M. Venkatesh on Rediff on Root of Globalisation

Nevertheless, it was this mindless consumption that acted as an engine of global growth for the past several years. In the process it ushered in great amount of prosperity at the macro level, never mind the imbalance associated with it.
Consequently, anyone who questioned the intrinsic instability of this model was branded insane. That explains why globalisation remained mostly un-critiqued.

This was succinctly put forth by my teacher who brilliantly explained the extant Western economic model as hereunder:

Atomised individuals;
Which in turn meant socialised women;
That in turn caused the collapse of the institution of families;
Consequently, reckless individualism leading to gargantuan consumption;

Finally that lead to nationalisation of responsibilities of families.
This in turn had the following inevitable consequence:
A pauperised State that was unable to carry on the responsibility of family;
This, in turn, lead to privatisation of the functions of government;
Naturally, that demanded a corporatised approach to economy; and
Finally, that necessitated a globalised market for the survival of these corporates.

Understanding Economic Cycles

Taken from
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8473

"The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite." Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), 3rd U.S. President
"I have learned to hold popular opinion of no value. "Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804)
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeating it." George Santayana (1863-1952)
[N.B.: This article is drawn from a conference to be pronounced by Dr. Tremblay before the Florida Renaissance Academy, Marco Island Yacht Club, on April 4, 2008. Those wishing to attend can call: 239-394-3089 or 239-434-4737]
PART I
I have been a student of cycles, both of economic cycles and of political trends, for a very long time. To try to understand the economy or politics for that matter without having a knowledge of cycles and trends is like sailing without a compass, a weather report or a GPS (Global Positioning System).
There are four main types of cycles in economics, some relatively short, such as the slightly less than four year long inventory cycle, or the standard 10-year technology cycle, and some longer, such as the 18-year long real estate cycle (N.B.: We are presently in the downward part of this cycle, which should last until 2010-11), and some called long waves, such as the 54- to 60-year long Kondratieff cycle of a debt and price inflation-then disinflation-followed by a debt and price deflation (N.B.: We are presently in the deflation phase of this long cycle, a good example being the debt deflation of heavily levered banks and hedged funds and of price deflation in housing) such a deflation phase expecting to last also until 2010-11.
As I mentioned, the shorter cycle is the inventory cycle (Kitchin), which lasts slightly less than four years. This cycle has become very much less pronounced in recent years for two reasons. 1) First, the service sector as a percentage of the entire economy is much larger than it was 100 or even 50 years ago. In the United States, the service sector accounts for approximately three quarters of GDP. Today, four out of every five private sector non-farm jobs (80 percent) are in the economy's service sector (federal, state and local government, wholesale trade, retail trade, transportation, public utilities, construction, finance, insurance, real estate, telecommunications, computer and related services, energy services, distribution, express delivery and audio-visual services, etc.). —50 years ago, the service sector accounted for about 60 percent of U.S. output and employment. Today, the information age has generated new forces that have driven the shift to a more services-oriented economy.
For the U.S., services exports represent approximately 30 percent of the total value of America’s exports, and it is in surplus. This sector of the economy is much less volatile than manufacturing, agriculture or mining.
2) Second, over the years, businesses have embraced the use of the computer and the digital revolution to manage inventories. This has lead to the "Just-in-time" inventory management method, which has considerably reduced fluctuations in the inventory stocks of distributors, thus smoothing the production cycle of producers.
During the entire twentieth century, as the economy moved from agriculture and industry and more and more toward service industries, the volatility of the US economy became less and less pronounced. As a consequence, recessions have been shallower and of shorter duration. And, of course, there has not been another economic depression, like the 10-year Great Depression that lasted from 1929 to 1939.
—There was another structural development on the inflation side. Indeed, the internationalization of national economies has acted as a damper on price increases, as new low cost producers, such as China and other emerging economies, have entered the markets. For instance, exports and imports used to represent 20 percent of the U. S. economy; nowadays, it is 30 percent.
Sometimes we measure these cycles from bottom to bottom, and sometimes from top to top. For the 10-year cycle (the Juglar cycle), it often coincides with normal recurring recessions. In the U.S., there were recessions, for example, in 1969, in 1973-75, in 1980 and 1981-82, in 1990-91 and in 2001, most of them within about a 9-10 year interval. According to this cycle, there could be a somewhat severe recession in 2010-11, possibly following the slowdown or recession expected to occur this year.
What is of interest is that the real estate cycle or housing cycle (the Kuznets cycle) is also scheduled to bottom in this period. This is a cycle of about 12 years of price increase and of 5 or 6 years of price decline. The previous cycle, from top to top went from 1987 to the spring of 2005. A bottom would therefore be normal in 2010-11 and a future top around 2023.
But the multi-generation Kondratieff cycle is perhaps even more ominous in its influence on the economy. From bottom to bottom, this very long cycle began in 1949, when wartime prices were unfrozen, reached a top in inflation in 1980 at 13-14 percent levels, and is expected to bottom between 2003 and 2010. The current financial crisis and the credit crunch that accompanies it are the main players in this long cycle.
As you see, the table is set for an important economic bottom in the next two years. That is why I recommend being careful and alert financially during this turbulent period.
There are also cycles and trends in politics, and they sometimes coincide with economic cycles. For example, it would surprise no one to know that during the early inflationary phase of the Kondratieff cycle, a philosophy of government social spending would tend to prevail. In the U.S., this would be a period where the Democrats would be expected to be in power. When there is a need to fight inflation, a conservative philosophy of government would tend to prevail, and this would favor the Republicans. The Kennedy-Johnson administration of the 1960s is a case in point, while the Reagan-Bush Sr. administration is the other.
Rodrigue Tremblay is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Rodrigue Tremblay

