Minimizing power consumption is one of the primary technical challenges that today's IT organizations face. Laurie Minas and Brad Ellison highlight how power consumption has grown quickly, driven by the sheer number of servers deployed in datacenters. The operational expense for energy over a three year period of operation will soon equal the capital expense of hardware. Rack and blade servers concentrate heat in smaller spaces and demand sophisticated cooling systems, which themselves consume power. While servers dominate the power consumed by IT systems, storage systems and network switches draw power as well.