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Less than a third of UK organisations that outsource always check the green credentials of the third party IT organisations to which they outsource such key IT activities. Just over half say such credentials are not always checked, and another fifth admit they do not know if they are checked or not. Faced with these findings one has to question the current ethics of outsourcing green IT.

It is also worth remembering that if green IT does become subject to legislation it is highly unlikely that such unregulated outsourcing would be acceptable. UK businesses must therefore introduce more vigorous vetting procedures when outsourcing, and again this is an area where vendors, distributors, resellers and outsourcers need to come together to support business customers with clearly marked, quantifiably green products and services.

Nearly a third of companies however do believe that it is actually the employees which are really driving this change, and this is where disconnect is happening. It is not surprising to hear that companies seeking to offload green responsibilities to a third party should also regard it as the employees’ inherent role to establish or enforce a green policy. If ethical green practice is to be truly adopted across the workplace, then the impetus really needs to be coming from the senior management

The good news is that half of the UK's IT decision makers do believe that it really is the CEO or MD who is driving green IT initiatives, with a fifth seeing change driven at the board level. Certainly the elevation of green issues is borne out by the fact that only 16 per cent of organisations say green IT initiatives are not taken seriously by the board. Yet very few organisations have actually appointed an individual or team to drive green issues beyond the board room.

Perhaps the most telling figure in the research carried out on the current state of green IT in the UK is that management is still failing to put money where its mouth is. Only 9 per cent of the 350 UK organisations questioned in our survey have actually earmarked specific budget to accommodate the necessary environmentally friendly changes - a frankly shocking statement. If green IT is ever to really make a difference it needs to be treated far more seriously.

Vendors, distributors and resellers need to find a way to communicate to the decision makers the real financial value of assessing existing IT infrastructure and also accurately label new compliant services and products. IT managers then need to better define the financial advantages of adopting a green IT policy to senior management, who in turn must allocate budget and be seen to drive the policy across the entire company.

With market issues as they are, can businesses really afford to ignore the value of going green?

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