Avanade’s Toby Velte has a post discussing the perception and reputation of Green IT.

The Reputation Green IT Doesn’t Deserve

“For the rays, to speak properly, are not coloured” - Sir Isaac Newton, 1730. What Newton was talking about is our perception of color. The reality is that visible light is electromagnetic radiation of various wavelengths. So that rays of 400nm are perceived by people as blue, 540nm green, and 700nm as red. The point is that the rays themselves do not contain color; it’s people that create this perception in their brains. So, our ‘green’ will be perceived differently by a turtle or a bee. I like this observation because it demonstrates the fundamental disconnect from reality and perception. Green IT is suffering this disconnect at the moment.

The post goes on to discuss how people are pro-green, yet IT’s actions are lagging.

The bottom line Toby points out.

If the real challenge is to change the behavior of businesses to adopt Green IT principles, then I will put my money on the ability of money to drive that change. Let’s see Green IT for what it really is – the right way for organizations to treat their customers yet stay healthy and competitive.

A friend pointed me to EMC’s Chuck Hollis blog.

Chuck Hollis
VP -- Global Marketing CTO
EMC Corporation
Chuck has been with EMC for 13 years, most of them pretty good.
He enjoys speaking to customer and industry audiences about a variety of technology topics, and -- of course -- enjoys blogging.

One entry which caught my eye is A Tale of Two Companies where Chuck contrasts two companies approach to IT.

Company One.

My job was to speak a bit about what EMC was working on now, and what we saw in the next few years that could really help them get the job done.

I rose to the challenge, and spoke with passion about the transformative power of newer technology to reduce cost structures, remove friction from traditional IT and be more responsive to the business.

I pointed to how many companies were getting started with today's products and achieving amazing results, and could only look forward to more goodness as the technologies marched forward.

I offered up that now -- more than ever -- was the time to take a hard look at how they did IT, and start grinding up a few of those sacred cows and start making tasty hamburgers (so to speak).

I'm sure that I was able to win over a few covert converts in the audience, but the conversation ended up being much more of the same.

I wondered if they had the passion and the incentive to change how they did IT.  Because -- from the outside -- that's what it looked like needed to be done.

Company Two.

The team was much smaller.  Everyone had a defined role in the organization, but knew what the others on the team did, and had a bit of shared perspective perspective.

They were intensely passionate about virtualizing as much of their environment as they could, as quickly as they could.  They had already done a lot, but had a burning desire to do much more, and do it faster.

They had already started to rework their operations around virtualization and "just-in-time" IT.  They had created a "new gen" environment, and were experiencing mostly success as the business welcomed the ability to put things up quickly, and change as they went along.

Chuck asks a good question given this economic environment.

The real question for me is -- how many IT organizations will look at this as big opportunity to fundamentally change how they do business?

Not only virtualize the majority of their environment, but re-engineer for speed and flexibility?  And, rather than expending enormous effort on each and every application, give them all a decent starting point, and adjust things dynamically as things change?

You can break down companies into 2 categories, those that are trying how to save their sacred cows of IT and those that are ready to throw the sacred cows out and implement change.

Or if  you don’t like the sacred cow analogy, here is Chuck’s other point.

When it's cold outside, you can sit inside and shiver, or get busy and build a fire.

Tony and Toby Velte have a post on Fast Company which brings up an observation.

Perfect Storm Forming for Green IT

| posted by Anthony & Toby Velte

Once we dispel the common misconception that Green IT, the practice of environmentally sound practices in the Information Technology field, is an altruistic pursuit alone and not grounded within the constraints of capitalism, we will see the adoption of Green IT explode. Several key elements in the financial markets, public opinion, and technology have aligned to form the perfect storm to bring about radical change in business behavior.

With the world’s financial markets at near collapse, lending clogged with fear, and revenue forecasts looking downhill, IT Departments across the globe are being told to 'do more with less'. That giant groan you heard over the past week was the sound of budgets everywhere getting tightened in reaction to the markets. Mandates tell business leaders to hold tight with what they already have and find ways to get more out of their current environments. That's tough when data centers are doubling every 5 years (US EPA Report to Congress August, 2007). That's tough when companies are more and more dependent on IT to run their business and differentiate themselves against their competitors. That's tough when technology in general has already resulted in lower operating costs and increased productivity. Shrinking IT back to where it was in the early 80's is more dangerous than the third rail.

If that pressure system is not enough, over 90% of consumers in the US say they'd consider switching brands if they learned about a company's negative environmental practices. Seventy-five percent of MBA students polled from top b-schools said they were willing to accept a 10-20% lower salary to work for a responsible company (Corporate Citizenship Study, Marc Gunter, Faith and Fortune, 2006). Consumers and employees are not only asking for more environmentally responsible organizations; they are voting with their pocketbooks and where they decide to invest their time.

Get a laugh today.

This video has an idea to harvest greenhouse gases in the office.