Gartner call on Green issues (20-Jul-07)

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Revision as of 16:11, 21 July 2007

Contents

MI Summary

Gartner call on Green issues (20-Jul-07)

Present on the call: Simon Mingay (for Gartner), Caroline, Gavin, Laura, and Paul.

Electrical Capacity of Datacentres

  • Q. Do we have evidence that we are in danger of running out of capacity?
  • A. In terms of quantitative data, No. But anecdotally, Gartner has lots of supporting evidence. SunGard reported that power-related disruptions increased from 7% in 2005 to 26% in 2006. (See Business disruption from power failures up 350% (30-Apr-07).)

In high-density urban areas such as Canary Wharf, this is a common problem. And it could get worse with the advent of blades.

Server consolidation should reduce the total power needed, so it is good from a green viewpoint. But it is bad if you consolidate onto an old datacentre. There may be an argument for consolidating work onto a mainframe, rather than a big Intel server.

But there is no indication that environmental factors are influencing customers' IT architecture decisions.

Environmental priorities by Industry

In descending order, environmental factors are of most concern to:

  1. Retail,
  2. Financial Services,
  3. Consumer Products,
  4. Utilities, and
  5. Telecommunications
  6. Non-commercial organisations with ethical duties.

These industries present the key opportunities and are leading the way in their awareness of green issues.

  • The Public sector, on the other hand, are pushing everything down the supply chain—by way of questions in RFPs etc—but are doing little themselves.

Most business today are taking a progressive position on the environment. But many IT departments are not joing the dots—i.e. they are not translating their company's environmental goals into IT behaviours. They need to act in line with their Corporate Social Responsibility.

The Issue of Climate Change

It is true that companies seem to be jumping on the bandwagon with regards to Green Issues—so-called green-washing. However, climate change means the Green Issue is not just a fad. It's here to stay.

The broader issue of sustainability has a more questionable future, but it is likely that this too will continue to gain attention.

Status on Green Issues

  • Germany is ahead of the UK in terms of their knowledge on, and actions regarding waste, recycling and solar panels.
  • The UK on the other hand is ahead of Germany in terms of awareness of Climate Change issues. It's obsessed with CO2 and greenhouse gases. The phenomenon of climate change has a scientific side and a political/consumer side. In the case of the latter, the level of rhetoric is high and it's going to get a lot of attention.

The US and European Perspectives on Green Issues are very different.

The US has a more divisive approach, hence it is harder to characterise what they are doing with regard to green issues. The consequence of this is that we should not be looking to the USA for guidance on what to do as we are likely to hear conflicting views. This poses the danger of only latching on to messages we want to hear and discarding the other messages.

The European perspective is non-divisive, and as a result much of the progress on Green Issues is coming from Europe.

Gartner's Hype Cycle and Green Issues

Simon referred us to his article(s) in the 'Journal for Unconventional Thinking', a Gartner publication which isn't subject to the same level of peer review as Gartner Research Notes. It's a sandbox.

ICT's Impact on the Environment

The impact of ICT on the environment can be broken down into three orders:

  • First Order. Impact from the stuff we produce
    • e.g. Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions, Electronic Waste, Hazardous Waste and non-renewable Resources. These aspects all have a negative impact upon the environment.
  • Second Order. Application of ICT
    • ICT can be used as a travel substitute, for engine management systems, to optimise transport networks, and for supply chain management etc. These aspects all have a positive impact upon the environment, and are concerned with increasing the material and energy efficiency of production.
  • Third Order. Structural Impacts
    • e.g. the macro-economic and socio-economic aspects of ICT. For example, increasing the use of ICT can decrease the travel density of the economy and decrease the number of miles travelled.

Media Coverage

It is important to remember that media coverage is way ahead of what most companies are doing. The same announcement will often be used in a number of different ways to make it sound like the company are doing more than they actually are.

The media can indeed be used as a good indicator of what is and can be done, but it is imperative to not take the media coverage too seriously. It's much easier to be a critic than to take action. If we looked, for example, at the BBC's environmental actions (apart from the Blue Peter garden), we would expect to find many of the faults that its reporters have identified in other compnies and broadcast.

Activities of other companies

  • BT has done a great deal for its own green profile and for its customers.
  • Sometimes a board can be persuaded that it needs to do thing simply because it's the right thing to do. More often, you have to appeal to its self-interest to get executive action.
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