IT

But automation (business speak for “doing it better and faster”) is hardly a Darwinian one-way street – eco-minded companies are benefiting more than just their own bottom line by developing or partnering to develop software that automates green decision making: they are greening entire industries. And, the three who are doing it – Green Printer, Workforce Software and Sustainable Minds – have a lot to share on what it takes to get there.

If you think the virtual, online world helps reduce energy consumption in the real world (a topic we’ve touched on before here at Green Options Media), think again: a new study by management consulting firm McKinsey & Company provides scary insights into how Internet computing is devouring more and more power and spewing out more and more greenhouse gases.

The UK government's top CIO blasts the industry at an important Green IT event. Good read.

There are some surprisingly easy ways to reduce IT costs while improving performance and cutting energy use.

If you're an IT pro, though, going green may well be new to you, and you may not know where to begin. So here are five simple ways to get started going green. You'll be surprised how simple it is to get started, and how quickly you'll start seeing results.

In the near future, environmental, financial, legislative and risk-related pressure will increasingly force organizations to govern and manage their IT in a green fashion.

Discusses a resource for IT network professionals.

Major vendors in the IT server industry have banded together to create a new standard for measuring the relation of power consumption to performance. This is a major step forward for end user who want a realistic measure of the power/efficiency ration of rival products. It should be agreat help to all those who want to buy green and who have to justify the financial cost of doing so.

Despite growing awareness of the need to adopt more environmentally friendly IT practices, a quarter of firms (26%) admit to having done next to nothing to green their IT, according a PMP Research study commissioned by the Evaluation Centre.

Sun and a consortium of other businesses are going to lower Blackbox self-contained computing facilities into a Japanese coalmine to set up an underground datacentre, using up to 50% less power than a ground-level datacentre.

Steven Sams, IBM Vice President of Global Site & Facilities, is interviewed, in which he describes an energy crunch facing IT data centers and how IBM's Project Big Green initiative aims to solve it.

As the focus on climate change continues to grow, IBM is launching a corporate-led initiative in which businesses earncash or credits for reducing their energy consumption. As part of the program, IBM Efficiency Certificates, clients are rewarded for lowering the amount of energy needed to run their data centers.

Power consumption, recyling or proper disposal of our used IT products, these are things not often considered in companies..

IT provider Sun Microsystems creates online community to track and share data related to an organization's carbon
footprint, to create a mechanism for greenhouse gas accounting.

Worldwide, Internet computers directly pollute the equivalent of 22 million cars. And the Infrastructure powering the Internet contributes more carbon emissions that the entire Aviation Industry.

With power costs rocketing and electricity supplies becoming increasingly unpredictable, IT executives could benefit from completing the Global Action Plan green IT survey and thinking about new ways of working.

According to the release the The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported last month that data centers are consuming up to 1.5 percent of all the electricity generated in the U.S.

Google has unveiled a series of new environmentally-friendly initiatives including the installation of solar panels on the roof of its Mountain View, CA headquarters. This solar installation, the largest US corporate solar installation to date, will generate an electrical output that is enough to supply an estimated 1,000 average California homes.

IBM has announced plans to consolidate its data center from 3,900 computer servers onto about 30 System z mainframes. The initiative is part of Project Big Green, a broad commitment that IBM announced in May to sharply reduce data center energy consumption for IBM and its clients. According to IBM, the new server environment will consume approximately 80 percent less energy than the current set up and the company expects
significant savings over five years in energy, software and system support costs.