Sun names VP for eco-friendly products

Sun Microsystems has created a new vice presidential post for Eco-Responsibility, reflecting the company's strategy to focus on environmental friendliness as a competitive differentiator. David Douglas will return to Sun to take up the position.

Douglas will assume responsibility for the strategy and execution of environmental initiatives across the company, including enhancements to Sun's products in the areas of energy efficiency, cooling technologies, product recycling and clean manufacturing, the company said. He will report to Greg Papadopoulos, the company's chief technology officer and executive vice president of research and development.

Technology companies including Advanced Micro Devices, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Sun set up an environmental project called The Green Grid in April. The project aims to reduce power and cooling requirements in computer data centers. The project is to announce next month a formal metric for measuring energy consumption of servers.

Douglas returns to Sun where he worked previously in a variety of senior engineering and technology management positions in both systems and software, including as vice president of engineering for Sun's Solaris operating system. In 2001, Douglas cofounded ConnecTerra, a startup in RFID middleware technology, and when ConnecTerra was purchased by BEA Systems in 2005 he became BEA's chief architect for WebLogic from October 2005.