Green IT in the wrong department, survey suggests

Responsibility for reducing the carbon footprint of their employers' IT equipment is being shared across multiple job roles, the new research reveals.

The survey - published this week - concludes that 34 per cent of UK organisations trust green IT initiatives to company directors and senior management.

Although 13 per cent employed a dedicated ‘green’ person and 17 per cent employed facilities managers (dealing with utility bills), six per cent foisted responsibility on to office managers or administrators and four per cent to human resources staff.

Separate research from the National Computing Centre placed green IT initiatives a long way down the list of priorities for the UK construction industry, with spending on cost-saving technology such as virtualisation, software as a service (SaaS) and cloud computing taking precedence.

With their higher emphasis on using shared infrastructure and less physical servers, these technologies often reduce end-user carbon output.

Research firm Datamonitor has indicated that 2010 would be a good year to get board approval for green IT projects which can also be shown to deliver cost savings.

Further information:

http://www.ncc.co.uk/article/?articleid=15902

http://searchvirtualdatacentre.techtarget.co.uk/news/article/0,289142,sid203_gci1362320,00.html