These audit services will provide organisations with the indicators needed to define high performance, eco-friendly and sustainable practices in their IT activities and strengthen their environmental initiatives. Schneider Electric and Bull will combine their expertise in the areas of IT and power infrastructures management.

Under the terms of this agreement, Bull will market the offering in Europe. Schneider Electric will rely on the leadership of APC by Schneider Electric in the data centre environment.

"Environmental responsibility is still a relatively new phenomenon in business", explained Paul-François Cattier, Vice-President France, APC by Schneider Electric. "IT Departments are aware that their data centres are consuming a growing amount of power, and are increasingly seeking eco-friendly energy solutions, but do not necessarily know how to ensure that this new imperative is a core part of their strategy for investment in IT."

The audit methodology developed by Bull and Schneider Electric has four distinct stages:

• identifying potential economies of scale once the scope of the exercise has been established,
• evaluating energy efficiency and confirming opportunities where savings can be made,
• setting out recommendations that are consistent with the datacenter's energy profile,
• supporting the customer in its implementation of an energy optimization strategy and in the achievement of performance objectives.

"Schneider Electric had longstanding experience in energy efficiency services and projects", noted Paul Hamilton, Schneider Electric's Energy Efficiency Program VP. "We have successfully implemented a large number of projects in the construction and industrial sectors."

In October 2007, Bull unveiled its "Bio Data Center" concept: an innovative approach using an effective combination of servers and services to deliver performance, flexibility and sustainable development. This approach focuses in particular on curbing complexity and enhancing flexibility, in order to simplify and strengthen IT infrastructures, and ultimately reduce the data centre's carbon footprint.

In this context, Bull's list of customer references includes numerous projects where the carbon footprint of IT facilities has been reduced by over 40%, and the virtualization/consolidation ratio is more than 15:1, with the number of low-workload servers being reduced and the optimization of virtualized servers to ensure they are working at 80% of their full capacity.