Nike’s Shambhala initiative, which kicked off in 1999, aimed to transform Nike’s approach to social and environmental issues. A series of workshops brought together sustainability gurus, speakers and more than 50 managers from across Nike’s many divisions to discuss ways to push the envelope on internal and product-focused sustainability. The events were hugely successful, but the challenge, says Justin Yuen, a former intranet developer turned corporate social responsibility manager at Nike, was finding a way to keep that sense of community and engagement among individual participants after they returned to their teams.

Traditionally, employees had two methods of communicating with one another: email and the company intranet. The former, while dynamic enough to support actual work, lacked transparency, longevity and opportunities for collaboration. The intranet, on the other hand, was great for sharing static information across teams and individuals. Neither, however, reflected how people actually worked together. So in 2004, Yuen left his position in Nike’s corporate social responsibility team, and set out on his own to develop a product that could do better. The result was fmyi — as in, “for my information” — and it’s a rare success story in the web 2.0 landscape: a social-media-infused enterprise collaboration tool that’s been profitable since two years after its founding. Continue »

While it may seem that everyone and their mother is moving to the cloud, the truth is that many enterprises are still wary about moving into public, shared infrastructures. But there are undeniable business benefits to cloud computing, and enterprises are beginning to ask: How can we get the cost of IT operations and application delivery down? That’s where private clouds come into play.

George Gilbert, co-founder and partner for analyst firm TechAlpha, moderated a discussion among representatives from infrastructure/hardware, the infrastructure management layer, and public clouds — including James Urquhart, technology strategist for Cisco (@jamesurquhart), Chuck Hollis, VP and CTO of Global Marketing for EMC (@chuckhollis), Stephen Herrod, CTO and SVP R&D of VMware; Scott Morrison (@kscottmorrison), chief architect of Layer 7; Kia Behnia, CTO of BMC; and Brandon Watson, director of Microsoft’s Azure Services Platform (@brandonwatson) — to discuss the question: What are the pieces that have to come together to make private clouds a reality? Continue »

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., like many semiconductor companies, is on the lookout for new markets, and according to some reports, the company thinks it could generate more than $2 billion in revenue from opportunities that include solar and LEDs. The company’s not alone. The semiconductor business is struggling in the face of a long recession and the success of less powerful, smaller-margin chips like Intel’s Atom; but demand for green technologies is going strong, and innovative products in this area could help semiconductor companies bolster their margins.

A new GigaOM Pro report out today looks more closely at one green opportunity: LED solid-state lighting. It’s the first research note in a three-part series from the GigaOM Analyst Network’s Katherine Austin looking at how semiconductor companies can capitalize on opportunities in the green market. Among her findings, Austin says the market for LEDs in general lighting applications could reach $10 billion by 2012, up more than 40 percent from today’s total LED market (which also includes LEDs for cars, cell phones, etc.) Get the full analysis here (subscription required).

With both NetApp and EMC eager to acquire Data Domain, the leading storage-efficiency company appears certain to be facing a future in the arms of a larger firm. Om in a post last week laid out some of the reasons why both companies are interested in acquiring Data Domain and its de-deduplication expertise, and suggested that the deal could be a bellwether event for the storage business.

The analysts at TechAlpha agree, and in a new research note for GigaOM Pro, they take a look at the strategic rationale behind the offers made by both EMC and NetApp, why Data Domain is open to an acquisition, why other potential buyers are unlikely to emerge, and dig into what the deal reveals about the state of the storage business today. They’ve also tapped their contacts to provide the customer perspective on what the Data Domain acquisition — and further consolidation in the industry — would mean for them.

Get the full research note here (subscription required).

Cisco this morning announced its official game plan for the smart grid market, which it believes represents a $20 billion-a-year opportunity as the systems are built out over the next five years. In typical Cisco fashion, the five-point plan hinges on new opportunities for its existing business lines: networking solutions for smart grid communications, security for the smart grid, gear for the coming utility data center buildout, and energy management systems for the home and enterprise.

As utilities become the next big purchasers of networking and data center gear, Cisco smells a ripe opportunity for its Unified Computing System, which it unveiled earlier this year. While Cisco competes for traditional data center customers with numerous competitors that have legacy relationships, to date the utility market is relatively small, and with its expertise in network security, Cisco could have a compelling pitch. But smart grid communications is the area in which Cisco is most likely to shine; the networking giant says it can play a critical role in helping automate how electrons move from supply to demand.

For now, the plan lacks a lot of specific detail, but it nonetheless is an example of how aggressively Cisco is moving into the space — and signals to some startups that there’s a powerful new competitor (or partner) on the scene.