Establishing a Green IT Baseline
As a part of any initiative, to put together a comprehensive action plan, and to implement the same, the necessary information needs to be discovered and calculated. Far beyond a trend, the greening of business, is an important step towards cost saving, while at the same time fulfilling a responsibility to the environment.
Technology industry analyst Doug Washburn provides three insightful points why its important to establish a green IT baseline:
- Guide your greening efforts with solid data. Avoid guessing about what to green first by referencing concrete statistics on energy consumption, CO2 emissions, and cost per IT asset.
- Create realistic goals. Measuring IT’s energy consumption will help you estimate the possible environmental and economic benefits of going green, ensuring your green-related goals are realistic.
- Quantify the benefits over time. Once you have implemented green upgrades to your IT assets, compare your new energy consumption to your baseline, highlighting both environmental and economic savings.
Additional things to consider: Discuss with business leaders about current energy budgets and compare with your green IT baseline. Propose a solution, and expose organization’s business leaders to the benefit of and importance of green IT initiative, with current and planned utilization. Inspire those around you by forming a green team, green initiative, along with marketing and whomever will join in sounding the voice.
The Green IT Baseline Calculator
In February 2009, Forrester Research introduced an online green IT baseline calculator, designed to help IT professionals and decision makers calculate their green technology baseline.
(If you experience any difficulty viewing the embedded calculator click here)
