Indian SMBs Are Leading Green IT Investors: IBM

Following the initial hype and unending debates on the tangible and
intangible effects of going green, businesses have now finally woken up to the
benefits of green IT. Irrespective of size and nature of business, companies are
now willingly embracing green IT as a primary way to save costs and secondly to
give essence to their CSR activities. Back in January 2009, Dataquest came out
with its first green audit.

The research result was fairly encouraging with close to 69 percent of the
respondents admitting that they were aware of green IT. A recent survey by IBM
and InfoTech Research Group reveals that Indian SMBs are in fact leading
investments in green IT.

SMBs lead

The IBM study reveals that even in a very difficult economic environment,
Indian SMBs are eager to actively invest in initiatives that reduce the
environmental impact of their IT. It also highlights that controlling costs is
the most popular factor driving implementation across initiatives, and green
initiatives have a clear impact on the bottom lines of organizations. The study
is based on a survey of more than 1,000 information technology executives at
companies with between 100 and 1,000 employees across industries, and in a dozen
countries including India, the United States, Canada, France, Germany and the
United Kingdom.

The findings show that more than 55 percent of Indian companies are going to,
or have already commissioned, third-party environmental audits, purchased
emission credits, or have made improvements in their supply chain efficiency to
reduce energy consumption. Businesses around the world have discovered that
going green isn't just good for the planet; its good for their bottom line as
well.

Hot technologies

Storage consolidation, server and desktop virtualization are key
technologies adopted by SMBs to reduce cost and consumption. The rate of server
virtualization across most regions (with an average implementation rate of 48
percent) is evidence that virtualization is undisputedly the most popular of all
green IT efforts. Almost two-thirds of all companies globally are currently, or
are planning within the next 12 months, to add virtualization technology to
their servers.

Apart from virtualization, SMBs are looking at videoconferencing and unified
communications as effective ways to bring down commuting costs. The survey found
that while 50-60 percent of Indian, Brazilian, North American and British
businesses are up and running with telecommuting and virtual conferencing
capabilities, Germany, France and to a lesser extent, the Nordic countries have
been slower to adopt these technologies. Initiatives intended to reduce travel
are clearly going to receive the highest attention from countries over the next
12 months.

Priya Kekre

Courtesy: DQ