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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 »Bahrain Pushes for Green Investment
July 20, 2007
The greening of technology and the move to sustainability is by no means limited to North America and Europe. In fact in a recent blog entry, Rich points out that The Viet Nam Cleaner Production Center and the Swiss government have signed a $5 million contract to establish the Green Credit Trust Fund in Viet Nam.
According the announcement:
Switzerland will sponsor the program’s initial development. The fund will be used to grant low interest loans for companies looking to buy modern, environmentally friendly technologies to up production.
Well, add Bahrain to the list of nations making the transition to green.
According to Jean Paul Carteron, chairman and founder of Crans Montana Forum, Bahrain has the financial wherewithal and the political will to become a leading green location by preserving environment and setting a new trend for a sustainable economic and financial developments.
Said Carteron:
“Clean technology is major concern in the world and the strategists view economic development in the perspective of profitable clean environment.”
The World's Top Sustainable Stocks
July 20, 2007
SustainableBusiness.com announced its 2007 Sustainable Business 20 (SB20) List, which comprises the World’s Top Sustainable Stocks in their view.
According to the SustainableBuisiness.com Web site:
The SB20 list, in its sixth year, consists of 20 public companies that are having an important impact on creating an environmentally sustainable society.
Rona Fried, Ph.D., SustainableBusiness.com CEO and Editor of Progressive Investor, explained the reasoning for the list in a recent statement.
“Our goal is to create a list that showcases public companies that, over the past year, have made substantial progress in either greening their internal operations or growing a business based on an important green technology.”
The list of the SB20 is presented below, with companies appearing in Alphabetical order. It should be noted that this list is made up of a broad international group of companies, which is illustrative of the fact that green innovation is a truly global phenomenon.
On another note, Google was given an honorable mention, so one might consider them the 21st such company on the SustainableBusiness.com list.
Company
Ticker
Country
Best Water Technology
Vienna: BWT.VI
Austria
Canon
NYSE: CAJ
Japan
Comverge
Nasdaq: COMV
USA
Chipotle Mexican Grill
NYSE: CMG
USA
First Solar
Nasdaq: FSLR
USA
Fuel Tech
Nasdaq: FTEK
USA
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters
Nasdaq: GMCR
USA
Groupe Danone
DANO.PA
Netherlands
Herman Miller
Nasdaq: MLHR
USA
Interface
Nasdaq: IFSIA
USA
Land Securities
London: Land.L
Britain
NIKE, Inc.
NYSE: NKE
USA
Novozymes
Copenhagen: NZYM.CO
Denmark
Ormat Technologies
NYSE: ORA
USA
Precious Woods
Geneva: SWX: PRWN
Switzerland
Renewable Energy Corp. (REC)
Oslo: REC.OL
Norway
Royal Philips Electronics NV
NYSE: PHG
Netherlands
Schmack Biogas AG
Germany: SB1B.DE
Germany
Vestas
Copenhagen: VWS.CO
Denmark
Whole Foods Market
Nasdaq: WFMI
USA
Electronics Recycling Day at Fresno Fairgrounds July 28
July 19, 2007
Before you toss that old cell phone, television, stereo equipment or computer in the trash, stop, wait and think a minute.
Can it be recycled?
You bet it can. Maybe not the whole thing … but at least parts of it … all you have to do is get it to the right location. Items such as computers, stereos, TVs, mobile phones and home appliances can very often be refurbished and reused (for example, many consumers throw away fully functional computers, mobile phones and other electronics during upgrades). Perhaps more importantly, their parts can be recycled and made into new electronics components or other consumer products.
Can it be recycled?
You bet it can. Maybe not the whole thing … but at least parts of it … all you have to do is get it to the right location. Items such as computers, stereos, TVs, mobile phones and home appliances can very often be refurbished and reused (for example, many consumers throw away fully functional computers, mobile phones and other electronics during upgrades). Perhaps more importantly, their parts can be recycled and made into new electronics components or other consumer products.
Vietnam Green Fund
July 19, 2007
I am intrigued with government initiatives such as this which allow for a trust fund to be set up whose purpose is to help companies go greener. In theory, companies in Vietnam of a certain size who qualify will be able to receive credits for reducing their carbon emissions. I wonder if something like this could take hold in the US.
Buy The Best or Greenest?
July 18, 2007
When it comes to IT should be green for the sake of the color or should we instead do what makes he most business sense? ComputerWorld has an interesting article on the topic and also delves into what happens when vendors tell little green lies.
CommuniClique Giving Away Saturn Hybrid, Launches âGo Greenâ Campaign
July 16, 2007
CommuniClique, a provider of on-demand collaboration services using VoIP and other communication tools, realizes that for every person who telecommutes to work each day, there is one less car burning fossil fuel on the highway. Similarly, this environmentally conscious company realizes if you increase the number of hybrids on the road, air pollution can be reduced even further.
As such, CommuniClique is giving away a Hybrid Saturn Aura-Green in late September to its 3,000th customer. The company is doing this in the hopes that it can influence its customers “to make more environmentally friendly decisions when it comes to business applications.”
CommuniClique’s IP-based conferencing solutions enable the “virtual office,” where managers and executives can collaborate in real time, no matter where they are located. The service lets users communicate via secure, Web-based VoIP on a “pay-as-you-go” basis.
As such, CommuniClique is giving away a Hybrid Saturn Aura-Green in late September to its 3,000th customer. The company is doing this in the hopes that it can influence its customers “to make more environmentally friendly decisions when it comes to business applications.”
CommuniClique’s IP-based conferencing solutions enable the “virtual office,” where managers and executives can collaborate in real time, no matter where they are located. The service lets users communicate via secure, Web-based VoIP on a “pay-as-you-go” basis.
IBM and APC Go Green
July 15, 2007
It really pays to be green if you are a vendor focused on providing power-saving solutions. Witness IBM and APC winning a data infrastructure contract at Bryant University. Interestingly they replaced Sun equipment. In my meetings with Sun executives in the past I recall the California-based computer company was the first to tout their solutions as green. So I find this an interesting move.
Here are the details from CNNMoney.com.
Dennis Leary on Carbon Footprint
July 14, 2007
The comedian/actor jokes, "You can take the carbon footprint and stick it up my ass. I don't care, I'm using electricity as long as I'm on this planet. I love turning stuff on, I love having giant plasmas (TVs) everywhere. If I could drive an electric car with a plasma in it, I would. I don't care about how much electricity I'm using.
Here is more from The StarPulse News Blog.
Yahoo Green Center
July 12, 2007
I was perusing the Yahoo! Green Center and for the life of me I cannot understand why Honda and Toyota consistently beat American car companies when it comes to styling, innovation and now being green. The top four cars in terms of greenness are as follows:
Car
Greenness
(100 is best)
2007 Honda Civic Hybrid
86
2007 Toyota Prius
86
2007 Honda Civic GX NGV
85
2007 Toyota Camry Hybrid
79
I just get the feeling the American car companies are just too macho to be the greenest. Well at least Ford has a great green hybrid SUV… The 2008 Escape at 34 MPG.
