To Cisco's London offices where the networking giant has joined forces with BT to host a video conference-enabled roundtable bringing together attendees from Madrid, Dubai and, erm, Reading.

The subject for discussion is the results from a new academic study on the best practices firms should embrace to drive a successful environmental sustainability strategy. The findings of the study itself are hardly ground breaking (who would have guessed that a successful corporate sustainability strategy requires board level support, firm targets, action rather than words, and a commitment to incorporate the environment into the overarching business strategy), but the video conferencing technology on the other hand, now that was impressive.

I know it has become de rigueur for any journalist visiting one of these high definition video conferencing suites to come out and instantly file a story along the lines of "wow, this kit looks incredible", but seriously, wow, this kit looks incredible.

Having spent four years covering the IT industry and its infuriating tendency of promoting every incremental product improvement as something akin to the invention of the wheel and the discovery of fire combined, I am rarely impressed by any new gadget. But it is hard to stress quite how life-like the people on the high definition plasma screens are. You can tell the time by sneaking a peak at the watch of the academic opposite, you can admire the cuff links of the Cisco exec and if you are feeling mean you can pretty much count the grey hairs of your fellow attendees.

Personally, I am suddenly very conscious that I didn't shave this morning and silently musing on the fact that if this high definition kit takes off the biggest winners (alongside the likes of Cisco and HP who are selling it in the form of their respective TelePresence and Halo suites) are likely to be purveyors of executive grooming paraphernalia - the cameras really are that unforgiving.

I know I am beginning to sound like I'm on commission (I'm not), but after years of overstating the benefits of video conferencing those IT companies now claiming that these system have finally come of age are telling the truth this time.

However, if the technology is not that far short of flawless it is interesting to observe the extent to which the people using it have not yet caught up. All the teething problems evident throughout the call - and almost certainly repeated in teleconferencing suites the world over - could be directly attributed to the attendees, no doubt myself included.

So the conference starts with the volume set to low, is then interrupted by interference caused by one attendee leaving a mobile phone too near one of the microphones, and, due to the seats some of the speakers have chosen, is punctuated by the surreal site of the two attendees from Reading talking to the speaker from Madrid while apparently turning their backs on him.

Meanwhile, the fact that everyone is in plain view appears lost on at least one attendee who rather distractingly spends much of the call checking and re-checking their Blackberry.

The fact is that even many of those people familiar with video conferencing suites are yet to fully appreciate that this an entirely new form of communication that requires a new set of behaviours.

Video conferencing is not exactly akin to a face-to-face meeting, but it is closer to that than it is a simple telephone call and as a result the behaviours that are tolerated on phone calls - checking mobiles, tapping away on laptops, stifling yawns - are likely to alienate people on a video conference call.

The success of video conferencing technologies - underlined by BT's revelation yesterday that it saved over £200m and 97,000 tonnes of carbon last year through its use of 20 Cisco TelePresence suites - is at least partially dependent on the pace at which executives work out the optimum approaches for using the technology and it will be intriguing to see how quickly these best practices evolve.

Should people get the hang of video conferencing quickly, and there is no reason to believe that they won't, then the environmental, cost and quality of life case for the technology should ensure that it quickly becomes a common feature at large multinationals.

And if that does prove the case I'd recommend that the more image conscious amongst you add some moisturiser to the various accoutrements in your office desk drawer.

Posted by James Murray on January 16, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (2)

Today sees the third installment of BusinessGreen's web seminars on how to run a green IT department.

Entitled IT and the environment in action – how businesses are proving their green credentials, the seminar briungs together a panel of leading IT professionals to discuss how their organisations are practically deploying green IT strategies.

The seminar will be chaired by Computing Editor Bryan Glick and include presentations from Ian Exton of WWF on how the environmental charity is deploying virtualization software to reduce power consumption, Patrick Fogarty of engineering services firm Norman Disney & Young on how firms are enhancing the environmental credentials of their datacentres, and John Hegarty of Betfair on the company's green IT policy and PC turn off campaigns.

Each of the presentations will provide an opportunity to see how some of your peers are limiting their environmental impact, and as always there will be the chance to ask questions to the panel.

