(re) blog: dialogue with Redemtech

Thoughts and observations about the set of business practices that join financial, contractual and inventory processes to support life cycle management and the strategic decision-making in managing IT assets from cradle to grave. Includes commentary on: hardware lifecycle planning, best practices, asset recovery and disposition, technology recycling and other related subjects.

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Sierra Club How Green Is Your PC Quiz

The Sierra Club has come out with a surprisingly fun and informative little quiz on green PCs. Some of the more interesting questions include:

• Every wonder how much energy laptops use vs desktop PC?
• How much energy a screensaver saves?
• How much more power computer processors use as they get more powerful?
• How much lifetime energy consumption of a PC occurs before you buy it?
• Whether it’s more energy efficient to shut down and restart your computer during the day or just leaving it running?

To take the full Sierra Club quiz, find it here. See how well you do on the quiz!

Beyond Green: Roadmap to Sustainable Computing

Thanks to everyone who attended our presentation at the recent Gartner IT Financial, Procurement & Asset Management Summit in San Diego. Our material was based on a new IDC whitepaper by David Daoud, Beyond Power: IT's Roadmap to Sustainable Computing. We ran a little long, as always happens when people with passion for a topic are given a podium, so I promised to do our Q&A online.

Low Value E-Waste Processing: Are U.S. Scrap Metal Smelters the Missing Link?

In 1977 - before cell phones, CDs and a then-bearish 15-17-cent-a-pound Lead (Pb) market - for a short time I worked overseeing a lead products warehouse. To my surprise, the warehouse consisted of more than 50 lead-base products. Back then, the range of products derived from recycled lead from our smelter next door amazed me. Lead came (the kind you find in Tiffany glass), as well as oil drilling bits, sheet lead, oxide, pigments, an assortment of solders, varieties of lead alloys and ship/boat anodes. One of the best features of the job was interacting with customers and truckers from all across the U.S.

Making the G.R.A.D.E.

The IT asset disposition business today is highly fragmented and immature, with no generally accepted standards and few barriers to entry. And because the service smacks of being "green," the industry is awash in an entrepreneurial froth, leaving small electronics recyclers in almost every town of any size.

Caring Means Governance

Hypothetically, let's say a financial services company suspects it has lost a couple of unencrypted computers, or more specifically, its auditors think they have. Under the law, they have an obligation to report such a loss.  When they check with their IT asset disposition vendor, none are missing, but two serial numbers don't match. Is it a privacy breach or just bad accounting?

Why Improving IT Asset Management Requires Dealing With Grief Process

According to an old joke, change is hard only when it encounters human nature, which tends to resist most changes. In other words, change of any sort is hard.

Why Everyone Needs to Walk the Talk

When it comes to e-waste, I frequently run into ironic situations. I had another one of those moments recently, as Redemtech played host to local material waste regulators.

Measure Twice, Cut Once

Perhaps you’re familiar with the old saying “measure twice and cut once.” It’s a bit of wisdom about the importance of planning, and how proper planning leads to fewer mistakes. Every good seamstress or carpenter understands this immediately. And while it might be less obvious in the IT asset management industry, it’s no less true.

If People Only Knew

In the field of air and water pollution control equipment, over the years I’ve assisted many companies in lowering emission rates and/or achieving compliance with air quality standards. As a consultant, I’ve had the opportunity to work with a variety of players in the metals processing industry, everything from lead, copper and aluminum smelters to facilities that deal with the remediation of lead and acid in batteries. Most of my experiences stem from the Southern California area, which has the country’s most stringent environmental regulations.

How IT Asset Management Is Like Making Coffee

At Redemtech, we're in the business of business process outsourcing, or BPO in support of the lifecycle management activities necessary to effectively manage technology assets. Demonstrating how our service offerings improve the bottom line while insuring security and environmental responsibility is what I spend much of my time discussing with clients and prospects.

Winning the Earth Day Shell Game

Earth Day has always been a holiday like New Years for boomer environmentalists like me—a festive opportunity for resolutions to improve our lives. So we make an annual effort to recycle more and drive less, and maybe it helps a little. But recently the market has discovered that green sells, so Earth Day is suddenly big in a bad way. Thanks to the numerous electronics recycling events planned for this week, Earth Day may be the single most harmful day of the year for the environment and human health.

After 31 Years of Recycling, Earth Day is a Lifestyle

As Earth Day 2008 grew near, someone happened to ask me my thoughts about the annual holiday. I had to admit that since I’ve been working in the e-waste recycling industry for 31 years, it’s hard to get too excited about Earth Day any longer. For me and many others, every day is Earth Day.

Proactive Beats Reactive Any Day

As I talk to prospective clients about responsible IT lifecycle management practices, there inevitably comes a moment when I can almost read the person’s mind. Sure, one more layer of regulations for me to worry about. One more layer of burdensome requirements that will drive my costs even higher.

Business Should Be Thankful for Technology

Every day, I remind myself of all the things that I am thankful for. Today, as always, I was thankful to wake to see another day. Next, I was thankful for the fact that my commute to work only required walking a few steps into the other room – and the dress code includes feetie pajamas.

Looking to Boost Data Security? Check the Lost & Found Pile

In the IT industry, we tend to get so wrapped up in high-tech, high-concept notions about data and network security. We go through periods of rapture about the latest software fixes that are guaranteed to finally lock down our networks and prevent incursions from malicious intruders.

