Green IT

IBM has introduced a carbon-emissions modelling tool, aimed at helping businesses analyse the environmental impact of supply-chain decisions and to devise alternative business practices.

Analyst report from In-Stat says LAN switches from 3Com are up to 60 percent more energy efficient than those from its competitors.

The IT industry needs to benchmark and copy best practice methodology rather than design from scratch, according to UK Government CIO John Suffolk.

London based software developer Living Life Green launched CarbonWiseâ„¢ today, an enterprise level energy management solution that can achieve up to 50% savings in energy and substantial reductions in carbon emissions. The software is suitable for small business and is fully scaleable to run on multi location, multi server networks, ideal for corporates and government departments.

For every server virtualised, customers can save about 7,000 kilowatt hours, or four tons of CO2 emissions, every year, says company.

Nearly half of IT professionals admit that they had run out of space, power or cooling capacity at their datacentres, according to a recent survey of 150 IT professionals.

Heat from a datacentre built in a bunker is being collected and transferred to the nearby pool as part of an innovative energy efficiency project undertaken by GIB-Services, a Swiss IT co-location company.

While it's true that many organisations are looking to reduce their carbon footprint, it's also the case that much of the green hype is unfounded. Besides, there's plenty of evidence that planting-a-tree missions are a misguided approach to reducing carbon emissions.

In the near future, environmental, financial, legislative and risk-related pressure will increasingly force organizations to govern and manage their IT in a green fashion.

A survey carried out within the 150-member Corporate iT Forum reveals 81 percent to have pushed Green IT further up their agenda compared to last year. But cost remains a crucial sticking point.

Top retailer Marks and Spencer and leading charity Oxfam are incentivising recycling. Major IT suppliers have recycling schemes for their old kit, but we haven't seen them offer substantial rebates for doing so. Its about time they did.

Consumer electronics reflect a sensitivity to the attitudes of modern consumers of course. But there are indications outside of Vegas that the CES orchestrations are the tip of an iceberg of awareness that technology – which by its nature resonates with the notion of efficiency – can cut a lot of its own energy and resource waste simply by more thoughtful design.

Microsoft is determined to lose a reputation for workload inefficiency, and the some of its story makes for great motherhood and apple pie tale but why was there no menmtion of green issues at its bigges EUropean end user event? A day and a half and the only conversation about greening was at the dinner table....

Public sector CIOs are being urged to take a leadership position with regard to green IT, despite the contradictions in the UK government’s green IT policies.

Dell plans to make its global operations carbon neutral by the end of 2008, earlier than previously thought.