Let's be clear about one thing, if the developing world wants to emulate the western world's way of life, we will need multiple planets to supply the raw materials and absorb the waste. EMC's Dick Sullivan points out that China has nine motor vehicles per thousand heads of population, India has eleven and the USA has 1148.

Huge changes need to take place and many of them are quite beyond the scope of the IT department. But, having said that, ICT generally can make a substantial difference and have a positive effect, not only on the planet, but on society and on company profitability.

In the last item in this series, we saw how changes in the data centre and at the desktop could make a substantial difference to energy consumption, space usage and the bottom line. Today we'll look at how ICT can support the organisation in its pursuit of environmental objectives.

Broadly speaking, ICT can help run a more efficient and less energy-consuming organisation. It can also help 'dematerialise' a company's products and the means by which it delivers its services. To take a simple example of dematerialisation, remember when we had telephone answering machines? Now the same function is delivered as a service, either by the telecom service provider or by software inside the organisation. More recent examples are online music and eBooks.

Another form of dematerialisation is to substitute travel with videoconferencing. We can transport people as bits instead of atoms. And save the economic and environmental costs of ground and air transport as well as accommodation expenses. EMC uses Cisco's TelePresence system and finds meetings very realistic. The worst aspect is that you can't all go down the pub together when the session's over.

Forrester Research suggests that, in future, the cost of a product or service will be measured not only in price, but also in terms of energy consumed over its lifecycle. No doubt a product's inherent recyclability and use of hazardous chemicals could also be taken into account. Such information would need to be recorded and maintained by IT systems. And it will apply to both the purchase, processing and supply activities of a company. All companies will need to account for their environmental performance.

IT can't act alone and its impact will vary in proportion to the type of organisation it is supporting. It must be difficult if you're the CIO of a coal-burning power station to know that 60 percent of the energy produced goes straight up the chimney. But we all have to do our bit and hope that others, with bigger carbon deficits are doing something about theirs.

The important thing is to look at the business as a whole, along with the CEO, facilities, HR and anyone else with a vested interest. Raw materials, manufacturing, logistics, staff travel and buildings are all part of the mix. IT applied intelligently can reduce road and air miles, reduce commutes and eliminate many business trips altogether. In America, UPS plans its routes to maximise the number of right turns. It estimates that this, and its package flow technology, saved it three million gallons of fuel last year.

Cutting the carbon footprint is a question of motivation at the top. Once a company has decided to act, every aspect of the business can be re-examined in this light. The trick, certainly in the early days, is to look for the big wins. These usually deliver nett economic, environmental and social benefits.

An IP communications network can put antennae in every part of a business. Instead of separate monitoring and control systems, they could be consolidated into a single all-embracing network, in theory at least. Building security, cctv, presence sensors, lighting, elevator control, air conditioning, fire alarms, remote sensing of reservoir water levels, railway points and so on could be integrated and automated. But common sense needs to be applied with regard to the investment needed and the payoff expected.

It's unlikely that anyone in the organisation will be familiar with all the potential opportunities. So why not create online meeting places where employees can discuss and share information and opinion? Especially in identifying opportunities for the beneficial application of ICT. The more ICT is seen as value-adding, the more it will attract budget and raise its importance to the organisation.

In order to keep the planet ticking over and to recover lost ground, we need to shift as many of our desires as possible away from material things and towards services. It all sounds terribly idealistic, but when you think that an iPod is probably thousands of times more environmentally friendly over its life than a conventional music system with its collection of records, CDs and tapes, then it's not such a big leap. We still get the pleasure we crave but with a much smaller environmental impact. The short term hit of retiring the old equipment and buying the new ought to lead to a long term nett benefit.

IT can help at many levels. Not least in environmental accounting for all the companies inputs, processing and outputs, in the effective operation of the buildings and services and in the minimisation of travel, accommodation and commuting.

But, it has to be said, if your company does not take any of this stuff seriously then your best bet is to show how environmental actions can actually benefit the bottom line. And take it from there.

