The way the economy is going, it's hard to justify paying a premium for green technology. But a couple of changes now can yield some surprising near-immediate savings as well as longer term boosts to the bottom line.

Also, IBM and Dell tout their green cred; National Semiconductor makes moves into solar; and Japan may well become the model of a sustainable, economically-motivated society.

Color Your IT Strategy Green - Small Business Computing

There’s a common thread between technologies such as unified communications, Web conferencing, portal and collaboration software and mobile computing: all of these applications make it easier for people to work from anywhere. Thus, your company can potentially expand telecommuting and even cut back on business travel.

"A big selling point of collaborative technologies is going to be resource reduction - in terms of staff time, power, gas and travel dollars," said John Burke, an IT analyst with Nemertes Research. He gives the example of a 1,000-employee global beverage distributor that is saving $3,600 per day by using Web conferencing to reduce business travel. If you factor in the several hours of lost productivity that go along with most business trips, those time-and-money benefits can make a real difference to your small business.

Big Blue's Power Systems Painted Green at OCEAN Tech Conference - IT Jungle

Where should IT managers look for energy abuse? X64 servers took a lot of the heat that Howard was dishing out. Utilization rates for X64 servers are notoriously low, typically in the 10 percent to 20 percent range. Server consolidation means energy conservation and considerable savings can be realized in companies running dozens or--oh, mercy--hundreds of under utilized servers.

Dell strives to make it easier to be green with FlexAddress - ZDNet Blogs

Glenn Keels, director, global relationship marketing at Dell, describes FlexAddress as a simple way for managers to deploy and manage blades because it abstracts that Fibre Channel Worldwide Network Name and Ethernet/iSCSI Media Access Control address from the blade hardware and instead ties persistently to a slot in M1000e blade chassis.

National Semiconductor reinvents itself and goes solar - TG Daily

NSC apparently found some opportunities in solar paneling and is looking to expand its business into the green industry. In May, Halla hinted that a new technology would be introduced to make solar panels more efficient and since last week we know what the executive was talking about. NSC promises that its Solar Magic technology can recoup as much as 50% of lost output in solar systems due to issues such as debris and shade.

Japan's Green Gold Mine - Forbes

It's a feel-good campaign, but it's also an economic development plan. Fukuda is counting on Japanese manufacturers to export these technologies. Japan's marquee automakers have jumped into hybrids, electrics and hydrogen cars, following Toyota's success with the Prius and its other hybrid cars. Pledging environmental support is in vogue, especially when it makes money.