Green IT Savings by the Numbers

You're doing Green IT wrong, people. So suggests research by power-management company 1E. Going green is supposed to save you money while you're saving the planet, and saving money is the reason most businesses are going to consider it in the first place. But as always with technology, success is not just about what you buy, but how you use it -- and it turns out that a lot of people are using their efficient new technology in markedly inefficient old ways. For example, if you leave even the power-sippingest PC on overnight – a common practice for 50% of the American workforce – you are compounding the problem of wasteful energy consumption in the enterprise, not helping to solve it, albeit it at a slightly slower rate of waste than with your previous machine. Understanding just how much power IT consumes provides a sobering perspective, and an impetus to follow some common-sense approaches to sustainable computing. Meanwhile, businesses need to do more to support their own green initiatives, and go beyond talking a good game to playing one.