Royalty weighs in on green tech - by peter judge

Views and Opinions on Green IT (Jun 7 2010)

1. 

   The picture says it all really. Prince Charles is holding a garden party to promote green technology. And IBM is going to be there. 
   
   So here we see the heir to the British throne, standing in the long grass, in the sunshine, flanked by men (and a woman) in suits.
   
   Approaching retirement age, Prince Charles has yet to take up his eventual job as King, but has kept himself busy to greater or lesser effect in causes such as architecture, youth unemployment, alternative medicine and sustainability.
   
   To be more precise about the garden party, September 8th this year sees the start of a twelve day garden party, run by the Prince's green Start charity. which will be held outside the official buildings alongside Green Park in London (across the part from Buckingham Palace). Meanwhile inside one of those buildings, the Foreign Office's Lancaster House, IBM will host a nine day summit focusing on nine aspects of sustainability. 
   
   The event has had some criticism for not involving other more established green charities and campaigners: the sponsors are all big companies like IBM, BT and energy company EDF. 
   
   In the IT sector, it's certainly a coup for IBM. Some people have argued that the company has effectively bought itself exclusive access to a big negotiating table for the next buying cycle for greentech in the UK, and the event makes heavy use of IBM's "smarter planet" slogan. We'd just say we hope it paid lots for this, and that some of that goes towards action in sustainability. 
   
   And we look forward to the content. IBM has much genuine good work in sustainable tech to point to. 
   
   “You have millions of information points and your ability to make adjustments to services in real time is where value is going to be generated,” Sam Palmisano, the company’s chairman and chief executive, told reporters - according to a story in The Times.  
   
   It's all about gathering data, and responding efficiently (once that data has been processed by the IT infrastructure IBM can provide). And it's partly driven by an expanding middle class, The Times has Mr Palmisano saying - or is that just what The Times wanted to hear, with its pending move to a paid-for model for online content?
   
   What I'm interested to hear is how very much IBM's story sounds like HP's. At an energy industry conference, Hewlett-Packard proposed using sensor networks where trillions of devices gather data, claiming this sort of continuous feedback could prevent a repeat of BP's disastrous oil leak off the Gulf Coast. 
   
   Talk is cheap of course (though we get the feeling the talk at the Prince's garden party could be pretty expensive). What will count is actions, and they will take longer to evaluate. 
   

   
   

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