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Permalink Reply by AlternativeEnergy.com on June 25, 2008 at 10:33pm

I think this is some of the lowest hanging fruit in terms of energy conservation and reducing carbon footprint. Plus it is an added convenience and can improve productivity. Wow!

I'd like this to be a prominent section on AlternativeEnergy.com so this site can steer people towards finding proper, trusted resources. Suggestions?

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Permalink Reply by Yehuda Draiman on June 25, 2008 at 11:44pm

How to make money by going green
For K H, group general manager and chief information officer of BUSINESS, the recent hike in the cost of
electricity has been a good thing in one way – by waking IT directors up to the business benefits of running
more environmentally friendly operations.
“Power is now 6% to 7% of data centre costs compared to 1% a few years ago,” he said.
As the price of oil has hit the roof, the cost of powering data-centers has become something IT directors
can no longer ignore. Green is not just a nicety; careful power management will actually help businesses
save money.
Any savings on power consumption will have an immediate financial gain for the bank. BUSINESS
is rolling out Sun T2000 servers, which are said to deliver up to three times the throughput at 30% less
power and cooling costs compared to alternative server hardware.
BUSINESS has also been using green PCs for more than five years and is looking at ways to reduce the
amount of printing that needs to be done.
For instance, the bank operates so-called green branches, equipped with LCD monitors that swivel, allowing
both staff and customer to use the terminal. There are two benefits, according to H. LCD
monitors have lower heat output so there is a lower environmental
According to H, the challenge is in
demonstrating to the business that people
who do not travel into a corporate building
every day adhere to the company’s principles as
strongly as those that do
impact, and less printing is needed since both the customer and staff can see an application form.
Beyond the power savings in the datacenter, energy saving measures within branches and cutting down
on print wastage, green can mean many things. At BUSINESS, H’s ambition is to try to demonstrate
how the greater use of electronic systems can support a corporate social responsibility by making it possible
for both staff and customers to be environmentally friendly.
For instance, H is keen to move customers to monthly electronic statements. These not only reduce paper waste, but also the environmental impact of transportation in mailing a paper-based statement to the customer. It is also cheaper for the bank to e-mail the statements.
Management
Any direct connection between computer systems reduces the need for people to move around. “When
people move around, you consume energy,” H said. So BUSINESS’s lab facilities are investigating ways to
reduce the amount people have to travel, such as better sitting of large branches. The idea is to “go to BUSINESS on the way to Waitrose,” he said. Such a philosophy also applies to BUSINESS’s own staff. H is assessing how a virtual call centre could be used at the bank. Virtual call centers are not a new concept, but
are rarely applied in the green debate. More often, they are seen as a way to have people who speak the same language and even have the same regional accents, to take customer calls. Staff benefit from flexible working hours and the business is able to employ people who would not normally be available for work.
A virtual call centre does not need a building – there is no heating, electricity or IT bill. Staff do not need to commute either. And since people generally heat their homes when they are at work, the environmental impact of heating an unoccupied house is reduced. So a virtual call centre is pretty green.
According to H, the challenge is in demonstrating to the business that people who do not travel
into a corporate building every day adhere to the company’s principles as strongly as those that do.
As far as H is concerned there is no reason why someone working from home cannot take customer calls just as well as someone who drives every day to a call centre. He believes this would benefit not only the environment, but also customer service, and improve employees’ work/life balance. He just needs to convince the business.
It is not just making call centre operations greener that can benefit from technology. Collaboration
technology can be used for tasks that were traditionally conducted face-to-face.
H: “The cost of one business class flight to Vancouver is equivalent to running one of our call centers for a day”
Take software development, for example. This is one business activity that generally needs teams to work very closely for a common business goal.
“Writing good software is like writing a good novel,” H said. However, software development is
a team activity and any deviation can be disastrous, leading to expensive bug fixing, applications that do not meet users’ expectations, or systems failure. Because of this it is not uncommon for a team to be flown in on a particular project. Yet H is happy running 50% of his software development using offshore teams.
The process by which these people interact electronically, in order to solve software development issues,
seems to work at BUSINESS.
H agrees that it is hard to talk to the business about how such technologies could work. But luck is on his side, thanks to state-of-the art videoconferencing suites like Halo from HP and Tele-presence from Cisco, such is the realism of this technology. He said, “My advice is to sit the CEO in a Tele-presence suite”.
Thanks to clever positioning of speakers and lighting, the suite creates the illusion that conference participants are sitting across the same table, even though they may be on the other side of the planet.
Participants’ voices sound natural, as if you were actually sitting right across from them, H said.
“And you can see the colors of their eyes,” he added. “Considering the cost of one business class flight to Vancouver is equivalent to running one of our call centers for a day,” for H, the value of such technology is immediately apparent. While these systems are costly, H said that for around an extra
$40 users can specify new laptops with a video camera built on top of the screen. Equipped with such a laptop, and suitable software, H said a CIO should be able to show business executives how
videoconferencing could be widely deployed. For instance, H has 14 direct reports globally and he communicates with them via a desktop videoconferencing system from Tandberg, which uses BUSINESS’s IP
network to connect users’ laptops, which are equipped with video cameras.
“We already have the network,” he said. After all, BUSINESS is a global bank so there is plenty of bandwidth
available for trying applications like videoconferencing. If the bank ever requires more bandwidth, the
quality of the video is simply degraded.
Clearly IT can support a company’s green policy. Buying green PCs and data centre equipment is
only the start.
H’s advice to any IT director looking to support a green policy, or even lead the way, is to show
people technology that is close to something they are familiar with and therefore would not feel alienated
by.
For instance, he said, the fax machine was easy to deploy as it simply operated a bit like a photocopier but
was able to send the scanned document to someone else’s fax machine.
At the time, it was also regarded as green, since it avoided the need for couriering documents.
Fax server software was supposed to be a natural successor, allowing faxes to be stored and accessed via
a central server, cutting out paper wastage from fax printouts.
However, said H, “While the fax server was much more ecologically friendly and offered greater
security, ultimately, it failed.”
The reason, according to H, was that business people simply could not accept the server; it was not what they were accustomed to.
H’s final piece of advice to any IT director considering embarking on a green policy is to “convince the CEO that the total operating cost would drop.”

