The technology industry, especially the enterprise-focused hardware companies, have been doing their utmost of late to re-tool their products and services for the perceived holy grail of new, "green" markets. An example of this is IBMs Green project initiative launched in the middle of last year:
"In May this year the firm launched its $1bn Big Green Project campaign focusing on ways it could reduce energy consumption.
Technologies which IBM touted last month included liquid cooling
solutions, virtualization systems and power management, all of which it
hopes to integrate into the new facility.
Data centres have been notorious for consuming vast quantities of
power, as well as pushing out large chunks of carbon emissions to keep
the beasts ticking over."
You may have seen several commercials IBM has been running to convince its target market, the enterprise CIOs (Chief Information Officers), of the merits in investing in "green hardware, software and services. This one is a good example:
Its an uphill climb, as other companies in the industry with similar recent initiatives, like Dell, have found. This piece in the Register yesterday is a case in point:
"Dell has admitted it wont earn much return on the energetic
greening of its operations and products, until CIOs get paid to have
greener data centres.
Michael Dell, Dells founder, chairman and CEO, said in a briefing
with journalists in London today, that the underlying interest in green
matters is growing at a fast pace.
But he added: "CIOs say the energy cost is not in my budget."
That means that Dell, after a breakneck rush to green its product
range, is offering products to CIOs who do not yet have an incentive to
buy them.
Dell thinks "this is changing. CIOs are being held accountable."
Asked if, when CIOs do get an energy budget responsibility, Dell would
be there waiting, he said simply: "Yes."
These markets take a long time to turn around to new trends and opportunities. Heres hoping in this instance that the market catches up with the vendors some point soon.
