Houston, Green Energy and Web Hosting

The City of Houston has the honor of being ranked as the #1 municipal purchaser of renewable energy; #6 overall among the largest urban cities across the United States. Indeed, the City of Houston has purchased 50 MW of wind power utilizing 35% renewable energy. And added to Houston’s growing list of achievements is a rapidly growing technology sector. Without question, the City of Houston’s web hosting industry is not only growing but surpassing other municipalities with a strong green web hosting presence among Internet providers in Houston and worldwide.

Houston’s Green Power Partnership

Houston has long held the distinction of being the Energy Capital of the World, and now Houston has captured another honor. Houston could soon become the Green Energy Capital of the U.S.

Using green power helps reduce the environmental impacts of electricity use and supports the development of new renewable generation capacity nationwide.

Houston is already known as the energy capital of the world, but we are committed to becoming the alternative energy capital of the world as well,” said Mayor Annise Parker. “This ranking confirms we are taking the right steps in the right direction, and it’s going to benefit everyone.

The City of Houston purchases 50 Megawatts, or 35 percent of the City’s total electricity load, of wind energy to power Houston’s vast city facilities. The City expects to use as much as 1.7 billion kilowatt-hours of renewable wind energy in one year alone, equivalent to the amount of kilowatt-hours needed to power nearly thirty thousand family homes each year. The cities movement toward utilization of renewable wind energy also has the advantage of reducing its need to build more expensive power plants for the region’s rising energy needs.

Houston-Number One in Green Power

Houston was designated as the number one municipal purchaser of green power and the sixth-largest overall purchaser in the nation, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The city of Houston has announced plans to even increase its purchase of renewable, green, wind energy. Indeed, Houston’s use of green, renewable energy will only increase. On the City of Houston website GreenHoustonTx.gov, the city announced plans to increase their investment in green, renewable energy to a whopping 50%. Their “Future Work” presentation to city council and visitors, laid out the plan for the City of Houston’s consideration of an additional purchase of 80 MW, which would put Houston in the range of utilization of over half green power usage through renewable energy.

Houston Getting More Green

The City of Houston Department of Public Works and Engineering Green Building Resource Center was officially launched on Earth Day 2009. The center, under the Planning and Development Services Division, is located at the Houston Permitting Center Building at 1002 Washington. If ‘Going Green’ is your goal this center offers economical Green Houston solutions for the entire community.

Green Energy Capital, Web Hosting no Exception

Softlayer Technologies, an Internet Service Provider, Computer Security Service firm with multiple Houston locations, recently announced their purchase of green, renewable energy through Green Mountain Energy. SoftLayer provides global cloud infrastructure built at Internet scale and has locations in downtown Houston on Capital Street as well as a second location on Greens Parkway. Indeed, SoftLayer is bred into the culture of Houston as a longtime resident and web hosting partner for large Houston conglomerates.

Nathan Day, Softlayer’s CTO, “One thing we’ve learned along the way is that one size doe not fit all. (PCWorld)” So when considering who can meet your needs the best, just remember that at Softlayer, you can have it your way.

Build Your Own Web Hosting Cloud

Customers can visit SoftLayer’s Build Your Computer portal to select how many cores and how much RAM and storage they want and see the cost per hour or month. Users can choose exactly how much RAM, CPU, and storage they want. SoftLayer’s launch of its “Build your Own Cloud” platform has changed the web hosting industry. This new approach allows customers to configure the amount of CPU, memory, and storage used by their cloud servers. With this enhanced capability, SoftLayer customers avoid the trade-offs forced by other IaaS offerings, such as Amazon.

A Large Web Hosting Presence in Houston

SoftLayer’s two data center location in Houston host over twenty-five thousand servers, serving not only Houston firms, but corporate hosting configurations world-wide. Each data center facility features multiple pods, each built to the same specifications with best-in-class configuration protocols that can support up to five thousand servers per pod. Leveraging this standardization across all geographic locations, SoftLayer optimizes key data center performance variables including space, power, network, personnel, and internal infrastructure.

Point of Presence (POP) in Houston

Pop is short for point of presence, an access point to the Internet. Web hosting conglomerates and Internet Service Providers typically have multiple POPs. A point of presence is a physical location, either part of the facilities of a telecommunications provider that the ISP rents or a separate location from the telecommunications provider, that houses servers, routers, ATM switches, and digital/analog call aggregators.

Global Web Hosting Expansion Originating from Houston

SoftLayer’s global network will include points of presence (PoPs) and data centers throughout Europe and Asia, with Houston being central to the core of SoftLayer’s operations within the United States. Indeed, the two Houston web hosting data centers operated by SoftLayer include data centers as well as POPs connected by 20 Gpbs network (Gigabits per second), a data transfer speed measurement for high-speed networks such as Gigabit Ethernet.

The Future of Houston

Houston ranks second in employment growth rate and fourth in nominal employment growth among the 10 most populous metro areas in the United States. Houston’s economy has a broad industrial base in the energy, aeronautics, and technology industries: only New York City is home to more Fortune 500 headquarters. Houston is working to solve the region’s toughest problems by providing meaningful research, defining innovative strategies, and engaging diverse leaders.

Source by Stephanie Rosendahl