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Permalink Reply by Brien on July 1, 2008 at 3:16pm

As the VP of a video phone/conferencing company I can wholeheartedly agree with the discussion thus far. Our offices are in San Diego and our developer is in Westlake Village. By using our videophones for requests and updates he not only saves the insane knuckle whitening drive down the 5/405 but on one call we calculated just his drive cost savings and it was at least $50 based on a fill up and 1 meal.

When we calculated the potential cost of pulling him off our projects for the 4 hour two-way drive based on his salary we saved $100's and no loss of project continuity.

We are working with a company to get a better real and actual estimate of the carbon footprint saved as well. Imagine the savings for flying somone to a meeting or flying yourself to an international client. The time factor alone can be worth thousands of dollars alone, add in flight, hotel, cars, meals and so forth and you really have quite a list of money being spent.

The difficulty we see more often than not is cost, it always seems like at least one side of the equation requires a large up front investment in equipment and bandwidth. Ease of use can also be a barrier. I know this is like a commercial for our service but we are specifically designed to be reasonable cost, easy-to-use, scalable and cross compatible.

For example, if you have a high value client which require fequent conference calls are they prepared to get a webcam to facilitate a move to face-to-face calls? Could they then incorporate such a service inside thier organization? Are they technically savvy enough? We have clients who simply buy our product and service for their clients and send it to them telling them to plug it into a power outlet and the internet. Once they do that they can have unlimited video calls between those phones and ANY other video phones on our services.

I believe interoperability will increase adoption as well as drive prices to the fixed rate and unlimited calls model that we are pioneering.

Research has shown that up to 55% of conversations are based on non-verbal facial cues, so video phone calls are definitely beneficial in business and interpersonal relationships. Now if your CPA, Doctor and other single office service providers had a way to join in the video face-to-face revolution...we are convinced at www.voicevisionusa.com that ease of use and cost are the greatest barriers to universal adoption that we will solve.

Alternative energy requires alternative thinking, speaking and action on a daily basis to become commonplace. Do something different today.

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Permalink Reply by Glen Roberts on July 9, 2008 at 9:23am

Dear Members,
We are equipped with video conferencing technology and we find it far and few between who have reciprocal equipment. We realized the need and invested accordingly.
Maybe a video conference call for members regarding this technology will assist with education.
Glen Roberts

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