Disney's Epcot Center -- the Experimental Community of Tomorrow built ... last century -- may seem an unlikely place to put a shiny new data center, but IBM thinks it's the ideal location.

The company lifted the curtain today on a new exhibit that showcases to facets of IBM's operations: its Smarter Planet project, and its green data center operations.

The exhibit touts technology's role in driving a more energy efficient future -- long the focus of IBM's forward-looking operations. (For an in-depth look at Smarter Planet, see this interview with Joel Makower and IBM's Rich Lechner: "A Closer Look at IBM's "Smarter Planet" Campaign.")

IBM's exhibit includes interactive kiosks showing how information technology touches nearly every facet of a more connected, more energy efficient future, from the smart grid to home energy management to traffic flow systems to water mapping and management. The exhibit also features a computer game developed with Disney Imagineering called Runtime that, according to a press release, lets players "run, jump and dance through a timeline of IBM's achievements in the history of computing."

If all that sounds a bit mass-market, consider the other half of the exhibit: One of IBM's scalable modular data centers (SMDCs), which in addition to being a hands-on element of the exhibit, is also running the show.

Steve Sams, IBM's vice president of Sites and Facilities, told me that the data center had always been part of the plan -- it was needed to run the games, after all -- but had originally intended be stay behind the scenes. But the setting of the exhibit lent itself to the shift.

"When you profile the Epcot visiting community, it contains -- especially in the technology exhibits -- it contains a relatively sophisticated audience," Sams explained, "people who are interested in technology, in the environment, in healthcare."

The SMDC, pictured below, is one of the jewels of IBM's IT services. It is, as the name suggests, a data center that can be quickly built to specs for companies large or small, and can then be scaled to meet demand.

Rather than build a data center that is intended to last for 15 years -- and which as a result contains cooling, lighting and infrastructure for machines that won't even be purchases for years to come -- the shift to a scalable facility means companies can save big on upfront capital expense costs and on operating expenses.