While I still have some doubt about some companies motives driving their “green initiatives”, as I discussed in a previous post, this is definitely a positive trend with some potentially very positive outcomes. I will be excited to see what innovative solutions are showcased and will try to report back on anything of particular interest. To start-off see Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer, discuss energy efficiency that has been built into Windows Server 2008.

To confirm this growing trend of focus on environmental issues within IT you can look to see where venture capitalists are focusing their attention. As summarized by Paul Allen, at the Venture Capital in the Rockies event there were 20 startups invited to present business plans to 200-300 venture capitalists
from 8 states in the US. Interesting to see that from the 20 invited startups, 30% of them had business plans focused on environmental issues. Its refreshing to see new innovative ideas being developed and launched towards this initiative.

“The Story of Stuff takes you on a provocative tour of our consumer-driven culture?from resource extraction to iPod incineration. Watch this 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of production, consumption, and waste. It?ll teach you something. It?ll make you laugh. And it just may change the way you look at all your stuff. Learn more at www.storyofstuff.com“

Don’t get me wrong, I think it is great that awareness for environmental issues is growing and that many companies are taking serious efforts to make a difference. However, I really find it annoying when they just use it as a marketing gimmick without any real substance to back it up. An example of which I came across yesterday when I saw the advertisement pictured to the right for Rackspace’s Green Server. The marketing tactic worked on me as I was curious to see what was done to develop an environmental friendly servers. I went to the site to see their Green Server configuration, but was disappointed to not find anything revolutionary. It appears that they have just configured a server with components that consume a little less to be able to put together this marketing campaign. While this is still better than nothing, I personally don’t feel that it is worthy of the hype that their marketing campaign gives it.

Fortunately not all companies are using the “green campaign” for marketing purposes, but rather to make a real difference. An excellent example of this is Google as documented in this IEEE article. Surely there are other notable examples, please leave a comment to fill me in.