Green Issues

This topic was recently discussed by three IT industry sector personalities in a debate hosted by the Chartered Institute for IT, who are currently doing a lot of work on the subject.

Avanquest’s Mike Rae took part. Green issues, such as carbon offsetting, cap and trade and home working were all talked about. Debaters came up with some practical approaches to the problem.

Mike said “Whilst I agree that carbon offsetting and providing businesses with tools that allow them to measure their carbon footprint is generally a good thing, I also believe there are many simple and relatively inexpensive steps that can be taken to reduce the amount of fossil fuels from the current levels.  Much of this is common sense; such as switching off lights, only using as much heat as is required and thinking about how and when we should travel.  We help our customers by removing paper from processes which reduces costs, increases efficiency and enables people to do their job from any location by accessing information electronically”

Q.  Is it really a good time to talk about Green Computing?

Mike Rae, Sales Director, Avanquest Solutions:

A. It’s a great time to talk about Green Computing because there are several things businesses can do to reduce the impact on the Earth’s natural resources whilst reducing their costs.

Let’s start with car journeys; many unnecessary face to face meetings can be avoided these days with the availability of web conferencing and the ever increasing bandwidth of broadband allows us to work at home just as effectively as when we are in the office.  In fact, many people comment to me that they are far more productive at home because they don’t lose the dead time travelling to and from work and have far less distractions.

Then you have the issue of paper.  There is far less need to print reams of paper these days when information can be communicated electronically, digitally signed, stored securely and accessed remotely.

Finally, virtualisation technology means that the number of physical servers your business needs can be reduced dramatically and the fewer machines to power, the less power you need!