Vendors bicker over green networking crown

3Com has been challenged in its claim of leading the market in making its networking gear more energy efficient, says PC World.

The company based its claim on a report by US analyst firm In-Stat; however, a rival has charged that 3Com only counted its role in enterprise-class large switches and may actually lag behind in greening the key market for small and medium Ethernet switches.

According to the report, Green Networking Equipment: Who Leads and Who Lags, LAN switches from 3Com are up to 60% more energy efficient than those from its competitors. 3Com added that its newest products are also up to 78% more efficient than its previous ones.

Japanese enterprises are expected to play an active role supporting China's efforts to build an environment-friendly society following president Hu Jintao's "warm spring" visit, reports China Daily.

Before flying home on Saturday, Hu visited the headquarters of electronics giant Matsushita, maker of Panasonic products, where he asked the firm to collaborate in environmental protection technology.

Hu said China is committed to building a resource-saving and environment-friendly society, and needs help with advanced technology from the organisation, one of the top sponsors of the Beijing Olympics.

Stressing that it is both good for business and the environment, one of the world's largest technology companies is pouring a huge amount of money and effort to develop more efficient and greener technology products, particularly data centres, states Manilla Bulletin.

IBM, also known by its moniker "Big Blue", made the colour green stand out as a concept at the recently concluded Business Partner Leadership Conference as it made the "new enterprise data centre" one of its three major focus areas - the other two are emerging markets and Blue Business application platform for collaborative software.

Sam Palmisano, chairman and CEO of IBM, said during his presentation that new technologies such as virtualisation, service-oriented architecture and Web 2.0 are paving the way for the emergence of a "new enterprise data centre".