subject: Green Technologies In The Contact Center Come Of Age [print this page] Consumers and enterprises alike suffer from green fatigue an ennui born from too much hype and too little substance around green technology. But as green technology becomes more synonymous with cost-saving technology, enterprises have begun to warm to the idea. Contact centers, in particular, have begun to explore the homeshoring or work-at-home agent model, a model with many green benefits. Longer term, new technologies and new uses for existing technologies including application and call routing virtualization will gain traction in the contact center arena. The economic recession has forced many contact centers into cost-cutting mode; contact center and IT decision-makers should therefore be closely examining green technologies and processes that help trim costs.
Table of Contents:
Executive summary
In a nutshell
Ovum view
Recommendations
Green contact center investment is timely
Green contact centers mean cost-effective contact centers
Market opportunity
Green fatigue breeds skepticism
Contact centers have seen a great deal of green marketing
Most enterprises expect green to cut costs, not enhance reputation
Cost-effective may not be truly green
Separating efficiency from ecology
Enterprises and technology vendors both face increased legislative pressure to adopt green IT
Customer impact
Homeshoring already on the rise
Reducing commute reduces resource use
Calculating the benefit in fuel and CO2 emissions
Work-at-home agents reduce power consumption at least by companies
Technology evolution
New technologies with green applications
Turn off, tune out
Erlang saves agents which save power
The cloud is theoretically green
Data center-style virtualization could bring green benefits
A virtual softphone without voice quality loss
Definitions
Cloud computing
CSR
Green IT
Homeshoring
Virtualization
List of Tables
Table 1: Non-green benefits of homeshoring
List of Figures
Figure 1: How do current economic conditions change your perception of the value of green IT?
Figure 2: Power reduction mandates by US state
Figure 3: Software-based virtualization: a greener deployment model
