Can I.T. be Green?

I decided to check back in with Dell's Ideastorm site to see the latest developments. The site is still going strong and most importantly, the customer dialogue continues.

In May, Dell announced the availability of a Linux operating system (Ubuntu) on three PC models - an offering created as a direct response to overwhelming demand on IdeaStorm (where customer submitted ideas are voted "up" or "down" - in a process made famous on Digg.com).

Most recently the conversation has steered towards environmental initiatives. Dell's customers have been asking how Dell can produce "greener" products.

And now Dell has decided to focus on this initiative.

To be fair, Dell has always promoted PC recycling efforts and has made attempts to use earth friendly components in their PCs. Michael Dell says they're one of the greenest companies in the Fortune 50. Dell supports a plant a tree program and their founder recently announced a personal commitment to match donations to this effort for the next three months.

Dell will be measuring their carbon footprint with an effort towards reducing it. And they'll be looking up and down their supply chain to hold their partners equally accountable.

Of course the reasons for "going green" are many. The Greener Computing website features an article on The Rise of The Chief Green Officer.

All this begs the question; What are YOU doing to reduce your carbon footprint within your I.T. department?

Here are some ideas:

1. For years I.T. departments have had to be careful when disposing of outdated PCs and laptops because of environmental concerns with some of the components. How about extending the life of these machines by replacing the licensed software with Ubuntu and donating the machines to schools, or charities? Giving these PCs an extended life will keep them out of landfills.

2. Do you offer everyone the ability to work from home and avoid the gas consuming commute to work? Is working from home done on an exception basis (inclement weather) or can employees do this more frequently? Could it be an option for your team?

3. Do you still have paper based processes at your work? If so, make these electronic. Once a process begins with a piece of paper, it automatically generates an environmental impact. Whether the paper gets used for a short period of time then gets tossed or whether the paper is moved around the organization for approvals, then gets filed. Electronic workflow processes dramatically reduce the environmental costs of routing, storing, archiving, shredding and disposal.

4. Hopefully, your company is already purchasing recycled paper for its printers. But have you done a print audit? If your company is using the same amount of printer paper as it was five years ago, you may not be taking advantage of the multitude of technologies which allow you to publish and subscribe (blogs and RSS feeds) or to hyperlink documents to one another or to collaborate (TeamRooms, Sharepoint, wikis) to reduce that mountain of paper we all consume each year.

5. Does your company continue to print its annual report? Why not simply put it online as a pdf document? Or offer a print on demand solution (at Lulu.com or similar site) to allow interested parties access to a printed version only as required.

6. Are you asking your employees for suggestions as to how to be a greener corporate citizen? Are you listening and acting on the suggestions?

If your company is adopting innovative solutions towards reducing its environmental impact, let me know how. I'm happy to publish your ideas.

Web 2.0 and Politics...more musings

I just read that Chris Hughes (creator of Facebook) has joined Obama's campaign team. Not that Obama's campaign needed more coaching in building community - he's already garnered double the number of campaign contributors than his closest Democratic rival. Agree with his politics or not, clearly he's a candidate whose campaign really understands the power of online community.

And now they have added Chris Hughes, who as founder of Facebook, clearly understands how communities can be built and grown over the Web. It will be very interesting to see what is in store.

To that end I have one idea... I've been writing recently about how Dell courageously introduced IdeaStorm - an open discussion with the online community about how to improve their products and services. If you're not familiar with IdeaStorm, click here. Dell invited interested parties (anyone) to suggest improvements. Participants can vote to promote or demote any proposed idea. They also promised to respond to the most popular ideas. So far, they've committed to take action on the most popular idea - which was to expand their offerings of Linux based PCs and laptops. This is already underway.

I bring this up, because the same idea could be a powerful way to further engage Obama support. What if Obama's team launched their own IdeaStorm? Can you imagine the power of unleashing the creativity of hundreds of thousands of people, engaging them in discussions about every major issue facing the country?

The campaign could then respond, by issuing position papers on the highest ranked suggestions or by having Obama issue a YouTube video, responding to the ideas - or both. I can't imagine any other tactic more engaging that allowing voters to interact directly with a candidate and one another. Besides the benefit of potentially surfacing ideas that might otherwise stay at our kitchen tables, it also reinforces the fundamental message that we all need to work on these problems together rather than falling into the trap of thinking and acting along traditional party lines.

This could potentially energize the voting public in a way that's never been done before. For Obama, it might offer a competitive advantage over the other candidates who seem to be struggling with Web2.0 - relying on the shifting tides of public opinion polls and recreating their images to better the outcome. What a great way to sidestep the interests of PACs and special interests and let the voice of the people be heard. What a terrific way to drive a constructive conversation on the issues that matter.

Time for mainstream Linux!

After reading more on Dell's IdeaStorm about Dell's proposed actions to offer pre-installed Linux on more of their desktops and laptops, it came to me that if there are any CIOs out there who are NOT experimenting with Linux based operating systems and OpenOffice 2.0 (or other web based applications like Zoho), they're crazy.

Eliminating the Microsoft "tax" is the next big cost savings opportunity for your IT department. Not only does their software cost more and more as a percentage of the cost of a PC or laptop, the forced upgrade support costs are completely none value adding (IMO).

Many companies must now support at least two operating systems (assuming they're running Microsoft exclusively) as PCs and laptops "refresh". And anyone who has gone through this learning curve knows the pain; applications that don't quite work the same way (or at all) under the new O/S. Then there's the learning curve of the employees (and your IT department!).

Even those intrepid souls who try to keep standard by upgrading older machines are faced with the possibility of having to upgrade memory, video cards etc or face deteriorating performance. Our end users don't need to be put through this! The whole exercise is simply non value adding for most companies.

So perhaps the time has come for the great Linux and OpenOffice experiment. What have you got to lose?

Have you visited Dell's new IdeaStorm?

About a month ago, Dell launched a brand new, leading edge, daring experiment called IdeaStorm. If you're unfamiliar with the concept, Dell has started an open suggestion/discussion forum with its customers using many of the concepts from Digg. The software was developed by Crisp Ideas and private branded by Salesforce.com.

Their IdeaStorm site allows users to suggest improvements to product and services offered by Dell. All users can then "vote" acceptance for the ideas they like. In this way Dell begins to directly solicit product and service improvements from their customers.

I think this is a very novel idea and an exciting one, but it's a double edged sword. By allowing customers (and I may be making an assumption here - users need not register using real names, nor do they have to be customers) to register suggestions, Dell is obliged to respond to the most popular.

Early on, the process was a free-for-all, with many duplicate posts, accusations of censorship (Dell was actually merging similar ideas and votes to help reduce the suggestion clutter). The process seems to be stabilizing somewhat now.

Interesting enough, the top ranked suggestion was for Dell to offer (free) Linux O/S instead of shipping all PCs and laptops with Microsoft Vista. The second most popular suggestion? Install OpenOffice2.0. Clearly the IdeaStorm has attracted many Linux fans.

What this has shown me (and Microsoft?) is that consumers want choice in their operating systems, directly from the hardware supplier. Obviously anyone can download their version of Linux, post hardware purchase, but the fact remains that they had to buy MS software they didn't want in the first place! As the price of computer hardware declines, the pre-bundled software is becoming an ever increasing portion of the purchase price.

The fascinating thing about IdeaStorm, is that Dell's competitors (like any participant) can see the suggestions and voting. If Dell doesn't act, their competitors might!

And it makes one wonder what the folks in Redmond are talking about this week.