Fujitsu challenges FTSE 350 to deliver energy efficiency gains

Promises to cut datacentre energy costs by 40 percent

James Murray, IT Week 07 Jun 2007

Fujitsu Siemens Computers has today offered all FTSE 350 companies a free energy efficiency assessment service and promised to donate £10,000 to an environmental charity each time it fails to deliver at least a 40 percent reduction in their datacentre's energy costs, operating costs and physical footprint.

Managing director at Fujitsu Siemens Computers UK Steve Kendall-Smith said that the Dynamic Datacentre Challenge underlined the company's confidence that it could consistently deliver significant datacentre energy savings. "We may not be able to [achieve cuts of] 40 percent in every case and so we're happy to make donations to [environmental charity] The Climate Group," he said. "But we are really confident we can deliver savings that make sense for customers."

Kendall-Smith insisted that the savings identified by the free Value Study service could be delivered without always resorting to large scale roll-outs of new energy efficiency hardware. "Some of our competitors are saying you need to buy more kit to [reduce energy consumption] and of course new energy efficient systems are part of the solution," he said. "But the main goal is to reduce the number of servers and storage typically through solutions like virtualisation and improved management."

Fujitsu is expecting considerable take up of the new scheme, according to Kendall-Smith. "The carbon footprint is important to these large corporations, but there are also real business issues for their datacentres because many are now struggling to get enough power into the building to run them."

He added that based on take up of the challenge amongst FTSE 350 companies, Fujitsu Siemens Computers may extend a similar offer to other firms and public sector customers.

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