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In the past applications were run on their own dedicated server hardware. More applications meant more servers. Virtualisation reduces server sprawl, as IT departments can consolidate several applications on a single box. Virtualisation also has a role in Green IT: it can improve the efficiency of servers and lower the amount of electricity consumed.

But, virtualisation comes at a cost. In this podcast, Cliff Saran speaks to Gartner vice president, Alexa Bona, about the licensing costs that can erode any financial savings.

Unlike the field of dreams of the old days of the Web - building an attractive and useful site is no guarantee that it will foster a community. Communities grow organically. In this podcast Cliff Saran interviews Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics - How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. Don believes businesses can learn a lot from the growth of web communities like Flickr and peer collaboration such as open source development.

There is a growing concern that the UK is falling behind the skills race, which could mean we do not have people with the right skills for the UK to compete effectively in the 21st century knowledge economy. Cliff Saran speaks to Microsoft's UK managing director, Gordon Frazer and Mike Rodd, Director, Learned Society & External Relations, at the British Computer Society about the IT skills crisis.

Cliff Saran interviews Alan Cox who used to maintain the Linux kernel and now works at Red Hat. Cox discusses what is happening with Linux and open source systems in terms of technical breakthroughs like KVM, a virtualisation device driver. He also covers some of the key challenges facing Linux as it becomes more pervasive. Open source is one of the topics being covered on Cliff Saran's new blog.

In this podcast Cliff Saran speaks to Mark Ridley, who is head of technology at online recruiter, Reed.co.uk, about his assessment. Also this week, Nick McGrath, director of platform strategy at Microsoft UK, reveals whether Microsoft still thinks Linux and open source software is a threat to its Windows Server family. And Gary Barnett, research director at Ovum, gives his appraisal of Windows and open source interoperability.

In an interview with Cliff Saran, Phil Cracknell, president of the Internet Security Systems Association (ISSA), speaks frankly about the challenges in creating applications that balance new functionality with tight security. Phil also discusses the need to develop mentoring to help IT security professionals progress their careers.

In this interview, Cliff Saran speaks to James Gosling, father of Java and chief technology officer at Sun Microsystems. In 1995, when Java 1.0 was released, developing software for websites was quite restrictive and relied mainly on scripts run on the server. Today, in the age of the rich internet client, users can run fully-fledged interactive applications on their web browsers over the internet. In spite of alternative approaches such as interoperability via web services using open source code to develop cross-platform applications Gosling believes Java still has a role to play.

Far from being green, IT equipment such as desktop PC and servers running in data centres, are contributing to global warming. They are putting massive demands on the electricity grid. Worldwide, the cost of electricity is going up, and while some businesses may have the option to relocate their datacentres to areas where there is a cheap and abundant electricity supply, many more will not have that option.

Listen to Cliff Saran’s interview with Andrew Fanara, a leading member in the product specifications development team at the US Environmental Protection Agency, on the need for data centre operators, IT directors and CIOs to plan to do tackle green IT issues that are most cost-effective to deliver savings to the business.

CIOs and IT directors should look at inefficient use of power and cooling in all datacentre components, from routers to servers and in other network equipment - across the whole power delivery infrastructure.

The US Environment; Protection Agency is working on standards as part of its Energy Star programme to help people buying PCs, servers and data centre equipment identify energy efficient hardware. In the second part of his interview with Andrew Fanara of the product specifications development team at the US Environmental Protection Agency, Cliff Saran finds out about the programme.

According to Fanara, "Datacentres represent a great opportunity for companies to cost-effectively reduce energy consumption, particularly during peak times. At the same time, their efforts will contribute towards the global challenge of tackling climate change."

Service oriented architecture, SOA , complements the next version of the web, web 2.0, by allowing people to create applications and applets that can easily be reused. It is easy to see how Google Maps (http://maps.google.co.uk/maps) can be used to create completely new applications using the idea of a mash-up to embed the Google code.

Now imagine the possibility of using a service oriented architecture to develop an application that could be embedded on third-party sites. This code could actually be used as a marketing tool. Those sites that embed it would, in fact, be promoting your brand.

Andy Mulholland, global chief technology officer of Capgemini, explores this in the second part of his interview with Computer Weekly (www.computerweekly.com/podcasts).