Say "green" to most enterprise IT suppliers and they fire back with "energy". They see energy issues as the number one threat for organisations, and IT departments in particular. They also see it as their number one opportunity to hook their sales teams into your refresh cycle. The twin evils of faltering energy supplies and rising prices deliver hardware and software suppliers a chance to offer IT departments what amounts to an energy-related 'get out of jail free' card.

Dig a little deeper and each supplier will lay claim to a green agenda. As we saw in the last report in this series, some have a genuine history of environmental concern and try to be ahead of the regulators while others simply do what they are obliged to. It might help your company's own environmental credentials if you ensure that your own suppliers are credible in this respect.

Most vendors agree that IT equipment usually runs inefficiently. Servers and desktops alike only run to a fraction of their capacity yet, whether fully occupied or idle, they still gobble power. The cost of power is rising and demand for computing resources shows no sign of abating. Making IT equipment and its surrounding infrastructure more energy efficient saves money and improves your company's environmental performance.

The first step is for IT departments to figure out how much energy they use. Traditionally, this is not something they have had to worry about. Electricity is bought and paid for by facilities and accounts and a proportionate charge slapped on IT by the bean counters. Unless, or until, IT can measure its power requirements and identify exactly where the energy goes, it cannot put an effective energy saving strategy into operation.

For many organisations, this need to manage energy usage comes at the same time that the company is growing, placing increased processing demands on the IT department. These contradictory forces will be shaping the IT agenda very soon, if they are not already. One good thing is that computer power continues to grow while occupying the same amount of rack space.

If you're running a data centre, a large chunk of incoming energy goes on cooling. The next large slice is taken by the IT equipment itself. The next chunk is used by the UPS. If you are running racks of x86-based servers, the news is good because these are currently the least efficiently used pieces of equipment. And they throw out a lot of heat, which is usually wasted to the atmosphere although some companies try to put it to good use, feeding it into the space heating system, for example.

A more efficiently run server farm with a more intelligent use of cooling equipment could pay cost and environmental dividends, either by shrinking energy budgets or by enabling growth. You'll find better designed racks and cooling systems on offer. Some, such as Hewlett Packard's Dynamic Smart Cooling  can be retrofitted to existing installations.

Moving to the servers themselves, let's be generous and say that the average server is running at 20 percent capacity (estimates start at five percent). Obviously, you won't crank that up to 100 percent but, through virtualisation, 60 percent might be achievable. That's a tripling of capacity or a shrinking of the equipment and its surrounding infrastructure by two thirds.

What about consolidation? If your computer operations are spread across multiple locations, could they be brought together? To take an extreme example, IBM consolidated 150 data centres to ten and 31 networks to one. It also went from 3900 servers down to 33 mainframes running Linux. The savings were astronomical and are ongoing. Sun went through a similar exercise, slashing its data centre floor area by 80 percent and its energy usage by 65 percent. The IT folk checked out the function of every server and powered down hundreds whose function couldn't be determined.

Sun estimates that the average desktop is run at around one percent of capacity. It advocates a thin client approach using its 4 watt SunRay devices. But, regardless of whether its figure for PCs is accurate, it does raise the issue of the appropriateness of equipment. Do people need the PC power that they're given? Do they know that standby mode consumes less energy than a screen saver? Do they switch off their machines at night? In the data centre, are the servers, storage and cooling over-specified for the job at hand? Would it matter if lower-power processors or slower drives were used?

Whichever way you look, the question "is this resource appropriate for the task?" can be asked. It's not a case of fork-lifting in a new data centre, although some vendors would love that, it's about systematically considering each component in a green/energy light in advance of your next equipment refresh.

And, when the time comes to refresh, don't forget to plan for the environmentally friendly disposal of old equipment and the packaging of the new equipment. An increasing number of manufacturers will be happy to make this part of the deal.

Call it green, call it sustainability, call it environment, the name doesn't matter. The fact is that the general public has now become agitated about the issue with the result that companies have to respond. Various bits of legislation that exist now, and which are coming down the track, are bringing the issues into even sharper focus.

