The Greening of IT

Environmental responsibility has emerged as an important consideration for corporations today. The IT sector in particular has recently woken up to the various negative environmental effects of the vast amounts of energy they release from their operations. The result- a Green IT movement focusing on minimizing the effects of harmful energy emissions from IT operations. Increasing power consumption and cooling requirement in data centers, as well as e-waste, are the most important environmental concerns in the IT sector today.

The rising awareness of environmental effects of IT is believed to be driven by tangible business benefits.

Although server virtualization and consolidation techniques boost server utilization and capacity, they are also believed to aggravate cooling problems. Enterprises and consumers will replace more than 800 million PCs worldwide in 2007-2012. These discarded PCs will add significantly to the mounting e-waste challenge, concern about data security is one of the main hindrances to the recycling.

Environmental problems caused by IT operations are attracting a lot of attention and organizations are waking up to the harmful effects of their large-scale energy emissions.

Changes, even if not disruptive, always bring along opportunity. The Green IT movement spells immense opportunity for IT vendors.

IT heavyweights realize that the green movement presents a win-win opportunity. Industry majors are now coming together to form green alliances. Being known as a socially responsible and environmentally friendly organization has become one of the top priorities for IT companies today. This, coupled with a strong profit proposition, will keep the supply side going on Green IT.