Saving the planet is going to have to wait until IT managers can control IT costs and get their security in place – that’s the finding of a new study.
According to the findings, over 60% of companies continue to regard cost as the key factor in IT purchasing decisions, whilst over 35% view security as the primary concern. Environmental concerns remain a distant third priority, with just three per cent of respondents citing these issues as their priority.
The study, by Windows management software vendor 1E, involved surveying IT managers from 100 UK enterprise organisations. It found that the more traditional considerations of cost and security continue to dominate the procurement agenda for technology infrastructure, despite increasing corporate and governmental focus on issues such as power consumption and carbon footprints.
1E noted that more than two-thirds of those companies surveyed are yet to impose any kind of formal policy for the shutting-down of company PCs during evenings and weekends. This is particularly relevant given the findings of a recent National Energy Foundation study, conducted in collaboration with 1E, which estimated that 1.7 million corporate PCs are routinely left on by UK companies when not in use, wasting some 1.5kWh of electricity and generating around 700,000 tonnes of unnecessary CO2 each year.
Fortunately for the polar ice caps and rainforests, controlling IT costs and being more ‘green’ are not mutually exclusive, something that the study fails to recognise. So IT managers may say being ‘green’ is low down on their list of priorities, but many will surely investigate lower-energy storage, servers, desktops and peripherals for their ability to reduce cost, even if going ‘green’ is not the primary driver.
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