Google held an innovative event for the data center industry on Apr 1, 2009. Many readers out there thought the event was an April Fools joke. But ,the only joke was the oil tanker data center.

As the event closed I asked the folks at Google what they thought of the event and did it meet their expectations. My hope is that this event sets a new direction for data center events where sponsors cannot buy into the program. The sponsor based event model has contributed to the current state of the data center industry. As customer stories are integrated to sell products, not necessarily to solve problems.

Microsoft had their MDX event.

Summary of Microsoft's Data Center Event - Microsoft Set the Bar

TechHermit has three different attendees submit comments about the Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Data Center Event. Mike Manos, Christian Belady, Daniel Costello, and the rest of the Microsoft Data Center team are changing the data center industry.

But, the Microsoft event was NDA. Google is planning on posting the conference on Youtube On Apr 6.

175 people registered for the event, and 25 of those where Google employees who finally had the chance to share some of their data center experiences for the first time.

One of the event organizers Chris Malone, Google Data Center R&D, provided some reflective comments.

'The aim of the summit was to bring together various groups from the IT industry to discuss best practices for efficient data center design and operation. We disclosed details about our server and data center design with the aim of demonstrating that best practices can yield substantial efficiency improvements. Google data centers operate with quarterly average PUE values as low as 1.12, mostly through the rigorous application of best practices that are available to everyone. When you consider that the typical data center has a PUE of approximately 2.0, it is encouraging that well-understood steps may be applied to significantly improvement efficiency for many data centers.'

it was great to be able to share some of our innovations with the hope that it will aid the industry in moving toward improved efficiency.

The speakers and panelists from Google, The Green Grid, Amazon, eBay, The Uptime Institute, LBNL, and the EPA provided a good cross-section of views and ideas from across the IT industry.

Also, Urs Hoelzle stuck around for the whole event, and was readily accessible by attendees. I had the pleasure of having multiple conversations and many of his comments align with the above comments by Chris.

It was fun to Live Blog the event, and I posted more than I thought. Here are the posts I created for the event.