In Short

Today's other technology stories in brief

Fujitsu savings promise

Fujitsu Siemens Computers has said it will donate €10,000 to an environmental charity if it cannot demonstrate how to make 40 per cent savings on any Irish organisation's data centre running costs.

Under the terms of its Dynamic Data Centre Challenge, Fujitsu Siemens will conduct a free study to show how companies running large data centres can make significant savings by reducing power consumption, operating costs and the physical footprint of their data centre.

"Data centre power consumption is growing by 25 per cent per annum. However, we believe many businesses simply don't know how to go about reducing this huge consumption of power," said Liam Halpin, managing director of Fujitsu Siemens Computers Ireland.

Mr Halpin said Fujitsu Siemens had helped reduce British bank Standard Chartered's data centre from 588 servers with 1,976 processors to 96 servers with 286 processors by using its BladeFrame servers and associated technologies.

Analysts at Gartner have said data centres account for almost a quarter of CO2 emissions from the IT industry. In April the firm found that the IT industry produces 2 per cent of global emissions - on a par with the aviation industry.

Nine Inch Nails to sell online

Following Radiohead's release of their latest album, In Rainbows, online this week, Nine Inch Nails are the latest major act to say they will begin selling directly to fans without using a record company.

In a blog post this week, lead singer Trent Reznor said Nine Inch Nails were a "totally free agent" and would shortly make an announcement about a 2008 release.

Kainos, Meridio expand

Belfast technology services firm Kainos and its spin-out Meridio have agreed to extend their relationship in the area of enterprise document and records management, which will now cover the British market.

This follows a number of new contracts won by the partnership this year, including the Audit Commission, the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, Bank of Ireland, Shipowners, the Northern Ireland Department of Health and Intertek.

15 years of ThinkPad

Chinese PC manufacturer Lenovo has marked the 15th anniversary of the ThinkPad brand of notebooks, which it acquired from IBM.

The 10 designers and engineers who introduced the original product have said the design was influenced by the Shokado bento - a traditional black-lacquered Japanese lunch box - and an IBM employee notebook with the corporate motto "Think" printed on the cover.

More than 30 million ThinkPads have been sold in 160 countries worldwide.

FotoNation patents

Galway digital imaging technology firm FotoNation has 180 patents pending and not 80 patents granted, as reported in last Friday's article on the company.