Is Green IT Your Emperor With No Clothes?

Awareness for green IT is increasing, driven by corporatewide greening efforts as well as practical IT concerns like running out of space, power, or budget. As a result, IT ops executives are tasked to formulate and enact their green IT strategy.While technology in itself is not "green," enterprise IT does have the opportunity to harvest the environmental and financial benefits of becoming more eco-conscious. But before investing a single dollar into green IT, Forrester recommends that firms set expectations by measuring their green IT baseline — an annual estimate of the energy consumption, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and financial costs of operating IT. Not only will this data offer a practical green IT starting point by exposing your most eco-taxing assets, but without it you cannot accurately quantify and report the benefits of your greening efforts to senior management.