Learning from Tata's Nano

http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/feb2008/id20080227_377233.htm
The announcement last month by Tata Motors of its newest car, the Nano, was revealing on many levels. The announcement generated extensive coverage and commentary, but just about everyone missed the Nano's real significance, which goes far beyond the car itself.
But, O.K., let's start with the car itself—particularly the price. At about $2,500 retail, the Nano is the most inexpensive car in the world. Its closest competitor, the Maruti 800, made in India by Maruti Udyog, sells for roughly twice as much. To put this in perspective, the price of the entire Nano car is roughly equivalent to the price of a DVD player option in a luxury Western car. The low price point has left other auto companies scrambling to catch up.
Thinking Outside the Patent Box
How could Tata Motors make a car so inexpensively? It started by looking at everything from scratch, applying what some analysts have described as "Gandhian engineering" principles—deep frugality with a willingness to challenge conventional wisdom. A lot of features that Western consumers take for granted—air conditioning, power brakes, radios, etc.—are missing from the entry-level model.
More fundamentally, the engineers worked to do more with less. The car is smaller in overall dimensions than the Maruti, but it offers about 20% more seating capacity as a result of design choices such as putting the wheels at the extreme edges of the car. The Nano is also much lighter than comparable models as a result of efforts to reduce the amount of steel in the car (including the use of an aluminum engine) and the use of lightweight steel where possible. The car currently meets all Indian emission, pollution, and safety standards, though it only attains a maximum speed of about 65 mph. The fuel efficiency is attractive—50 miles to the gallon.
Hearing all this, many Western executives doubt that this new car represents real innovation. Too often, when they think of innovation, they focus on product innovation using breakthrough technologies; often, specifically, on patents. Tata Motors has filed for 34 patents associated with the design of the Nano, which contrasts with the roughly 280 patents awarded to General Motors (GM) every year. Admittedly that figure tallies all of GM's research efforts, but if innovation is measured only in terms of patents, no wonder the Nano is not of much interest to Western executives. Measuring progress solely by patent creation misses a key dimension of innovation: Some of the most valuable innovations take existing, patented components and remix them in ways that more effectively serve the needs of large numbers of customers.
A Modular Design Revolution
But even this broader perspective fails to capture other significant dimensions of innovation. In fact, Tata Motors itself did not draw a lot of attention to what is perhaps the most innovative aspect of the Nano: its modular design. The Nano is constructed of components that can be built and shipped separately to be assembled in a variety of locations. In effect, the Nano is being sold in kits that are distributed, assembled, and serviced by local entrepreneurs.
As Ratan Tata, chairman of the Tata group of companies, observed in an interview with The Times of London: "A bunch of entrepreneurs could establish an assembly operation and Tata Motors would train their people, would oversee their quality assurance and they would become satellite assembly operations for us. So we would create entrepreneurs across the country that would produce the car. We would produce the mass items and ship it to them as kits. That is my idea of dispersing wealth. The service person would be like an insurance agent who would be trained, have a cell phone and scooter and would be assigned to a set of customers."
In fact, Tata envisions going even further, providing the tools for local mechanics to assemble the car in existing auto shops or even in new garages created to cater to remote rural customers. With the exception of Manjeet Kripalani, BusinessWeek's India bureau chief, few have focused on this breakthrough element of the Nano innovation (BusinessWeek.com, 1/10/08).
This is part of a broader pattern of innovation emerging in India in a variety of markets, ranging from diesel engines and agricultural products to financial services. While most of the companies pursuing this type of innovation are Indian, the U.S. engineering firm, Cummins (CMI) demonstrates that Western companies can also harness this approach and apply it effectively. In 2000 Cummins designed innovative "gensets" (generation sets) to enter the lower end of the power generator market in India. These modular sets were explicitly designed to lower distribution costs and make it easy for distributors and customers to tailor the product for highly variable customer environments. Using this approach, Cummins captured a leading position in the Indian market and now actively exports these new products to Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East.
