All that glisters is not Green...

Back at Migration Solutions we're getting ready for the Data Centre World Conference & Expo next week in London (at the Barbican, 24-25 Feb) and, in addition to the usual preparations - which include making sure we have enough business cards, packing the company brochures and shining our shoes - Migration Solutions' MD Alex Rabbetts has been rehearsing for his speaker slot at the conference on a subject he's particularly passionate about. Entitled, 'All that Glisters is not Green: Real World Solutions to Increasing Efficiency, Cutting Costs and Reducing Environmental Impact' (3.15pm on 24 Feb), he sees this as his opportunity to highlight how IT industry greenwash is seriously in danger of spinning itself out of control.

As Alex has been saying for sometime, and now the mainstream media are beginning to pick up on (see Charles Arthur's excellent article in The Guardian: Greenwash? and let's start with that screen) Datacentres are not green and are not likely to be green for the foreseeable future. With some effort however they can be made greener (and btw, better, more efficient and cheaper!). Alex’s point is that Greenwash goes from being mildly amusing to dangerous when the hype starts to numb us to more modest (but real) benefits that can be achieved from the serious and sensible work of making our IT infrastructure greener.

Come along to the Data Centre World conference if you want to hear a great presentation from someone who's 'browned off' with how 'Greenwash' is blinding the industry to the serious solutions that can take the data centre power bill out of the ‘red’ … and reduce emissions too!