I had the good fortune to see the late Admiral Grace Hopper speak about the history and direction of information technology, twice. She was a pioneer, having been involved in the creation of COBOL, one of the early third generation languages that sparked an explosion of business applications. To paraphrase her message: The most dangerous words in the world are "we've never done it that way before."

Lax as we've been in posting, we'll make up for it this month with three topics. What's the theme? Relationship management (not necessarily IT related), green IT, and an ad that makes you wonder.

Late last year I had the opportunity to attend a Green IT conference at the Polytechnic Institute of NYU, so-sponsored by the UN and AITGlobal. While references for the statistics bandied about were hard to come by - leaving me somewhat leary - several speakers had actually put into practice some of their "green" energy-saving recommendations. The speakers made the case - there's some real money at stake. So how real is it?

It's no news that the real estate market is in the tank. So why write about it here? For starters, one of my past clients is in the real estate business. And while I haven't published the fact in my technology consulting practice, I'm a licensed real estate broker in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. So even though I'm no longer actively in the business, I have a certain interest.

As the economy continues to slide and pressure mounts for all companies to cut their expenses, pressure on IT mounts accordingly (and appropriately). In the spirit of constructive action, we'll begin a series of postings here on how IT can save money. Some ideas will be obvious to some of you, and some will require some thought and broad vision. Nevertheless, I invite comments and ideas.

Times are tough. The talking heads are going at it on CNN, and as of this writing, Congress is working on the big bailout following the greed-generated failure of several large financial institutions. There’s still debate about whether there’s a recession, but regardless, it feels like one, and my clients and prospects (and my consulting colleagues’ clients and prospects) are behaving as if it’s here.

IT is expensive. In dollar and cents terms, I suspect most companies would rather not have it. Unless you’re selling buggy whips on a small scale, avoiding it won’t be possible.