Fujitsu has revealed large IT-using organisations continue to have lack of maturity in ICT sustainability.
A new study by the Tokyo-based ICT business offerings provider also said that there is a direct relationship between the visibility of ICT power costs and an organisation’s overall awareness of ICT Sustainability issues.
The company released its second ICT Sustainability: The Global Benchmark Report, which provides an analysis of the trending maturity of ICT Sustainability in organisations across the globe.
The research data was collected through an online survey of CIOs and ICT managers in large IT-using organisations across industry sectors in seven countries: Australia, Canada, China, India, New Zealand, the UK and the US.
The report indicated that IT organisations may be losing their focus on ICT energy efficiency and ICT projects that were implemented have failed to institutionalise changes across the organisation. The Index across all countries and all industry sectors declined slightly between 2010 and the current results (from 56.4 to 54.3%), said Fujitsu.
The report said that over half the respondents had no understanding of how much power ICT consumes, with only one in seven ICT divisions including the cost of ICT’s power consumption in their departmental budgets. Fujitsu said for the very small proportion (14.2 per cent) where ICT has control and responsibility for ICT-specific power consumption, their performance was significantly higher. Organisations with more than 5,000 employees have an average score of 61.7 compared with just 50.7 for those with 100 to 499 employees, said the report.
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Fujitsu Global Executive Director Sustainability Alison Rowe said not only is there a relative lack of maturity in ICT Sustainability policies, practices and technologies but the overall Index has declined slightly from 2010, indicating that some of the buzz has gone from Green ICT.
Rowe said, "Many organisations have reached a plateau with ICT Sustainability. They may have tackled the easy initiatives, such as PC power management or telecommuting, but the problem is that even these have declined in performance.
"The survey reveals that the single most important reason ICT departments don’t prioritise ICT Sustainability, or feel they have a compelling reason to do so, is the lack of visibility of ICT power consumption. Until this data can be quantified, change cannot be measured and successes cannot be recognised.
"ICT is pervasive in business and extends far beyond the data centre or the ICT department. ICT Sustainability is the responsibility of all of us, be it end users, lines of business, the procurement function, senior management or our customers, we all have a role to play. This Benchmarking Report provides powerful information which can be leveraged for positive change," Rowe said.
The best performing country of the seven surveyed is Canada. The best performing sector is the ICT/Communications/Media sector in the report.