As IT professionals you have a responsibility to ensure that you optimise your own operations' impact on the environment. But it's a challenge to figure out where best to apply resources for the greatest impact. Do you invest in upgrading the data centre? Or do you provide new services to the organisation which enable it to reduce its own environmental impact?

According to recent research from Chatsworth Communications, environmental protection is not what motivates companies to adopt green policies. The top three motivators appear to be image, then customer pressure, then money.

Essentially, public companies don't have consciences; their primary concern is to deliver a return to their shareholders. It may be that this is best done by very publicly 'going green', thereby attracting customer loyalty. Or it may be by slashing energy-related costs. The environmental benefits are more or less a side-issue to increased profits or reduced costs.

As a prelude to more discussions about the environmental impact opportunities for IT, Freeform Dynamics decided to see what 10 major suppliers had to say on the subject. After all, one of the key elements of a green strategy is to ensure that all participants in the supply chain share the same commitments.

The first thing to note is that that vendors' green strategies are generally global. This means that different countries will react in different ways. At risk of offending people in two countries, readers based in Germany might be astonished to see companies bragging about their recycling activities while Americans might find it quite radical.

IBM boasts about its environmental programme being initiated in 1967 - long before even Small is Beautiful was written by E.F. Schumacher and also before some of the other companies in the top list were even founded. HP started product recycling in 1987 and Apple found its environmental feet in 1990. (I remember taking a briefing shortly afterwards in an office high in the Apple building, from which you could clearly see a brown photochemical haze enveloping Silicon Valley.)

It's also interesting to note the terminology used by different companies. It may reflect a natural caution by the corporate communications department. On the other hand, it might represent an attempt to mislead. If in doubt, do seek clarification.

More or less all companies talk of their commitment to something or other. Ignore that. What matters is what they're actually doing. Some say that they have policies. Again, that's very nice, but they need to have followed it with actions. So look out for active verbs, "we provide", "we conserve", "we lessen", and so on.

You can disregard "we meet all applicable government requirements." They have to, it's the law. However, if the most stringent requirements are met company-wide, then this is a good sign. Some say that they "exceed" their legal obligations. Cisco, for example, says: "Our programmes extend beyond environmental compliance...", and then explains how. This is clearly a better approach than simply meeting legal obligations.

The extreme of environmental friendliness is to return more value to the environment than is taken out. A negative carbon footprint, if you like. And no cheating by purchasing carbon credits. The Cradle to Cradle approach advocates the reuse of waste in components of equal or higher value to those from which it was recovered. That's a tough call, but some companies are trying to achieve such genuine sustainability.

A lot of companies claim to be doing the right thing, but it only applies to part of their operations. If they rely more on anecdotes than policies, plus proof, then they're possibly greenwashing and need to be checked out. ISO accreditations - 9000 and 14001 - are a good sign that they actually do have the right processes in place.

One of the problems is that even the best companies talk of visions, goals and commitments. While such public assertions are admirable, they're no substitute for measurable objectives or real evidence. Look for a 'take-back' story. Companies that do this generally give figures and, more importantly, achieve control of the recycling process thus optimising its effectiveness.

Finally, the Carbon Disclosure Project is a good place to check out most of your suppliers. They are asked to report their activities related to climate change. The volume and completeness of reporting speaks volumes. It also provides a more independent and structured view of their activities than declarations on the companies' own web sites.

By David Tebbutt, programme director, Freeform Dynamics

We had the opportunity of talking to Patrick Tiernan, HP's vice president for corporate social and environmental responsibility, and some of the other folks from HP last night and enjoyed a good chat with them.

There is no denying that Pat, in the six months or so since he took up the role has got stuck in, and the fact that he is spending nearly half his time with HP’s customers sounds like a good idea.

