Virginia –The 2012 green IT and sustainability research agenda needs to focus on the needs of Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and the IT management team. They must demonstrate leadership in sustainability and engage early in discussion of design, development, and deployment planning of sustainable business systems operations.
Traditionally for CIOs, efficient network and information management had been and will continue to support intelligent ICT deployment; and will continue to result in efficient use of resources and sustainable business outcomes in smarter ecosystems in urban environments. The big question is which combination of efficient network and information management has potential to revolutionize the ICT deployment and support growth in green IT and sustainability.
CIOs must also take a hard look at existing approaches to develop more systemic approaches to energy efficiency in the infrastructure. Looking at an entire network — an entire data center or multiple data centers — can provide IT with bigger opportunities for making changes with a wider impact.
Developing green vendor ecosystems which complement the vision and goals of the company for achievable transformation will form an important element in agenda 2012.
Green IT solutions for the business are mostly in IT organization domain, but can also span organizational boundaries and will involve multiple suppliers, thereby requiring more interdisciplinary work and business partnerships. This is true for data center efficiencies, an entire building or development of Enterprise IT, or the entire supply chain.
Conducting research on sustainability and green IT and staying ahead of the curve is the most daunting task of a CIO. Focus on researching and developing a sustainable business model for green IT will help them to better position sustainable solutions for customers to mitigate the operational costs, and reduce reputational and strategic business risks.
Secondly, identify innovative methods for how to respond to customer concerns and requests specifically for environmental performance, life cycle data and emerging carbon footprint standards of the company products and services. Finally, take leadership in developing sustainable business models in smarter buildings, transportation, services, technology architectures, urban infrastructures and “empowered” citizen applications.
It is not enough for CIOs to look for and to sell products and services that consume less energy and fewer resources or enable less energy consumption, reduced carbon footprint and resource management. They need to link products into a more integrated and long-term roadmap for sustainable technologies and solutions that connect to core strategy and fulfill goals.
CEOs and the leadership team are looking to sustainability as a stepping-stone to use as a platform for inter- and intra-enterprise collaboration and to build and stimulate the environment to create innovation. Sustainability is an information-intensive project that dwells mostly in the external environment of the IT organization.
CIOs and the leadership need to support the enterprise’s initiatives and provide some mechanism to integrate the external information (outside the organization) and internal projects. Failure to do so will result in unnecessary cost and risk built into the sustainable business systems operations.
Amod Desai
Amod Desai is an IT management consultant who writes about futuristic science and technology. Desai, an engineer and management consultant, specializes in information technology and business transformation. He is an alumina of George Mason University School of Management.