Fifteen per cent of the UK's total energy consumption goes on office equipment such as photocopiers, printers, desktop PCs and monitors, and the figure could rise to 30% by 2020 according to the Carbon Trust. If this were not bad enough, inefficient desktop PCs cost the top 200 UK businesses more than ￡61 million each year, according to a survey by Computer Centre and Fujitsu Siemens. One way to improve these statistics is through introduction of blade PC environments, which have been used by larger organisations since 2001. Research shows that blade PC technology can deliver big reductions in energy usage, cutting energy costs by 50%, and in carbon emissions. This could help enormously in improving the ratings required for certification as part of the EU's Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, which comes into force this year, with the UK's Carbon Reduction Commitment scheme to follow. Blade workstations are rack-mounted boards that contain a full PC, including processor, memory, hard drive, graphics and operating system. They are derived from blade server technology, which has been in use for several years, and as such are a natural evolution to the workstation application.
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