Template:GIT sep-07

From Lauraibm

Full article: Is Green IT an Illusion? (12-Sep-07)

While the developed world sees PCs more or less as consumables, for the rest of the world a PC costs half a year's salary.

Computer Aid ships between 2,000 and 3,000 PCs a month to the developing world, but it is a drop in the ocean compared to the estimated three million computers that are decommissioned each year in the UK alone.

"Some vendors are not targeting reuse because there is no money in it and it does not suit their interest to have a large refurbished market. When we refurbish machines and send them overseas they enjoy on average another 6,000 user hours," said the managing director of Computer Aid.

The problem is that the IT industry is already sitting on a mountain of inefficiency, largely created by its own technological success.

"The improvements in price-performance you would get in one year were so great, the storage improvement alone was so attractive in itself, that people did not exploit stuff, it was easier to be wasteful," said an IDC director.

With space and power at a premium, the hope is that businesses will begin to look at IT in the same way that they have looked at areas such as supply chain management.