Gain Problem Solving Skills and Become Change Agent With Green Belt Certification

Problems will always be a part of the organization. They won’t go away unless handled with care. For that reason, top talents are hired, paid handsomely to work as change agent and ensure growth for the company. You too can be that professional with six sigma green belt certification as add a new dimension to your stagnated career. Green belts are demanded a lot for their cutting-edge problem solving skills and also for their ability to manage by facts and data. They ensure that opinions won’t ever have a say in the daily running of the business and rather look to rely on hard data to drive the growth.

More so, green belts know the art of boosting profit and reducing cost on the back of supporting creative endeavors within the organization. With six sigma green belt certification, you’re imparted a deep knowledge of the tools and techniques required to ensure growth to the business. Green belts are the professionals with a better understanding of both people and processes within the organization. They not only understand business and its valuable connections but also have a grip over Lean Six Sigma’s DMAIC methodology. This helps them solve problems of any complexity to add value to the organization. This is why green belts are demanded so much in the industry.

More so, green belts know how to bring change by collaborating with the right people without looking to bypass responsibility. With six sigma green belt certification, the participants are taught to focus on fixing the process rather than evading responsibility. What’s more, green belts are among those rare breed of professionals with the freedom to take up job anywhere in the world, which is deservedly a great flexibility. Even if they are not a hard-core statistician but this does not take away their comfort level with data. In fact, they are trained in data analysis and can make process improvement as simple as needed.

Similarly, organizations can also look to fix processes and achieve growth targets by several other means to have an edge in the industry. They can benefit from the power of RPA consulting or Robotics Process Automation consulting to automate and achieve the desired growth results easily. This consulting is about letting software robots contribute to process automation across enterprises. They look to ease the burden on employees and get bots or configurable software to do process instead. And when business processes are automated in this way, the organization can be sure of superior speed and efficiency. This is how a business can become cutting edge without investing a lot.

Some companies also look to benefit from RPA consulting to bring flexibility & resilience to processes after automation. And when RPA is implemented by an expert consultant, it becomes easy to realize reduced cost and improved productivity. This is how businesses can become more accurate on the back of automation and create difference to their prospects in the industry. With an experienced consulting partner, it becomes possible to boost ROI and reduce cost and go on the right path of growth. The good thing, you can go automated irrespective of the industry or sector you’re part of.This is how your business grows and adds value.

Is Green Web Hosting The Future of The Web? Count On It

Is Green Web Hosting The Future of The Web? Count On It. Internet Future: Green Web Hosting

The world wide web runs on electricity, though we don’t usually think about it. But the fact is, without electricity you wouldn’t be reading this. You’d hunker down in front of the fireplace and read the newspaper by the dim light of a lamp fueled by whale oil. Sound like fun?

It wasn’t. It was actually pretty boring compared to today’s instant information available only on the W3. If it happens any where – from Teheran to Terre Haute, it spreads virally across the digital landscape in seconds. That news bit also gobbles up electricity like nobody’s business.

So, is green hosting the wave of the future web? Yes. And if you aren’t riding the crest of that wave, you’ll be left behind in the digital dust. An energy munching web site is sooo “last millennium.”

The Ever Expanding World Wide Web

Some facts about green hosting:

  • There are more than 125 million web sites on line today.
  • Each day, 6,000 new web sites launch, carrying with them the dreams and visions of web-preneurs looking to become the next Amazon.
  • Each web site sits on a server that requires electricity to run it and cool it. That requires a lot of electricity.
  • The electricity bill for a successful web host would make a grown man cry. It’s HUGE. Many web hosts pay thousands of dollars monthly to keep their servers juiced.
  • The consumption of electricity used by web hosts doubled in just five years.
  • With the advent of Web 2.0 features like videos, VoIP, streaming TV and other “must-haves,” the web will only expand the demand for more and more electricity.
  • Experts suggest that energy consumption by web hosts will continue to double every five years and studies show these web pros are actually being conservative. Some “green” bloggers suggest the amount of electricity consumed by web hosts will double every 30 months.
  • Energy consumption to power the W3 grows exponentially, doubling then quadrupling and so on. The demand for power from web hosts will increase at a phenomenal rate.
  • As the world wide web grows in both size and features, web site owners will require increasing amounts of bandwidth to avoid long download times.

