Kermit has a lot to answer for …

This little bloke started the ball rolling on “green”. Since then the environment movement and now the IT game have jumped on the bandwagon.

Trouble is … are we sick of hearing about “green”?

I was doing a product presentation yesterday for Adaptec iSCSI Storage devices, after which I branched into our controller range and our newest feature … power saving.

The general response from the audience was “so Adaptec have jumped on the Green bandwagon as well!”. Is this cynicism justified? Personally I’m as green as the next person … got rid of the gaz-guzzling 6 cylinders for a couple of 4-cylinder econo cars, ride the pushbike where possible, catch public transport when possible (and it arrives), recycle everything possible (haven’t worked out a way to recycle the kids yet but the cheese and kisses is working on it) and changed all the light-bulbs for those environmentally friendly but slightly-dim units that have me thinking I need new glasses.

So I regard myself as “green” (sort of), and should therefore be excited about anything that saves energy. Add to this the fact that the boss pays me to go out and promote Adaptec’s new “green” philosophy and you end up with a “green” evangelist running around telling everyone they should “save power” wherever possible.

Trouble is, the general public (as in my presentation audience) have become jaded and somewhat sick of the green message. Therefore I think it’s time to develop a new marketing model for “green”. Try this one …

“Be greedy, save money!” Morally it’s not all that responsible, but logically it makes sense. If you can purchase two products of similar characteristics, and one will save you money over a period of time, why not be “green”, or “greedy”, and in the process save some money, save the environment and give yourself a slap on the back by proudly stating “our organisation is green!”.

For a long time now we have been looking at the fancy stickers on white-goods and trying to work out which one will keep the beer cold for the least cost for the longest period of time, so why not start thinking about computer components in the same manner.

I note that there are various developments in the power supply arena, promoting efficiency (and you can bet they’ll call them green). What about other computer components? Adaptec have started the ball rolling with their Series 5 and 2 RAID cards by introducing power saving features that will help the card pay for iteself over a period of time, but what about the rest of the components in the box?

When was the last time you asked your hard drive vendor … how much does this unit cost to run? What about the motherboard manufacturers? Or the LCD vendors for that matter.

Adaptec have started the ball rolling in the “green”/”greedy” department for computer components … so where it everyone else up to?

Food for thought.
Kermit’s alter ego