Governments are determined to look green, at least on paper, and it is only a matter of time before datacentres get stung by the taxman.
In recognition that datacentres being massive users of power, governments might tax them in relation to the amount of power they use. Datacentres probably already account for about 5% of global [...]

The first story that comes to mind when I think about an IT initiative that substantially enhanced customer engagement this year is the launch of Tesco’s T-Jam.
T-Jam is a research project that unites independent software developers and customers to bring in improvements to the web experience provided by the retailer, while providing an outlet where [...]

Jim Mortleman, in his post The real return on green innovation, pointed to the measurable value of investing in environmentally-oriented projects. I wholeheartedly agree - he talked about the three things I’m advising my clients to consider in their business case for green investment: efficiency, reducing the cost of compliance, and increased revenue through brand [...]

IT Leaders are increasingly being called upon to deliver innovation within their organisations. A recent ’Strategic Insight Survey - an IT leadership perspective’ conducted by PA Consulting Group in partnership with Harvey Nash found that 84% of those surveyed indicated that the board looked to IT organisation to deliver innovation, but 78% reported only ‘limited’ or ‘reasonable’ [...]

Innovation is more than technical innovation - business innovation is also an important area, yet mostly ignored.
Innovation more broadly, is certainly welcome within the outsourcing industry. All too common, the industry is characterised by a “me too” mentality. Most vendors appear to only concentrate on price innovation and even that, not really very innovative. Take [...]

How quickly sentiment changes. We all knew six months ago that the year was going to be tough. And yet we still talked assertively of the importance of innovating in tough times. Didn’t all those success stories begin in recessions? Google, Apple, etc. Aren’t recessions those times where you steal a march over your struggling [...]

Web 2.0 technologies may offer businesses a way to innovate rapidly and at low cost, but the critical success factor in innovation isn’t technology - it’s people. IT service providers that fail to make this clear to their customers are setting them up for a fall. It’s one thing to convince an enthusiastic CTO that [...]

In these troubled times, companies are much more likely to invest in innovation that offers them a guaranteed return on investment. One clear way they can achieve this is through green IT initiatives.
Many IT departments, for example, are forging ahead with server virtualisation projects despite the recession, since these almost invariably offer dramatic savings in [...]

Just as Microsoft beta-launches its own Google rival, known as ‘Bing‘ - officially described as a ‘decision engine’ as opposed to a ’search engine’ - Google moves forward with the announcement of two new innovative products.
Garnering most attention has been Google Wave, a new social media platform which will sit somewhere between Twitter and email [...]

Innovation is a topic that is often raised in discussions about outsourcing, usually in the context that it’s impossible to contract for something as nebulous as innovation.
Well, it’s true that it can be difficult to write a contract that recreates the skunk works environment of everyone in the basement toying with new ideas that may [...]