IBM Ponies Up Some Green Stuff For Green Tech Movement

According to this The New York Times report, the company is poised to announce a major initiative intended to double its data center capacity by 2010 without increasing power consumption.

As I have written many times in this blog, there are two big facets to the green technology movement. The first involves efforts to reduce data center power consumption; the Green Grid is the most visible organization in this arena and includes vendors from the server and UPS worlds.

There's a whole other movement focused on better asset redeployment and recycling -- and on the creation of technologies that are just more environmentally sound in the first place.

This is where companies like NEC Display have begun to pull away from the pack. I talked to the company's vice president for environmental services, Richard Atanus, last week, after Steve Jobs' big green technology memo about Apple came out. There was a big deal made out of Apple's LED research and development work. Fact is, Atanus tells me, NEC has had an LED-backlit monitor out on the market for two years. The company hasn't pushed the products that hard because it isn't satisfied with the power consumption requirements.

And at $4,000 for the 21-inch version, it's awful pricey. The big "aha" is in the product's lifespan: Atanus says a typical LCD might last 45,000 hours, while an LED-lit one could live up to 90,000.

"One of the things we all really need to do is educate the consumer about the totals costs and how much [a product] costs at the end of its life," Atanus says.

Incidentally, NEC was one of the companies that helped author the Energy Star program and it's big into EPEAT (Electronic Product Environment Assessment Tool), where it boasts the highest ratings.

You can expect much more buzz on the green technology movement, now that IBM is pouring lots of money into the issue and analysts such as Forrester Research have stepped forward to tap into the buyers' psyche.

In a report that it issued this morning, for example, Forrester reported that only 24 percent of the respondents to its recent survey of 124 IT buyers said they actually have a green technology program in place. Moreover, only 15 percent feel they understand their suppliers' strategies for green technology procurement and management. So, clearly, there are plenty of talking point opportunities for solution providers. Trouble is, many of you probably feel the same way about your own vendor partners. So, you will have to suss much of this out on your own. At least for now.

What's your carbon footprint? If you have to ask, that's your answer. Email comments, ideas and other random musings to [email protected].