Betfair chief technology officer Rorie Devine's honesty in the new issue of Computing Business makes for a refreshing change: 'When people first started talking about green computing at the back end of last year, I was not sure what they meant.'

Good for him, it is good to see a technology leader - in fact, any kind of business leader - sticking his head about the parapet and be being candid enough to say that dealing with rampant environmentalism can be a bit of challenge.

As the chief technology officer at Betfair is brave enough to declare, enthusiasm can often make the green issue sound worthy. But as Devine also recognises, green computing soon becomes a crucial business strategy once energy savings are made clear.

Betfair has introduced a range of initiative, including storage virtualisation, running energy-efficient machines and recycling old equipment through specialist charity Computer Aid International.

Such projects all fall in line with our own Green Computing campaign, which aims to raise awareness of environmental issues in IT departments and in doing so, reduce business costs and improve efficiency.

At the heart of Computing's campaign is a seven point charter designed to help chief information officers (CIOs) and IT managers with environmental goals. The charter is a set of guidelines for IT organisations to improve their green credentials and reduce costs:

1. Find out how much energy your IT systems use and monitor ongoing consumption levels.
2. Ensure unused equipment is turned off when it is not being used.
3. Educate staff to the benefits of saving energy and recycling.
4. Establish a code of practice designed to minimise unnecessary printing.
5. Identify IT management practices that reduce power consumption.
6. When purchasing new IT equipment, choose energy-saving devices that have been manufactured in an environmentally-conscious fashion.
7. Dispose of old hardware responsibly; send old PCs to be reconditioned and recycled.

Computing has been encouraging companies to sign up to the charter - but how many of these seven environmental goals is your IT organisational successfully meeting?

If you stick your head above the parapet and are candid about green computing, would you say you are doing enough to meet the challenge of environmentalism? Could you honestly say you are a green CIO?

'I hate the world today,' sang miserable rocker Alanis Morissette. With a downbeat attitude like that, is it time for the singer-songwriter to cheer up? Probably - but maybe Morissette has spent too much time using Web 2.0 technologies.

According to research by internet marketing specialist E-consultancy, more than half of firms are planning to adopt blogs, podcasts, videocasts and user-generated content this year. And while increased interactivity sounds like a big positive, there is a downside too.

A survey of over 2,500 office workers by content security specialist Clearswift found under-30s use Web 2.0 sites most regularly – 39 per cent access them several times a day – and nearly half of this group said they had discussed work-related issues on such sites.

Worried? Well, maybe you should be. As your IT workers spend more paid time on MySpace and increasingly less time on corporate issues, you will need to establish a security policy - and creating a policy in such a context will be an intractable challenge.

One such IT worker - a socially challenged but technically literate friend of mine - was recently raving about the quality of YouTube: 'You can find videos of literally anything you want,' he said. 'Obscure 1980s German pop videos - anything.'

Put to the test, his theory stands up surprisingly well. A random search for Chas 'n' Dave's "Snooker Loopy" provides a number of options, including a mind-numbing eight minute compilation of the cheeky chappies' hits. I also looked up my secondary school and found a depressing collection of happy slapping incidents, faux fights, and teachers and staff singing "Show me the way to Amarillo".

For five minutes of supposed fun, I got five five hours of depression. What has happened to the world? Is it all the fault of Web 2.0 technologies? Worse, maybe even Alanis Morissette was right (no, that is a step too far).

But there is, however, a simple lesson: know your Web 2.0 enemy. Get to know the technologies, put your policies in place now and make the most of the content. What you are prepared for cannot hurt you.

Research from law firm Addleshaw Goddard shows more than half of blue-chip companies have been forced to exit or renegotiate an outsourcing contract before the end of its term. Apparently, poor service, lack of control and hidden costs are usually to blame.

It all adds up to more bad news for external service providers. Back in January, outsourcing adviser TPI reported that the final quarter of 2006 was the worst quarter in five years, in terms of the total value of contracts awarded. The value of new market contracts declined by 8 per cent on 2005 levels.

So, where is the good news? When it comes to outsourcing, where will users be directing their attention during the next five-or-so years? Anjan Lahiri, head of European operations at outsourcing specialist MindTree, told The Knowledge to expect concentration in three key areas.

Bundled services
The outsourcing of business processes where the software is embedded with the external service provision. Examples might include pharmaceutical companies outsourcing clinical trials, or a human resources (HR) organisation outsourcing the induction of an employee. In the second example, the company using the externalised HR service might pay for each worker inducted, rather than for the technology system itself.