OEMs Are the Greenest!

Let's pretend that we are all big PC manufacturers, and that we want to sell more boxes. Since everybody's talking about being more "green," maybe we could say that it's more environmentally friendly to trade in that old PC on a new one! Yeah, that's it—older PCs aren't worth as much, so companies might have to pay to recycle them. That makes buying new systems cheaper in the long run than keeping the old ones, right? 

Finally, Simplifying Things is Cool

A big, global IT hardware vendor, a brand name you’d instantly recognize, apparently has gotten religion.

Why It Pays To Help Little Old Ladies Across the Street

If you know anything at all about my employer, Redemtech, you probably know that it’s a business based on doing the right thing - for the environment, customers, shareholders, associates and the larger community. And part of doing the right thing in business, I believe, is looking very hard for a way to offer carrots to your customers rather than wielding sticks on them.

Being an IT Asset Manager Requires Endurance

Being an IT Asset Manager requires endurance ... just ask those ITAM professionals who trekked through the desert during the recent International Association of Information Technology Asset Managers (IAITAM) conference. The messages about software license compliance, data security and best practices told the story of even more daunting times ahead.

Here’s How to Stay Off Greenpeace’s Radar Screen

The problems with e-waste continue to grow. Not long ago, the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that “as much as 4 percent of municipal solid waste is e-scrap.” That number may have since risen to 5 percent. Fox News, meanwhile, reports that while “most Americans think they're helping the earth when they recycle their old computers, televisions and cell phones, chances are they're contributing to a global trade in electronic trash that endangers workers and pollutes the environment overseas.”

IAITAM Conference A Chance to Exchange ITAM Ideas

Wow, how time flies! It's already October and less than a month away from the annual International Association of Information Technologies (IAITAM) Conference in Rancho Mirage, Calif. I can hardly wait to connect with old and new colleagues to catch up on the latest innovations in their IT Asset Management programs.

What Business Leaders Could Learn from Pumpkin Farmers

A pumpkin farmer was asked how he maintained a successful business. “It’s not difficult,” he replied, looking out over acres of orange globes. “I just keep track of every pumpkin I grow.” That sounds like a daunting task to me, but it must be the correct business model. Every October, the fields are covered with the makings of pumpkin pies and American front porches are filled with grinning jack-o’-lanterns.

IT Asset Management Requires Measurement

What to measure, how to measure, and why to measure various data capture points in the technology asset inventory management lifecycle is a challenge for today’s IT Asset Manager. Let’s identify some of the roadblocks to the success of developing accurate metrics.

Identity Theft – A Killer of Reputations

Consumer confidence should be an increasing concern for businesses that are keepers of precious personal information. Information such as Social Security numbers, addresses, driver’s license numbers, or even credit card spending habits can give criminals the information they need to kill your credit score.

Do Businesses Really Need a Chief Green Officer?

Do businesses really need a Chief Green Officer? Or is this role for executive CGO "O"verkill?

PC Technology No Longer Holds Mystique

Computer hardware technology no longer holds the mystique that it once held for me.

Seismic Shifts in the World of Computers

Some major shifts are occurring in the world of computers that could impact how long businesses and consumers hang onto their equipment.

Absolutely Obsolete – Phone Books vs. IT Equipment

I’ve never known the Maple tree in front of my house to bear fruit, but earlier this week I found two drooping limbs had sprouted heavy, plastic-coated produce. Some clever delivery person had tossed a phone book up into my tree.

Old Habits Don’t Have to Die Hard

Old habits die hard.

You would think that after all of the lessons learned, failed implementations and wasted project efforts, things would change, and organizations would begin to understand what it really takes to successfully implement applications.

It has nothing to do with IT not delivering what the business asked for ... it has to do with businesses knowing what to ask for, before they ask for it.

Simple Tools Enable Customers to Help Businesses Reduce Costs

Recently I took my daughter to eat at one of our favorite restaurants, where I always admire the fantastically engineered process the management has designed for recovery of materials when people are done with their meals. The restaurant specializes in soups served in ceramic bowls and sandwiches balanced on glass plates, yet uses the basic fast-food set-up where customers stand in line to order and retrieve their food.

Customer Service or Lip Service?

Customer Service is in the process. If organizations do not have processes that support the ultimate expectations of the customer, while maintaining profitability and environmental sustainability, they must implement those processes to support strategic goals. The desire to deliver and the capability to do so are separated by the processes and the measurements used to gauge satisfaction. Without support processes, the result is Lip Service.

Ohio's Data Breach Response Represents Trend Toward Responsibility

While I routinely track and report offline data thefts and other security breaches as part of my job (see news bureau), I have to admit that the recent disappearance of a backup computer storage device with the names of more than 64,000 Ohio state employees, as well as names and Social Security numbers of about 75,500 dependents, caught me by surprise.

Let the Software Police Own the Magic Decoder Ring

After my recent trip to the Gartner IT and Software Asset Management Summit, and my discussions with asset managers struggling with software discovery and translation, I started thinking about the process and effort required to translate discovered data. The Six Sigma analyst in me had me asking myself, what could be done to improve this process, not just for a single organization, but for every asset manager out there who has struggled to justify a program to manage this effort - a daunting, if not impossible task...