{"id":49004,"date":"2014-08-15T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-08-15T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/is-green-it-dead\/"},"modified":"2014-08-14T18:26:41","modified_gmt":"2014-08-14T18:26:41","slug":"is-green-it-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/2\/30737\/enterprise\/is-green-it-dead","title":{"rendered":"Is Green IT Dead?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few years ago, it seemed many organizations were undertaking drives for green IT<\/a> – companies publicized their efforts to reduce how much power was being used, worked at lowering carbon footprints<\/a> and started eliminating materials known to be harmful to the environment from their products. More recently, however, there\u2019s been very little "green" hitting the headlines. So what\u2019s happened? Has green IT died, or does it just feel like it?<\/p>\n

Green IT: Hype vs. Reality<\/span><\/h2>\n

The summary is that the challenges of green IT have overtaken the hype and the publicizing. In previous articles (See: Think 3-D Printing Is Brand New? Think Again<\/a>), we\u2019ve talked about the hype cycle<\/a> of adoption and how there\u2019s a peak of expectation followed by a trough of disillusionment. For green IT, the promise of data centers using power more efficiently has also coincided with a surge in the use of more and more cloud services. And to provide bandwidth to customers, this is pushing many hosting organizations to have more power than needed on tap, conflicting with green initiatives. Security concerns over consolidating systems together have resulted in keeping them apart, increasing power demands. Add to these failures of high-profile "green" energy projects (remember Solyndra<\/a>?) and it’s easy to see how green tech has become a little, well, jaded (pun intended!).<\/p>\n

Very often though, the trough of disillusionment forces organizations to rethink the underlying purpose and benefits of their original vision. They create the next generation of products based on what worked and what didn\u2019t in the first. And it is these offerings that then progress the slope of enlightenment. If we look at the origins of green IT, it was all about IT and tech organizations aligning with a greater cultural shift of environmental awareness. The end consumer was becoming more concerned about environmental impact and organizations tapped into that interest with an angle that appealed. The "Tide Coldwater challenge" in 2005, HSBC\u2019s "No Small Change" in 2008 and Toyota Prius in 2009 were popular and well-recognized advertising campaigns focused on lowering energy and reducing carbon emissions. And these worked because the green angle was seen as sincere by consumers and a long-lasting solution, not just surface-level branding.<\/p>\n

Green IT vs. Cost & Quality<\/span><\/h2>\n

If we compare the above examples of green marketing to green IT, the key issues that arise are cost\/benefit sustainability and keeping the green angle aligned with the changing focus of consumers. For example, consider what green IT means when it comes to continuing to find the most power-efficient means of providing greater capacity of "consumer demand" for cloud services. If green projects start to conflict with an organization’s ability to be profitable, they become unsustainable, resulting in the green drive failing and adding to the perception that green IT is superficial.<\/p>\n

So where is green IT succeeding? Key areas include: <\/p>\n