Green IT Still Finding Its Way

July 23, 2007

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In the absence of a mature green IT market, users are cobbling together green strategies that are saving them money without negatively impacting IT performance, Infoworld reports. Many strategies are based on internal development efforts, while a limited number have vendor input. For now, it seems, going green mostly means going it alone, which leaves a big vacuum for vendors to fill with their emerging green IT marketing plans.

But some of these plans, according to Greg Schulz, founder and senior analyst at The StorageIO Group, are just greenwashing. “There’s money in the green story,” he asserts. “If you can make your story sell by making it sound green and appealing to that feel-good green aspect of the market, you’re going to get money out of it.”

But others disagree. Pat Samples, vice president of information systems at Cooper Communities, says he is saving money by being green.

Samples says his company is saving money via green IT in a couple of ways. “First of all, new equipment is more power-efficient,” he says. “In some places, we’re retiring two and three servers. So electrical consumption is going to go down, and we’re going to save money on licensing costs because we’ll have one server doing the job of two or three.”

While 85 percent of IT professionals surveyed in a recent Forrester report said environmental factors are important in planning IT operations, only one-quarter said they have written green criteria into their company’s purchasing processes.

One of the biggest moves to date by a vendor is IBM spending $1 billion to spread technologies and services that could make corporate computing centers more energy efficient.

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