Datasouth Business Solutions

Green back in fashion for IT

Tuesday, 27th April 2010

As the global economy starts to slowly recover, so does the focus of the business world on reducing its environmental impact. Whatever you think of the scientific debate about global warming, the business challenges to CIOs of becoming greener are real.

It was hardly surprising that green computing issues fell off the radar in 2009. As blogger Don Tennant says,

“When a CIO is trying to help steer the corporate ship through recessionary waters, and he's worrying about what will happen if it capsizes, don't start whining about oil spills. Right or wrong, he doesn't want to hear it.”

The storm has abated somewhat in 2010 so it is time to start thinking about how green your IT is once again. This must be focussed on practical implications rather than ideology or politics. As Tennant again notes,

“IT executives are dealing with far too many headaches to let themselves be led on an environmental guilt trip.”

A green focus is not simply about being good corporate citizens, there are some quite practical reasons to invest some time and effort to assessing the sustainability of your IT approach.

IT is traditionally seen as a key to improving an organisation’s productivity. But there is evidence it can make a real contribution to reducing its carbon emissions. A recently published Boston Consulting study showed that using IT could help reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 15% on existing levels in the US by 2020.

Reduced energy consumption is the key area where corporates have experienced significant savings by adopting smarter approaches to purchasing and using IT equipment. While reducing your carbon footprint, it can also deliver quick cost savings without impacting productivity. Other less significant areas of cost can be saved with lower usage of paper and other consumables.

More ephemeral benefits of being green are things like enhancing your reputation in the market, and making staff feel good about being part of an environmentally responsible organisation. Given high quality IT skills are still in demand this has some resonance for many businesses.

Another incentive is more stick than carrot. Increasingly having a defined and measured sustainability strategy is a requirement of supply agreements. For large corporate supply chains it is likely to become a standard feature in coming years.

At a higher level emissions trading schemes are being built by the Australian and New Zealand governments. Although the regulatory or taxation implications aren’t yet clear, there will be some sort of impact on the cost of business outputs.

Green computing is not just about direct savings from changing IT activity, but using IT to empower sustainably initiatives. For example: using software to improve the efficiency of logistics and therefore reduce shipping requirements; strengthening your unified communications strategy so travel is reduced; moving more applications to the cloud to reduce the use of in-house servers; or removing waste out of your production processes with integrated information systems.

Then of course there are the direct opportunities to reduce the environment impact of your IT. There are numerous opportunities — Gartner point to areas like document management, telepresence, teleworking, smart buildings, carbon tracking, and logistics. Specifically they may be in areas like re-examining your buying policies to source more energy efficient and recyclable computing hardware. On the software side for example Windows 7 has a range of power consumption features that help both end-users and IT departments to be smarter about using energy in-house and on the road.

Rather than being subjected to an environmental guilt trip, greening your IT can deliver some positive benefits for your business. Talk to Datasouth today about your green IT strategies and what changes can be made.

We specialise in the provision of technology solutions that assist organisations in enhancing their business by improved information flow and productivity. As an organisation that has been providing advice to government and corporate clients for over fifteen years, we can advise, design and implement solutions that truly provide a competitive edge and reduced cost structures.

To better understand how we may help you to drive your business forward, please contact Datasouth to discuss your specific requirements.