Yes it’s snowing.  It does that sometimes.  Even in the UK.  Just as well the new name for global warming is ‘climate change’ as it is freezing cold; possibly the coldest winter in the UK for 30 odd years.

Speaking of climate change, what is the knock-on environmental impact of all this snowfall?  As far as less travel, fewer car journeys, and lots of grounded planes goes; it all looks good.  Enough to outweigh the fact more people are staying at home with the thermostat cranked up, more people are reliant on their smartphones, laptops and other battery-munching portable whatnots…? 

Ever since they first emerged (and for almost a decade subsequently) most of the corporate communications positioning around VPNs, SOHO CPEs, collaboration software and home broadband availability has included a good dollop of ‘green’, mixed in – of course – with the obligatory ‘cost savings’ and ‘productivity gains’ hooks.  As such, “Airline Industry Threatened by Emergence of Videoconferencing” and other such vendor claims, frothy PR feature pitches and resultant press articles still wash around today. 

Do enough of us practice what they preach to make these claims a reality though?  I remember hearing the story of the MD of a VPN/remote access reseller well regarded for selling enterprises the vision of a truly remote workforce empowered with access to all their applications wherever they were in the world.  Were his own employees ever allowed to work from home?  No.

So, even though it’s snowing hard, why the disruption?  None here at Cohesive; we are living the dream.  This Internet thing is going to be big y’know    

Dev