A recent report commissioned by Bell Micro, an IT distributor in the UK, has found that 21% of organisations have "implemented" a Green IT policy however only 8% of these have actually implemented the policy in its entirety...
Across 350 Senior IT Manager interviews, from various sectors and business sizes, the study found that even with the small number of IT organisations with a Green IT policy, there was a lack of effective measurement for energy consumption - a leading cause of IT carbon emissions worldwide.
Two of the most common policy items were recycling paper and recycling hardware and/or consumables. Less common areas included using energy saving hardware and software (25%), use of virtualisation (13%), storage consolidation (13%), blade implementation (11%) and teleworking initiatives (11%).
These areas are all commonly talked about in the media and will take time to penetrate organisations, especially government organisations, many of whom struggle with internal policy development at the best of times. There have been proven studies on the reduced power consumption of virtualisation technologies, such as Microsoft's Hypervisor; and the social and economic benefits of telecommuting.
On the other end of the scale, 3% of organisations had implemented solar panels for their data centre energy requirements. Interviewees in larger companies pointed out they gained the most savings from virtualisation however only 12% of the interviewee pool had actually quantified the energy savings they had gained.
Once again, as with all things in IT, a dynamic and proactive IT department can only become one through measurement and monitoring of the success or failure of projects and initiatives such as Green IT.
However probably two of the most interesting metrics Bell Micro discovered was where the drive behind Green IT was - 50% said it was their CEO - but the second largest response was that it was their employees driving change (27%).
The latter figure highlights the social aspect of Green IT - there are been many studies proving employees want to work for socially responsible employers and that this is a part of their employment criteria. Green IT isn't just about saving money, but also extends to who you attract to your organisation. This then may impact the type of innovation your business can naturally undertake. Most people want to feel good about who they work for, even if they don't see this specifically correlating to paper recycling or a reduction in power consumption due to virtualisation initiatives.
References:
Bell Micro 2008, Passing the Green IT buck, http://www.bellmicro.eu/goingreen/downloads/research.pdf
Microsoft 2008, Windows Server 2008 Power Savings, http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=61d493fd-855d-4719-8662-3a40ba3a0a5c&displaylang=en
The American Consumer Institute 2008, Information Technologies and Telecommuting: Good for the Economy, Good for the Environment, http://www.aci-citizenresearch.org/Telecommuting.pdf
