Blade Network Technologies joins green-computing group

Blade Network Technologies recently joined the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, a non-profit organization whose stated goal is to cut computer power consumption in half by 2010.

The initiative was started last year by Google and Intel, and current leaders also include Dell, EDS, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft, Pacific Gas & Electric and World Wildlife Fund. Sponsors include Acer, AMD, Delta Electronics, eBay, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Lite-On, Marvell Semiconductor, NEC, Sun and Supermicro.

The organization's site gives a little background on its approach:

"The Initiative was started in the spirit of WWF’s Climate Savers program which has mobilized over a dozen companies since 1999 to cut carbon dioxide emissions, demonstrating that reducing emissions is good business. Our goal is to promote development, deployment and adoption of smart technologies that can both improve the efficiency of a computer’s power delivery and reduce the energy consumed when the computer is in an inactive state."

Blade Network Technologies supplies Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gigabit Ethernet equipment for blade server connections, and is looking to reduce energy consumption in data centers.

"At a time when customers are seeking to embrace best practices for energy efficiency and economically sound environmental value in their data centers, Climate Savers Computing is helping to increase our industry's eco-consciousness," said Andre Luthard, Blade's chief green officer, in a statement. In other news, Blade has a "chief green officer." So the company must be pretty serious about this.

Blade argues that the best way to an energy-efficient data center is to have replicated racks with standard configurations of servers, storage and network connections, a concept it calls "Rackonomics."

Many readers have expressed skepticism of green initiatives in the past, but as Network World's Carolyn Duffy Marsan wrote recently, CIOs will be under increasing pressure to give in to those initiatives.

Jeff Caruso is site editor at Network World.