Network World — LAS VEGAS -- Vendors at Interop this week introduced new and updated software to track not only IT asset information but also power, cooling and environmental metrics as data center managers work to reduce costs associated with IT resources and facilities expenses.

Slideshow: Cool new products announced at Interop  

Measure and Accelerate Green in Your Data Center

IT departments are more challenged than ever to build facilities that meet the needs of IT without breaking the bank, industry watchers say.

"It's financially and technically impractical to build a data center that will last for 20 years or more -- retrofits are a fact of life. As applications become ever more resource-intensive and racks fill up with power-hungry servers, the life span of a data center is getting shorter and shorter," a recent Forrester Research report reads. "As data centers inevitably run out of power -- and assets have been consolidated and virtualized as much as possible -- the next step is to look at the efficiency of the facilities side of the house.”

Avocent,with this week's release of MergePoint Infrastructure Explorer, is attempting to provide a tool that will help data center managers understand the power, cooling and environmental costs associated with IT assets. The software application collects data from multiple devices in an environment and provides a visual tool that can help data center managers better locate resources to reduce costs.

"Infrastructure Explorer helps IT understand how changes could help save costs. If they move certain racks or servers into a different location, it could help reduce power consumption," says Mark Harris, Avocent's vice president of strategic technologies.

MergePoint Infrastructure Explorer can also enable IT to better track assets and their licenses, and eliminate travel to remote locations by providing specific views, such as rack details, to IT managers. The software, expected to be available at the end of May, is priced at about $1,000 per rack, which includes services.

For its part, Netreo announced its OmniCenter DataCenter Dashboard product that now polls via SNMP to collect power statistics from devices throughout an environment. The data center application looks at utilization levels and aggregates power consumption across devices. The module also gives IT managers the ability to set potential goals to drive those power utilization levels down and better plan for capacity for both technologies and facilities, says Netreo CEO Kevin Kinsey.

"Because the data center exists for IT, IT should get more involved in data center capacity planning, facility requirements, budgets, and operations. In many organizations, IT does not see or pay the data center's power, providing little incentive to reduce energy consumption," the Forrester report reads. "To combat this, a small but growing number of IT shops are learning about and taking responsibility for energy-related expenses in the data center."

OmniCenter DataCenter Dashboard is priced between $5,000 and $10,000, depending on environment.

Do you Tweet? Follow me on Twitter here.