You can catch the programme, which kicks off at 3pm GMT, by registering for free here.

Posted by James Murray on June 20, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

A few months ago I found myself at a global press event organised by a major software vendor where great efforts had been taken to follow all the best practices you would expect from a modern, environmentally-conscious multinational corporation.

The press releases and speaker biogs were printed on both sides of the paper, with little recycling logos in the corner; the keynote presentation was delivered via a video link from New York; and the media question and answer session was undertaken with UK-based execs in the room and global execs answering questions from four continents using a conference call facility.

Flights had been avoided, paper had been saved, most people had arrived by public transport, the whole event was the embodiment of a successful green meeting – or it would have been had any of it worked.

The keynote was a moderate-sized disaster with the video link capturing a jerky likeness of the company's president as he delivered his speech, but singularly failing to provide a readable impression of the PowerPoint slides he kept referring to.

The Q&A proved even more luckless with UK journalists plunged into a telephonic black hole by the conferencing system for several minutes, before finally entering the press conference in New York only to find either the microphones or speakers were not sophisticated enough to make the speakers' responses audible. Things improved slightly when a new phone was wheeled in, but by then the Q&A was being wrapped up.

It was a timely reminder that while everyone is now aware of how beneficial online and phone conferencing systems can be in reducing corporate travel and thus carbon emissions, they will only prove effective if they deliver truly seamless and effective communication. As a result many investments in online conferencing systems are failing to deliver the expected benefits, resulting in some executives shunning the unreliable systems in favour of traveling to financially and environmentally damaging face-to-face meetings.

It is a problem reluctantly acknowledged by many of the web conferencing providers who over the past decade have often seen their systems deployed by customers only to be ignored by the executives who should have been using them.

"The legacy of the first wave of video conferencing is that many firms invested in expensive end point video equipment and due to various reasons the investment failed to deliver the expected returns," admits Steve Frost, marketing manager at the Unified Communications division of networking giant Cisco.

The absence of ubiquitous broadband coupled with the dominance of low definition cameras and complicated user interfaces often made online conferencing a trying experience. "The systems used to be far too complex," adds Frost. "People used to step into a room and be given a remote control and told "set it up then" – it was never going to work."

However, according to Frost and other advocates of online conferencing, these technological problems have been resolved and the shambolic and ineffective virtual meetings and presentations such as the one I experienced are increasingly a thing of the past. "The problem now [for the vendors of video conferencing systems] is that a lot of firms don't believe video conferencing can deliver what we say it can," comments Paul Gullet (pictured), president for Europe, Middle East and Africa at video conferencing specialist Tandberg. "The challenge is to get the technology in front of people and prove it now works and is easy to use."

In fact, those firms that are deploying the new breed of high definition video and interactive online communication tools are finding that the key to successful deployment lies less in the technology and more in the ability to embrace the right management practices. "The challenge is not the technology," argues Ewan Cameron UK sales manager at web conferencing specialist WebEx. "The broadband connection is less of an issue, the cost and quality of the cameras are also getting better all the time, and you really only need an internet connection to have a successful web conference. The challenge now is about changing employee habits."

Experts agree that the first habit employees using online conferencing need to change is their one-size-fits-all approach to online meetings – and in some cases that can mean limiting use of video conferencing.

"A lot of people focus on video conferencing but video is just part of the solution," says Frost. "Successful [online] meetings are also about other forms of collaboration and ensuring you get the right mix. You are not always going to need high-definition video, it is about having the options offered by a unified communications suite and learning to select the right medium."

Ian Gabbie, European marketing manager at online conferencing specialist Genesys, claims growing numbers of firms are finally realising they need access to a selection of different communication tools to ensure successful online meetings. "The growth in integrated audio, web and video conferencing is outstripping growth in pure video suites," he said. "These integrated suites mean you can now push slides out to people, share documents, and work on them together. You can basically do everything you can do in a face-to-face meeting bar actually touching the other person."

