Friday, September 5, 2008

Forrester Groundswell Award Entry - Social Impact



Name of entry: Edison

Name of company entering: Verdiem Corporation

Category: Social Impact

Edison Info & Download: www.verdiem.com/edison

Availability: August 2008 to Present

Application Description
Created by Verdiem Corporation, Edison is a free PC energy management tool for everyone. It is an easy-to-use, consumer-friendly application that allows users to set energy savings controls on their PCs. To use the application, consumers merely have to download Edison, scroll the savings bar to the desired level, set schedules and forget it.

Verdiem chose to offer Edison for free to people who care about energy efficiency. Whether it’s about saving money or reducing carbon emissions, Edison offers a simple way to fight energy waste. In fact, by taking a few simple steps to activate energy management software, computers can require up to 80% less energy (source). We hope that as people use Edison, they’ll become more aware of the global energy waste problem and possible solutions they can implement at home and on the job.

Edison launched earlier this summer to tremendous enthusiasm and praise from organizations and individuals literally from around the world. At launch, Verdiem challenged consumers to help support the Climate Savers Computing Initiative’s goal of reducing PC-related carbon emissions by 54 million tons by 2010. If just 1% of the world’s PCs – or 10 million – used Edison, we could reduce PC-related carbon emissions by 7 billion pounds, which is equivalent to taking 500,000 cars off the road (source).

In addition to the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, Verdiem also worked with Microsoft’s Sustainability teams and the Alliance for Climate Protection (which is affiliated with the We Can Solve It campaign) to promote the launch.

Along with an environmentally-conscious virtual press conference, Verdiem chose to spread the word about Edison through a variety of social media tools, including our website, Power Alley Blog, Facebook page and the viral videos housed on the Verdiem YouTube channel. In addition, we’ll be interacting with users via regular newsletters that will offer tips and tricks for how best to take advantage of Edison and advice on other ways to fight the global climate crisis. Already we see current users who are so pleased with the tool that they have decided to pass it along to their friends, family and colleagues via personal websites, blogs and in some cases, even company websites.

Within all of the tools that we manage, Verdiem has received and continues to receive comments and questions about the application, and is working hard to keep up the open dialogue with users from around the world.

In all, we believe Edison offers concerned citizens the opportunity to make a huge contribution to solving the global climate crisis with minimal effort, and we look forward to continuing to see how consumers respond to the challenge.

How This Entry Accomplishes Business Goals
Verdiem is a mission-driven company committed to reducing the environmental impact of technology. The most fundamental reason that Verdiem created Edison was to make PC energy management easier for all – at home and at work.

By offering a free tool for everyone to use, we are taking another step towards reducing the burden that technology energy consumption places on the planet, and continuing to demonstrate our commitment to our mission.

However, it’s not enough to simply create and distribute this tool to the public; ultimately, the goal of Edison is to reduce PC energy consumption, which can only happen when people install it and use it on a regular basis. This is why the launch of Edison coincided with a challenge for all consumers to help support the Climate Savers Computing Initiative’s goal of reducing PC-related carbon emissions by 54 million tons by 2010. Verdiem believes that educating people about the incredible amount of energy PCs consume and how they can now address it in their own lives is the best solution. Once people understand the problem and how they can help, they are much more likely to become involved.

To date we have seen strong adoption of Edison from around the world. While we have not yet begun sharing download numbers with the public, we are pleased to see that Edison is being used today in more than 130 countries. In addition, we have received a lot of positive feedback from individuals regarding their impressions of the tool and how it could potentially help in their daily lives.

While our overall goal to reduce the environmental impact of technology, along with our Edison-specific goal of helping the Climate Savers Computing Initiative to reach its goal of reducing PC-related carbon emission by 2010 is far from completely achieved, the launch of Edison and the participation by each new user takes us a giant step closer to addressing the problem and meeting our goals.

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