Green Technology Alliance to Help Companies Use Green Computing Methods
Goals of the Green Technology Alliance
As more businesses add green computing initiatives in their business plans, more organizations and initiatives start hitting the green computing scene. Green Technology Alliance’s (GTA) mission is “to accelerate the adoption of green, clean and sustainable business practices, technologies and solutions.”
GTA has four goals:
- Highlight and build green technologies.
- Identify strategies for solutions that provide a business benefit for companies investing in green technologies.
- Encourage adoption of green technologies that contribute to the economy.
- Build a “sustainable economies model” that supports and sustains our economy and environment.
Growing the Green Community
Currently, the first chapter exists in Austin, Texas. However, the alliance plans to add more regional chapters in other cities and countries.
In an interview with Michelle Naquin and Heath Naquin, co-founders of GTA, they said that no green computing standard currently exists because of the complexity of IT and systems. So, the Green Technology Alliance is working with many industry partners to create that first matrix and build the industry specific requirements.
The GTA aims to build a community dedicated to reaching its four core goals of accelerating the adoption of green computing. The alliance shows the solutions available, takes action by educating, and offers support for organizations ready to implement.
One of the GTA’s actions includes hosting the Green IT Summit that contains support from over 1000 people and 700 organizations. The summit offers a full day of conference sessions focusing on going and staying green in IT.
The GTA also offers professional services to help businesses answer all their questions concerning green computing including best practices, actions to take, impacts of operations on environment, available green programs and services, financial benefits of going green and evaluating green products and services.
Organizations can also become GTA Certified, which is “a product certification program providing a baseline standard enabling hardware, software and other products to be measured against their ‘green’ competitors.” The beta program began in September 2008.
Green Technology Alliance web site provides many resources on its web site at greentechnologyalliance.org. The alliance offers discounted membership fees to students, individuals, sole proprietors and nonprofits.
