CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — In the growing universe of green IT hardware, software and services, there are two kinds of technologies, according to a new report from Forrester Research: Green IT 1.0 and green IT 2.0.

The 1.0 technologies are those that green the IT infrastructure of a company -- like virtualization and power management -- while 2.0 technologies are those that help the company green other aspects of its business, such as videoconferencing or supply chain management software.

While awareness and implementation of green IT 2.0 projects are certainly on the upswing in companies, green IT 1.0 technologies have taken solid root in companies of all types, to great benefit.

In the new TechRadar report, author Doug Washburn interviewed 12 green IT experts and 10 end-users to identify 15 1.0 technologies that make the cut for how broadly they've been adopted and how ready for prime time the tools are.

The full list of GreenIT 1.0 Technologies is as follows:

• 10 GbE (10 gigabit per second Ethernet)
• Clean energy to power data centers
• Client virtualization
• Cloud computing services
• Data center outsourcing and colocation services
• IT asset disposal and recycling services
• IT energy measurement
• Localized cooling
• Managed printing services
• PC power management software
• Server power management software
• Server virtualization
• Solid-state disk (SSD)
• Storage capacity optimization
• Thin clients

Among the findings for why these technologies have taken off is one that gets to the heart of the future of green IT: even though the economic meltdown has hit most businesses quite hard, more and more companies plan to accelerate their green IT projects. This is because the vast majority of IT professionals see green IT as first and foremost a cost-saving measure, and secondly as a boon to the environment.

"[A]s organizations look to wring out costs any which way they can, green IT can expose opportunities for savings that were otherwise hidden or overlooked," Washburn writes, "such as energy costs from idle PCs and servers, data center cooling costs, and costs from single-sided printing."

The report breaks down the full list of technologies into five categories, based on how broadly or deeply they're adopted: Creation-phase, Survival-phase, Growth-phase, Equilibrium-phase and Decline-phase.

Adoption rates for Green IT 1.0 strategies. Click for full-sized.

While none of these technologies landed in the Decline phase -- Washburn writes that "green IT is here to stay" -- the bulk of the technologies are included in the Survival and Growth phases. The former is a group of on-the-rise technologies, with customers beginning to adopt and spread the word and vendor competition increases. The latter group are more established but still vibrant technologies, where the benefits are widely known and there are ample options for services.

The only technologies that fell outside the largest categories were IT asset disposal and recycling services and managed printing services, both placed in the Equilibrium phase for being well established, highly consolidated markets; and the use of clean energy for data centers in the Creation phase, because despite the many benefits, there are too many barriers to widespread adoption.

The full report, "TechRadar For I&O Professionals: Green IT 1.0 Technologies, Q2 2009" is available for purchase from Forrester Research.