In the early 1990s, I was working for ICL – the once and former poster child for UK IT – trying to sell big old mainframes running an operating system called VME (which stood for “virtual machine environment” – remember that, it becomes important later on…).

It wasn’t an entirely successful venture, given that most of the world was moving to mid-range Unix servers and proliferating these cheaper boxes around every department of the organisation.

At the time, I would occasionally come across an IBM customer still hanging on to their dear old water-cooled mainframes. Water cooling! Honestly. So 1970s. Air conditioning – that was the way forward.

Fast forward to this week when, while hosting a Computing web seminar on energy efficient IT, I find the expert speakers telling viewers to consider, um, consolidating departmental servers to one big central box and, err, investigating water cooling for their datacentres instead of energy-hungry air conditioning.

See? The IT industry is a fast-moving, forward-looking, innovative industry. You heard it here first – water-cooled mainframes are the next big thing. And flares.

Oh, and don’t forget the key technology that is driving the server consolidation trend – virtualisation, whereby multiple applications previously hosted on individual boxes are run in virtual servers on a single box, centralised into what you might call a virtual machine environment.

In the spirit of the IT industry’s love of TLAs (three-letter acronyms), let’s now give this technology its own shorthand – virtualisation, after all, being a bit of mouthful. I suggest that from now on, we call it VME.

Sound familiar?

Sometimes it really is true that the best ideas are the old ones. Of course IT, like anything else, goes in cycles and the trends of yesteryear find new popularity once more. Give it 10 years and we’ll have a dot com boom – Business 5.0, perhaps.

Can anyone else think of examples of old technologies and trends that are - or should be - making a renaissance today?

Here’s another one for the real nostalgists – the ICL One-per-desk (OPD), but with a voice over IP interface. It would work…

An OPD yesterday. Or in 1984.

Unlikely as it may seem, the latest battleground in IT is the school desk of children in developing countries.

Leading the way in publicity terms is the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, dreamed up by US technology guru Nicholas Negroponte.

The aim was to provide a $100 computer based on low-cost components and open source software. The scheme has generated many column inches, but fewer sales. Negroponte admits that many heads of state who said they were interested are less keen to sign a cheque. A short-term scheme has been announced where US residents can purchase two OLPC laptops for $399, and one of them will be donated to a child in the developing world ­ the $100 laptop has already become a $150 laptop.

The motivation behind OLPC is sound, but the reality is proving to be a challenge. Nevertheless, Intel has been sufficiently impressed/worried (delete as you consider appropriate) to launch a rival scheme called the Classmate PC.

An already popular option is to donate used computers to be refurbished and sent out to projects in developing countries. Computing has supported the charity Computer Aid International for some years, and several thousand computers have already been provided by readers. Computer Aid is a great charity ­ even if we are biased ­ but it needs more backing and more PCs to spread its reach.

Microsoft founded a similar charity ­- and rival to Computer Aid -­ called Digital Pipeline, and in July announced that EDS had donated 30,000 PCs for use by schoolchildren in Africa. Some have questioned Microsoft’s motives ­ you can’t see those PCs having Linux installed ­ but the recipients will not be complaining.

And last week, another scheme popped up. Macedonia’s Ministry of Education and Science has signed a €44m (£30.8m) deal for thin-client supplier NComputing to provide 180,000 devices costing just £35 each to the entire school population of the former Yugoslav republic.

For UK IT leaders, the race for the school desk has clear implications. The drive to reduce the cost of personal computing can only benefit your budget ­ although the impact will probably not be felt for some time, and IT suppliers are unlikely to rush to offer the same low-cost technology to wealthy business buyers.

But this is also an opportunity for IT departments to play their part in the organisation’s corporate social responsibility plans by donating PCs or supporting projects in the developing world. The question for those in UK IT is: what are you doing to help?

If you've ever been to Times Square in New York you may have seen the US national debt clock - a giant counter tallying up the ever-growing amount of money owed by the US government. (As I write this, the figure stands at a little over $9 trillion - about $30,000 per US citizen).

The aim of the clock is to highlight one of that country's greatest economic challenges. Now, thanks to supplier EMC and analyst IDC, IT managers have their very own equivalent - and you can see it below.

How many times have you had to go back to the board and ask for funds to buy more storage because of the rapidly-growing volume of data you have accumulated? Well, you're not alone.

This is the data clock - the estimated amount of digital information currently in existence around the world. At current growth rates, it is expected to reach 988 billion gigabytes by 2010.

So next time your boss moans about how much you spend on storage - take a look at the latest number above for a little perspective.