Green talk becomes green action

Added by The Editor, about 1 year ago.

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Environmental concerns are rising up the corporate IT agenda, according to a recent report from IT market research company Forrester.

Analysts at the company found that one-third of European organisations now take ‘green' issues into account when evaluating and selecting IT suppliers.

And almost half (48 per cent) of the European respondents also said that environmental concerns are "very important" in planning their company's IT operations.

That puts European companies way ahead of their US counterparts, where just 22 per cent of organisations look at green factors when choosing suppliers and only 33 per cent say that environmental concerns are "very important" to the IT department.

Said one respondent to the Forrester survey: "I fully expect that green will become one of our decision factors in sourcing and in picking which vendors we work with. I think that green will initially be a differentiator; eventually, it will become a requirement for working with a vendor."

Our take: These findings are very encouraging, as they suggest that companies are starting to translate green talk into green action. Switching off PCs at night and not printing off emails is a great start - but it's vital that IT departments incorporate environmentally-friendly principles into their longer term strategic plans.