Microsoft- World's Biggest Green Engine

They say- You can love it, hate it but can never ignore it. That's Microsoft for you and its famed founder Bill Gates. Apart from being one of the most successful capitalist of the previous century, Bill is also a great transformer. The role that his vision in the form of Microsoft has played is often ignored on the wake of criticism that his proprietary software business receives. The Open Source enthusiasts would vouch for it and so do Apple fans. But none of this can steal the credit that he deserves.

Of all the things in terms of job creation, wealth creation, market creation and dream creation, one of the largest contributions of Bill to the world has been Sustainability and Green. Did you ever think of Microsoft this way?

The last time I was writing an e-mail to my colleague sitting in the US it just struck me how would otherwise I be sending a document to him- Fax or may be a courier or worse dictate? What about jointly working on something critical? How about a series of plastic transparencies getting tossed away? How much time, effort and emotions would that have consumer in past?... What about the thousands of paper (hand written or printed material) that we save on while using MS Word. Or for that matter when was a last time you made multiple copies of the same document to be sent to many people as To, CC or BCC?

As always things which are pervasive and with us for long, loose value. MS is the victim in this case. With products ranging from Office Tools to other collaboration applications and you name it- MS has impacted the world in an irreversible way. Am not debating here that all that you see from MS was invented there, but frankly it doesn't matter. What is of value is- Diffusion. How does one take it to masses, and that's precisely MS did. Even today Apple is with the freaky few and Linux OS has yet to reach the main stream market. So still for the first time users it is very much MS.

And never can you forget the millions of people MS inspired and as a result thousands of software and IT companies world over. Think of India for a moment. The impact MS had here.

Here's a summary of the Green impacts of MS in the world we live in (remember not all was invented at MS, but as I said it doesn't matter):

• E-mails (no more paper based message transfer)
• Word Processors, Power Point and Excel (paperless presentation, no plastic transparencies and edition)
• Collaboration Tool (no travel of people, exchange of duplicate content)

Not sure if this post helped sway your mindset on the Sustainability dimension of MS, but the firm merits a place in the history of a transformation.