One of the key issues that HP is keen to put forward, is that it has been 'a good guy' (let's agree that means caring more than average about its social and environmental impact) for over 30 years, and is one of the key differentiators between how it behaves now, how it feels it should be perceived by the world at large, and what everyone else is doing. I have no reason to take issue with HP on this point but am currently wondering out loud (as I did last night) as to how much it’s actually going to help them in the future.

What I mean is this: Accepting HP's position that it has been making an effort to be environmentally sound for much longer than the rest of the market means we could decide to agree that the market’s thinking has caught up with HP's.

However, I feel that HP's heritage in this market (or anyone else's for that matter) - given the rest of the world has only just woken up to the fact that being good guys and being successful in business are not mutually exclusive - might not count for much outside its existing customer base. It might not have counted for much within its customer base either, unless HP already knows how much incremental business it has won from other suppliers as a result of its good-guy activities over the last 30 years. Which I doubt it does.

Maybe it doesn’t matter, but I’m not convinced that using its heritage in this area to give it a head start against other IT vendors will help very much at all. The user market only started counting recently, as did the mainstream media, the analysts et al.

So where does this leave HP and other IT vendors that have, in the past, at least made an effort to be responsible?

HP’s risk is that it has never been that great at getting the positive stuff out into the market - this can't be the PR department’s fault, more a bushel hiding, slightly odd bit of 'protective' corporate policy at work perhaps.

This could mean that relatively, HP could end up going backwards while others shout louder and 'do green stuff' more obviously to claim the plaudits. I didn’t have to look far to find an example - where is HP on this list?

I'm sure there are other lists where HP is riding high, but if the goal is to tell everyone what’s good and positive about HP's activities both now and in the past, then HP needs to start playing the game harder. It runs the risk, like everyone though, of hyping the 'green thing' into meaninglessness.

Let’s not forget, the ideal goal is to make green the norm, but NOT, as I fear many will, to make the norm green.

From a business point of view though, bragging rights with no substance to back them up doesn’t win business and this is where HP might have the edge.

The sustainability, energy consumption and general manageability of corporate IT is a big focus right now for sure. The work HP and other vendors are doing on energy efficiency, cooling, recycling/waste disposal and ‘designing green-ness’ into their products sets a better, (but related) agenda to the more emotive ‘green campaign’.

It’s better because it makes business sense for its customers.

They don’t even have to be green-minded to benefit either. The good thing about most of the issues surrounding the notion of being kinder to the planet is that they make sense at a business level. If the result of them making purchasing decisions based on energy efficiencies and capability to comply with ever-more stringent disposal and recycling initiatives saves money and is kinder to the environment, then everyone’s a winner.

We’ve not even touched on the other side of HPs corporate responsibility  activities, and that’s supply chain ethics (essentially ensuring that sourcing and manufacturing activities don’t necessitate the mistreatment of workers or the environment), which is as emotive and important an issue as the environment, but is harder to pin down in terms of impact on cost and availability of certain goods.

This is one area in which any company acting alone faces the risk of being undercut by less scrupulous rivals, and so it will be interesting to see how HP handles this going forwards. 

Spreading  the environmental message, supply chain ethics best practice, and demonstrating how HP's kit helps ' the customer’s business and the world at large are then good reasons as to why Pat Tiernan has been spending significant time with customers.

If he can seed some of the 'ways to do things', on top of the ‘buy HP because it will save you money and is greener', then HP stands a much better chance of being aligned in its customers eyes with being 'the good guy in business, and the good guy for our business'.

Now if they could just show me how to stop my printer defaulting to hi-res...

One final thing. I found out last night that HP recently made the offer of off-setting every analyst’s travel carbon emissions for a year if they’d pay for half their airfare to attend a recent event.

Nobody took them up on it. Shame on us.

I recently joined a group of IT managers to dig into the issues they face in building their next-generation desktop architectures.

The format of the event was a roundtable discussion on key issues, sponsored by NEC and hosted by Computing. But once we started going round the table doing the introductions, it seemed that everyone was keen to unburden themselves of the pressing issues and trends that they see today, and it’s interesting to see how this small sample mirrors some of the output of Freeform Dynamics’ primary research.

