19/12/2008

NComputing becomes certified under the Computers Off Australia Green IT labelling initiative

MELBOURNE – Thursday, 18 December 2008, – Computers Off Australia (COA), a not-for-profit campaign and labelling initiative developed to help reduce Australia’s IT carbon footprint, today announced that ultra-low-cost computing vendor NComputing has been granted Australia’s Power Management (Green) and Virtualisation (Blue) certification.

COA is an educational marketing and awareness campaign, combined with a labelling scheme that classifies organisations using three colour-coded ticks that represent Power Management (Green), Virtualisation (Blue) and Carbon Neutral (Gold).The environmental certification labelling scheme is designed to help businesses, government and individuals identify organisations that are doing their part in reducing their CO2 emissions by lowering their power consumption.

“NComputing desktop virtualisation products consume as little as 1 watt per added user, compared to an average of 110 watts per dedicated PC,” said John Robinson, country manager of NComputing (Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific Islands). By using our technology, it is much easier for companies to go green. All too often, companies shy away from purchasing carbon offsets especially in a down economy when budgets are tight. The beauty of the NComputing solution is that it is also radically less expensive than dedicated PCs. It pays for itself from day one, and continues to pay for itself every day after with drastically lower energy costs.”.

Mark Winter, founder of COA said, “NComputing’s commitment to developing desktop virtualisation technology is a great start, however we are interested in what organisations are doing internally. NComputing has raised their hand as not only developing eco-friendly technology; they are also taking action and have implemented internal green IT policies that comply with the COA certification. We see this as NComputing putting the challenge out to other vendors and organisations to step up and certify to show their real commitment to the environment and to stop the “green washing” that we are seeing in the market place today.”

The objective of the Computers Off campaign is to encourage the use of new and practical programs being offered by the Information and Communication Technologies industry to improve energy efficiency and deal with global climate change. This initiative also supports an industry-wide target to achieve a 50 per cent improvement in Australia’s and global computer energy efficiency by 2010.

Australians can now make a real, tangible and easy difference to our environment – on a national and global scale – by using alternative ultra-low-power consumption devices and by turning off their computers when not in use.

Industry associations including the (AIIA) Australia Information Industry Association and the (ACS) Australian Computers Society Green IT SIG have provided their endorsements and support behind this campaign and labelling initiative.

The opportunity for us here in Australia is to lead by example and show the rest of the world that we can achieve something that we probably didn''''''''t think possible. By coming together and turning our computers off when they are not being used, not only can we can make a real difference, we can leave our children’s children with a habitable planet.
 

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