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Five Simple Ways to Help Your IT Infrastructure Go Green

If you're an IT pro, though, going green may well be new to you, and you may not know where to begin. So here are five simple ways to get started going green. You'll be surprised how simple it is to get started, and how quickly you'll start seeing results. Read More

(Updated on July 24, 2024)

If you’re an IT pro, there’s a big green bus headed your way. The future of your career may depend on whether you get on board and take the wheel, or instead become roadkill.

How green an IT infrastructure is will soon become as important to corporations as other traditional means of measuring IT effectiveness, such as uptime, availability, and service level agreements (SLAs). In fact, don’t be surprised if corporations devise a variety of green SLAs that IT will have to meet. There are plenty of reasons for this, from simple cost-savings to being want to be seen as a good citizen.

If you’re an IT pro, though, going green may well be new to you, and you may not know where to begin. So here are five simple ways to get started going green. You’ll be surprised how simple it is to get started, and how quickly you’ll start seeing results.

The information for this column is taken largely from an excellent report from Forrester Research titled Five Green IT Trends That Will Impact The IT Infrastructure and Operations Profession. More details about the report are included in this story from GreenerComputing.com.

Know Your Energy Use — and Cut It

The U.S. Department of Energy says that data centers used 1.5 percent of the nation’s 2006 energy output, with consumption is growing at 12 percent per year. It’s also chewing up a big portion of your company’s energy budget. Despite this, Forrester says in its report, “23 percent of data center decision-makers tell us that their company is only ‘somewhat interested’ and another 32 percent are simply ‘not interested’ in increasing energy efficiency in the data center.”

Why the disconnect? Typically, IT doesn’t pay the energy bill, so there’s no incentive to cut power use. But that clearly is going to change — one day it will become an important part of an IT pro’s job. So get ahead of the curve, and start cutting today. Talk to your facilities staff, find out energy use, and devise a plan to cut it.

Go Green in Procurement and Sourcing

Corporations are increasingly exceedingly conscious of whether what they buy meet green criteria, and of whether their disposal methods are green. Forrester says that 38 percent of corporations include “environmental criteria such as green manufacturing, operation, and/or disposal processes in their evaluation and selection of IT purchases — up from 25 percent only six months earlier.”

Here’s another instance where you need to get ahead of your business in going green. Develop a set of green evaluation criteria, and check your suppliers for their environmental practices. If you don’t do it, your company’s procurement department will, and you’ll be stuck with their rules, rather than your own.


Be Seen as a Green Champion

It’s not enough to merely be green — you need to be seen as green as well. In fact, you may already have a number of projects underway that offer significant green benefits, so it’s time to highlight them. Virtualization and server and storage consolidation, for example, offer significant green benefits. Take the time to calculate those benefits, and report on them to upper management. If you can’t calculate the benefits yourself, check with your vendor or consultant — they’ll know the figures.

Do this not just to blow your own horn. It will also help you get backing for important IT projects. And make sure, when proposing new projects, that you always include potential green benefits. That way, they’ll be more likely to get approved.

Pay Attention to Recycling and Disposal

Disposal of old equipment is the dirty little secret of many enterprises and IT departments. Old electronic equipment and computers cause a wide variety of environmental damage when disposed of improperly. Today, few companies pay attention to this. Tomorrow, they will. So you should start investigating today how to get rid of old gear.

There’s a simple place to begin — with the hardware manufacturer. Many manufacturers will take back their old hardware from you, and recycle it properly. Dell and HP, for example, both have programs in which they will take back and properly recycle old hardware.

In addition to checking with your vendor or supplier, a good place to start is at the eBay Rethink Initiative, with plenty of links to vendor and other sites dealing with e-waste. Other good places to check are Green-Tech Assets and Technology Recycling Group.

Think Beyond the Data Center

It’s not just servers, storage, switches and other data center gear you need to be concerned about. There are plenty of other ways to go green. Paper waste is an enormous problem, so look for ways not only to recycle paper, but to put a program into effect that helps limit printing. Consider allowing your staff to telecommute part of the week. Build a unified communications strategy, including instant messaging, video, voice, and email, as a way to cut down on air travel.

If you take these five steps, you’ll have gotten a head start on going green. Leading the way not only means doing good for the environment, but for your career as well. Being seen as a green hero means greater visibility within your corporation, and very good for
your career path.

Preston Gralla is the editor of GreenerComputing.com. Send news leads, comments and suggestions to him at editor@greenercomputing.com.

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