Christopher Mines - Senior Vice President Forrester Research

Since publishing seminal research on "The Greening of IT" in 2007, Chris has become one of the leading analysts of the trend toward more environmentally responsible computing. He regularly speaks at industry events and with top-tier media outlets on green IT topics, especially the interplay of enterprise requirements and adoption with supplier strategies and business models.

WHY GREEN IT MATTERS Christopher Mines, Euan Davis

Green IT is part of a fundamental change in the economy and society. It is a subset of the larger green (or sustainable) business trend, which reconciles sustainable business practices with profitable business operations. In the IT industry, both suppliers and buyers are coming to realize that they should incorporate green principles into the design, manufacturing, operation, and disposal of IT assets. The impetus for this change comes from a variety of sources:

Government mandates. Regulators in the EU, the US, and elsewhere are aggressively policing aspects of IT products and operations, including toxic materials used in building computing gear, disposal of electronic equipment, and emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases caused by power consumption and other sources.

Energy efficiency. Companies buying more energy-efficient IT equipment get the dual benefit of lowering their utility bills while also reducing their carbon footprint. Server and storage virtualization, for example, can deliver considerable savings in energy consumption as well as decreasing physical waste.

Product and company differentiation. Banking on growing consumer demand for green products and services, some retailers have developed "sub-brands" with a green angle, such as Home Depot's Eco Options label. Increasingly, manufacturers across industries will use green products and green corporate behavior as a way to appeal to this growing segment of customers.

CSR. CSR initiatives enhance the brands of companies by helping them stand out as those that care about the communities they operate within. Going green is part of any CSR agenda because of the prominence of global warming concerns.

This is excerpted from a larger paper on this subject avaialble here.

Listen to Forrester analyst Christopher Mines discuss the role of collaborative technologies in assisting with environmental sustainability initiatives

AT&T and Cisco have a unique telepresence joint offer.

There are two unique features of the AT&T/Cisco telepresence solution offers over other solutions are:

1. AT&T offers this as a fully managed service that includes all of the equipment as part of the solution. This means there is minimal "up-front" equipment costs to commit to.
2. The AT&T Business Exchange offers interconnectivity between any two endpoints on the AT&T Telepresence network. The way that telepresence has been offered in the past requires that the business be fully responsible for the supporting "mpls" network that undergirds the quality of the solution. This means that a business could insure the quality of the connectivity between their own locaitons, but they were essentially "locked" into their own network. This makes the telepresence solution more valuable, since many more site locations are avaialable on this network.

Below is short video with two executives from AT&T and Cisco discussing this breakthrough offer.

One of the most difficult questions to answer in the use of Telepresence is the cost benefit conundrum. As this paper illustrates, there are significant benefits to telepresence that go beyond historical webmeetings and traditional video-conferencing.

In their summary the Wainhouse Research Group conclude:

"Clearly, telepresence systems are delivering the remote meeting experience, including audio-video quality, ease-of-use, and realistic face-to-face environment that executives, product planners, and business managers want. Whether used in business negotiations, candidate job interviews, sales calls, or plain team meetings, telepresence systems are providing business professionals the ability to reduce travel while attending more meetings at the same time. The proof lies in the fact that companies who have deployed telepresence solutions find their systems are used more heavily than is the case for typical videoconferencing room systems. Although costly at first, telepresence systems have successfully addressed the limitations of typical videoconferencing designs. "

You can find a copy of their January 28, 2008 paper entitled "Telepresence vs. Videoconferencing Resolving the Cost/Benefit Conundrum"

By fully leveraging the power of the Internet, telepresence provides a truly viable alternative to business travel. A generation or more beyond video conferencing, telepresence creates an
environment where real-to-life participants interact in a shared boardroom, even though they might be separated by tens of thousands of miles. By replacing the need to transport humans to meetings around the globe, it’s fast becoming the ideal way to lower corporate carbon footprints and protect the environment, creating a significant return on investment and boosting productivity.

So begins a white paper on this subject in an article entitled: "Telepresence: reducing the impact of business travel"