"Open Distribution" Innovation
We have called this "open distribution" innovation because it mobilizes large numbers of third parties to reach remote rural consumers, tailor the products and services to more effectively serve their needs, and add value to the core product or service through ancillary services. Three innovations in products and processes come together to support "open distribution:"
• increased modularity (both in products and processes)
• aggressive leveraging of existing third-party, often noncommercial, institutions in rural areas to more effectively reach target customers
• creative use of information technology, carefully integrated with social institutions, to encourage use and deliver even greater value.
Modular designs combined with creative leverage of local third-party institutions help participants to get better faster. Companies such as Tata and Cummins are going far beyond "customer co-creation" in the narrow sense of soliciting isolated ideas from customers. Instead, they are building long-term personal relationships with customers, enriched by the specialized capabilities of broad networks of third parties that generate much deeper insight into customer needs and afford opportunities to tailor value.
Such innovations are quite different from those in the retail distribution systems pioneered by companies such as Dell (DELL) and the leading big-box retailers. These U.S. companies developed completely self-contained and highly standardized facilities and services for customers. But the open-architecture approach pioneered by Indian companies may offer much greater opportunity to deliver more tailored value to customers than the closed-architecture U.S. approach. The techniques initially developed to reach poor and rural customers may have even greater potential when used to reach highly demanding, affluent, urban customers in Western economies.
Welcoming Users Back into the Design Loop
The Tata Motors/Nano approach contrasts with the strategy of most other manufacturers. For more established automakers each new model represents an advance in tight integration, with more and more of the functionality deeply embedded in electronics that truly represent a "black box" to the customer. The days of customizing cars to personalize them and push their performance limits are rapidly receding into distant memory for the average customer. Yet, as Kathleen Franz, makes clear in her wonderful book, Tinkering: Consumers Reinvent the Early Automobile, it was the open design of early automobile models that blurred the lines between consumption and invention and led to a wave of innovations that were later embraced by the auto industry.
What are the broader lessons that Western executives should learn from this innovation story?
Emerging markets are a fertile ground for innovation. The challenge of reaching dispersed, low-income consumers in emerging markets often spurs significant innovation. Western executives should be careful about compartmentalizing the impact of these innovations on the edge of the global economy. As we suggested in Innovation Blowback, these innovations will become the basis for "attacker" strategies that can be used to challenge incumbents in more developed economies. What's initially on the edge soon comes to the core.
• Find ways to help customers and others on the edge to tinker with your products. Modular and open product designs help engage large numbers of motivated users in tailoring and pushing the performance boundaries of your products, leading to significant insight into unmet customer needs and creative approaches to addressing those needs.
• Pay attention to institutional innovation. Western executives often become too narrowly focused on product or process innovation. Far higher returns may come from investing in institutional innovation—redefining the roles and relationships that bring together independent entities to deliver more value to the market. Tata is innovating in all three dimensions simultaneously.
• Rethink distribution models. In our relentless quest for operating efficiency, we have gone for more standardization and fewer business partners in our efforts to reach customers. As customers gain more power, they will demand more tailoring and value-added service to meet their needs. Companies that innovate on this dimension are likely to be richly rewarded.
John Hagel and John Seely Brown are co-chairman and independent co-chairman, respectively, of the Center for Edge Innovation, a part of Deloitte & Touche USA LLP. John Hagel writes a blog at Edge Perspectives .

