How green IT can help develop skills in the right areas

Hi All  just a little taster on how Green IT can help your company in many ways.
The Mad Hatter.

In 2010, a global survey of business leaders revealed that, despite a challenging economic environment, organisations were continuing, and even increasing activity on climate change and sustainability (see panel below)

Climate change programmes
• Over two thirds of organisations already had a climate change programme in place
• The top driver of these programmes was energy costs, closely followed by changes in customer demand and new revenue opportunities.
• 70% of organisations planned to increase their spend on climate change and sustainability between 2010 and 2012; top investments listed were investing in energy efficiency, development of new products and services, and transparency in corporate reporting.
Yet it was clear from comments and responses from survey participants that, despite clear business drivers, increasing budgets and planned initiatives, organisations were struggling with execution.

Sustainability has a key role to play in the economic recovery and the future, not simply in response to global or national regulations but also to revenue opportunities and customer demand, and to be competitive in emerging and developing markets.

Bringing sustainability and IT together via green IT has already achieved some notable successes. One example is that of the search for significant and immediate costs savings during the recession. This accelerated the adoption of new technologies to enable virtual meetings and collaboration, to reduce large travel costs. Many organisations captured tangible and measurable business value delivered by those investments in cost savings and contribution to sustainability targets. And these benefits resulted directly from collaboration between business and IT on sustainable IT-enabled business processes.

Those organisations which have already recognised the business potential and imperative of climate change and sustainability, and have a programme in place, should revisit their plans now to take stock, review the business drivers and objectives, and set objectives and targets. Those who have only targeted easily obtainable goals, silo'd activities or who have not even started a programme, should seize the opportunity to establish one or progress their current project as a clear opportunity to reduce costs, enhance reputation and exploit growth opportunities.

IT's role in this is not only to meet sustainability targets where it has direct control but, more importantly, to enable and accelerate the business response to meet its targets.