The Eco Center achieves maximum energy-saving benefits by capitalizing on the optimization technology of NEC's "Sigma System Center" integrated with VMware's "VMware ESX 3.5" to streamline allocation of operations in response to hardware demands.

"Loaded with such advanced technologies, the Eco Center is ideally suited for the large-scale application servers and Web servers being used in major enterprises and government agency data centres", stated Mr. Yukio Ito, Senior Vice President, NEC Corporation. With energy-saving IT devices attracting considerable attention in the battle against global warming, NEC intends to actively market the Eco Center as the core product in its "Real IT Cool Project". An initiative that aims to cut the power used by customer IT platforms by 50% year on year, and to realize a cumulative reduction in CO2 emissions from IT devices by approximately 910,000 tons by 2012.

New product features include:

• Electrical Power Conservation: The Eco Center incorporates batteries that require 20% less electrical power than conventional batteries. Furthermore, its server components are optimally located to maximize cooling airflow, which reduces the system's temperature and amount of electricity required to operate. The system also features Intel's latest power saving CPU advancements through the low voltage "Quad Core Intel Xeon Processor L5420". Moreover, the most recent power conservation technologies, including chip sets, memory and more, enable the Eco Center to decrease power consumption by 55% when compared to earlier systems.
• Space Conservation / Weight Reduction: The Eco Center's dedicated housing is specially designed for easy storage as a compact server module consisting of 2 servers. Each housing unit measures 2 meters tall with a 128-processor / 512-core maximum capacity. The space required to store each unit has been reduced by as much as 50% in comparison to conventional equipment. The server module is also composed of aluminum materials, and features cores mounted with 512-core capabilities. Furthermore, the module's weight of 540kg is approximately 58% lighter when compared to previously available servers.
• Electricity Conservation through the latest technology optimizations: The most valuable element of the system's electricity conservation is met through a combination of "VMware ESX 3.5" optimization and the integrated "Sigma System Center" platform management software, which optimally positions operations in response to burdens placed on the hardware (application servers).

Future measures with the "Sigma System Center" to reduce electricity consumption through optimization include a planned collaboration with the "Citrix XenServer Enterprise Edition" from Citrix Systems. Moreover, the correspondence to "Hyper-V" contained in "Windows Server 2008" is also planned.

The Eco Center is also expected to support "Windows Server 2003", "Windows Server 2008", and "Red Hat Enterprise Linux".

NEC forecasts to begin shipment of the Eco Center to overseas markets, including the U.S., Europe and Asia by September 2008. NEC will continue to enhance its products and services under the "Real IT Platform" vision to achieve a more flexible, secure and user friendly IT environment.