Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer anounced the
company'snew hosted Sharepoint and Exchange Server
productsthat signal the supplier's increasing
shift to green computing.
"The notion of sustainability is an important issue really for
all of us," Ballmer said at a press conference at CeBIT 2008. "We
are focused on opportunities to reduce power consumption by the IT
industry."
Microsoft said it had reduced power consumption in Windows
Server 2008 by 40%, which would have a knock-on effect for
datacentre energy needs, Ballmer said.
The software giant has reduced power consumption at both the PC
and server level. Windows XP used 100 watts per hour during PC idle
time, while Vista uses three watts per hour, according to
Microsoft.
Ballmer also announced the rollout of
Search
Server 2008, a software that complements higher end functions
of Office Sharepoint Server, and the release of beta versions of
hosted Sharepoint and Exchange
services for cloud computing.
"We will now have Sharepoint and Exchange available to
organisations," Ballmer said. "Our strategy with all these online
services is to let customers take advantage of the power of the
cloud, but with control over enterprise needs."
