eSolve Blog
Real Green IT - reducing the number of meetings
May. 13, 2009 10:47
"Green IT" and "Green Computing" is gaining significant attention these days. Wikipedia notes that "Green computing is the study and practice of using computing resources efficiently." Yet, with all the focus on going green, one underlying problem is not being addressed, especially in the area of using technology to improve communication and collaboration. Although technology such as Cisco Telepresence and gotomeeting.com offers an alternative to face-to-face communication to reduce travel and energy use, the basic problem – too many meetings – is not addressed.
Cisco reports that, since 2006, workers using its real-time virtual meeting technology have avoided travel for 17,500 meetings, savings $90M and 20 million cubic meters of emissions, or the equivalent of 8700 cars off the road. However, avoiding travel for meetings, only to replace it with online and virtual meetings, is not a final solution. In fact, online meetings can cost more and be less effective than face-to-face meetings, since they often tie-up more people in more locations, although few participants actively participate or engage in those meetings. A better method is to reduce the need for meetings while providing a better way for virtual teams to work and collaborate. The best way to accomplish this is to use non-real time communication. This can easily reduce the need for meetings by at least 25%.
The non-real time forms of communication used most often are email, chat, blogging, and other Web 2.0 social networking tools, such as Wiki’s, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Unfortunately, none of these methods has a project focus and communication is often random, difficult to follow, off topic, and cannot be tied to specific work projects. Finding information when needed among all these dispersed sources has become an increasing problem, and the risk of losing important business information has increased. Workers have resorted to storing key data on laptops and mobile devices and this also increases the risk of data loss due to stolen or lost devices, and device failures (e.g., hard disk crashes).
A new, non-real time form of online communication called “project collaboration” has emerged that combines Web 2.0 tools and social networking with project management. These tools allow workers not only to discuss doing work, but actually conduct it anytime, anyplace, using a web browser and avoid business travel to attend meetings. Information is organized by project and is primarily text-based and easily searchable. The benefit of this type of communication is that persons both inside and outside organizational boundaries can engage in project discussions and work, since the tools reside outside organizational firewalls on the Internet. When properly secured, this form of communication provides a central store of information that captures all communication and discussion about a project or problem, normally only found in email. Users can discuss issues, develop solutions, collaborate on documents, share results, and plan tasks, all without physically meeting. This reduces the need for real-time communication to an absolute minimum, since all project data and interaction can be found in the online system at any time, from any location. Email is dramatically reduced since all communication occurs inside the system, tied to a specific project and discussion area. A recent survey by Cohesive Knowledge Solutions (CKS) reported that employees now spend over 40% of their workday on e-mail—and they consider more than a third of that time as wasted. This translates into $300 billion a year in lost productivity and profits.
eSolve Solutions offers a web-based project collaboration solution called "The eSolve Office™". Through adaption of The eSolve Office™, customers are able to end the need to run and maintain a server at its facility, saving the energy necessary to run the server, and associated cooling costs. A typical business server will use approximately 6 kW per day, or approximately 2200 kW per year along with 7000 kW per year for cooling. Also, by using web-based applications, businesses can switch many users to smaller work terminals and laptops, with energy savings as high as 80% over larger desktop workstations.
Using The eSolve Office™ also promotes telecommuting – employees can work from anywhere, at anytime, as long as they have access to the Internet and a web-browser. As a result, a business can increase profit margins as a result of lower costs for office space. This can amount to significant energy savings since the average annual energy consumption for US office buildings is over 23 kilowatt hours per square foot.
Contact eSolve Solutions to learn more about non-real time collaboration alternatives and the schedule an assessment of your work situation. You may also try out the eSolve Office for yourself via the demo and watch the video to find out more. You may be surprised to learn that you can truly go green AND save time and money at the same time.
----------------
Dr. Guy J. Cortesi
Director of Technology and Chief Information Officer
eSolve Solutions, Inc.
May. 13, 2009 10:47
"Green IT" and "Green Computing" is gaining significant attention these days. Wikipedia notes that "Green computing is the study and practice of using computing resources efficiently." Yet, with all the focus on going green, one underlying problem is not being addressed, especially in the area of using technology to improve communication and collaboration. Although technology such as Cisco Telepresence and gotomeeting.com offers an alternative to face-to-face communication to reduce travel and energy use, the basic problem – too many meetings – is not addressed.
Cisco reports that, since 2006, workers using its real-time virtual meeting technology have avoided travel for 17,500 meetings, savings $90M and 20 million cubic meters of emissions, or the equivalent of 8700 cars off the road. However, avoiding travel for meetings, only to replace it with online and virtual meetings, is not a final solution. In fact, online meetings can cost more and be less effective than face-to-face meetings, since they often tie-up more people in more locations, although few participants actively participate or engage in those meetings. A better method is to reduce the need for meetings while providing a better way for virtual teams to work and collaborate. The best way to accomplish this is to use non-real time communication. This can easily reduce the need for meetings by at least 25%.
The non-real time forms of communication used most often are email, chat, blogging, and other Web 2.0 social networking tools, such as Wiki’s, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Unfortunately, none of these methods has a project focus and communication is often random, difficult to follow, off topic, and cannot be tied to specific work projects. Finding information when needed among all these dispersed sources has become an increasing problem, and the risk of losing important business information has increased. Workers have resorted to storing key data on laptops and mobile devices and this also increases the risk of data loss due to stolen or lost devices, and device failures (e.g., hard disk crashes).
A new, non-real time form of online communication called “project collaboration” has emerged that combines Web 2.0 tools and social networking with project management. These tools allow workers not only to discuss doing work, but actually conduct it anytime, anyplace, using a web browser and avoid business travel to attend meetings. Information is organized by project and is primarily text-based and easily searchable. The benefit of this type of communication is that persons both inside and outside organizational boundaries can engage in project discussions and work, since the tools reside outside organizational firewalls on the Internet. When properly secured, this form of communication provides a central store of information that captures all communication and discussion about a project or problem, normally only found in email. Users can discuss issues, develop solutions, collaborate on documents, share results, and plan tasks, all without physically meeting. This reduces the need for real-time communication to an absolute minimum, since all project data and interaction can be found in the online system at any time, from any location. Email is dramatically reduced since all communication occurs inside the system, tied to a specific project and discussion area. A recent survey by Cohesive Knowledge Solutions (CKS) reported that employees now spend over 40% of their workday on e-mail—and they consider more than a third of that time as wasted. This translates into $300 billion a year in lost productivity and profits.
eSolve Solutions offers a web-based project collaboration solution called "The eSolve Office™". Through adaption of The eSolve Office™, customers are able to end the need to run and maintain a server at its facility, saving the energy necessary to run the server, and associated cooling costs. A typical business server will use approximately 6 kW per day, or approximately 2200 kW per year along with 7000 kW per year for cooling. Also, by using web-based applications, businesses can switch many users to smaller work terminals and laptops, with energy savings as high as 80% over larger desktop workstations.
Using The eSolve Office™ also promotes telecommuting – employees can work from anywhere, at anytime, as long as they have access to the Internet and a web-browser. As a result, a business can increase profit margins as a result of lower costs for office space. This can amount to significant energy savings since the average annual energy consumption for US office buildings is over 23 kilowatt hours per square foot.
Contact eSolve Solutions to learn more about non-real time collaboration alternatives and the schedule an assessment of your work situation. You may also try out the eSolve Office for yourself via the demo and watch the video to find out more. You may be surprised to learn that you can truly go green AND save time and money at the same time.
----------------
Dr. Guy J. Cortesi
Director of Technology and Chief Information Officer
eSolve Solutions, Inc.