It is easy to envisage how better selection of technology would have improved the unsuccessful keynote I watched. Simply making the video link part of a dashboard that allowed the presentation slides to be seen directly on the screen alongside the speaker would have easily solved the problem posed by the low definition video. Similarly, the level of collaboration required during the press conference would have been better achieved through an audio web conference that allowed journalists to send over questions through instant messages than it was through an antiquated telephone conferencing system.

But how do firms ensure they pick the right tools for the right meeting? A recent report from occupational psychologists Pearn Kandola, commissioned by Cisco, set out to answer this question and offers best practice guidelines on how to select the appropriate technologies for different types of online meetings. In particular, it advises that groups use richer media, such as video, in the initial stages of a project to aid relationship building, before switching to less intrusive communication tools, such as IM or audio web conferences, once the work really gets under way. Furthermore, it recommends that project teams working online should agree clear protocols such as agreed response times and notifying other attendees of unavailability to avoid confusion and foster trust.

Basic principles for a good meeting should also be retained for online conferences, according to Professor Peter James of the UK Centre for Environmental and Economic Development. "As with any meeting it is really important you have a chair person," he advises. "It is not as bad as with pure phone conferences, but with video and online conferences you can still have some people uninvolved and it is important there is someone in a position to manage the meeting."

Once the right communication tools and guidelines are in place the next step required is to get executives actually using the new technology. Even the most ardent supporters of web conferences agree that there are many circumstances where face-to-face meetings will still be required. But there is also a growing consensus that large numbers of meetings can be successfully shifted online once executives are convinced that the new technology works.

Demonstrating the tools to staff and ensuring the user interface is easy to use are both critical to ensuring staff use the technology, according to Dominic Hook, director of ICT at trade union Amicus, which has deployed video conferencing systems at around 40 of its offices. "It is a visual technology so you need to show people how it works and then give them time to get used to it," he advises. "At first we found people wanted to do their hair before getting in front of a camera, but if you give people time it is surprising how quickly they become comfortable with the technology."

Cameron agrees that people are most resistant to using web conferences when they don't understand how they work and as a result training and internal marketing is important for driving adoption. "You need champions within the business - people who say "stop and think", "what are you doing" and "how could you use these tools"," he adds.

Cameron recommends that this internal marketing is most effective when formalised and undertaken with backing from senior executives. "A lot of our customer engagements are bottom up where someone in a department realises how much time and energy they waste traveling to meetings and looks into how WebEx could help," he admits. "That's great, but if you really want to drive the commercial and environmental gains across the business you need a senior exec pushing it. We see the highest use of web conferencing where clients have been really proactive and deployed measures such as changing their corporate intranet travel booking page so that people have to fill in why the meeting can not be done using WebEx."

The well-publicised environmental, cost and productivity gains that web conferencing delivers should also form a key plank of any internal marketing strategy, according to Gabbie. He argues that increasingly environmentally-aware employees are far more likely to eschew journeys in favour of online meetings if they have a sense of how much they are saving in carbon emissions. "It should be best practice for firms' HR departments to share this environmental information so that staff can see the positive contribution they are making," advises Gabbie.

Posted by James Murray on June 7, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (5)

Here's a poser for you: Who does more to accelerate global warming, a corporate executive flying business class from London to New York for a meeting or a tourist on the same flight stuck back in row 45?

In real terms they are, of course, contributing equally to climate change. Put the flight details into a carbon calculator and you find that each passenger is responsible for 0.77 tonnes of CO2 emissions regardless of whether they are supping champagne at the front or crammed in next to the toilets at the back.

However, according to Professor Peter James of the UK Centre for Environmental and Economic Development an economic analysis of the two journeys reveals a completely different picture.

Speaking yesterday at a roundtable event on climate change hosted by video conferencing specialist Tandberg, James argued that the disproportionate amount of revenue and profits that airlines generate from their relatively few business class seats means that it is these high-end passengers that are making the bigger contribution to climate change.

"Despite all the publicity around Ryanair and easyJet, business travellers are still the main drivers of the airline industry with 35 to 40 percent of revenue for the mainstream carriers coming from business class," he explained. "As a result what will change the economics of each flight is if business travel is cut. That would hit the airlines hardest and force them to put leisure prices up and ultimately even cut flights."