Volume and scale
Lahiri believes we have just touched the surface of what is possible, with regards to the outsourcing of services. Rather than the current face-to-face interaction we are used to, hotel and hospital receptionist services might be outsourced, enabling organisations to reduce costs and potentially increase efficiency. The only limitation to such  processes, says Lahiri, is how far business is prepared to go socially - in other words, the extent to which the public at large believes outsourcing is socially acceptable.

Industrial engineering outsourcing
In an attempt to create workable solutions, research companies run different models over and over again. Lahiri says elements of the testing chain can be - and increasingly will be - outsourced to specialist organisations.

How does the internet work? I don't mean broadband pipes and caching - all the network-type stuff can be understood with a bit of thought. No, I mean how the does the data behind the internet really work?

Back in September 2003, I interviewed Mark Littlewoood of Sun Microsystems for an article about Windows and Linux. It was pretty standard stuff: the premise was that an increasing number of users were considering Linux as an alternative to Microsoft for their desktop software. A bunch of industry experts were polled for their opinions.

Littlewood, Sun's UK entry server product marketing manager, referred to the usage of Linux in the enterprise by saying: 'It's not a massive explosion but it's growing at an increasing rate.' As I said, standard stuff.

However, during the past few months, strange things have started happening. I have started receiving emails from US sales companies that are pitching software and conference opportunities... to me... as Mark Littlewood.

Somehow - somewhere in cyberspace - someone, or something, has connected a database that has merged Mark Littlewood with Mark Samuels.

Write one article about one person and you can become that individual. So, how does the data behind the internet really work?

How rubbish are Birmingham City Football Club? With a far from glorious history and an almost empty trophy cabinet, very rubbish indeed would seem to be an appropriate answer.

The second city's second club's only major honour came in 1963 when they won the League Cup, beating Aston Villa in a two-legged final. Beating your local rivals would seem like good news, at least. But fans of Birmingham - or the Blues, as they are known - should not get too cocky. The Villa can boast 21 major hours, including the European Cup, seven League titles and seven FA Cup wins.

Fans of the Blues blame a curse for the club's bad, or should I say, appalling luck. Birmingham's attempt at a football ground was built on a former gypsy camp - and the gypsies were reputed to have put a curse on the ground when they were evicted.

Enough is enough, says one Villa fan - who has used the government's e-petitions system in an attempt to out Birmingham's gypsy curse excuse as a sham.

Launched in November 2006, e-petitions allow users to electronically create and sign petitions - before delivering the request directly to Downing Street.

The Villa fan's request - launched by Dan Carroll - states the following: 'We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to ban Birmingham City fans from blaming an apparent gypsies' curse for being the reason they never achieve any success.'

Further details from the petition creator state: 'Let's face it, have you ever heard anything so patently ridiculous? The reason they have had no success is that they are rubbish!'

At this point, I should make my allegiances clear: I am an Aston Villa supporter - and I too believe the curse and Birmingham City, more generally, are rubbish.

But the public at large and the UK government clearly do not agree. Dan Carroll's petition was rejected for the following reason: 'It was intended to be humorous, or have no point about government policy.'

Which is fair enough - Carroll's petition was a bit silly and I cannot see it affecting wider, public sector thinking.

More to the point, the Blues believe the curse has now been lifted - given that the date of the 100-year hex apparently passed on Boxing Day, 2006.

Proof, however, will be on the pitch. And with Birmingham challenging at the top of the Championship, am I worried? Nah (well, not too much).

Companies are wasting cash on technology - and most of that money is being splashed on maintenance rather than development, according to Chris Henn, vice president of business development at service-oriented architecture (SOA) specialist E2E.

Speaking to The Knowledge, Henn said total cost of ownership figures for users are 'pretty bad'. He suggested companies are spending just 20 per cent of their IT budgets on development and as much as 80 per cent on maintenance. 'Companies are used to doing it, so no-one is yelling,' he said. The key question, of course, is why have costs been allowed to become allocated in such a way?

Henn blamed object-oriented languages, tired development methods and the business treating IT as a service.

Innovative use of SOA can help companies to integrate systems and processes, helping the IT organisation to cut maintenance costs and increase development spending.

