How green is my vendor? Capgemini's Green IT Report 2008

Tony Austin
Saturday, 18 October 2008 09:03

Opinion and Analysis

The Green IT Report 2008, just published by Capgemini, examines the IT industry’s green credentials and an assessment of how industry leaders are dealing with environmental responsibility, sustainability and corporate social responsibility, also looking at what both IT vendors and users should do to implement a successful green IT strategy.

Consulting, technology and outsourcing company Capgemini have published (on 16 October 2008) a new paper: Green IT Report 2008 - The Computer Equipment Lifecycle Study

The study was done on Capgemini's technology partners, who are among the leaders in the IT industry: Google, EMC², IBM, HP, Sun Microsystems and Intel.

"Although not a hardware manufacturer, they say, "Google delivers an optional component of Capgemini’s managed desktop service and so a view on Google’s green credentials has been included."

The report serves as an analysis of Capgemini’s technology partners’ green credentials and sustainability policies and provides Capgemini’s views and recommendations. In addition, Capgemini has highlighted those areas of infrastructure manufacture that Capgemini believes will experience particularly important development in the future.

They set out, in what they term a Computer Equipment Lifecycle Survey, to establish how these partners are responding to today’s economic and environmental challenges and also to determine how much of the market messaging is backed by genuine developments in power efficiency.

Among their conclusions are that: "Despite their best intentions, most surveyed partners highlighted the difficulty in extending their own green or sustainability policies throughout the supply chain due to its complexity."

"In addition, with regards to reducing the distance from point of production to end-user, surveyed partners expressed their agreement with delivering as locally as possible, wherever feasible."

"However, the view was also expressed that it is neither commercially viable nor environmentally friendly to have in-country manufacturing sites in all major markets."

Also: "Regardless of the decision taken by a corporate executive on IT hardware deployment, there will be an environmental impact. A decision to remain on older hardware means continuing to consume more power/emit more heat/require more air conditioning, than would be the case if a decision were made to upgrade to newer, more efficient technology."

"However, upgrading to newer technology results in more resources used during the manufacture of that hardware and the imposition of the legislative requirement to dispose of equipment."

Get your own copy (free, but site registration is required) to find out how Capgemini's six technology partners fared in this lifecycle survey.

The report is quite comprehensive (104 pages), but it's a pity that we don't have the same information about other IT vendors.