International Green Machines: Is IBM the New GreenTech Master?
May 28, 2008 at 5:15 pm | Filed under: Green Tech, TechnoBlog
Last week in recycling news, we covered some of the green innovations in HP’s new line of printer products. IBM certainly doesn’t seem to be waiting in the wings with its latest set of green tech offerings for businesses.
For those of you who may have been out of touch, or vacationing on the moon, for the last four years, IBM no longer makes “personal” computers but instead focuses on the business market. So instead of printers with deep sleep power saving modes they are marketing a new approach to measuring, managing, and balancing a corporations carbon footprint.
What seems to be the golden egg is a tool (dare I say, “program”?) called the Carbon Tradeoff Modeler designed to–that’s right–model carbon tradeoff but specifically in a company’s supply chain. IBM isn’t just acting out of the goodness of their hearts here, a 2008 IBM Global CEO Study found that corporate social responsability, or CSR for short, is at the top of many executives’ agendas. IBM is touting the Carbon Tradeoff Modeler as a way to quickly and quantitatively balance services, quality, CO2 emissions, and cost. According to the official press release it also can make suggestions on how to reduce packaging, consolidate shipments, and effectively handle reroutes that increase efficiency. This saves the company more money and releases fewer green house gasses. If you aren’t sure you want to go in for the whole sha-bang IBM has a site for managing global supply chains as well as a free pdf on “Mastering Carbon Management”.
For those running a data center, IBM also quietly slipped out a couple of golden nuggets. One is an update to their Systems Director Active Energy Manager which keeps tabs on power consumption. The other is an online benchmarking tool for determining the green-ness of your data center. The tool was presumably developed in part by The Bathwick Group a lesser-known but no less respected IT consultancy group. No doubt the goal here is to drive more traffic towards IBM’s own paid consultancy services but for those readers running data centers, this free tool seems to be well worth a look.
One Response to “International Green Machines: Is IBM the New GreenTech Master?”
[...] IBM introduces a new consulting service today aimed at helping corporations measure and manage energy consumption and waste-water generation. IBM has made significant offerings in the way of helping to reduce data center costs and increase environmental responsibility. [...]