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The Greening of IT
2 How Companies Can Make a Difference for the Environment

As I mentioned in the Preface, green IT is an ideal way for most compa-
nies to make a significant step in reducing their carbon footprint for several
reasons. First, for competitive reasons, most companies already refresh their
computer hardware—laptops, desktops, servers, and storage devices—every
three to four years. That refresh cycle provides a recurring opportunity to buy
increasingly energy-efficient technology, such as virtual servers, virtual net-
works, and virtual data storage. Such virtualization can easily reduce IT
power consumption for the replaced equipment by up to 50 percent. (For
examples, refer to the Environmental Protection Agency’s [EPA] “Report to
Congress on Server and Data Center Energy Efficiency” or the reports by
Jonathan Koomey listed in the Bibliography.) A second compelling reason to
move to green IT is that virtualization technology enables you to reduce
equipment and system management costs for your data center. Data center
green technology is based on a solid business case—even before we consider
the savings due to reduced energy costs. A third reason for moving to green
IT is that all large companies are moving to such implementation improve-
ments (in IT virtualization, cloud computing, and so on). In addition to
information on IT virtualization, this book also includes information on new
ptg
energy-efficient cooling technologies that support IT, and the impact of elec-
tric utility-rate case incentives and government incentives and regulations on
promoting IT energy efficiency.
Green IT has many different aspects. In this book, we use the terms green
IT, green computing, and green data centers. Green IT—as used here—is
the most comprehensive because it includes all computing, inside and out-
side the data center. The emphasis of our discussion is on the business aspects
of green IT, so the focus is on what to do, rather than the details of how to do
it. However, several chapters, especially the case studies, do give details on
how to implement green IT, using best practices based on recent experience
and lessons learned through dealing with many companies and organizations
throughout the world.
In the following chapters, we look at the benefits and roadblocks in mov-
ing to green IT, including the following:

1. Organizational issues in addressing the problem (for example, CIO
doesn’t pay the electricity bill).
2. The future of regulations as external factors for change.
3. Overall motivation for executives to move to green IT.
4. Evaluation of product end of life and asset disposal, procurement
policies, and supply-chain issues (solutions to avoid climate impact,
and such).