But undertaking innovative SOA can be a tricky challenge. And when it comes to technology leadership, Henn said three key issues will dominate SOA usage during the next three-or-so years:

1. Companies will needs to find a common business technology language. The left hand currently works with code, while the right hand works with models.
2. Like in all other areas of computing, the board will need to become more involved in technology decision making. In short, the chief executive will need to recognise that IT is not just a service.
3. Finally, IT managers will need to concentrate on finding the right place to start their SOA initiative. SOA-based computing can sometimes seem like a big project, but technology leaders will need to recognise that they can start their projects at a low level. It is vital for to get the right people involved and to pick an initiative that is both business routed and that will quickly prove business benefits, preferably within two-to-four months.

An even briefer summary of the issues that will dominate SOA implementation is provided by vice president Gary Baverstock, Chris Henn's colleague at E2E: 'Re-use is what it's all about it,' he says. If companies can stop wasting cash on maintenance, he might just be right.

As an IT leader, you are responsible for company content that is probably used and stored in countless ways.

Every day, you make potentially damaging decisions regarding the data assets in your business. So it is vital that you make the right decisions.

As this month’s Computing Business cover story shows, picking your way through the digital rights minefield can be an intractable challenge. The same information is often duplicated many times over, held in several databases and accessed through various systems. To sort data rights management, the chief information officer needs to be attentive to policy-making – the ‘who, when, why and what’ of content access.

Working out who is allowed to open key documents will help you establish company standards. And technologies such as tracking and authentication can help to ensure your policies are enforced.

But while standards and technologies can help reduce potential damage to information assets, it is important to recognise that the digital rights minefield can expose many unwelcome surprises.

Ownership of content, for example, is a delicate issue. And in the information age the concept of possession is a lot murkier.

Take, say, the ownership of music. Remember the feeling of guilt people used to get as they illegally copied albums to cassette tapes in the eighties and nineties?

Such feelings of shame are now a long and distant memory, with citizens across the land burning home-made compilations on digital kit, the quality of which would have been unthinkable just a decade ago.

And record sales have dropped by 20 per cent in the past five years.

Warn your kids and work colleagues, however: big business is biting back. This month’s cover story highlights a series of landmark cases that are helping to turn the tide in favour of the record companies.

Additional change is expected in the wake of the government’s Gowers review, which recommends increasing online piracy and fileshare penalties to 10 years.

The report recommends that consumers be allowed limited private use, such as when they are switching CD content from one format to another – such as PC to MP3.

Cassettes, on the other hand, have been consigned to history. When trying to buy one in a high-street retailer recently, I was told there was no demand for them – which was odd because the same retailer sold cassette recorders.

The complexities of digital rights management suggest you should not expect your creation and use of content to be more straightforward.

It was stated in yesterday's The Knowledge that stereotyping is a dangerous game, particularly with regards to offshoring.

More specifically, it was illustrated how the failure of sourcing contracts has little to do with the localised approach of the offshorer - and how offshoring is more likely to inspire cultural growth, particularly in the host population.

Responding to the posting, Mark Brady said: 'I would ask those thinking of offshoring not to give up managing IT, but to concentrate on it and invest in their local community first.'

First, the managing of IT is rarely given up. Even in the circumstances when a technology organisation is outsourced, management is the one element of IT that is always kept in-house - and usually kept in the UK. In an attempt to reduce costs, technology leaders might be keen to shunt elements of the technology department to the other side of the world (much to the pleasure of their finance department and the consternation of the IT staff) - but IT directors are unlikely to remove themselves totally from the chain of command. In a world where chief information officers (CIOs) are under increasing pressure to justify their existence, giving up on IT - including technology management - would not be a good idea.

Second, the knowledge economy is a global economy. Every job offshored - and created in India, China or even Ukraine - creates value for Western economies. For example, each dollar sent offshore from the United States creates $1.46 of new economic value - $1.1.3 in the United States and $0.33 in India (according to a recent presentation by Anjan Lahiri, head of European operations at outsourcing specialist MindTree).

Ask the person sitting next to you, maybe even the people directly affected by the process itself - they will tell you the same thing: offshoring has had a dramatic effect on UK IT.

Many chief information officers (CIOs) have transfered IT processes to the other side of the world, keen to ensure that internal and external service is maintained - and, of course, keen to ensure that costs are reduced.

Manging expectations during offshoring can be an intractable challenge, especially when it comes to in-house staff. Many technology professionals feel offshoring is having a detrimental effect - and prominent complaints include removing development opportunities in the UK and reducing the quality of service.

It is, however, dangerous to stereotype. The failure of large scale sourcing contracts during the last decade-or-so should teach us that strategic approaches to service provision sometimes work; sometimes they do not. But such failures have little (or more likely, nothing) to do with the localised approach of the offshorer.