Furniture of an apartment in a box- great design

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/02/casulo_an_entir.php

Kudos to the designers. Great idea. great appeal.

Custom-made mobile phones to suit your choices

NEW DELHI: This is one made-to-order device that everyone will love to have: the cellphone. If you are a music lover, why not have a phone which can hold more songs rather than heavy graphics.

Alternatively, if you want a better camera on a handset, why settle for just a 2-megapixel one? Soon, you will be able to order a mobile phone built to your specifications, much like you can assemble a computer or order a custom-made one from Dell or any other PC vendor.

It will carry a premium, but will definitely set you apart from the people who use the mass market product. A mobile phone is a combination of various parts - memory, processor, camera, MP3 music player, other applications, number of SIM card slots et al. Now, you’ll be able to dial up a vendor and buy parts off the shelf and put together your own cellphone.

This will completely overhaul the mobile phone business, which is currently dependent on selling whatever the cellphone maker wants to market rather than what you want to buy.

Also, when mobile phone makers like to call their devices as computers why can’t they custom-build them? That’s the problem the Chinese company, zzzPhone, is planning to solve. Their factory in China will custom-build a phone to your specifications - like the number of SIM card slots, applications accessibility, memory capacity etc.


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It will look like any other regular handset. The difference will be inside: you can choose to have (or not have) GPS, 7-megapixel camera, 4GB internal memory, stereo speakers and Windows Mobile (or equivalent) operating system, processor upgrade or anything else. It even has two SIM card slots so you can keep your work and play in the same phone.
Right now, prices are variable, starting at $149 for a 3-megapixel version with Windows Mobile and a 3-inch VGA display. The company claims to deliver orders within six weeks.

Technical and marketing experts in India argue that while this is practical, the miniature mobile parts do pose a challenge in terms of how far you can go. Says Nokia India marketing director Devinder Kishore: “Custom-building can be incorporated. But Nokia already offers 40 new models each year, catering to the needs of a whole spectrum of users.”
While a range of models in the market ensures that people have a choice, it does not satiate the desires of consumers who are looking for top-end exclusivity and here’s where the custom-built phone will score.

Explains Hewlett-Packard India (personal systems group), president, Ravi Swaminathan: “Technically, it is possible. If you are willing to pay the price, anything can be custom-built, much like top-end cars. But I believe that a wide range is available in the market and meets the needs of over 90% of the market.”

The miniature mobile components pose a challenge to custom-make the gadget. But for people willing to shell out a premium, it won’t be a problem to choose between having, say, a global positioning system on the phone or a 10-megapixel camera.

