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Green IT: beyond the data center
How IT can contribute to the environmentalagenda across and beyond the business
By Stephen Nunn
Technology Consulting
 
2Green IT
Now a further pressure has been addedto the mix. Amid intensifying scrutinyof your company's environmentalimpact, your IT function has founditself in the front line of the battleagainst climate change. As a major—perhaps
the 
major—high-profileconsumer of energy in the organization,IT is being asked to demonstrate itscommitment to reducing carbonemissions. And everyone is watchingfor your response, from the CEO toinvestors, and from employees togreen lobby groups.Put simply, IT needs to go green—andto prove it. As a CIO, if you haven'tbeen asked to do this already, thenyou soon will be. When that questioncomes, you want to have the rightanswers ready.
Greening the data-center…
What should those answers be? Tofind out, let's start by examining thetone and focus of the current debatearound green IT.To date, the agenda has largely beenset by IT hardware suppliers, who havenot been slow to seize the opportunitypresented by this new pressure on theCIO. For them, the debate is aroundrunning IT assets and services in amore energy-efficient way. And theywill be happy to supply new equipmentto enable the CIO to do this.This agenda has had two results.One is that the whole discussionaround IT's ability to drive energysavings has tended to focus narrowlyon data center operations. The otheris an upsurge in marketing of IThardware and systems that consumeless energy while delivering the sameprocessing capacity.
…is just the start
In our view, this focus is not wrong, just incomplete. It risks missing somemajor opportunities, because the realenvironmental agenda for the CIOcan be—and certainly should be—farbroader. True, the data center is onevalid area of focus in IT's efforts tosupport the company's environmentalagenda. But it is just one of many.There are also several other areaswhere IT can make a real anddemonstrable contribution.At its root, the shared challengefacing every member of the board ishow to limit, and hopefully reduce,the organization's overall carbonfootprint. The question is how muchcan each executive bring to the party.And as CIO, you can bring a lot morethan more energy-efficient servers.Indeed, if you don't, you will be failingto pull your full potential weight.
As a chief information officer (CIO), you are underpressure from many quarters. Just look around theboardroom table. The CEO wants you to deliverhigher shareholder value. The CFO is demandinghigher returns on IT investments. The COO is lookingto you to create operations that are lower-cost andmore effective. And all of them want you to helpdrive the organization towards high performance.
A new environment for IT
 
3How IT can contribute to the environmental agenda across and beyond the business
How green?
Over 50 percent of customersnow consider the environmentalrecord of their supplier whenconducting business. And50 percent of shareholders saythey are more likely to buyshares in a company that showsenvironmental awareness.
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