What Are Web Hosts and Why Do They Gobble Up Energy?

Conduct a Google search of web hosts and see what pops up.

You’ll get 149,000,000 search results for web hosts. Now, not all of these SERP links are for actual web hosts. Some are for reviewing sites (that use web hosts), blogs about web hosts (that use a web host to get their blogs out to the masses) and even SERPs links to sellers, resellers and re-re-sellers of hosting services.

Hosting is a commodity on the web. You or I can buy space from a web host and open up our own hosting company. The mother host provides all the tools and support you need to build your own hosting company in the basement office. (The one that floods occasionally. Ooops.)

A web host can be a kid down the street or it can be a huge, physical plant with chipheads tending to racks of servers, customer support taking calls from subscribers and office people tending to routine business matters – like paying the electric company.

What’s a server? Well, in simplest terms, a server is not much more than a humongous hard drive in a box. Your web site (or future web site) resides on one of these server hard drives, along with hundreds of other web sites. Today, server disk space is measured in terabytes.

What’s a terabyte? A measurement of bits and bytes on steroids. A terabyte is the equivalent of 1,000 gigabytes. More dramatically, a terabyte equals 1,000,000,000,000 bytes or 10 to the 12th power of bytes.

That brand new computer you just bought MIGHT have a 500 gigabyte hard drive. A server has dozens of terabytes of storage. It also has tons of RAM (128 gigabytes of RAM isn’t unusual) so that the server can deliver the bandwidth required for fast downloads of all the sites stored on that server.

In other words, web hosting companies consume a lot of electricity with rack upon rack of servers all sucking up electricity from the grid.

Facebook, alone, employs 30,000 servers as of October, 2009 and that number grows daily as more and more of us connect through this social media site. Amazon employs thousands of servers. Microsoft, Verizon and all of your other favorite sites employ thousands of servers strung together in arrays,

In other words, there are millions of servers storing terabytes of information available to you on the W3. Yep, even your little blog gobbles up electricity.

Green Hosting

So, even though we may not think about energy consumption when we stake a claim to some digital real estate, build and launch web site, we are adding to the demand for more and more electricity.

Now, along comes green hosting – hosting companies that employ “green” technology to lower the demand for electricity generated by coal- and gas-fired electricity generation plants. These businesses recognize that green hosting is inevitable as energy costs rise and we continue to pump tons of air-borne pollutants into the atmosphere every day.

Things ain’t going to get better, folks, unless our corporate culture does an about face and stops drawing down available energy. Major cities, like Los Angeles and Phoenix, already experience rolling blackouts as parts of the energy grid are shut down for a while. New York City broadcasts “please turn off your air conditioners” on the hottest summer days and brown-outs are almost routine.

Green hosting is leading the way in how U.S. businesses conduct on-line business by employing green sources of energy to power their servers.

A green host doesn’t add to the demand for more electricity from traditional sources. Instead, these far-sighted companies employ new technology – solar power, wind power, deep core earth energy, hydro-electric (where available) and bio-fuels that can be regenerated with another harvest of corn.

But there’s a lot more to web hosting than just storing web sites on gigantic hard drives. It’s not just about ROM. It’s also about RAM, which translates into the speed at which your web site interacts with site visitors. It better be fast. Studies reveal that 90% of us will sit through a 10-second download while only 10% will sit through a 30-second download. We’ve become that impatient.

From a site owner’s perspective, that stat translates into a loss of 80% of your prospects in that 20-second download window. So you want more RAM, more bandwidth and unfettered access to the server’s CPU and other shared assets – server parts you share with other sites.

