IBM has developed an energy and environment technical validation programme, which has saved the company 12 252kWh of annual energy usage within five months.
The “Ready for IBM Energy and Environment” technical validation programme is a green standard designed to assist IBM's business partners to market and sell IT solutions that have been certified by IBM to provide benefits in energy-efficiency.
Maureen Baird, IBM's resident green expert, says: “Any company can label their solution as 'green'. This programme is designed to help customers identify solutions that have been rigorously evaluated and demonstrated to reduce environmental impact based on real-world customer use.”
Business partners that meet the green standards of IBM's validation can market their product as “Ready for IBM Energy and Environment” at any of the 42 IBM Innovation Centres worldwide, such as the African Innovation Centre, in Sandton.
Baird explains: “To qualify for the 'Ready for IBM Energy and Environment' mark, an IBM partner must have a solution, product or service that leverages IBM software, hardware and/or services and provides customer-documented, measurable energy reduction or other environmental benefit.”
Business partners have to prove their product has environmental benefits, such as reduction in electrical usage - for example, an equal amount of work processed in an equal or lesser amount or time, using less energy.
"We developed this programme to help clients cut through the clutter of self-labelled 'green solutions' and identify products and services that offer customer-documented environmental benefits," says Jim Corgel, GM of IBM independent software vendors and developer relations.
According to Baird, IBM partners can nominate their solutions via an online nomination form. The programme and official nomination Web site is scheduled to go live on 16 February.
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