Nov. 9, 2007 Fujitsu Siemens has committed to making its entire product line energy-efficient at no extra cost to consumers.

Bernd Bischoff, CEO of Fujitsu Siemens Computers (FSC), made the announcement at a green IT forum in Berlin, saying the company aims to be "the first IT vendor to completely move to energy-efficient products," PC World reports.

At the conference, FSC unveiled a new computer monitor that uses no power in sleep mode. In addition, the company says it is banking on flash drives as the next big thing in energy-efficient data storage. Smaller external drives requires less space than hard disks and therefore require less energy to cool.

FSC chief technical officer Joseph Reger warned, however, that while green IT strategies such as flash-based data storage and server virtualization could deliver significant energy savings, technological improvements can only go so far. Datacenter employees must also understand their personal responsibility in energy consumption.

Companies need to give employees guidance on simple things like switching off monitors and desktops when theyre not using them, and switching off lights," Reger says. Its more practical to tell them these things, and monitor it, than presenting them with a kilowatt per hour figure for what theyve used, which doesnt mean much to a lot of people."

Reger suggests simple, low-tech strategies to get the message across, such as programming PCs to offer a green tip of the day. He also called for facilities management and IT teams to work more closely together to monitor energy usage.