The Green Agenda: A Business Guide

This business guide to Green IT was written to introduce, to a business audience, the opposing groups and the key climate change concepts, to provide an overview of a Green IT strategy and to set out a straightforward, bottom line-orientated Green IT action plan. The fact that this will also enable the organization to comply with the growing range of ecologically-focused range of regulations is an additional benefit! Green has become an important business issue. If consumers want to buy from Green organizations, then organizations have to consider their positions, their marketing strategies, their product ranges and their overall operational approach. While there is also a fast-growing market for suppliers of Green products and services, there is a much larger group of organizations that does not yet know how it should respond to the Green business challenge, not least because the business benefits of pursuing a Green strategy are not necessarily that well articulated. Whatever else the modern organization does, it almost certainly had an energy dependency, and it almost certainly uses and relies on information and communications technology (ICT or, more simply, IT). Energy is an expensive commodity, and IT infrastructure and running costs in most organizations are substantial. A business cost-containment strategy that focuses on these aspects of the IT cost base is also one that has direct, quantifiable climate benefits. From a simplistic perspective, it doesnt really matter whether an organization is motivated by a desire to save the planet or simply to save money, the results of pursuing a Green IT strategy will include both.