In short, if business class travellers opt to fly less, by using rail where possible, cutting down on unnecessary meetings and conferences, and pushing more face-to-face meetings online, they will generate dual environmental benefits: cutting their own carbon emissions and forcing up ticket prices across the board as they eat into the profitability of airlines that rely on their high-margin seats.

Just as the business class traveller is disproportionately important to the airlines they are also disproportionately powerful and as a result a genuine revolution in corporate travel policies has more chance of reducing the number of flights than if environmentally responsible tourists start taking holidays in the UK.

"In terms of CO2 it is the same [for the business traveller and the holidaymaker]," summarised James. "But if you look at the economics of what will force flights to be grounded it is the business traveller [choosing not to fly] who will have the bigger impact."

Posted by James Murray on May 31, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (2)

It's been a busy week at BusinessGreen HQ - we've been going through an office move since you ask - which is why I forgot to mention earlier in the week that Wednesday afternoon saw the second of our live web seminars on how to run a greener IT department.

Though fear not if you missed it, because through the magic of our shiny new Web 2.0 on demand interface you can register to watch the whole show at any time here.

I was in the hot seat this time giving my best Hugh Edwards impression and hosting a panel of experts looking at some of the practical tips and advice firms should embrace if they want to limit the environmental impact of both their IT hardware and the wider business.

John Madden of analyst firm Ovum kicked off proceedings with at look at why energy efficiency has become so important to IT departments, an overview of what some of the leading hardware vendors are doing to improve the environmental footprint of their kit, and an assessment of some of the best practices IT chiefs should be embracing, including gaining control of the electricity bill, procuring more efficient kit and deploying the latest management and virtualisation software to drive up utility rates.

He was followed by Martin Niemer, senior product marketing manager at virtualisation software specialist VMware, who looked in more detail at how virtualised environments can reduce datacentre power consumption by up to 80 percent.

Ian Osborne of IT trade group Intellect completed the panel with a look at how IT can have a positive environmental impact beyond the datacentre, through video conferencing, hosted software and thin clients, and turn off campaigns.

An interactive question and answer session followed with the audience offering posers on everything from how green initiatives work at smaller firms to whether you need to upgrade your servers to support virtualisation software.

So if you want to find out more about the green IT department, keep an eye out for the next seminar on June 20th and, in the meantime, you can catch up on both the first and second show whenever you fancy.

Posted by James Murray on May 25, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Few innovations illustrate the green potential of IT better than online and video conferencing. The recent boom in adoption of these next generation communication technologies has indisputably helped slow the still rapid growth in corporate travel and there is reason to hope that as these collaboration systems continue their march into the mainstream they could even lead to an overall reduction in carbon intensive business trips.

But, if my recent experiences are anything to go by, there is a danger that the environmental benefits of online meeting tools could be being undermined by some firms' failure to utilise the technology fully.

Over the past few months I have enjoyed/endured several product briefings with US IT companies, where instead of either a simple phone conversation I have been invited to sign into a popular online meeting site.

Once there all the great funtionality found in such collaboration suites has been instantly available - and yet all the portal has been used for is to walk me through a PowerPoint presentation detailing all the bells and whistles of whichever new product the person on the other end of the phone is trying to promote.

The only collaboration involved has been in the form of the phone conversation and the only reason I can see for using an online meeting to go through the presentation rather than just sending over the PowerPoint via email is that it means the other people in the meeting can be sure I am on the right slide and not idly surfing the web when I should be learning about their latest exciting acronym strategy.

Basically, vendors using online conferencing suites in this way are shelling out for next to no real benefit.

Of course, the only damage being done it to their marketing budget and from an environmental perspective it is great that the US execs I talk to are not being flown over to the UK when in most cases the briefing works pretty much as well over the phone - particularly if you have met the person you are talking to at least once in the past.

But my concern is that this failure to make full use of online conferencing capabilities is not confined to press briefings. If, as I suspect must be the case at some firms, this technology is being used to simply force PowerPoint presentations upon people rather than provide a genuinely collaborative forum for work and discussion then users will not only fail to maximise their return on investment but will ultimately alienate users of the technology.

