Crafting a green information technology strategic plan: Organisations can make difference

The world in which we live is at risk of global warming due to greenhouse gas emissions. The responsibility of planning to minimise carbon emissions is not just the responsibility of eco-experts, but IT professionals and organisations must also take on responsibility to ensure that their IT operations are environmentally sound. IT is at the heart of every successful modern business. For medium and large sized organisations, which have embraced technology, the failure or removal of this technology would affect their ability to succeed. Although the IT industry has been perceived to be clean on the surface, IT professionals are realising the magnitude of the environmental impact of their IT infrastructures and operations. The environmental impact of IT operations has slowly been increasing within organisations due to the technology push from IT vendors and the pull from the business needs of the organisation. For example as more customer transactions have been processed, more powerful CPUs have been required as well as potentially more servers etc to store the data. The environmental impact of IT operations is severe in many ways.The total electrical energy consumption in IT operations is steadily increasing. "Green IT" has become a popular and trendy topic in the IT industry. Many organisations are exploring methods and policies to use and develop green technologies. Most policies merely scratch the surface. IT infrastructures are well established in most organisations, but often IT professionals are unaware of how to improve the environmental footprint of their operation.IT organisations should start by crafting a “Green IT Strategic Plan” for implementing green IT principles. As with any IT project, planning for green IT, both for the near term and for the long term, is essential for success It is important to provide practical strategies to energy efficiency, consumption reduction, and environmental stewardship. The plan must have strategies, from as simple as reduction in paper usage, to purchasing energy smart equipment, deployment of collaboration software, energy efficient use, environmentally friendly disposal, server virtualisation and assigning a Green IT champion to communicate the plan. This paper will review current Green IT trends and initiatives, an assessment of the IT operation and analysis of the impact of the carbon footprint in selected organisations, providing an understanding of green IT attitudes among IT professionals to enable a Green IT strategic plan to be proposed