Keep your IT friends close and keep your finance friends closer

I attended the Green IT and Cloud Computing 2.0 Summit this week in Washington D.C. on behalf of Climate Savers Computing, and there was an overarching theme coming from the event: It is good to be green, but it is better to be cheap. Now, that’s simplifying things considerably, so let me further explain.

The Green IT Council invited me to keynote at their second annual Green IT event where companies like Forrester, Microsoft, Intel, HP, CompTIA, CSC, CA and many others presented on technical and management-focused topics as they relate to sustainability.

My keynote “Power Management: Promises Unfulfilled,” addressed the challenges of implementing power management in the early days, or, as I fondly refer to it, pain management. The issue is once bitten, twice shy. As a result, many people still assume that power management isn’t effective. The truth is, unlike systems of the ‘90s and early ’00s when “Sleep” could mean “Die,” current generation hardware and operating systems work well and easily. I discussed in my last two blogs the steps to take to easily enable PM on your desktop or laptop.

At the show, everyone talked about and agreed that IT departments, procurers and facilities people think its great to be green and sustainable, it just isn’t a priority. The key to traction for Green IT and for sustainability to go mainstream is to get the decision-making trifecta – the CFO, the CIO/CTO and the procurement manager – to align on strategic imperatives. The short story is tie green initiatives to cost reduction. Easier said than done.

CSCI hosted an executive roundtable at the conclusion of the Green IT Summit to discuss how CFOs and CTOs can find common ground by discussing their challenges and successes in implementing PM. The discussion was interesting and enlightening, for me and for the people around the table.

All this discussion wraps up on a significant point – Earth Day – which reminds us that it is important to take a step back and see the color of green – not just greenbacks.

Please, do what you can to honor this planet of ours and remember: power management is one easy step toward that.

George Goodman