One of the areas that we naturally covered was the migration to Microsoft Vista and the Office 2007 application suite. Opinions in the room matched the research that we carried out on Vista adoption in the first part of 2006, with only one out of the 10 IT managers present doing an active migration, the others preferring to wait some period of time until convinced of the stability of the new products. This latter course was expressed in a number of different ways, from the standard ‘not until Service Pack 2’ statement to a more measured response tied to the product lifecycle of the PCs.

One of the frustrations expressed was the feeling that everyone was being driven by Microsoft’s product release agenda, rather than being involved in a consultative process to take business capability forward on the new platforms. While we all like to be armchair marketing experts, there is an argument that says that Microsoft has been very keen on pushing the new technologies in Vista and Office 2007 and the degree of development effort involved in delivering them, encapsulated in the mass advertising around the campaign ‘The Wow starts now’, as opposed to communicating the undoubted business benefits that can be derived from adopting them. This is particularly true of new line of business applications developed using the latest version of Visual Studio that can access the new display capabilities in Vista, and the integration of products in the Office suite with collaboration services such as SharePoint.

SharePoint has achieved a viral level of success within organisations, much in the way that departmental Lans (local area networks) did in the 1980s, and this was again validated by a straw poll in the room, with some of the participants noting their surprise at how many SharePoint servers they were able to find on their networks when they went and looked. In a lot of cases these servers remained in place after the project they were set up to support had finished, which raises some interesting issues around management and administration.

Clearly SharePoint is delivering business value, but in many cases there is no corporate policy for management and use, so it’s probably a sound idea for IT and business to get together to develop a support and management model for better managed use of the technology. This would then make it easier to develop some of the Office 2007 collaboration features that would otherwise be underutilised. This additional value would also help motivate users to go through the pain barrier as far as learning the use of the new look-and-feel of the suite, such as the ribbon menu system.

Another area that a number of participants commented on was the pressure on IT coming from newer entrants to the workforce who have been accustomed to a rich online experience. It’s often frustrating for these younger people to move into to a computing environment that is missing the kind of collaborative experience that they have been used to. In many cases they understand the difference between work and social life, but they don’t understand why technologies such as online group chat, file sharing and free voice over IP are not available to facilitate their work.

This feeling is further strengthened when the employer claims a commitment to home working, in which case the remote worker is using a home machine on which they are used to using newer social tools. This contrasts with the challenge at the other end of the age and experience spectrum with more mature workers who lack IT confidence, feeling very nervous about setting up and doing self-maintenance on home networking.

There was also some discussion on the whole area of green computing. Much in the news with politicians tripping over themselves to burnish their ecological credentials, IT managers are dealing with more practical issues, like how to get all the heat out of dealing rooms that have three computers and five screens per desk, and getting power in and out of wiring closets that have to be upgraded to support the power over Ethernet (PoE) required to drive the latest generation of IP phones. Having worked for a thin client manufacturer in a former life, it was good to hear that this technology still has good mindshare in the enterprise, with many IT managers considering it for suitable environments such as call centres, hotdesks, and applications where data has to be kept away from local storage. Many of the drawbacks are now overcome, particularly in areas of graphics delivery, with newer techniques such as those from NEC allowing the delivery of streaming video without being hamstrung by the poor performance of the screen display protocol.

The main conclusion, which isn’t exactly a revelation, is that IT managers are clearly ready to embrace newer technologies, but on their own terms. Key criteria include achieving harmony with existing investments in software and systems, as well as timing of the product upgrade cycle. Vista and Office upgrades will be more palatable if they fit this model, as opposed to being force-fed as the only available software option on newer equipment. But the substantial discontinuity that this migration represents is giving some IT managers, particularly those in the public sector with an obligation to get the most utility from the public money they use, to look, however briefly, at alternative desktop technologies such as thin client, and even different software solutions such as Linux, OpenOffice and StarOffice.

David Perry