Businesses are taking
green IT seriously, but IT departments are doing little to
measure the effectiveness of their environmental strategies.
In the
Green IT UK Corporate Census 2008 study of 171 senior IT
managers, 55% of IT managers rated going green as important or
vital to their company.
However, the joint study from the Bathwick Group and the
Corporate IT Forum (TIF) found that only a quarter (26%) of IT
managers were actually measuring the effectiveness of their green
IT initiatives.
David Roberts, chief executive of the Corporate IT Forum, said,
"All organisations are aware of the need to contribute to green IT.
Most organisations have initiatives under way but there is a huge
amount of work to do".
The study showed that IT managers were unclear how they would
make measurements on the effectiveness of their green IT
strategies. "Measuring green IT is not developed at all. There are
not any standards for measuring," Roberts said.
Almost 60% of IT managers said finding a business case for going
green was also a big challenge. About half of IT managers surveyed
had ongoing budgetary constraints, which impacted their green IT
strategy.
Most (70%) IT managers in the survey have educated users or are
piloting educational sessions with end-users to encourage them to
switch off PCs and recycle paper in a bid to become more green.
Just under 80% of IT managers are deploying, piloting or
assessing the use of virtualisation technology to support their
green IT strategy.
The British Computer Society has added a
Green IT category to its industry awards, in recognition of the
work IT departments and the industry have undertaken to reduce
their environmental impact.