Fujitsu’s ‘ICT Sustainability: Australian Benchmark 2014’ report has been launched at an event in Sydney opened by the NSW Minister for the Environment Rob Stokes and attended by professionals in sustainability positions in both government and industry.
The report compared 200 large IT-using organisations in Australia across all industry sectors, focusing on areas in ICT in which improvement was required to achieve sustainable practice. The report was developed using metrics developed by Connection Research in conjunction with Fujitsu Australia.
“From the last Benchmark Report, we can see that ICT Sustainability across Australian organisations has stalled,” said William Ehmcke, director of Connection Research.
“Over the next two years we hope to see some very real flow-on benefits stemming from better metrics and increased investment in technology enablement. These will have the capacity to drive wholesale improvement and value across private and public sector enterprises.”
The research takes a critical look at sustainability practices in five key areas of ICT – Equipment Lifecycle Management, the Data Centre, End User Computing, Technology Enablement and Metrics – and how to measure and manage performance and ICT energy use.
“It is clear that Australian enterprises are making only token gestures towards the environment,” said Lee Stewart, head of sustainability at Fujitsu Australia and New Zealand.
“Failure to take responsibility for the impact on the planet is one thing, but failure to see ICT sustainability improvements as key to reducing CapEx and energy costs is missing the requirements for every area of every business to produce savings. ICT sustainability, even if seen in pure financial terms, cannot be ignored.”
In encouraging CIOs across Australia to download the report, Stewart said: “If you take only one thing from this report, it is to isolate and understand your ICT energy usage. Treat it like cash in your business – measure it, monitor it and control it.
“This single action will push efficiencies beyond ICT to your whole organisation. Every new technology implementation is a real chance to improve sustainability and financial performance.”
The report is a follow-up to earlier research conducted by Fujitsu in 2010, 2011 and 2012, covering research data collected from over 3000 CIOs across eight countries. That research was conducted and analysed by Connection Research.
