New server technologies currently being developed by Bull are adding energy management intelligence into the new generation of data centres. The mission of this initiative between Bull and SAP Research is to develop an overall strategy for data centre energy management intelligence combined with server management services, integrating business applications and end-user services to enable sustainable data centre technologies.

"This R&D project embodies our vision of the 'Bio Data Centre', a new-generation data centre that brings critical advances in quality of service, energy consumption, and flexibility to customers", stated Michel Guillemet, Group R&D Director at Bull. "This initiative, launched between two European-based global IT companies, demonstrates that Europe can act as a leading force for concrete innovation, addressing raising environmental concerns, while delivering to enterprises more efficient IT solutions."

Bull's R&D team and SAP Research will pro-actively engage in this initiative to tackle every aspect of the IT life cycle: design, deployment, operation and disposal. Through the initiative, the companies aim to meet the following objectives:

• Optimize transaction/watt ratios and energy footprints through definition of infrastructure guidance for deploying large-scale SAP solution-based landscapes,
• Develop an innovative approach for an effective combination of server technologies and software best practices to deliver performance, flexibility and radical inflexion of energy consumption,
• Develop best practices for virtualization architectures in order to determine break-even points for optimized carbon footprints of SAP solution-based infrastructures.

"We remain committed to developing solutions that help our customers better manage their businesses", explained Lutz Heuser, vice president of SAP Research and chief development architect at SAP. "Our co-operation with Bull in e-energy research will help both companies make further progress in the area of Green IT. It will help us to extend our capabilities in providing business software that helps our customers reduce their energy consumption, while looking at significantly lowering our energy expenditure at the same time."

Bull and SAP Research have already begun working together on their joint R&D initiative, which they expect to last for an initial term of three years. Through this initiative, the companies plan to provide various deliverables ranging from MIPS/watt benchmarks, optimized virtualized architectures, and energy management-enabled SAP software.

Bull NovaScale and Escala servers will be used as the foundation for reference platforms and best practices guidance. These servers already include strong features that make them ideally suited for minimizing the carbon footprint of the IT infrastructures in which they are deployed.