Green IT is taking root, whether you're looking at specific practices from power management to virtualization or taking a top-level look at corporate sustainability goals, according to a report released today by
Symantec.
"Perhaps in the past [green IT] was a wish-list item, it's now essential for almost all the companies we surveyed," explained Jose Iglesias, Symantec's vice president of global solutions. More telling is that the survey found that budgets for green it have been rising: "Most IT budgets are declining or staying flat; so the fact that these numbers are rising is pretty remarkable," he said.
The survey, conducted in March 2009, polled top-level employees at 1,052 large companies around the globe, and found some surprising -- and surprisingly positive -- results.
The first notable result is that budgets for green IT practices are on the rise. "One of the reasons that budgets are increasing is because the typical respondent is paying $21 to 27 million per year in electricity use," Iglesias said, "so going after reducing the electricity consumption will pay for itself."
In addition to the boost in green IT budgets, almost all respondents have begun discussing a green IT strategy -- 97 percent said it was on their radar, and 45 percent of the companies in the survey had already put a strategy into action. The motivations for these projects were evenly split between cost savings and energy conservation, both with 92 percent of respondents ranking as important, and 86 percent put environmental responsibility as a key driver for green goals.
