Tech Trailblazers Awards welcome The Green Grid’s support of Sustainable IT category

Green IT startups get a shot at prizes including The Green Grid membership. Entries close tomorrow – 21^st September

LONDON, UK – September 20th 2012 – The inaugural Tech Trailblazers Awards for enterprise technology startups today unveiled a new industry supporter: The Green Grid, a global consortium of companies, government agencies and educational institutions dedicated to advancing resource efficiency in data centres and business computing ecosystems.

The Green Grid’s involvement is a significant development for the Tech Trailblazers Awards. It means that winners of the Sustainable IT category will receive free memberships to The Green Grid as part of their prize. The Green Grid joins existing Tech Trailblazers Awards industry supporters including the MIT/Stanford Venture Lab, Amoo Venture Capital Advisory, the Storage Networking Industry Association and the Cloud Security Alliance, among others.

“Green IT has gone from being a marketing buzzword to one of the most exciting and innovative sectors of technology, with organisations finding increasingly novel and effective methods to reduce resource consumption in the data centre,” said Harkeeret Singh, member of The Green Grid’s Technical Committee, and one of the judges of the award.  “We are looking forward to seeing the shortlist of nominated companies, to recognising their contribution to the wider industry, and of course to welcoming the winners into The Green Grid’s community of 175 member companies worldwide, where they will contribute to the further development of industry standards and best practice for sustainable IT.”

The Tech Trailblazers Awards represent the first independent initiative to recognize and reward green enterprise technology startups in a global arena. In addition to sustainable IT, Tech Trailblazers categories include: big data, cloud, infosecurity, mobile, networking, storage, virtualization and emerging markets.

All eligible entrants will win free products and services from a prize fund worth an estimated value over $1 million. Winners will also get exclusive coaching, mentoring and development from venture capitalists (VCs) and leading chief technology officers (CTOs).

The Tech Trailblazers Awards judging panel includes green IT experts such as:

– BT’s former Global Head of Operations, Stephen O'Donnell, now a consultant, advisor and author at www.thehotaisle.com;  

– Sam Johnston, Director of Cloud and IT Services at Equinix (A Green Grid member organization);

– and Harkeeret Singh, Global Head of Energy and Sustainable IT at Thomson Reuters and member of The Green Grid Technical Working Group.

O’Donnell commented:  “The Green Grid is a leading light in sustainable IT and a champion of green technology and practices within the data centre. Their involvement with the Tech Trailblazers Awards is a clear sign that innovation from the startup community as well as established industry players is a key to success in this area.”

Enterprise IT startups have until September 21st at 11:59pm PT to enter the Tech Trailblazers Awards for a chance to win free products and services worth thousands of dollars from an estimated $1 million prize fund.

To be eligible, your company must be privately owned, less than five years old and privately funded or at C-series funding or below. Download an entry form today at www.techtrailblazers.com.

For more information, please visit www.techtrailblazers.com or follow the Tech Trailblazers Awards on Twitter @techtrailblaze, #TTawards or on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/company/tech-trailblazers-awards.

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Notes to editors

Rose Ross, founder of the Tech Trailblazers Awards is available to comment. Please contact Olivia Shannon at Omarketing for more information (contact details below).

Media Contacts

For Tech Trailblazers Awards

Olivia Shannon

Omarketing

UK: +44 (0)208 255 5225

US: +1 781 519 0275

olivia@omarketing.co.uk

www.twitter.com/Olivia_at_O

For The Green Grid

Rob Jessel / Robin Campbell-Burt

Spreckley Partners Ltd

T. +44(0)20 7388 9988

E. greengrid@spreckley.co.uk

About The Green Grid

The Green Grid is a global consortium of companies, government agencies and educational institutions dedicated to advancing resource efficiency in data centres and business computing ecosystems.

The Green Grid does not endorse vendor-specific products or solutions, and instead seeks to provide industry-wide recommendations on best practices, metrics and technologies that will improve overall data centre resource efficiencies. Membership is open to organisations interested in data centre operational efficiency at the Contributor, General or Associate member level.

Additional information is available at www.thegreengrid.org and on Twitter at http://twitter.com/TheGreenGrid.

About the Tech Trailblazers Awards

www.techtrailblazers.com

Tech Trailblazers is a new concept in awards, designed explicitly for smaller businesses and startups that are less than five years old and at C-series funding or below. The awards have low barriers to entry and prizes that not only recognize startup innovation, but also proactively help startups grow their businesses with exclusive coaching, mentoring and development from VCs and leading CTOs as well as an estimated prize fund worth in excess of $1m. The awards seek to recognize true innovators in the following enterprise technology and other areas:

• Big Data Trailblazers
• Cloud Trailblazers
• Emerging Markets Trailblazers
• Mobile Technology Trailblazers
• Networking Trailblazers
• Security Trailblazers
• Storage Trailblazers
• Sustainable IT Trailblazers
• Virtualization Trailblazers

Entries close on September 21st at 11:59pm PT. Download the entry form at www.techtrailblazers.com. For more information, please email us at innovate@techtrailblazers.com, follow us on Twitter @techtrailblaze or via the hashtag  #TTAwards, or visit us on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/company/tech-trailblazers-awards.