Imagine a world where technology enables a sustainable environment—that's what Microsoft called on students to consider for its 2008 U.S. Imagine Cup competition. It's a challenge that Microsoft has taken on as the company strives to become a leader in environmental sustainability, an issue that is gaining momentum as more technologists and users inquire about green IT initiatives and carbon footprints. As a result, the relationship between environment sustainability and business sustainability has become more apparent.

The success of Imagine Cup subtantiates this trend, as more than 185,000 young software developers and artists from more than 100 countries participated in this year's international competition. In the U.S. alone the competition drew more than 16,000 entries, up from 4,000 last year. Their solutions, presented at the competition in Los Angeles this past spring, reflected this shift in environmental awareness and displayed a fresh blend of technology and unconventional thinking. Many of the solutions mirrored the commitment Microsoft has made to preserve and improve the environment through software innovation, strategic partnerships, and utilizing sound environmental practices.

Participants were asked to give particular attention to the business sustainability of their solutions, which is essential to the success of many green initiatives. Several teams already had plans to bring their solutions to market, including Team Carbon Cart from Seattle Pacific University, which developed an e-commerce site with an eco-conscience. CarbonCart.com secured a drop-ship partnership with Amazon.com enabling CarbonCart.com to offer Amazon's entire product inventory. But the interesting part is that CarbonCart.com further partnered with the Carbon Fund to allow shoppers to offset the carbon footprint of their orders, including the carbon emissions of shipping the merchandize.

The winner of the U.S. Software Design competition, Team Sparx from the Rochester Institute of Technology, showed how technology can help consumers and businesses save energy and money today. Its Reactivity technology programs a network of sensors for homes or businesses to take readings of environmental variables such as electrical current, temperature, humidity, light, sound, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and motion. It then stores the data in SQL Server® for analysis.

Other software design entries included an interactive drawing tablet to reduce paper use in elementary school education, carbon footprint calculators, and an online solution that integrates with Facebook for matching commuters to share transportation.

To help winners turn their technical solutions into viable businesses, Imagine Cup offers the Imagine Cup Innovation Accelerator program. The program provides technical and business coaching from cosponsoring companies to help students build a business plan and bring their ideas to market while retaining the intellectual property rights.

For its part, Microsoft continues to expand the environmental sustainability initiative on three fronts: internal efforts to reduce its own carbon footprint, providing environment-friendly enhancements to software, and rolling out new solutions to help customers use energy more efficiently. Specifically, Microsoft offers an Environmental Sustainability Dashboard to Dynamics AX customers. Also, there are now power management capabilities in Windows Vista® and Windows Server® 2008. Furthermore, by investing in technologies such as Live Meeting, Microsoft has greatly reduced the need to travel for meetings.

Microsoft also participates in The Green Grid consortium of IT companies seeking to reduce power consumption and improve efficiency in their datacenters. The company has also made a sustained effort to provide digital downloads, thus reducing the need to manufacture and ship CDs and DVDs.

With these steps toward environmental sustainability and the incentives offered by the Imagine Cup competition, Microsoft hopes to instill a commitment to the environment in the next generation of developers and IT professionals. See more about the Imagine Cup at imaginecup.com/About/WhatIs.aspx.