ARM (a chipmaker for cell phones) managing director Anil Gupta adds: “It’s possible to get to a point where we can buy a phone with more, or less memory. Also, in future, most mobiles will have USB ports to allow connecting to a ‘sister’ device. Even the idea of a ‘single-use’ mobile phone is not far-fetched (similar to the use-and-throw cameras).

Such phones could be useful when you are travelling to a new destination: you keep your regular phone, but use the single-use unit while at the new location, throwing it away when you are ready to leave.” Whatever the technical challenges, a made-to-order phone is pretty much feasible and soon, you will be able to ask for one with your own specifications.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/News_By_Industry/Telecom/Custom-made_mobile_phones_to_suit_your_choices/rssarticleshow/2786945.cms

Made in India

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Sunday_Specials/Special_Report/Made_in_India/articleshow/2751757.cms

3 Feb 2008, 0000 hrs IST,Sujata Dutta Sachdeva,TNN

Sabeer Bhatia’s hotmail revolutionised communication. Bhatia’s baby was reportedly sold to Bill Gates for $400 million (TOI Photo)
Driving through the American countryside, an Indian visitor was taking in the sights when something caught his eye. Amid the vast, rolling fields was a farmer riding a Mahindra tractor. Conceptualised and designed at Mahindra and Mahindra’s R&D centre in Mumbai, this made-in-India farm vehicle has managed to grab 6% of US market share in its segment. And now it’s making inroads into mark-ets as diverse as Europe and Sri Lanka. Surprised? Not when you consider India’s steady emergence as an engineering and design hub. Tata’s Rs-1 lakh Nano has already made a global splash. Then there is HCL’s homegrown Mileaptop. Weighing less than a kilogram and priced below Rs 15,000, the entry-level laptop is touted as the cheapest in the market. "The idea is to increase PC penetration in India and improve Net accessibility," says Rajendra Kumar, executive VP, HCL. And let’s not forget Maruti’s first concept car. Saurabh Singh and Rajesh Gogu created waves at the recent Delhi Auto Expo. The duo designed the A-Star at Maruti Udyog’s Manesar plant. Soon, the car will be seen on European motorways. Maruti engineers have worked with Suzuki Motors to design Swift and Zen Estilo as well. "We hope to design and produce our own car model from India by 2011," says C V Raman, chief general manager (engineering), Maruti Udyog. From cars to tractors, refrigerators to laptops, made-and-designed-in-India is becoming a sought after label. One that also means serious business. According to some studies, India’s contract industrial engineering revenue is expected to grow from around $500 million to $10 billion in the next five years. Worldwide, the market is growing exponentially. International market research firm IDC expects the product engineering services industry to double, hitting $53 billion annually by 2009. Closer home, Nasscom in its study ‘Engineering Service Outsourcing (ESO)’, pegs global spending on engineering services at $750 billion per year - almost equal to India’s GDP. By 2020, this amount is expected to increase to more than $1 trillion. Of the $750 billion being spent today, only $10-15 billion is being offshored. India has about 12% market share. By 2020, the ESO market would be worth $150-$225 billion. India’s share will be 25-30%, or $50 billion annually. In fact, much