Hosts employ the latest in fiber optic technology, they boost RAM and deliver quick downloads even quicker. Green web hosts do this without further straining the energy system that we rely on to log on, watch TV and cook dinner by using non-traditional resources to power up your web site whenever a site visitor stops by.

Cool It

In addition to delivering more bandwidth to you and your site visitors, and easier access to the server’s CPU, servers need to be cooled.

Even your PC pumps out a lot of heat and heat is the enemy of all those circuit boards, CPUs and other electronics inside the box. Now multiply that by thousands – tens of thousands of servers all humming along pumping out heat. To keep these servers happy, they need to be cooled.

Traditional hosts add to the demand for more energy by cooling servers with cold air. The server room in a hosting company is kept cool – so cool you could probably store sides of beef in there if the racks of servers didn’t take up so much space. That cooling requires energy and plenty of it.

Green hosts, once again, employ state-of-the-art tech to cool those thousands of servers. They use cold water, flushed through a water-tight system, to cool the server room, lessening the demand for more and more cold air from the local coal-burning energy plant.

Make a Statement: We’re Green

Getting a little recognition on the W3 is hard, even in a niche market (especially in a niche market). You have less than 10 seconds to convince a site visitor to stick around long enough to learn about the quality of your services, your products or your message. Web surfers are jagged out on information overload. If they don’t see what they want to see on your home page or a landing page, they bounce.

So, making a statement about your corporate culture and your business’ core values has to happen in the blink of an eye. Visitors will never even see the “About Us” page if you don’t create a good impression – in 10 seconds!

An emblem or banner proclaiming that you employ green hosting makes an immediate statement about your on-line business. It says you care about the environment. It says you care about the future of the planet and our children and grandchildren who will populate Earth 25, 50 or 100 years from now.

That “green” badge of honor also bestows a cache of cutting edge tech-iness. You get it. Your on-line business uses green hosting because you recognize the importance of this fledging movement.

There aren’t a lot of green hosts even today. However, more hosts will soon recognize that green is the only way to go. And those few green hosts out there now?

They’re making a statement about their business culture – a statement that passes on to your business when you display a green host emblem or banner.

Who said it isn’t easy being green? Today, green hosting makes a statement about you and your business – a positive statement.

And with less than 10 seconds to make a good first impression, that “green” host emblem goes a long, long way in making the right statement quickly.

Yep, we get it. We’re green. Stick around and learn more.

The Cost of Quality Green Web Hosting: How Much For What?

The Cost of Green Web Hosting

The world wide web (W3) is a vast frontier for those within whom the web-preneurial spirit burns brightly. To open a brick and mortar business on Main Street is going to cost a pile of capital, and in this economy, who wants a second (or third) mortgage to roll the dice and fund a new gift shop downtown.

The web, on the other hand, provides all the tools you need to build and grow a business for just a few bucks a month. And, each year, the W3 becomes a more robust marketplace. In 1999, fewer than 10% of us purchased goods or services on line. In 2010, it’s projected that 60% of us will make at least one purchase on line – and that number is only going to increase. Want proof?

Take a look at your local newspaper, The Morning Rag. It ain’t what it used to be. Print, delivered to your newspaper tube, is in its death throes with advertising dollars (that’s where the money is) down 25% in ’09 alone, while the web saw a 15% increase in revenue dollars. The point? Advertisers go where the buyers go and a 40% spread from traditional print outlets to an easy-to-build, easy-to-use web site is clear evidence that buyers are employing the web more and more to buy everything from clothes to carpeting to refrigerators.

And even if you do have a store front in town, web users employ digital assets for everything from comparison shopping to snagging a printable set of directions to your store from your web site. The integration between real and virtual marketing has proved to be a boon for small, local businesses thanks to the development of local search.

