I know I often have a strong opinion on all the things I think Dell is doing wrong in the marketplace but tonight I applaud their continued effort to be the greenest technology company on the planet.

I pulled the paragraph below from a letter from Michael Dell talking about the initiative and the commitment behind it. I have no doubt that Dell can make it happen and look forward to seeing what it does to our industry and to business around the globe.

Josh

Committing on World Environment Day to make Dell the
greenest technology company on the planet. More than ever
before, we are integrating consideration of the environment
into our business processes and product design to deliver the
industry’s most energy-efficient products, save energy and
deploy green power at our own facilities, and maintain our
recycling leadership. We know that people of all ages around
the globe who care about protecting the Earth expect no less.

Link to the full document outlining the initiative

I came across a blog post this weekend that did a great job of laying out the numbers for a small business when it comes to turning off and unplugging computers for cost savings.

The tools vendors in the industry have either built or are building the functionality for managed service providers to control systems power consumption. In order to take advantage of this functionality in practice and in marketing you will need to be able to share an easy to understand outline like the one below with your prospects and customers.

In this market any savings and any costs you can eliminate to show better ROI on a clients technology budget goes a long way.

Josh

Now let’s talk about electricity. I’m only going to talk about computer equipment but the discussion applies equally well to every power consuming thing in your office. If you leave them on, here’s what each item is costing you every year.

Let’s do some math and assume a 10 user company with LCD monitors for nice round numbers.

Cost when left on: $1629.30

Cost when unplugged: $135.80

Savings: $1493.50