Happy New Year. Its getting harder to stay cheery these days.
We've all tried to stay positive as the sub-prime crisis spawned the credit crunch which smothered the global economy. But its easy to lose heart as pensions and house prices tumble and mighty institutions such as HBOS, RBOS are humbled.
As the gloom of the New Millenium Depression sinks in, we find ourselves working harder, with scarce opportunity, and evaporating job security.
As the good Rev. I. M. Jolly once said, "You know, its been a hell of a year".
With this in mind just before Christmas we invited renowned economist Jeremy Peat to speak at Microsoft Edinburgh HQ.
Jeremy's views on the Scottish economic outlook for the next 18 months were riveting, but there were few rays of sunshine. Luckily the windows are sealed at Waverley Gate, preventing the assembled Scottish IT Industry leaders from throwing themselves on the railway tracks below.
Looking for cheerier news, I checked some of my favourite RSS feeds.
Although Barry Beelzebub politically incorrect rant on the state of the nation and The Daily Mash can't fail to amuse, everywhere else it's doom and gloom as the World faces a doubly whammy of financial and environmental catastrophe.
The Guardian's respected environmental blogger George Monbiot tells us that the International Energy Agency is warning of "Peak Oil" in 2020, some 10 years earlier than previously projected. Earlier posts explain that global warming proceeding faster than anticipated faster than expected with melting of arctic ice and permafrost warming the atmosphere by around 5 degrees to 2050 - rendering human civilisation impossible across much of the planet.
George's views, backed up by solid research it must be said, is that we must change our ways or the planet will burn. I imagine he doesn't get invited to many parties these days.
Meanwhile in the Technology Industries perhaps there are some positives... The Global Financial Crisis may be a perfect storm for technology and IT professionals with Business willing to try out new ideas.
In economies like the UK and US where GDP is likely to shrink by a few points in 2009 and faced with growing commitment to climate change legislation and regulation, it seems clear that business and consumers must find new ways of "doing stuff" which are less wasteful of resources, can reduce operating costs and make less demands on capital investment. Its common sense that a recession changes habits - Consumers put off the expensive holiday in favour of paying the mortgage. Organisations will take every opportunity to make changes which cut operating costs before taking the step of making redundancies.
Lynda Gratton of the FT predicts that business travel habits will fundamentally change in her article "Recessions give space for new ideas to flourish" with fiscal necessity driving adoption of collaboration and video conferencing technologies.
This really is a no-brainer - stop flying employees to meetings and use conferencing technology. Not only will this take a serious bite out of business air travel carbon emissions (currently 6% of UK total), but it can have a significant impact on opex. Of course this doesn't work for all industries, but it is not unusual for a UK services sector enterprises to budget £10,000 per year for employee T&E. My personal experience has been that judicious use of Unified Communications tools can cut 50% off that figure.
In fact, if such tools are fully adopted in the company culture (and this takes time), Real Estate and Facilities could really start to trim some fat from the bottom line. Such tools promise to make employees productive wherever they are, reducing the capital cost of office move and consolidation, facilitating Telework and promoting more flexible sharing of expensive office space.
Such ideas are not new - but as the tech gets cheaper and the pressure to reduce operational expenditure increases, ideas thought too risky in the boom times may become standard in the bust.
Cloud-delivered subscription services such as Microsoft's Business Productivity Online, which for some companies can give an employee all the IT services they need for around a tenner a month, may become the norm for smaller customers in a protracted recession. This is more efficient for many businesses than procuring hardware and software and running the services themselves, and for those familiar with the growing electricity consumption of the IT industry worldwide, it promotes maximum efficiency of energy use.
Perhaps all this is good news for IT industry professionals: demand for skills around technologies which reduce consumption and make things more efficient in the coming years may stay solid. Companies IT spend will may shift focus, and new ideas previously thought of as too far removed from the status quo will flourish.
Information Technology based applications, ideas and initiatives can have a broad impact on energy use and operating costs. Take Shiply - a venture born just as the UK's major banks were passing round the hat in Rights Issues last year. Shiply is on online freight marketplace which benefits both the consumer and supplier of the service. Hauliers reverse-auction for jobs to fill empty lorries returning from other work, and the customer pays around 50% of traditional services. Clearly this service improves efficiency, reducing costs, more effectively utilising resources, ultimately reducing the number of freight journeys and hence carbon emmissions.
Ex-SAP Executive Shai Agassi high profile Better Place initiative aims to go even further. His ambitious business model is to replace our vehicle and oil based public transportation with an electric infrastructure of free cars where we pay by the mile, in much the same way as the free handset/Pay as you go model works in telecomms. Further positive grand vision can be found in the Global E-sustainability initiative "SMART 2020 - Enabling a low carbon economy in the Information Age" which identifies the IT industry as the hero, contributing to the Low Carbon economy by enabling new motor and logistics systems, smart energy grids and buildings.
So despite the doom, gloom and despondancy, there are still some uplifting stories to raise our spirits in 2009 - But remember in these dark and uncertain times the words of the Good Reverend - "Life is like an ashtray - full of little doubts".
