Improving sustainability and meeting"green" policiesset out at a
corporate level is not a high priority for European IT departments
in Europe.
The lack of support for green issues in IT departments is
revealed in a survey of 800 datacentre managers released by
Symantec.
Symantec's 'Green Datacentre' report shows that datacentre
managers are being driven to adopt green policies to meet
operational as opposed to altruistic goals.
This includes reducing costs via greater energy efficiency, the
better use of limited space whilst managing ever increasing amounts
of data, and
improving cooling at a lower cost.
But the survey shows that although the majority of organisations
have a green policy in place (56%) and that most datacentre
managers are familiar with the concept of green datacentres (60%),
only one in seven have successfully implemented a green
datacentre.
"Climate change and sustainability was arguably one of the
greatest public issues of 2007, yet our survey shows a
disconnection between corporate plans to roll out green policies
and what is actually happening within the IT department," said
Amanda Jobbins, vice-president at Symantec.
"Considering that IT accounts for a significant percentage of
energy usage within an organisation, and IT waste is considered to
contribute at least a third of overall electronic waste in the UK,
the IT department should be one of the first places that green
polices are put into practice within an organisation," said
Jobbins.