Email Emancipation

Remember the days of typewriters and memo’s, internal mail deliveries and the excitement that came with the introduction of word processors? Your desk had a work space, an in- and an out-tray, and your secretary would make sure the out-tray was emptied regularly in line with internal mail and the in-tray was organised with post-it instructions like ‘sign here’, ‘urgent’, or ‘for your attention’. You had time to ‘do’ work.

And then email arrived...

Are your Green Projects a sickly shade of Gray?

It’s time to get back to basics.

Green IT 2.0 is getting a lot more publicity but what is it? Put simply it’s about using technology to enable greener business practices. That means deploying IT in smarter ways so it’s used to enable further reductions in the total carbon footprint of a company. I read some Forrester research recently and they cited an example where Tesco has found IT’s contribution to their carbon footprint is only 4% but that it has the enabling potential to reduce their total footprint by 20%, which regardless of the calculator you use equates to what could be huge cost savings.

Good news indeed, especially with regards to the other elephants in the room – Climate Change and the ongoing Global Economic Crisis.

But what of Green IT projects themselves? Are they defined, organised, or delivered in a different way to any other project? And, how can these projects enable greener business practices not just to reduce a carbon footprint but to also increase business process efficiency?