thebuzz
Global research firm IDC also
found growing interest in green
IT projects in its December
2008 Green IT survey of more
than 1,500 global business
executives in 10 countries.
As in the Forrester survey,
executives saw green IT projects
as the best strategy to reduce
rising energy costs. More than
70 percent of the respondents
identified energy concerns as
the number one driver for
implementing green IT projects,
with 77 percent of U.S. respondents and 74 percent of
European respondents putting
it at the top of their list.
“The cost savings associated
with reducing power consumption is definitely capturing the
attention of IT decision-makers
around the world,” says Vernon
Turner, senior vice president,
enterprise infrastructure,
consumer and telecom research
at IDC.
The survey also shows that
Europe is lagging compared with
other regions when it comes to
senior management interest in
and customer demand to invest
in sustainability projects.
But regulatory pressures and
soaring energy costs could drive
change.
“Last year, € 1. 6 billion was
spent on powering servers
throughout Western Europe,
which translated into € 4. 4 billion for entire data centers,” says Nathaniel
Martinez, program director, European enterprise
servers at IDC. “Unless a drastic change in products and company practices occurs, things will
not get any better in the future. In 2012, we
could face a scenario where for every euro spent
on buying new servers, more than €0.80 will be
needed to power the existing data center infrastructure.”
FORCED GREEN
Green data storage was among
the biggest trends in 2008,
writes Lauren Whitehouse,
analyst at U.S. research firm
Enterprise Strategy Group in a
Tech Target ANZ article in
January 2009.
“Social responsibility has been
less of a driver than the power,
cooling and space efficiency challenges forcing ‘green’ initiatives
in companies of all sizes,” she
writes. “These initiatives aim to
reduce costs, improve the environment and create new business
opportunities by eliminating
waste, conserving energy,
reducing carbon footprints,
and taking new approaches to
the development and marketing
of products and services—often
relying heavily on IT to help
meet goals.”
And not even the dismal
economy will be enough to
derail the move to green IT,
according to one IT guru.
“There is no doubt that
organizations are reducing IT
investments in light of the economic downturn. Many have
argued that the reduced price
of oil and economic pressures
will kill the green movement.
The death of the green movement in organizations and society
has been greatly exaggerated.
However, there will be some
changes in green IT investment
activity,” Lewis Curtis, infrastructure architect
and advisor at Microsoft, said in a December
2008 Info World article.
“Environmental sustainability projects that
positively impact the bottom line in the short
run will be moved to the front of the line,”
he predicted, while those that increase costs
or don’t impact immediate regulatory needs will
be delayed.
52
Percentage of
companies
implementing or
creating a green IT
action plan, up from
45% in early 2008
10
Percentage of
companies that plan
to increase the pace of
their green IT projects
5
Percentage of
companies planning
to slow the pace of
green IT projects
“The central value
of green IT programs—
greener IT also means
saving money—is
taking hold among
corporate IT
practitioners.
—Chris Mines,
”
Forrester Research
SOURCE: Forrester Research