like software design, the volume of sophisticated engineering design work being done out of India is growing rapidly. While many IT majors have already set up captive centres for design development here, local firms too are getting good business from global customers. Harita TVS in Bangalore does engineering design services for customers across US and Europe. It’s the preferred partner for many OEM and Tier-1 customers. Similarly, Plexion Technologies has worked on interior design and windows for a top European car brand. Other car makers like Toyota Motors, Ford, Ferrari, and Honda have all boosted Indian outsourcing. Realising the potential, Indian companies are now focusing a lot more on innovation and design. Sona Group, the well-known auto accessories maker, is now working on an electric power steering for non-highway vehicles in the US. "We are trying to create a mindset for innovation. To keep ahead of the competition, innovation in design is a must; we are creating tools and developing skills so that people are able to think out of the box," says Kiran Deshmukh, COO, Sona Kyo Steering Systems. The company was involved in the making of the Nano’s steering wheel. "A lot of product design is already happening in Indian industry. The final products will be as impressive as the Nano," assures Sarita Nagpal, deputy director general, CII. Take, for instance, Godrej’s latest fridge-in-the-works. The folks who gave us our first indigenous locks, vegetable-oil soaps and colour fridges have come up with the low-cost Hedge. "It’s a refrigerator with convection floors that allow uniform cooling and is competitively priced," says G Sundarman, president, product strategy, Godrej Appliances. Competitive pricing is also the USP of HCL’s rural PCs that run on car batteries. Last year, Mahindra created Shaan, a multiutility farm vehicle which won an award from the American Society for Agricultural and Biological Engineers for design. "We have a patent for it. The tractor is aimed at people who use it in their farms, as a family vehicle and for transporting goods," says Manrao, senior VP, M&M. They also created India’s first bio-diesel tractor in 2004. Likewise, the Tata Group has been in the forefront of design engineering in India. Their Indica was touted as the ‘first truly Indian car’. Now the Nano’s become a global talking point. As Sunil Sinha, CEO, Tata Quality Management Services explains, "As a group, we started looking at innovation seriously in the ’90s. Internally, we have amplified the message of innovation, strengthened our R&D and increased our budget spend." And it’s showing. While Tata Tetley designed an iced tea dispenser that’s become a rage in the US, Tata Technologies, which operates in 12 countries, is designing cars and vans for top foreign carmakers. However, Sinha feels a lot still needs to be done. "In 2006, India had filed only 400-odd IPRs while companies like Microsoft and Intel alone filed more than 2,000. We need to change the mindset and make innovation happen here." The problem is that over the years we have focused more on excelling in production engineering rather than on creating our own designs. "It’s time to think beyond and recognize the importance of product design and innovation. Only then can we remain competitive," says Deshmukh. Else, we may only end up creating the occasional ripple with a Nano or a Shaan - hardly adequate for the long drive to design stardom. sujata.sachdeva@timesgroup.com