Using conferencing technologies in this limited way also means that as soon as you have to undertake a task more complicated than simply passing on information - something you can do just as easily and at a lower cost using the phone or email - you are likely to think online conferencing can't help and will instead resort to getting in the car and travelling to meet your colleagues to work on the issue in hand.

Web conferencing is indisputably a Good Thing, cutting costs, driving productivity and reducing carbon emissions. But firms must be careful that in the rush to implement such systems they ensure that users are aware of the full functionality and that online conferencing portals are being used to genuinely replace unnecessary face-to-face meetings and not as a costly and at times intrusive addition to meetings that were going to be held over the phone anyway.

Posted by James Murray on April 17, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (4)

Will increasing interest in a more rational use of resources in business lead to a full blown take-off of Web and video conferencing? For whatever reason, especially in Europe, executives still seem keener on travelling to meetings rather than conducting them virtually from one set point.

There’s a different picture in the US, claims Natalie Butler, UK Sales Manager for web conferencing specialist WebEx, where the market has been growing steadily since 2001. In any case the company claims 25,000 customers now, conducting around 50,000 meetings daily using its technology.

The company – which competes with both Microsoft and Citrix in this space – deploys a set of heavyweight statistics, mainly around notoriously high-polluting air travel, to prick the corporate green conscience. One person flying from New York to London for a team meeting uses 2,690 pounds of carbon dioxide; two people travelling from Chicago to San Francisco for a sales presentation would save 4,696 pounds; a training session with 12 participants flying from Dallas to San Francisco would save 22,377 pounds, and so forth.

“There just is less and less reason to consume time and energy in meeting people face to face,” says Butler. “There’s only so much of the M25 you can stand, after all.” 

Butler cites her own experience where as a sales rep in a previous company she averaged 35,000 miles on the road, which dropped to 20,000 once she started using online conferencing.

At the same time, “A lot of UK organisations have signed up to the whole Corporate Social Responsibility agenda, and their employees want to see evidence of how they are working more responsibly. So we expect a lot more companies to start investigating this technology as a way to not just save cost on travel but be seen as being greener.”

Well, that remains to be seen of course. But anything that can save money and cut down on CO2 has to be worth investigating.

Posted by Gary Flood on November 3, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (1)

News that many business travelers regard business trips as a "necessary evil" and are keen to move over a quarter of face-to-face meetings online will be welcomed by IT directors keen to deploy the technology in order to cut costs and limit their firm's environmental impact.

But according to video conferencing technology specialist Tandberg - which commissioned the Ipsos MORI survey of business traveler attitudes - there are a number of steps IT directors should take to ensure they maximise returns from any investment in online communication tools.

Perhaps the single most important factor, according to Paul Gullet managing director for the UK and Ireland at Tandberg, is to get a senior business executive to "champion" the technology. "You need cross departmental support for video conferencing if you are going to get people using it, and you neeed a senior exec to drive that," said Gullet.

The next step is for the IT department to perform its core function and ensure the technology is rock solid and reliable.

But once that is achieved IT chiefs will find themselves having to break out from their traditional skillset and turn marketer, according to Gullet. "The technology adoption will have been driven by the technologist, but then they have to get the message out there that the technology is available," he said.

Tandberg offers a usage and adoption framework service for customers, designed to help them maximise their investment through internal marketing and advertising activities as well basic training and support for users.

Another successful tactic is for the IT director to build a relationship with the firm's travel bookers to ensure that reminders of video conferencing capabilities are embedded into booking processes so that anyone trying to book a flight is first asked to justify why the meeting can not go online.

Gullet insists focusing on cost and productivity is the best way to convince people to push more meetings online, but he added that where firms have an active environmental strategy stressing the pollution caused by flying can also have an impact.

"I always ask my staff how big their garden is," he said. "If you are doing up to 18,000 business miles in a car, four European flights and one international flight a year that means you have to plant a tree a month to offset the CO2 emissions you are responsible for. You're going to need a pretty big garden."

Posted by James Murray on October 20, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)