Christopher Mines

Two fairly disparate trends -- the integration of hardware and software systems and more modular data centers -- both are leading to significantly more efficient IT systems.

On a mission to spot the Next Big Thing in business technology, Christopher Mines of Forrest Research writes about his takeaways from GreenBiz Group's recent VERGE DC conference.

A look at how a new generation of IT is powering the next wave of industry growth -- a surge that's likely to outstrip cloud and mobile computing in its impact.

From big players like IBM and SAP to smaller startups like C3, vendors of energy and carbon management software have a big challenge to capture a slice of the broad demand for companies of all sizes.

Kickstarter -- and some of the cutting-edge inventions that are breaking records on the crowdfunding site -- are helping to change how green IT comes to market, and speeding the arrival of the Internet of Things.

At Big Blue's annual 'Connect' analyst event, the company gave a glimpse at how its Smarter Planet initiative is driving business opportunities, and mapped the next hurdles it will need to overcome.

Although it's a relatively young market, there is a surprising amount of activity taking place in the enterprise carbon and energy management field. Here are some of the latest signs of progress.

The boom in sustainability-themed events creates a nearly hypocritical carbon footprint for people most engaged in creating a low-carbon world. I'm pledging to use the many technologies available to cut my business-conference carbon footprint.

Despite the large number of companies selling carbon- and energy-management software today, vendors of different sizes and backgrounds widely agree on the needs of the market, even if their approaches are very different.

Despite the ongoing doom and gloom about the overall state of the environment, companies are increasingly bullish on sustainability issues -- and as green gets normalized in the C-Suite, suppliers are going to have to change how they do business.