by The Green Grid's technical committee. The papers offer perspectives on data center efficiency issues as well as efficiency baseline recommendations, and are targeted at CIO, data center administrator and facility manager audiences. For more information about The Green Grid's activities or to become a member, please visit the organization's Web site at its Web site.