Fujitsu and JAIST Win Minister of the Environment Award for Significantly Reducing ICT Energy Consumption with Advanced Private Cloud

Fujitsu Limited and Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST) today announced that they have been awarded the 2010 Minister of the Environment Award for the Prevention of Global Warming for achieving significant reductions in the energy consumption of ICT equipment by building an advanced on-campus private cloud.

The award is given as part of the Ministry of the Environment's efforts to promote measures that reduce global warming, and has been granted annually since 1998 during the month of December, which the ministry has designated Global Warming Prevention Month. The award recognizes individuals or organizations that have made noteworthy achievements in combating global warming.

Background

JAIST has been building an advanced ICT environment to support the generation, storage, and use of research data in cutting-edge fields of science and technology. Since 2006, in particular, it converted the PCs used by its students, faculty, and staff to thin clients and installed an on-campus ICT environment consisting of approximately 120 centrally-managed servers.

Due to differences among students, faculty, and staff in terms of the peak usage periods of the servers, there was considerable variation in the operating rates of the servers. To resolve this issue, JAIST installed an ICT environment in which all users are able to access as much computing power as they need whenever they need it, based upon their usage purposes and timeframes.

The recent award recognizes the improved server operating rate and overall 48% reduction in power consumption achieved by consolidating what had been approximately 120 servers to 54 blade servers with superior energy efficiency from Fujitsu.