Type in to your Google search box “pizza” and your zip code and see what pops up. You’ll see a Google map with pushpins showing the location of all the pizza places in town. Move your cursor over any push pin and a complete description of that pizza shop pops up with address and telephone number so you can call in your order. (Hold the anchovies, please!) And the pizza shop owner makes another sale.

So, whether you’re a budding entrepreneur selling grommets by the kilo or a well-established, local business, the world wide web is your oyster. It’s how you’ll grow your business to profitability faster by reaching the very people who are looking for you, your products and service offerings.

And all for $10 a month. You can’t beat that with a stick.

The Cost of Quality on the W3: Lots for Cheap

There are free web hosts, low-ball web hosts and quality web hosts that deliver a satchel of freebies for less than $10 a month – the cost of a couple of fast food lunches.

Now, you could go with a freebie but, as in all things, you get what you pay for. Free web hosting companies place their ads on your site, and you have no control over what’s going to appear. In fact, the host may actually place ads for competitors on YOUR free web site. So NOT cool.

The low-ball web hosts – the ones that give you a little disk space and their best wishes – might cost $3-4 a month. Not bad, but what do you get for your measly few bucks. Not much, and if you don’t know HTML code from an area code, you won’t get very far very fast, even though you save a few pesos each month.

A Competitive Marketplace Keeps Prices Down – Good For You

So what do you get when you go with a quality host? Well, a larger bill each month – but not by much. A quality hosting company charges less than $10 a month – $6 more than the low-ball sites. Six bucks more. So what do you get for that extra few bucks?

  • More disk space – sometimes 2-3 times more disk space.
  • More bandwidth for faster interactions with site visitors.
  • A tool kit that includes templates (thousands of them), a free shopping cart and checkout, a blog and bulletin board module that bolts on to your site with a click – seamlessly.
  • 24/7/365 toll-free customer service. Call any time. Somebody’s working on their web site somewhere day, night and in-between.
  • Easily accessible tech support. It’s nice to talk to someone NOW when you’re having a problem, or just have a simple question. And when problems do arise (they do, sometimes) you want your trouble ticket handed off to a techie and you want the problem fixed – yesterday. Like it never happened.
  • Uptime. If your site’s server is off-line, your business is off line. And, if you happen to get spidered while your site is “down,” guaranteed you’re going to get slammed by Google. Search engines don’t send users to inaccessible sites. So what do you look for? How about an uptime that exceeds 99.9%? How about uptime of 100%? You’re site is always up, even when the power is down in your server location!
  • Server-side security. The freebie hosts don’t pay a whole lot of attention to server-side security. They make they’re money placing ads on your site. And those low-ball sites have to cut corners somewhere and that somewhere is often server side security.
  • A quality host employs numerous layers of security to protect your digital assets: hardwired firewalls, algorithmically encrypted anti-spyware and anti-virus software, caged servers, locked server rooms and back-up power generation.
  • Hand holding. Probably more important to the first-time web site builder than the long-time vet of the web wars for site recognition. A quality hosting company recognizes the value of YOUR success. That’s how a good hosting company builds a solid client base, reducing operating costs. It costs 10x as much to find a new client as it does to keep an existing client happy so smart hosting company management takes your business seriously.
  • You got a question in the middle of the night? You need someone to walk you through the migration of your current site to a better quality host? Well, you want a human to answer the phone and help you plan your strategy, whether building from scratch or moving an existing site uptown.

Starting to get the picture? Yeah, you can save a few bucks and go with a free hosting service, but you won’t be happy after a few months. You also won’t see the site traffic that ultimately leads to web success.

Or, you can go with the cheapie sites but be prepared to install your own multi-layers of security software. You’ll also pay a few hundred bucks for site building software – money that could be used to market your start-up. Oh, and don’t expect a toll-free number for customer or tech support. These low-tiered hosts usually respond by email only. (Not so good when your site has vanished overnight and you don’t have a clue why.)

