HM Treasury Signs With Fujitsu For Green IT

As part of its ongoing commitment to “green” public sector IT, the government has announced a deal with Fujitsu services to overhaul communications and tech services at the Treasury.

Announced late last week, Fujitsu will provide services under the Public Sector Flex shared services framework to help improve the Treasury’s systems which the government claims are at “the end of their life”.

According to the government, the new platform will help the Treasury improve its energy efficiency as well as its business continuity. “The new solutions will conform to the Cabinet Office’s Greening Government ICT principles and will reduce the Treasury’s energy consumption,” the government said in a statement.

In September, unions criticised Fujitsu UK for announcing plans to cut around 1200 jobs in its services arm claiming that the moves are unnecessary given the company’s relatively healthy profits.

Earlier this month, the government announced a report tracking the progress of its Greening Government ICT programme one year on. Cabinet Office minister Angela Smith said the UK is leading the way when it comes to governments tackling the issue of sustainable IT. “A year ago the British Government became the first in the world to set tough targets to tackle the huge environmental and financial costs of computer use and I’m delighted to see the real progress that has been made. In just 12 months we’ve saved enough carbon dioxide to fill almost 2,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Fujitsu’s Laboratories of Europe also recently announced details what it calls its Total CO2 and Value Analysis system. The system allows data centre managers to analyse energy use and carbon emissions and “breaks new ground” according to Fujitsu by including physical infrastructure, software, applications and IT services.

Although not referenced directly by Fujitsu Labs in its announcement, the Total CO2 and Value Analysis tool is actually based on an open source data centre simulation platform developed by UK data centre efficiency start-up Romonet.

Set up by in 2006 by Zahl Limbuwala and Liam Newcombe, Romonet is currently focused on commercialising the open sourced data centre simulator it developed in conjunction with the British Computer Society and the Carbon Trust.

Fujitsu Services in the UK was once the leading UK computer manufacturer, ICL, formed by Labour Technology Minister Tony Benn, in 1968 from companies whose roots included the historic Leo computing company. Owned by Fujitsu since 1990, it was renamed Fujitsu Services in 2002.