Bladewatch.com

Green Tech Media

Forget about cutting-edge research into more efficient information technology, and start with using the IT that you have more efficiently.

That’s the simple strategy that the United Kingdom is taking to cutting its government IT energy footprint, John Suffolk, the nation’s chief information officer, said Thursday in San Jose.

That includes steps as simple as using fewer printers per employee, making sure those printers print on both sides of the paper, he said.

But Suffolk also gave a plug to using thin clients in lieu of PCs to cut energy use – welcome words, no doubt, to the executives at thin client maker Wyse Technology, which hosted the talk by Suffolk and California CIO Teri Takai.

“For the love of me, I can’t understand why we persist on having a big lump of lead on the desk” for every government employee, Suffolk said, using a less-than-generous description of the modern PC.

An interesting article talking about the Green IT concept, how the government is addressing the amount of power it uses to provide services using IT. I see it mentions the thin client concept, it’s a great way of reducing the end users’ carbon footprint, in most cases a thin client would provide everything the end user needs at a lower cost. The only barriers to entry I see at the moment having spoken with people are licensing costs coupled with the fixed cost scenario of the desktop function. As inflexible as the desktop can be, it works, it’s a fixed cost, we know every year the cost of the desktop function, it’s handled by someone else, all I have to do as CIO is sign the contract. Moving towards a centralized virtual desktop solution requires investment financially and operationally, not to mention some benchmarking so that we provide the right user experience and functionality for the different user groups.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.