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10 Lessons from Volleyball, Part 2
Part 1 of the 10 Business Lessons from Volleyball can be found here. In volleyball, the only play you control yourself is...
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CloudTC and N-Able Acquired
"Australian-owned IP PBX systems company, Vixtel, has completed the acquisition of Silicon Valley based glass phone developer, CloudTC, for an undisclosed figure,"...
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ProfitBricks: Where InfiniBand Meets Cloud 2.0
In a recent meeting with William Toll and Pete Johnson of ProfitBricks, the pair were ecstatic to explain how their company has...
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Proactive Care Puts Operators One Step Ahead
By Thomas Fuerst, Senior Director, Multimedia Solutions MarketingAlcatel-Lucent
Monitoring and analyzing network data proactively saves operators time, money, and customers.
When a network service fails, it makes headlines, ticks off customers, and costs that network operator money. When a failure is headed off in advance, on the other hand, there might not be praise-laden headlines, but it's newsworthy nonetheless.
The traditional approach to customer care has typically been: a disgruntled customer calls customer service and complains of a service interruption or problem; the rep, learning of it for the first time, sends out a technician the next day, and eventually finds a resolution. Often, customers are left feeling put out, and the operator has spent significant time and money resolving the problem. Even worse is the customer who doesn’t call and just feels this is ‘typical’ of their network experience. That is a customer at risk of leaving.
Proactive care flips this dynamic on its head by using predictive analytics to identify potential outages or errors in the network and stop them before they occur. It consists of three main parts: one, constantly monitoring and measuring data on the network; two, real-time analysis of the data; and three, the most important, acting on that analysis to fix the problem.
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10 Lessons from Volleyball
I've played volleyball for over 25 years. I have traveled around the US to watch the pros live - both indoor...
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Emerging Threats Combats a Million Plus Pieces of New Malware a Week
There are 250,000 plus new pieces of malware being produced each day equating to one piece per person in the US in...
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NFV-Based Software Telcos Need OSS/BSS Interoperability
One of the goals of ETSI NFV is to allow new entrants to provide solutions to carriers based on software instead of...
Full Story »BMW Hydrogen 7
August 19, 2007
Does Will Ferrell have a place in a green blog? Of course he does as BMW has seen it fit to give him the keys to the first BMW Hydrogen 7 for everyday use. This is all part of the Hydrogen 7 Pioneer Program which basically means giving Hydrogen cars to high profile people.
Some interesting facts… The car emits nothing but water vapor and is not for sale. Some argue that using hydrogen as a fuel is silly because it actually consumes more energy than it produces but the opposite argument is that over time this should change.
Certainly cars become much cleaner vehicles when using hydrogen for propulsion.
For more information on celebrities such as Angelina Jolie who have driven this car be sure to check out autoblogGreen for more.
Retailers Push Green for "Back to School" Crowd
August 17, 2007
Jenn Abelson, writing in today’s Boston Globe, tells us that retailers are looking to the back-to-school crowd with the hope that their shopping lists will include a new item: saving the planet.
According to Abelson,
Merchants are trying to capitalize on the growing eco-conscious movement by promoting green products this season, from $70 solar backpacks that power iPods and cellphones to pens made of recycled materials...
The article goes on to discuss a series of back to school themed green initiatives from retailers such as Wal-Mart, Office Depot, and Staples.
Green Technology Conference
August 16, 2007
Please accept my invitation to be part of TMC’s newest event. Here is a recent invitation we sent out. In case you missed it, here it is. Hope to see you at this show.
50 Ways To Curb Your Carbon
August 16, 2007
Diane Solomon, writing for MetroActive, a Silicon Valley weekly newspaper serving San Jose, Palo Alto, Los Gatos and other nearby towns, has put together a wonderful list of 50 Ways to reduce your carbon footprint, based on some rather straightforward advice: Simplify!
For the full article and 50 tips for reducing your carbon footprint please click here.
Drink The Green Kool-Aid? Consumers Not Convinced
August 15, 2007
Despite overwhelming media attention, it seems many consumers are not buying in to the thinking that we are in environmental crisis mode. In fact, Yankelovich recently published research showing that only 34% (of a sample survey of 2,763 consumers) feel more concern about the environment than they did a year ago. Perhaps more troubling, a scant 22% of those surveyed feel they can make a difference when it comes to the environment.
For more, check out this article.
Morgan Stanely to Offer Carbon Offset Service
August 15, 2007
If you though the green movment was a passing fancy, think again. All you need to do is heed the age-old adage: Follow the Money.
In a follow-on to last year’s proclamation from Morgan Stanley that the firm would invest upwards of $3 billion in environmental markets, including carbon credit trading, Morgan Stanley announced it will partner with consultants Det Norske Veritas (DNV), an independent risk management foundation in a bid to advise companies that want to go carbon neutral.
DNV is also considered a leading international provider of emissions data certification.
Morgan Stanley is not alone. The margins to be made selling carbon credits have attracted the attention of competing investment banks including Citigroup, Credit Suisse and Merrill Lynch.
According the Morgan Stanley, the system will work as follows:
Under the new service, clients will compile their emissions inventory and calculate their carbon footprint by applying the monitoring standards of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Initiative, which has provided the accounting framework for many mandatory greenhouse gas programs across the world, including the EU Emissions Trading Scheme.
Chinaâs Green Olympics
August 8, 2007
Although air quality problems plague the world’s fastest-growing economy, China is doing what it can to have a true green Olympics. The city of Beijing plans 80 percent of buses and 70 percent of taxis will be fueled via clean energy by 2008.
As part of the efforts, 14 electric buses have been running on one bus route for two years in Beijing as a pilot project while 1,300 buses fueled by compressed gas have been put into operation.
Of the two million square meters of buildings used for the Olympics, 26.9 percent will be powered by clean energy like solar, wind and geothermal power, the ministry said.
The seven main stadiums in Beijing will be equipped with solar generators with a total capacity of 480 KW while 90 percent of the lighting outside the stadiums and hot water supply in the Olympics Village will be powered by solar energy.
Beijing will have its first wind power plant by the end of this year with a capacity of 50,000 KW, which will supply main stadiums.
While it will take a while to clean the air in China, the Olympics seem like a great catalyst to get the country moving in the green direction.
CO2Sink
August 7, 2007
We often read of reducing carbon emissions but another way to minimize carbon emissions is to bury them underground. Here is a fascinating article on an experiment to bury carbon in Ketzin, Germany. How is it done you wonder? In this case, an 800 meter-deep hole is filled with porous rock.
Automotive X Prize
August 2, 2007
Is a 100-mpg car in reach? We will soon find out. Thirty-one teams have signed up to see if they can win the $10 million prize being offered by the X Prize Foundation. All you have to do to win is develop a marketable 100-mpg car. As they say at Staples, “that was easy.”
Here are the details from MSNBC.
Burgers Far From Green
July 31, 2007
Eight Quarter Pounders generate the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions as driving for three hours while burning a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days. And you wonder why you get a stomach ache after you eat fast food. :-)
Here is the full article from Wired.
