Businesses Taking Green IT More Seriously, Study Shows

More businesses will elevate green IT as an organizational priority, allocating budget and crafting strategies to implement conservation technologies as a lever to pare costs and improve profits, according to a recent CompTIA study.

The trade association’s second annual green IT survey, consisting of online interviews with 650 executives in the U.S., U.K. and Germany involved with green initiatives, suggested a growing attention to the technology as a means to boost the bottom line.

Data showed that in 2009, while only 9 percent of businesses rated green IT as a key organizational priority, that figure has climbed to 37 percent in 2011 and is expected to reach 54 percent by 2013, CompTIA said.

“Given the intense cost‐cutting focus during the tough economic times of the past few years as well as periods of high energy costs, it’s likely many firms eyed green strategies as a means to help the bottom line,” said Tim Herbert, CompTIA vice president, research.

One nettlesome problem impeding wider implementation is that green IT “remains a fuzzy concept for many,” said Herbert. “Use of the term and its interpretation vary widely,” he said.

CompTIA said that the study showed that most businesses associate practices that reduce energy consumption and the recycling of old IT equipment with green IT initiatives.

Right now only 20 percent of business organizations dedicate financial resources to green IT but 44 percent said they are moving in that direction, a marker of a growing market for green technology products and services, CompTIA said.

Some 77 percent of the study’s participants said that their organizations enact some level of green strategy that covers energy consumption, equipment usage and design, recycling and product disposal, carbon footprint and employee activities. Of those businesses currently absent a green IT strategy, about half said that their firms will have one in place with two years.

Virtualization technology may cross the bridge for many potential adopters of green IT, Herbert said..

“While technologies such as virtualization or cloud computing may go a long way towards optimizing resource use, fewer respondents currently make the association with green,” he said.