Fasten your seat belts ladies and germs, the green Vesuvius just went off. The same folks that led the ecommerce market with the idea of ebusiness and we’re among the first F500 companies to embrace the open source (Linux) movement have just announced a major green initiative to help other companies be more green. As one of the largest service companies in the world, IBM’s announcement is monumental. Here’s what they said about it in yesterday’s Wall St. Journal:

Under an initiative it has dubbed “Project Big Green,” International Business Machines Corp. plans to start a major business to help customers slash energy use in data centers that are running up ever larger electricity bills.

The business will help customers maximize energy efficiency of their computers and redesign the layout of their data centers to minimize cooling costs. In addition, IBM, which says it is the world’s biggest operator of data centers, will explain its own plans for reducing power consumption.

This is Marketing for Good on steroids. IBM is not only going “green” itself but it is also preparing to help the many thousands of business that it services go green too. According to the Journal:

IBM is training 1,000 services experts in green technology to help clients redesign their data centers and improve their efficiency.

According to materials prepared for the press event [on May 10th], IBM expects to double the computing capacity of its own data centers by 2010 without using additional energy. Under that scenario, it would avoid incurring $500 million in electricity costs.

Having twice had IBM as a client, I can assure you that when Big Blue (or should I say Big Green) gets behind an initiative like this, the full global might of this company is simply awe inspiring. To paraphrase Lou Gerstner, the elephant can indeed dance, and when it does the global forest rocks. You go Big Green.

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