To help customers optimize their data centers and save money, IBM will announce next month three new servers aimed at capturing “stranded” capacity, building on its existing ActivePower program. Another operational tool, called the QEDWiki Mashup Maker, will allow for easier integration of software management tools, an IBM executive said this week.

“Data center management is the hottest topic among our customers as they try to get a handle on operational costs,” said Steven A. Mills, senior vice president and group executive of IBM’s software group. “We see our customers struggling as they see a declining percentage of their budget going to doing things that bring added value to the business, and more and more of the budget being dedicated solely to operational expenses.”

Mills made his comments during an event on Wednesday to celebrate 40 years of IBM operations in Austin. The Austin facility has morphed from mostly assembly lines making Selectric typewriters in 1967, to today, when about 60% of the 6,200 Austin workers are involved in research and development.

One of those projects came out of customers’ desire to use Web 2.0 technologies to improve data center operations, mostly by allowing limited staffs to more easily take on new workloads.

QEDWiki Mashup Maker allows users to mix-and-match features from multiple Tivoli systems management software products, all in one user interface. To do this, IBM leveraged service-oriented architectures within existing Tivoli products. Then researchers created mashup “widgets” that can generate customizable user interfaces based on “Lego-style” building blocks, said Pat Griffin, a Tivoli software developer.

IBM has developed a widget library that can be accessed through IBM Director, Tivoli’s core systems management application. The goal is to allow individuals with limited expertise to create “situational” applications that bridge traditional software packages.

So, for instance, users can “mash” together widgets for configuration management, systems monitoring and change management — functions that may have originally come from separate Tivoli products — into one place.