Bladewatch.com

Eweek

The United Nations group charged with managing IT and telecoms standards and development has claimed that green IT is central to its mission and that technology could help cut emissions from other industries by as much as 40 percent.

Technology not only contributes to climate change but can also help combat it, said Malcolm Johnson, director of the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau at the International Telecommunications Union (ITU),  in a video interview, which echoed what many in the industry have been saying – for instance in our interview with Johnson’s boss, Dr Hamadoun Touré, secretary-general of the ITU.

“In terms of the emissions in other sectors that can be reduced by using ICT, the transport sector, the energy generation sector, buildings and waste disposal, estimates vary between 15 percent and 40 percent,” said Johnson in an interview with Lightreading.com.

An interesting read, we need to reduce the impact that IT has on the environment whether as a vehicle for reducing cost, meeting our corporate social responsibility requirements, or even as a manager had said to me the other day, “…to help investment during the credit crunch…”

When we look at reducing the impact of IT on emissions are we looking at the whole picture?

• How much data do we need to be online and at what level of accessibility in terms of time – if my email archive required a restore taking two hours would it be an issue?
• What core services does the desktop/laptop/phone need to provide and what can be hosted/powered online – do we need such powerful devices?
• How can we change the nature of the way we provision, manage and support our data centers, best practice is 20 degrees, what if I said 30 and signed off the risk on the basis that my hardware will be refreshed before heat would result in a direct component failure.
• When will we address those legacy platforms directly by investing and migrating – will carbon footprint of the data center mandate those legacy platforms?

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