Sustainable IT 2011

A shift in priority for many with a call for a change in leadership.

In January 2011, The Corporate IT Forum conducted a Reality Checker survey to understand the changes businesses are experiencing with sustainable IT.  47 responses from over 30 organisations answered questions covering priorities, drivers, leadership, challenges and budget.  Contributing organisations represent an annual IT spend of £7.5 billion and employ over 70,000 people.

• A shift in priority for Sustainable IT.  The corporate view on sustainable IT is polarising.   Whilst the number of organisations prioritising the issues remains high, there seems to be a trend for more organisations to reduce its priority. The number of corporates viewing sustainable IT as a low priority is increasing with a large increase in those who rate it as low or very low when compared to other business concerns.
• Call for leadership change.  Opinion on where leadership should come from has changed dramatically away from the Government and now nearly two thirds believe the lead should come from the business users themselves.
• Sustainable IT initiatives are now run across the organisation.  Previous years have highlighted that the approach has been across one or two functions at a time.  This has now changed, with 37.2% (up from 20.9% in 2010) rolling out initiatives across the whole organisation.  This may be due to previous years' results highlighting pilots or trials which, now successful, have been rolled out across the organisation.
• Addressing Data Centres sustainability remains at the heart of the issue.  The focus is still on the data centre but no longer on the network or desktop.
• Carbon offsetting has also reduced in popularity and many are no longer progressing this option.