The IT department at investment bank Lehman Brothers is
charging business departments based on the power consumption of the
applications they use.
"We cannot have a model of IT for infinite power consumption,
said Michael Fahy, head of IT infrastructure, Europe at Lehman
Brothers, which is based in Canary Wharf.
Because electrical power and space is at a premium, Fahy has
changed the way the IT department charges business departments for
IT to reflect the need for
greener IT. He said the bank previously charged back
applications based on the amount of datacentre floor space required
to run them. "We have moved to a model where applications are
charged based on the net power consumption of the storage and
servers they require."
Chargeback is one of the approaches IT takes to align more
closely with business, by offering services that are charged
directly to the business departments that consume them. Chargeback
is usually calculated based on the amount of IT resources the
business department requires, said Dale Vile, managing director at
analyst group Freeform
Dynamics.
"Lehman Brothers' chargeback mechanism looks like a very
original approach." he said. "The more you can make sustainability
part of the day-to-day processes of the business, the better."
"However, power is not the only cost and charging needs to take
into account staff and the type of architecture, such as PC servers
and mainframes."
A
study from Vanson Bourne, commissioned by Cisco, found that IT
decision makers are expected to spend more of their budgets on
technologies aimed at improving sustainable business practice.
Twenty five per cent of the 200 IT decision makers surveyed
expected their budget to rise by between 10% and 25% to support the
corporate sustainability strategies of the business. Forty three
per cent of respondents said they were prepared to pay a premium
for goods and services from sustainable suppliers.
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