What’s Your Green Cloud Plan?

My latest post What’s Your Green Cloud Plan? on KnowYourCloud 

Please take a moment to think about your engagement in a better IT environment, but nevertheless - enjoy!

Short break out:

"And when Greenpeace is on your case there’s really nowhere to hide; as a big cloud service provider you get bad publicity = less money. That’s it. Always. The IT industry’s black sheep

Customer newsletters

A couple of days ago I read an excellent and easy post about customer newsletters named 'Your Most Powerful Marketing Tool - A Customer Newsletter' written by Tripp Braden (@TrippBraden). I so agree with the text (cut from the post) "Newsletters are cheap, they provide valuable information, and they keep your name in front of your customers, prospects, and former customers."

I think a customer newsletter is a really strong market tool because of the ease creating, writing and publish, also because of the low cost. Of course as long as it is in a friendly layout and with a good content. Unfortunately I see to many uninteresting newsletters which I delete immediately.

At TeleComputing we send out newsletters quarterly. It might be too seldom and that a monthly would be better but it how it is for the moment. We focus on writing basic general articles about new services, business, trends etc and have always as a start the MD-words and end it with an interview with one of our employees. We never do it too "selly", then the receivers for sure would delete it. They want good information from their service provider and not the feeling that they have to buy things, even if the main goal for the sender in the end always is to get more business and to be seen on the market.

I think the trick to get readers, and business, from your newsletter is to embrace quality before quantity, but of course with a high quantity of receivers.

I'm sure our cost isn't as low as Tripp says, 0.89$ the send out, but it's definitely less expensive than to do print outs, which appeal to Green IT and definitely to cloud because it can be read from any device any time.

Inspiration (in Swedish, but you can get a good idea of a successful layout and context): TeleComputing News

TeleComputings nyhetsbrev 3-11 (in Swedish)

TeleComputing Sverige skickade tidigare idag ut sitt nyhetsbrev, nr 3 2011. Nyhetsbrevet är skriven på en grundläggande marknadsnivå.

Innehåller bl a artiklarna Office 365, Pads och UC samt den mycket glädjande nyheten att TeleComputing i Norden nu är ISO14001, alltså miljöcertifierat.

Nyhetsbrevet hittar du på http://www.telecomputing.se/sv/TeleComputing-Sweden/Om-TeleComputing/TeleComputing-News/Telecomputing-News-3-11/

Kortis ur Office 365:

Tidigt i somras lanserade Microsoft Office 365 som TeleComputing är återförsäljare av. Microsoft Office 365 är Microsofts lösning för kommunikation, samarbete, webbmöten och produktivitet – i molnet. Med Office 365 kan man enkelt dela dokument och samarbeta med hjälp av snabbmeddelanden, samarbetsportaler, webbkonferenser. Man har även senaste versionen av kontorsprogramvaran Office, dokument, kontakter, kalender och e-post lätt tillgängliga via närmaste dator eller mobiltelefon med webbläsare.

Energy consumption

There are a lot of articles and tweets about how cloud computing will cut energy consumption and costs in the future. One example is a report from Pike Research which says “that the adoption of cloud computing will lead to a reduction of data center energy consumption of 31% from 2010 to 2020.”

The report also quotes senior analyst Eric Woods who says “Cloud computing revenue will grow strongly over the next decade, with a CAGR of almost 29%. But the reduction in energy consumption will be even more significant. Massive investments in new data center technologies and computing clouds are leading to unprecedented efficiencies."
CAGR - Compound Annual Growth Rate

You can find a lot more to read about this on the web.

It is important that we can increase our productivity and efficiency by adopting cloud computing. It is also important putting on-premise solutions in modern data centers (with modern hardware), whether or not outsourced. Unfortunately many of the on-premise solutions are not that modern and won’t be upgraded that often like an MSP’s. Green IT might be a buzz word but never underestimate the importance of energy consumption; it will save money and definitely save our environment and the earth. A earth with limited resources.