The alliance will edify customers on technology infrastructure, practices and methodologies that can help them cut costs, use less space, improve performance and efficiency and "green" their business on their own.

APC-MGE, a leading provider of global, end-to-end solutions for real-time infrastructure has been a longstanding proponent of an energy efficient environment. It will provide know-how of data centre infrastructure architecture as a potential solution to address power and cooling issues, wherein AMD will offer its advanced energy efficient computing technologies which will help customers reduce business energy costs substantially.

Hitachi''s breakthrough green storage solutions deliver improved utilization of storage assets, which significantly reduce power consumption and improve IT efficiencies within the data center. Wipro''s expertise in system integration and consulting will provide customers options of scalability in the same footprint and help translate technology into business solutions.

As part of the company''s ongoing commitment to greening its global operations, Sun Microsystems also publicly unveiled an active, new data centre in Bangalore. Put into operation in February of this year, this data centre along with two others Sun built in Santa Clara, California and in Blackwater, UK, was built using breakthrough designs and next-generation energy efficient systems, power and cooling.

Sun estimates that the company''s data centre efforts have already saved the planet nearly 4,100 tons of CO2 per year and trimmed 1 per cent from Sun''s total carbon footprint. The new data centres house Sun''s line of energy efficient products, including Sun Fire(TM) T1000/T2000 servers, Sun''s x64 servers and Solaris(TM) Operating System.

Through this data centre, Sun has reduced 10,400 square feet of data centre space into approximately 5,096 square feet, saved nearly $100K in utility costs in first 6 months and reduced power consumption by 17 per cent. This combined with the worldwide consolidation efforts have reduced the companies data centre portfolio by over 200,000 square feet resulting in millions of opex reductions.

This new data centre also received top honours from PCQuest magazine''s "Best IT Implementation of 2007" beating out 250 submissions. "This data centre is based on Sun POD approach which simplifies data centre design and allows for the maximum efficiency while incorporating flexibility, functionality and scale." said, Ramesh KV, regional workplace manager that designed the data centre and manages the APAC data centre portfolio for Sun. "This approach has given us the ability to turn on a dime, it is a competitive weapon."

Speaking at the launch, Mike Douglas, head, field marketing, Sun Microsystems, said, "In the context of power and energy consumption, doing more with less is the new diktat for the corporate world- one can no longer separate the environment and the business, today what''s good for the environment is imperative for business, especially a technology-driven business. The Eco Innovation Initiative reinforces Sun''s track record of innovating around Eco design points and also emphasize the expertise and best practices we''ve developed as a result of consolidating worldwide datacenters and investing in Eco Responsibility.

"Sun has been one of the first organizations to define a ''green'' strategy, having delivered a microprocessor called Niagara (UltraSparc T1) that is three to five times more efficient than its nearest competitor. Having set the tone for the future of eco friendly computing, this consortium is yet another step in that direction and together we believe that we can do our bit to ensure a greener India," he further added.

Bhaskar Pramanik, president-India GEM, Sun Microsystems India, said, " At Sun, eco responsibility starts at home- we are not only at the forefront of defining industry best practices, but we are also following our own recommendations. The new data centre in Bangalore provides ample proof of this. Indian CIOs like their global counterparts are too facing the heat of problems related to energy and space and these problems are going to only get magnified as we make our progress and mark in the world economy. With this consortium we are hoping to raise awareness on the environmental aspects of running a business and with it promote the concept of eco responsibility."

Alok Ohrie, managing director, AMD India, said, "At AMD, we recognize that leading the world to energy efficient processing is about more than just the products we create. It is about building bridges between government, industry, and NGOs around the world to encourage energy efficient policies, incentives, and standards. We stand by Sun Microsystems and their initiative to serve one of the most critical needs of our customers, technology partners, and users."

"As data growth explodes and eco issues come to the fore, we are pleased to partner with Sun Microsystems to offer customers an eco-friendly and socially responsible approach to data center management," said Natarajan Viswanathan, Managing Director of India, Hitachi Data Systems. "Hitachi Data Systems provides customers with storage products, solutions and services that help them reduce space, power and cooling costs through improved storage utilization. Additionally, Hitachi deploys environmentally friendly methods to design, manufacture, and support storage infrastructures throughout their entire lifecycle."

"APC-MGE is happy to have partnered with Sun in setting up their state-of-the art data center in Bangalore. We understand the power and cooling challenges faced by the CIOs as a result of server consolidation and compaction. APC-MGE solutions address the data center challenges of space, cost of operation, energy consumption and cooling, while delivering high efficiency. The focus is on ensuring efficiency at both hardware and data centre design and management level, while reducing the total cost of operation. As part of this Eco Initiative consortium, we hope to create greater awareness for greener data center by promoting higher energy savings and efficient data centre management" said Pankaj Sharma, President, APC-MGE India.

Dr. Anurag Srivastava, vice president, consulting division, Wipro Infotech, said, " Wipro focuses on assisting organisations develop practical, workable and energy efficient solution to optimize their existing IT infrastructure. We are very happy to be associated with this consortium as this will help us reach out to a larger audience and edify them on making their data centre green and optimize their productivity and efficiency"

The eco innovation initiative builds on Sun''s eco responsibility efforts of the past year with its industry leading product technologies and the Solaris 10 operating system. The Sun Eco Innovation Initiative provides customers a simple, clear, actionable way to engage Sun''s innovative, open Eco products, expertise, partners and community to use less energy in their datacenter, reduce IT footprint and minimize operating costs: ''assess, optimise, virtualise''.

Sun software products provide record-setting performance to help increase energy savings and data centre efficiency. The Solaris OS enables customers to maximize availability by increasing resource utilization by up to 80 per cent and allowing hundreds of virtual environments to run on a single operating system instance. The Solaris power management project (Project Tesla) was recently released as part of Sun''s ongoing contributions to the OpenSolaris community. Sun Ray Software delivers a virtualized desktop to eco-friendly Sun Ray clients that consume only four watts of power.

Sun also recently announced the UltraSPARC T2 processor -- the most energy efficient processor on the market. At one-tenth to one-thirtieth the power consumption of competitive offerings, the UltraSPARC T2 processor sets the gold standard for green computing and efficiency, combining the industry''s lowest power consumption with double the cores, 16 times the threads, 4 times the throughput, with on-chip network and security functionality. Sun is also driving eco-efficiency into the data center with its UltraSPARC T1-based systems. With as much as 3x the throughput at half the power and space consumption, Sun''s SPARC Enterprise/Sun Fire T1000 and T2000 systems deliver breakthrough performance and dramatic space and power efficiency.

Sun''s Eco Responsibility Initiative is guided by three principles: Innovate, Act and Share. Sun innovates by making products and services that are both good for the environment and good for business. Sun acts by operating in an open, eco-conscious way. Sun shares by making information and technology available to others so that we can all move forward and participate in an increasingly sustainable way.

One of Sun''s many Eco Innovation (SM) products includes the Sun Fire / Sparc Enterprise T1000 / T2000 server, which is three to five times more energy efficient than its nearest competitor. Sun also takes responsibility for its products through end of life with its ''global takeback programme, which has allowed 95 er cent of returned products to be recycled or reused. Sun is greening its own operations through programs like open work, which saves our environment 30,000 metric tons a year by allowing employees to work from home or in a flexible office.