Over the last few years, the term of “Green IT” has begun to be used to describe a form that pour into two trends. The first trend involves the growing concern about environmental issues across our life in communities. The second trend involves Information Technology the use of digital tools and techniques for manipulating information, and the social phenomena that surround these systems.
As we know the Information Technology industry (hardware, software and services) has provided many tools to help generate and process data, communicate globally, and improve productivity.
With data consumption rising more than 10% every year and with most companies still hitched to dirty energy sources, we see there many companies found a full-fledged green transition in the IT sector is urgently needed and becoming sustainable!
Information in general, and IS and IT systems in particular can play an important control role through support of environmental management systems, life cycle analysis, and design for the environment practices. What do you think?
From my perspective, information technology is positioned to play a key role in facilitating the shift toward sustainability - oriented business. As the use of IT in business grows and both public and private demand for environmental and social responsibility increases, the need for effective sustainability - oriented IT systems will similarly expand.
In the same time and before applying sustainable technique or sustainable technologies, do you know what are the steps should followed to adopt this strategy? Do we understand what it takes to finance the energy improvements we require? Do companies have good information regarding the results of their sustainability initiatives? Can they report with confidence measures of tangible and intangible benefits? Do companies work to propel business applications while ensuring the server maintains a small carbon footprint? Do buildings with more natural light really improve productivity and morale?
For instance, laptops and mobile devices – information technology (IT) is not only a booming economic sector but also an energy-intensive one. There is a research says it accounts for 2% of human greenhouse gas emissions worldwide! Did you hear about that?
I would therefore say Green IT is the latest buzzword being promoted and become one of the best strategy that delivering incremental benefits to the organization by improving end-user working practices, creating energy efficient office environments and reducing data center energy consumption.
For Instance, the City of Calgary really does have to think about going “Green” and introduce new innovative technologies. Calgary this year has different projects in Green Technologies such as, Waste-heat capture program and Imagine Calgary
Going green is not only relate with the reduce the amount of paper we use or carbon footprint , it is the way to think of using information technology tools — from sensors to databases and websites to integrate sustainability factors into business operations.
Another Example I have in American University of Sharjah, in June 2011 AUS has lunched higher standard for academic buildings to sustain the campus environment. The building incorporates the most advanced technological facilities of academic infrastructure in the UAE and region.
From IT aspect many of the clever ideas connected with Green IT and sustainability involve the joint use of purely virtual space, most servers used today utilize between 5 and 15% of their total capacity while consuming 60 to 90% of their maximum energy consumption at idle. To overcome all these energy consumptions AUS has adopted a visualization (VMs) which allows the number of physical servers to be drastically reduced for large power savings and has contributed to add more space (Increase Data Center Capacity) in the data center once visualization is implemented due to the decreasing amount of physical hardware needed.
Clearly underlining that several organizations take Green IT seriously can boost that organization’s image and brand. Today, image and brand are significant aspects of competing for sales of products and services and for attracting and holding onto staff.
So it the time to integrating your Green IT strategy into business objectives.
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