Mapping Out "Green" Initiatives, GIS Health IT Careers

Today on Tom's IT Pro: Information Technology – The Steps for Going Green,"GIS Career Opportunities for Health IT Pros, Active Directory Organization: Avoiding the Reorg and Using Shared VMs in Workstation 8.

In today’s world, the subject of “Going Green” has become part of people's daily vocabulary, including for folks in the world of IT. As Tom’s IT Pro Been There, Done That columnist Laura Paoletti writes in her latest article, Green computing refers to the design, manufacture, use and disposal of computer equipment that is as energy efficient as possible and doesn't have any environmental impact.

As Laura notes, "we now are responsible for investigating new technologies and developing insertion strategies into our environment.  Did you know that data center power requirements are expected to grow from 61 billion kWh to 100 billion kWh by year end and that Global IT industries contribute 1 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually?"

In the article, she provides a few examples of steps you can take to reduce your IT department's environmental footprint without hurting the bottom line. She also explains what needs to be done before before committing resources to these "green" initiatives.

Also today, Tom's IT Pro Managing Editor shows how the growing sophistication of geographic information systems (GIS) and mapping provides IT pros with a significant opportunity to specialize in an increasingly in-demand set of skills, particularly in the health arena. GIS allows businesses and organizations to visualize, analyze, interpret and present complex geo-location data.

He interviews Devon Cancilla, Ph.D., dean, business and technology at American Sentinel University, who explains that healthcare organizations are looking to hire information technology professionals to help them develop new ways to harness the data integration and spatial visualization capabilities of GIS.

In other articles, IT consultant, presenter and author Don Jones demonstrates when and when not to reorganize your company's Active Directory deployment. As Don points out, a "major reorganization of AD is a high-risk, high-impact project."

Next, Microsoft MVP and VMware expert Greg Shields notes how VMware Workstation 8 offers the ability to work with VMs are running elsewhere on your network. Greg writes that VMware Workstation 8's "new Shared VMs might just be the feature that drives an upgrade." Read the article to learn why.

James Alan Miller is Managing Editor of Tom's IT Pro. He is a veteran technology journalist with over seventeen years of experience creating and developing magazine and online content. Founding editor of numerous business and enterprise computing sites at the internet.com network, James headed up the After Hours section at PC Magazine, as well as hardware and software sections of various Windows publications.