Gartner's 10 predictions for IT industry for 2008 and beyond

http://www.rediff.com/money/2008/jan/31infotech.htm

Leading IT industry analyst firm Gartner Inc has highlighted 10 key predictions of events and developments that will affect IT and business in 2008 and beyond.
The predictions highlight areas where executives and IT professionals need to take action in 2008. The full impact of these trends may not appear this year, but executives need to act now so that they can exploit the trends for their competitive advantage.
"Selected from across our research areas as the most compelling and critical predictions, the trends and topics they address this year indicate a strong focus on individuals, the environment, and alternative ways of buying and selling IT services and technologies," said Daryl Plummer, managing vice president and Gartner Fellow, in a media release on Thursday.
The predictions that Gartner has made for the year 2008 focus on general technology areas rather than on specific industries or roles. These include:
1. By 2011, Apple will double its American and western European market share in computers: Apple's gains in computer market share reflect as much on the failures of the rest of the industry as on Apple's success. Apple is challenging its competitors with software integration that provides ease of use and flexibility; continuous and more frequent innovation in hardware and software; and an ecosystem that focuses on interoperability across multiple devices (such as iPod and iMac cross-selling).
2. By 2012, 50 per cent of traveling workers will leave their notebooks at home in favour of other devices: Even though notebooks continue to shrink in size and weight, travelling workers lament the weight and inconvenience of carrying them on their trips. Vendors are developing solutions to address these concerns: new classes of Internet-centric pocketable devices at the sub-$400 level; and server and Web-based applications that can be accessed from anywhere. There is also a new class of applications: portable personality that encapsulates a user's preferred work environment, enabling the user to recreate that environment across multiple locations or systems.
3. By 2012, 80 per cent of all commercial software will include elements of open-source technology: Many open-source technologies are mature, stable and well supported. They provide significant opportunities for vendors and users to lower their total cost of ownership and increase returns on investment. Ignoring this will put companies at a serious competitive disadvantage.
Embedded open source strategies will become the minimal level of investment that most large software vendors will find necessary to maintain competitive advantages during the next five years.
4. By 2012, at least one-third of business application software spending will be as service subscription instead of as product license: With software as service (SaaS), the user organisation pays for software services in proportion to use. This is fundamentally different from the fixed-price perpetual license of the traditional on-premises technology. Endorsed and promoted by all leading business applications vendors (Oracle, SAP, Microsoft) and many Web technology leaders (Google, Amazon), the SaaS model of deployment and distribution of software services will enjoy steady growth in mainstream use during the next five years.
5. By 2011, early technology adopters will forgo capital expenditures and instead purchase 40 per cent of their IT infrastructure as a service: Increased high-speed bandwidth makes it practical to locate infrastructure at other sites and still receive the same response times. Enterprises believe that as service oriented architecture (SOA) becomes common 'cloud computing' will take off, thus untying applications from specific infrastructure.
This trend to accepting commodity infrastructure could end the traditional 'lock-in' with a single supplier and lower the costs of switching suppliers. It means that IT buyers should strengthen their purchasing and sourcing departments to evaluate offerings. They will have to develop and use new criteria for evaluation and selection and phase out traditional criteria.
6. By 2009, more than one-third of IT organisations will have one or more environmental criteria in their top six buying criteria for IT-related goods: Initially, the motivation will come from the wish to contain costs. Enterprise data centres are struggling to keep pace with the increasing power requirements of their infrastructures. And there is substantial potential to improve the environmental footprint, throughout the life cycle, of all IT products and services without any significant trade-offs in price or performance.
In future, IT organisations will shift their focus from the power efficiency of products to asking service providers about their measures to improve energy efficiency.
7. By 2010, 75 per cent of organisations will use full life cycle energy and CO2 footprint as mandatory PC hardware buying criteria: Most technology providers have little or no knowledge of the full life cycle energy and CO2 footprint of their products. Some technology providers have started the process of life cycle assessments, or at least were asking key suppliers about carbon and energy use in 2007 and will continue in 2008.
Most others using such information to differentiate their products will start in 2009 and by 2010 enterprises will be able to start using the information as a basis for purchasing decisions. Most others will stat some level of more detailed life cycle assessment in 2008.
8. By 2011, suppliers to large global enterprises will need to prove their green credentials via an audited process to retain preferred supplier status: Those organisations with strong brands are helping to forge the first wave of green sourcing policies and initiatives. These policies go well beyond minimising direct carbon emissions or requiring suppliers to comply with local environmental regulations.
For example, Timberland has launched a 'Green Index' environmental rating for its shoes and boots. Home Depot is working on evaluation and audit criteria for assessing supplier submissions for its new EcoOptions product line.
9. By 2010, end-user preferences will decide as much as half of all software, hardware and services acquisitions made by IT: The rise of the Internet and the ubiquity of the browser interface have made computing approachable and individuals are now making decisions about technology for personal and business use.
Because of this, IT organisations are addressing user concerns through planning for a global class of computing that incorporates user decisions in risk analysis and innovation of business strategy.
10. Through 2011, the number of 3-D printers in homes and businesses will grow 100-fold over 2006 levels: The technology lets users send a file of a 3-D design to a printer-like device that will carve the design out of a block of resin. A manufacturer can make scale models of new product designs without the expense of model makers. Or consumers can have models of the avatars they use online.
Ultimately, manufacturers can consider making some components on demand without having an inventory of replacement parts. Printers priced less than $10,000 have been announced for 2008, opening up the personal and hobbyist markets.