Is Green Becoming Black Again?

A couple years back one of the biggest industry buzz terms of the time was "Green." Green this. Green that. Green is the new black. Are your PCs and datacenter green enough? Are you doing your part to be a green company? At the time, the buzzword was even larger in life than "Cloud," if you can believe that.

As with any industry buzzword, it’s the vendors who promote it in an effort to create an industry where one doesn’t exist. Some catch on. Others fizzle out. Still more of them evolve or are eventually combined into other industry offerings. At the time vendors wanted to provide green and efficient services, ensuring that companies were environmentally conscious. It was a perfect item to add to idle CIO's project list. It was more about being the cool company on the block, rather than a necessity of the times like the Cloud has become.

Granted, it's important to run efficient, conserve energy, and recycle, but to me those things should be built into the services, products, and processes already available. It should be commonplace – just included – instead of built on a money-hungry industry. Green is more about education than product.

And, I believe, to some extent, this is exactly what happened. The Green march subsided and once the banner was raised and companies became more conscious about caring, it truly did become commonplace. But, it's always good to get a reminder.

With products like Windows XP hitting end of life, it's good to remember that there are many older computers running older operating systems that will need to be replaced very shortly.

To help remind us that the Green effort is still very much alive, and to also continue educating us about how to compute smart and efficient, Microsoft has rolled out a new web property called "The Greener IT Challenge."

The Greener IT Challenge web site offers information and training on how to buy environmentally friendly hardware, enable and managed PC power options, and how to dispose of used electronics.

Check it out here: Microsoft's Greener IT Challenge