In fact, offshoring is more likely to inspire cultural growth, particularly in the host population. Anjan Lahiri, head of European operations at outsourcing specialist MindTree, told The Knowledge that it is often forgotten how Western-sponsored offshoring has a deep social impact on Indian cultures. And Lahiri backed up his sentiments with the following facts:

• Just twenty-five years ago, more than 65 per cent of a typical Indian's wage was spent on food - now it is less than 35 per cent.
• At the same time, there has been a huge growth in consumerism: new mobile connections in India are running at 6.5 million per month.
• Offshoring has created a tremendous multiplier effect - one outsourcing job creates a further six jobs in other areas in India, such as teaching and construction.
• Offshoring has also sponsored dramatic changes in the make-up of the workplace and the attitudes of women at work. As much as 35 per cent of Indian IT workers are women.

Such figures make the social impact of offshoring seem impressive, possibly even inspiring. Now, what does the technology professional sitting next to you think...?

With all the hullabaloo surrounding an ever-increasing budget, it is easy to forget that the London Olympics is just five years away - not long when you have to plan and set up the technical infrastructure for a global event.

Service provider Atos Origin has been tasked with managing technology at the 2012 event. Previous experience from running a series of summer and winter Games will help, as will Atos' tried-and-tested technique of transferring processes and knowledge between events.

Planning starts early - often six-or-so years before the event. Earlier this week, Atos announced it was opening a UK test factory, a facility that will help the organisation standardise processes and procedures across the company - and that includes the work Atos undertakes as worldwide IT partner for the International Olympic Committee

With the Olympics just five years away, will the UK factory be used as a testing base for the 2012 Olympics? An Atos spokesperson told The Knowledge: 'It is too early to provide exact details of how testing for London 2012 will be managed.'

So, what can we learn from previous events? Well, in Athens, Torino and Beijing, Atos designed and built an integration test lab specifically for the event that was located close to the Olympic venues. The lab was used by Atos and other technology partners to integrate and test the IT infrastructure, security systems and software applications.

Claude Philipps, programme director for the 2006 Turin Winter Games, told me prior to the event that the testing initiative was a key driver for technical and human process success: ‘If we do not test, we are not sure it will work.'

In Turin, applications and general IT systems were checked in a massive programme that lasted up to 200,000 man-hours.

Whether or not the new UK factory is used as a basis for testing at the London Olympics, Atos will be hoping its methodology will ensure best practice at the 2012 event.

So, businesses are creating more and more information all the time. How can technology leaders help their firm to make best-use of the exabytes of information held on company systems and databases? Business intelligence, implemented effectively, could be the key.

John Proudlock, divisional information services and transformation director at Vertex Financial Services, says that  most chief information officers (CIOs) already have a range of enterprise applications that generate value for their business. And done properly, business intelligence provides an organisation with a cost effective way of unlocking the information contained within their hardware assets.

'To successfully drive a business, technology leaders need to know what levers they have to control their business - and they need to know what effect pulling each of those levers will or does have,' says Proudlock. 'Done properly, business intelligence provides just that.'

Despite the high praise, Proudlock has some doubts about business intellignce - particularly when it comes to the challenge of software implementation.

'I’ve never seen a business intelligence development where the value of the different pieces of information was properly understood at the beginning,' he says. 'Some information turns out to be much more valuable than initially thought and some turns out to be effectively worthless.'

Given the ongoing challenge of information management and the issues surrounding software roll-out, Proudlock's advice is simple: use business intelligence with care and consideration.

'Plan on growing your business intelligence application organically, allowing it to evolve,' he says. 'By that I mean develop it as a properly controlled programme, rather than as a project.'

Your business is information mad: it just cannot stop creating and using it. In 2006, 161 exabytes of digital information were created and copied, according to research from IDC and EMC.

An exabyte certainly sounds like a significant amount of data - and it can be best defined as a unit of computer storage equal to one quintillion bytes (or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes, which is a lot).

The 161 exabytes of information created last year is equivalent to three million times the information in all the books ever written.

IDC says the amount of information created and copied in 2010 will surge more than six fold to 988 exabytes - a compound annual growth rate of 57 per cent.

And mysimplemaths© suggests that exabyte-tastic total will represent 19 million times the information in all the books ever written.

Is the internet really that good, and are all the Microsoft XL spreadsheets that run your business really that important?

In short, is the information we are creating 19 million times better than all the books ever written? In even shorter form, no.