The bottom line is your bottom line. Web hosting is a highly competitive market segment. There are thousands of hosts from which to choose. But a quality hosting company is based on a client-centric corporate culture, recognizing that the success of its clients will, in the end, determine the success of the web host. It’s just, plain smart business.

The fact is, for a few extra bucks a month – chump change – you can partner with a hosting company that’s as interested in your on-line success as you are. These companies recognize that their long-term success is tied to the success of your web site. In effect, your web host becomes a partner in your web-based growth to profitability. These web hosts have clients who stay put.

These are the site owners who form a stable client base for the web host.

These are the site owners who recognize the value delivered for the cost of a couple of double bacon cheeseburgers.

Spend those few extra dollars and don’t be pound wise and penny foolish. You get what you pay for with web hosting.

In fact, you get a lot more than what you pay for when you choose a quality web host. Go with quality if you truly care about your business.

This is the one place YOU don’t have to cut corners, so pay the few bucks and get a bag o’ benefits for that small change. Success on the web is far from guaranteed, but you increase your chances for success when you pick a quality green web hosting service with which to partner.

Give yourself a break. Give yourself every advantage. Give yourself a better chance to achieve success on-line.

It’s money very well spent.

New Energy Future – We Need to Turn More Green Business Ideas Into Action

The way forward lies in green investment. No, I’m not talking about dollars, though that too will follow inevitably. I’m talking about greening your small business. And the many successful entrepreneurs who have managed to build sustainable businesses without sacrificing ethics or the environment.

The Obama government has set apart billions of dollars to encourage green business ideas and initiatives. Various finance sources such as tax credits, loans and grants are available to fund green buildings and energy efficient ventures at national, state and local levels. Homeowners, businesses, non-profit organizations and government organizations can take advantage of these opportunities to convert their green ideas into action.

Alternative renewable energy sources harness natural resources. Solar energy, wind farms, biogas digestion, rain water, biomass briquettes, helioculture are some examples of alternative renewable energy. Solar panels and installers are being used by many businesses, schools and homes to generate heat and electricity.

Top companies of various industries are taking responsibility to reduce their ecological footprint by slashing greenhouse gas emissions. Though saving money and reducing risks are the main incentives driving these initiatives, every effort is crucial in combating climate change. Green consulting agencies help businesses green their premises and inculcate green business practices amongst its employees. Energy efficient products conserve energy and reduce bills for consumers.

Businesses should support green initiatives with the necessary infrastructure and processes. Energy-efficient computers, monitors, printers, fax machines, scanners, copiers and multi-function devices that automatically power down during extended inactivity save 50% energy or more. Laptops are much more energy efficient than desktops. Consider upgrading your employees to laptops.

Taking business operations online reduces usage of paper and printing ink. Sending customers online receipts of sales instead of paper is another step. Online operations also improve business efficiency as data can be managed in a better way. Businesses should use recycled products wherever possible – paper, packages, toilet paper, etc. Wastage of water should be minimized by installing water saving devices in bathrooms and cafeteria. Energy efficient vending machines are equipped with refrigeration and lighting controls and save up to 30% energy. The key is to save wherever and whenever possible.

Where there is a will, there is a way. Nothing rings truer when one sees the amazingly innovative small green businesses sprouting across the globe. Typical examples are BTTRventures – a 100% sustainable urban mushroom farm that utilizes recycled coffee grounds from Peet’s Coffee & Tea, founded in Berkeley, CA by two 2009 grads; Turning Point Brewery – Canada’s first sustainable brewery; GRID Alternatives – provides renewable energy and energy efficiency services to low-income homeowners and community members.

There is never a better time than now. While businesses are doing their part to conserve the ecological system, it is also every individual’s moral responsibility to build a safe and healthy future for the next generation. By respecting our environment and following green practices at home and office, we pass on the right education to our children. Reduce, reuse and recycle – this is the mantra we all need to incorporate into our lifestyles.

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