Conventional management wisdom dictates that whatever it is that cannot be measured, cannot be managed. As part of its Greenspace initiative, hosting leader Rackspace has announced an online SMB carbon calculator this week to help small and medium-sized organizations start measuring their carbon consumption – also known as carbon footprint.

The online SMB carbon calculator page allows you to perform a complete energy audit in about 10 minutes. The easy-to-use survey prompts for information such as details of your company’s travel – the frequency, modes of transports, and distances involved – length of hotel stays, average energy consumption for cooling and heating, number of servers, and other factors. Location and staff strength are also factored into the mini-survey, presumably to compute the varying carbon cost in energy-extraction in the various states.

Once you have computed your carbon footprint, additional information is on hand to help you to take steps to reduce and mitigate the global warming impact. The downside here is that the survey appears to have been tailored towards SMBs that are based in the United States at the moment – there is no option to select other locations outside of the U.S. While I wish they could have included a blanket “Outside U.S.” option, it is nevertheless an interesting test.

On a more practical note, reduced energy consumption translates into direct savings in electricity bills. In fact, this is one point I kept hearing about when I recently interviewed an expert in the design of data centers, which I'll be writing about in an upcoming blog post.

The calculator is developed by NativeEnergy, and simply represents the newest addition to Rackspace’s continuing efforts to promote environmentally friendly programs. NativeEnergy is a leading international provider of high-quality carbon offsets and emission reductions

Finally, you can read Rackspace’s press release, or visit the the company’s Greenspace site and purchase carbon off-sets.