Sustainability now key issue for IT management

Its report ‘Sustainable IT Provision – Meeting the Challenge of Corporate, Social, and Environmental Responsibility’, just published, suggests that IT teams need to be more proactive, ensuring that new capabilities are incorporated into IT strategy and governance. “New opportunities continue to emerge that enable organisations to work in a more environmentally friendly way,” says Mark Blowers, senior research analyst and co-author of the study. “Yet many enterprises are failing to act and have not yet recognised the fact that business-as-usual is no longer an option. “IT management and new technologies [can] take a leading role in assisting the organisation in meeting social expectations… Innovative organisations can make the most of these openings to gain a leadership position.” Blowers believes that there are two primary ways in which IT teams can help to improve the environmental situation – by enabling measurement of the exposure to climate change and by increasing the efficiency of IT operations. “IT must improve the flexibility and efficiency of its operations, and measure performance related to environmental and social objectives,” he says. He suggests that the environmental mantra of Three R’s – Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle – be expanded to four by adding ‘Re-engineer’ for IT managers. “Clearly, any organisation’s printing activities are an area likely to be suitable for investigation in terms of lowering environmental impact and possible reuse. Cheap printers, ubiquitous in office environments, along with a combination of spiralling information volumes and the accessibility of printed output, have led to wasteful practices and needless paper use,” says Blowers. “It is important to take a holistic approach which encompasses not only equipment energy usage, but product, software and building design. For example, during the procurement process, questions need to be asked regarding the use of toxic chemicals during their manufacture and within the products, as well as ascertaining how recyclable the equipment and resources are,” he adds. And he goes on to indicate that T departments should also be considering energy utilisation, making the point that at the simplest level, all computer equipment should be turned off when not in use, while at a higher level, data centres are reviewed for underutilised servers and storage systems, many of which are consuming the same amount of electricity as fully-loaded servers. “The adoption of key re-engineering efforts, such as implementing an architectural approach, deploying hardware designed to use a dc supply, and utilising fresh air cooling, as well as improving utilisation by investing in consolidation and virtualisation, can result in not only reduced energy consumption, but also significant efficiency benefits and lower overheads,” says Blowers.