Pure green IT 'dead'

Green IT strategies are of little use on their own, but a company-wide approach to sustainability can bring financial benefits, according to an analyst's report, writes eWeek.

The old green IT movement was a fad, which was killed by the 2009 recession, says Stuart Neumann, an industry analyst at green specialists Verdantix. However, a new sustainability movement has emerged, backed by offerings from large service providers, which take in technologies beyond IT-centric issues such as data centre efficiency and turning off PCs.

The new sustainability movement has to think more broadly, says Neumann in a report, Green Quadrant: Sustainable Technology Services 2011. “Our research found that large multi-nationals and city leaders want IT support for new sustainability initiatives such as electric vehicle infrastructure, offshore wind farms and global carbon management systems,” he says.

The UK's Chartered Institute for IT has created a new certification process for data centre owners that will allow them to prove their green IT credentials, says One Stop Click.

According to the organisation, which was formerly known as the British Computer Society, the new certification gives businesses considering migrating their IT infrastructure to a third-party data storage facility a yardstick by which the performance of server virtualisation solution providers can be measured.

The new green IT certification is based on the European Union's Code of Conduct for Data Centres. The Certified Energy Efficiency Data centre Award comes in three varieties - bronze, silver and gold - and follows hot on the heels of similar certification introduced in the US by the Green Building Council.

AWS Convergence Technologies, better known for its WeatherBug observation services, is joining forces with Scripps Institution of Oceanography to deploy what it is describing as the largest greenhouse gas (GHG) observation network in the world, according to ZDNet.com.

AWS, which has changed its name to Earth Network, plans to invest $25 million over the next five years to build out more than 100 advanced GHG sensors, according to Earth Networks CEO Robert Marshall.

The network will use sensor technologies from Picarro, he says. AWS has been tracking weather since 1993.