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IT and business leaders in Australia must ‘wake up to the issues of spiraling energy consumption and environmental legislation’, says research and analyst firm Gartner.
“IT’s ‘age of innocence’ is nearing an end,” said Gartner chief of research, Steve Prentice. “Technology’s clean and friendly ‘weightless economy’ image is being challenged by its growing environmental footprint. While a growing number of regulations are already increasing the end-of-life costs for IT equipment, IT also has to face mounting concerns over increasing electrical power consumption.”
Gartner believes electronic waste and the potential impact – caused by the electricity that computers consume – on global warming are two factors that are of particular note. Prentice warns that overspending on power can have a considerable impact on the IT department’s ability to grow and meet business needs in the future.
“Today, energy costs typically form less than 10 percent of an overall IT budget. However, this could rise to more than 50 percent in the next few years. The bottom line is that the cost of power on this scale would be difficult to manage simply as a budget increase and most CIOs would struggle to justify the situation to company board members.”
Prentice, who will be in Sydney next month as keynote presenter at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2006, says ‘green’ is an issue that is rapidly rising up the CEO’s agenda and will be discussing the business case for being environmentally friendly at the Symposium.
