The good news for CIOs is that a growing amount of vendor investment has been drawn to this market, which Gartner has named Data Center Infrastructure Management. nlyte software, for example, provides a modeling, monitoring, and management suite for understanding power and cooling in a data center and optimizing placement and configuration of racks and servers.

FORBES: Power Management Questions for Every CIO

Fully mature Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software along with energy market integration that has a detailed model of power consumption, cooling, and the ability to manage servers, turning them on or off or putting them in a lower power state, completes the picture and enables the full benefit of a software defined data center to be realized.

FORBES: Why Software-Defined Data Centers Cost Much More Without Optimized Power and Cooling