Sustainability of IT sector needs push in the back

Sustainability in the IT sector needs push in the back

Interesting report by ABN-Amro about sustainability in the IT sector (read the article here, in Dutch).  What is already largely known, is confirmed: IT is the elephant in the room when it comes to data center sustainability.

Three things stand out:

1. Only a minority of IT decision makers (35 %) include sustainability as a procurement criterion.
   One of the main reasons cited is the lack of transparency by IT suppliers about the sustainability performance of their products & services, leading in turn to a lack of knowledge with the IT procurement department.
2. The software sector seems to largely escape the sustainability debate.
   Not only are software companies expected (in comparison with data center & cloud service providers) to do the least in the area of sustainability, there is also hardly any focus in the software sector on how to write code energy-efficiently. This is a missed opportunity because a lot (35 % energy savings) can be gained from energy-conscious software design.
3. Building in overcapacity is commonplace and already starts at the IT layer.
   This is then further duplicated at the DC building /technical facilities level leading to equipment (cooling machines, UPS) energy efficiency loss because of (too) low utilization levels.

Conclusion

If we want to address the overcapacity/sustainability issue in the DC sector, we need to start by looking at rightsizing the IT and software layers first.  Do you agree?  Feel free to contact us and rely on our experience and knowledge to improve the sustainability in your data center.