Virtualization no cure-all for data center energy crunch

Those changes include tighter integration between IT equipment and building management systems -- so that temperature readings from servers can be used to directly control cooling systems, for example -- and better communication between IT staff and the facilities teams that run the data center.

That's hard today, because building control and IT networks use different communication protocols. "Facilities today tend to be very reactive -- we haven't seen the same degree of IP enablement as you have in IT," Aldrich said. "If you look at how we manage environmentals for facilities, it really hasn't changed much since the '70s. There's no full convergence of these critical systems."