Saturday
Oct 11th
| A Greener Path |
Page 1 of 2  When half of IT people think that IT is not responsible for an organisation's CO2 emissions, something is going awry. So where have things gone wrong? Antony Young, director of services, security and networking at Bell Micro discusses.
According to recent independent research conducted in the UK, half of IT decision makers still remain unclear as to the actual value of a green policy. Whilst it is accepted that 'green IT' could save both money and the environment, it seems that these messages are currently failing to resonate with IT managers.The essence of the problem is the confusion over what it actually takes to be green. Media and marketing collaterals are full of green products and solutions yet the reality is that much of this amounts to little more than old sales messages repackaged to suit today's business pressures. What is apparent however is that the clamour to go green has only helped to complicate procurement processes. As recent as the start of this year, when Dynamic Markets questioned 350 UK businesses on behalf of Bell Micro about green IT, half firmly believed that IT is not responsible for the bulk of an organisation's CO2 emissions. This is perhaps an unexpected response when industry statistics always seem to suggest otherwise. When taking this opinion in to account it is of no surprise that only 8 per cent of the UK businesses taking part in the survey have implemented a full green IT policy. For the remaining 92 per cent the focus has been on recycling paper, cans and hardware instead of addressing energy consumption throughout the organisation. Only 25 per cent of those with existing policies have actively addressed the need for increased hardware utilisation or recommended implementing a method of energy saving hardware or software solutions. Despite the hype from vendors, just 13 per cent have considered the value of virtualisation or consolidation within the data centre. So why such a disconnect? It is important to understand that despite some of these figures, this is not an industry in denial. But there is a mismatch that needs to be reviewed. Whilst re-launching older products and services with a green angle has generated confusion, the real problems lie in the lack of dedicated funding for green issues, further exacerbated by a lack of a regulatory push. Unfortunately the subject of 'green' still has a tendency to fall through the gap between the IT manager and the facilities manager, where separate budgets are far more likely to generate conflicts of interest. Despite the continued green push, only a few organisations (7 per cent) and even fewer SMEs (2 per cent) have an appointed individual or team to respond to or drive green issues. What the industry is seeing is a systematic failure to educate - from buyer, to reseller and through distributor to vendor. To date, the channel has concentrated on selling hardware, but now the proliferation of green means increasing pressure for companies operating in this space to adopt a more advisory role. Some resellers are already doing a fantastic job of embracing green solutions but they are sadly in the minority because the majority of the expertise still lies with the vendors, and much of this knowledge has so far failed to filter through. With the support of distributors, resellers now need to tighten up the green message and re-train sales teams to be more consultative. Green should be seen as an opportunity for the IT industry, not just as a one-time sell. Though some resellers may feel uncomfortable with such a new approach, there needs to be a shift in focus to benchmark where a business sits with its green objectives first. Services such as HP's thermodynamic analysis of the data centre can immediately help to provide a better understanding of what the IT manager already has to hand and what can be done to improve an existing infrastructure. This in turn enables purchasing to be more strategic and ultimately more economic. Though benchmarking involves an initial capital outlay, it can easily be incorporated into the overall IT strategy of a business and, by acting on the resulting report, additional costs can be offset by savings from greater product efficiencies. For the IT manager facing budgetary constraints, or demanding more from IT spend, timing is key. If a benchmark audit is only completed when an issue with the data centre arises, then the business is already 18 months behind the curve. From a purely green perspective, 59 per cent of companies without a policy felt it would on average take 12 months to roll out necessary measures to be fully compliant. Until then, the business will be losing capital that could easily be saved by a simple green health check. The outsourcing dilemma Faced with such possible delays in rolling out IT policy, many companies are looking to outsource. This is already a very common practice in the UK with almost three quarters of business outsourcing some key IT functions and processes. There also exists a high correlation between those companies that already outsource and those that also operate a green policy (85 per cent). One in three that do outsource think this relieves some of the pressure on them and allows them to shift responsibility associated with green IT issues to someone else. This is a trend Bell Micro is seeing develop throughout SMEs and large organisations irrespective of company size, and it is a cause for concern. Amongst those outsourcing IT, we see the confusion over what is really 'green' and a lack of deeper comprehension with regards to what new storage technology can deliver. Few, for example, think significant energy savings would come from the use of virtualisation technology or increased utilisation of hardware. So the green message is not getting through with any clarity and this is exacerbated by more than a general malaise about green IT. Despite such attitudes, most would agree that now is the time to take a proactive approach to reducing the levels of power consumption and hardware wastage, if not purely to reduce financial expenditure but also because enforcing green policies is the right ethical response. |
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