Cisco and Ericsson the 'coolest' IT companies, says Greenpeace

Greenpeace has published its fourth semi-annual Cool IT Leaderboard, which ranks global IT brands on their efforts to build emission-reducing innovations, mitigate their own energy footprints and support groundbreaking climate and energy policies. Cisco, Ericsson and Fujitsu were singled out as leaders. Apple was nowhere to be seen.

A new report from Greenpeace warns that the growth in cloud computing will be accompanied by a sharp rise in greenhouse gas emissions, and calls on big companies like Facebook, Yahoo and Google to do more to help the environment.

Technology companies are not just making their products less carbon-intensive; they are also increasingly designing products to improve energy efficiency in the industries that they serve, according to the latest in a series of Greenpeace ratings of the sector's energy practices.

First-time surprise entrant Wipro tops the list of rankings in the 18th edition of the Greenpeace "Guide to Greener Electronics," with Apple dropping two spots to sixth compared to last year's study.

More developments on the grim story of ST-Ericsson, the unprofitable JV between Ericsson and STMicroelectronics that tried to kickstart a semiconductor business in Europe.

Cisco Jabber is not a household name yet. But a long-term showdown — involving Cisco Jabber vs. Microsoft Skype — could eventually emerge, especially in the business market where Microsoft (MSFT) and Cisco (CSCO) both compete and cooperate.

Hands up if you know what Ericsson does? Yes, we all know about that Sony-Ericsson smartphone thingamajig. But as Hans Vestberg, Ericsson’s surprisingly youthful CEO and President told me, Ericsson can claim, as much as any other company, to actually run the network.

Greenpeace has charged that Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Google and others are contributing to global warming by using coal to power data centers for their cloud-based services. The charges are dramatic --- but are they on target?

With enterprise companies such as Dell, Cisco and Oracle all looking to move up the data center product stack to become systems companies, EMC may be the perfect acquisition to fill a big gap in each.